Commissioner’s Corner- Pine Castle
Clean-Up Pine Castle
When we walk or drive down our neighborhood streets, I think we can all agree we want them to be clean, we want to take pride in where we live. To help out our fellow neighbors, I want to personally invite you to join me for a Community Clean-Up in Pine Castle on Saturday, May 21.
If you’re interested, volunteers should plan to meet at Oakridge High School at 8 a.m. and will be served a light breakfast and provided with T-shirts, gloves and all the goodies you’ll need to help us throughout the morning. At 11:45 a.m. we’ll come back together for a complimentary lunch. I hope you’ll join me in helping spruce up our community!
District 4 and 2012 Pioneer Days
I’m pleased to announce that one of our District 4 Aides, Susan Makowski, is now serving on the Pine Castle Pioneer Days Board where she’ll be helping plan the 2012 Pioneer Days! Susan helped plan this year’s event as well. The 2011 Pioneer Days was a great success and I want to thank everyone who put the event together and attended. I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with residents and learning a bit more about this historic area of our county.
I look forward to seeing what Susan and the rest of the Pine Castle Historical Society Board have planned for next year’s Pioneer Days!
Small Business Luncheons
One of my main goals as your County Commissioner is to help small businesses get connected with local government and assist them with the resources already available to help further their success. This past month, I hosted the first in a series of small business luncheons to do just that. We had over a dozen business owners located near the South Orange Ave. corridor, including Mayor Bagshaw from the City of Edgewood. A delicious lunch was provided by Sonny’s BBQ on South Orange Blossom Trail and served as a finger-lickin’ good opportunity for the business owners to get to know one another (and for me to get to know what’s important to making their business successful).
Stopping Domestic Abuse
I recently spoke at an event for Harbor House of Central Florida, which is launching a Pine Castle initiative called Project Courage. Project Courage is a community engagement pilot project that involves saturating a neighborhood with knowledge, information, training, programs and events that will help eradicate domestic abuse from that community.
This project teaches individuals how to recognize what abuse is, respond to the abused and abuser, and where to refer the survivor and family members of abuse for help and guidance. If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic abuse please call 407-886-2856, or for more information about Project Courage please visit www.harborhousefl.com.
SunRail Community Meetings
Last month Orange County hosted a community meeting about the planning process for the proposed SunRail station at Sand Lake and Orange Avenue. If the Governor allows Sun Rail to move forward, local residents can expect another community meeting as the process moves forward. If you would like to be notified of these future meetings – which I highly recommend – please let our office know by emailing district4@ocfl.net.