Dear ENA Members – I would like to inform the membership of ENA that at the last board meeting, I was elected your President. It is a great honor to be elevated to this position. I look forward in the next year to working with all of you to improve our neighborhood and make it a better and safer place to live. One of my goals is going to be to increase our membership and to get the business community involved in the association.

 There are a couple of items that I would like to make you aware of. First, this Saturday morning March 6th is the annual Waterway Cleanup. If you would like to participate, registration begins at 8:30 am at Colohatchee Park Boat Ramp. You can participate even if you don’t have a boat. Come on down and join the fun. Remember to wear old cloths and soft sole shoes as you will get dirty. For those of you who live on the water, wave at us going by!

Secondly, this upcoming Monday evening at 7:00 pm the City’s Planning and Zoning Board will meet in the new City Hall Commission Chambers to discuss a land use amendment which will greatly impact the western portions of our neighborhood.  The City wants to change the current land use designations of Commercial, Industrial, Low Medium (10 dwelling units per acre) Residential, Medium High Residential (25 dwelling units per acre), Transportation, and Recreation and Open Space into a Transit Oriented Corridor (TOC). This amendment is proposed west of NE 15th Avenue south of NE 26th Street and NE 14th Avenue north of NE 26th Street. The TOC would allow all the existing land use categories except they can be all mixed together. If this land use amendment is approved by the City, the County, and the State, the land will be rezoned to a new TOC zoning category. At that point, you could have a single family home next to a pawn shop or a check cashing store, and apartments in the middle of industrial lands. As an urban planner, I feel that this is poorly thought out and the City needs to redraw the boundary lines to eliminate the existing residential areas from the proposed TOC. I hope that you can attend the meeting next Monday and let them know that this is not what we need in our neighborhood.
 
Finally, I would like to remind you about our next meeting on April 8th at 7:00 pm at Independence Hall. We will have an interesting presentation by the City’s parking consultant about future parking plans for the Wilton Drive area. It promises to be an interesting meeting and I hope you can make it.  Remember, bring at least one neighbor to the meeting!

The comments above are my own, and are not officially approved by the ENA Board and membership. However, as your new president, sometime events occur between Board and General Membership meetings, and I want to keep you informed on issues that affect our neighborhood as they occur. See you at the Waterway Cleanup or our next meeting. - John  

  

John R. Fiore, President
Wilton Manors East Neighborhood Association
954-564-3821 - Home
954-357-8133 - Office
Fiore@wiltonmanors-ena.org