WHITE MOUNTAINS LAND TRUST AND SAVE OUR PARK NEWSLETTER
Volume One, Number One
Summer 2008
Welcome to the Friends of the White Mountains Land Trust (WMLT) and Save Our Park (SOP). You are receiving this because you signed up at an event like the 2007 Fall Festival or Wildlife Weekend, or donated at least $100 to WMLT and received a DVD of Woodland Lake Park, or participated in the 5K “Walk to Save Our Park” in June, 2008 or filled out a donor form or bought raffle tickets. We hope you will want to stay involved as someone who cares about Open Space and especially Woodland Lake Park (WLP).
In the past year the Town has created a task force to address all the possibilities for the Town to acquire WLP. Various committees were formed to explore funding and other ways for the Town to secure the park. “Save Our Park” is one of those committees. At first we were going to create a Foundation so donations would be tax deductible. The WMLT board stepped forward and agreed to hold the money for the Town. WMLT signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Town last Fall. Now donations to the fund to Save Our Park are tax deductible since WMLT has 501(c)3 status.
An appraisal is being done which should be completed by the end of this year. It is hoped that then we will know how much money will be needed for the Town to begin to purchase the park. The Trust for Public Lands (TPL) has also been recently engaged to help assess the citizens’ attitudes about raising funds for the park. TPL has vast experience in working with communities which wish to acquire open space. We are looking forward to their unbiased survey which will be done soon. Because we expect that the appraisal amount will be very large (the Forest Service must appraise the land at its “highest and best use”), TPL will also help us create a ballot question for submission to the voters next May. Your input on the survey and ballot issue will be greatly appreciated.
There have been 4 Town Hall meetings in the various “nodal” areas in the past year. Citizen concerns and ideas were collected and discussed. An update on the Town’s progress will be showcased at the next 2020 Vision Committee’s Town Hall on July 29th at 6:30 PM at the Blue Ridge High School Auditorium. We hope that many people who care about WLP will attend and voice their opinions.
As far as fund raising projects which the Save Our Park committee has had in the past year, there have been 3 main ones: Barb Davis created a DVD and had a special showing of it where people donated $100 or more and received the DVD as a “Thank You” gift, then on June 7th about 250 people participated in a 5K Walk to Save Our Park at Pinetop Lakes Golf and Country Club which raised over$13,000 and, finally, we are currently having a raffle. The raffle has 7 prizes: a gorgeous quilt made by Barbara Henderson, a hand woven stole or poncho by Richard Peel (whose mother walks WLP with a walker!), the choice of 2 paintings done by Grace Berg (one of which is the logo for Save Our Park), a $100 gift card from Red Devil Restaurant, the WLP DVD by Barb Davis, a beautiful fused glass necklace by Nita Morton and golf with carts for four at Silver Creek Golf Course. The tickets are $1 or 6 for $5. They are available at Red Devil, 4 Seasons Printing, Classic Cookware, Safeway whenever it is possible to man a table and the Pinetop-Lakeside Chamber of Commerce on Friday afternoons and some Saturdays. The large items are displayed at the Chamber also. The drawing will be at the Fall Festival on September 28th and you do NOT need to be present to win. You can also e-mail Lynn Krigbaum and work out how to purchase tickets from her. lynnkrigbaum@yahoo.com or Krigbaum@wmonline.com There is one other factor in the raffle and that is that you can designate which prize you want to win. We hope you will participate in this fund raiser. You can also always send a donation (in any amount, but $100 or more will still produce the DVD “Thank You”) in the form of a check written to “White Mountains Land Trust” with “Save Our Park” in the Memo line to White Mountains Land Trust, P.O. Box 803, Lakeside, AZ 85929.
We are excited to look forward to repeating the 5K Walk to Save Our Park at Pinetop Lakes Golf and Country Club on June 6, 2009. We hope you will participate in this event.
Another up coming event yet this year is the annual Fall Festival Parade. It will be September 27th. We thought it would be fun and a real boost to the awareness of the importance of securing Woodland Lake Park if everyone who walked in the 5K last June would wear their tee shirts from the Walk and participate in the parade. We have a banner and if we could have a hundred or so people wearing their Save Our Park shirts walking behind it, that would send a message to the Town about the care that we have for the Park.