Archives/Technology Note: Website

Many residents have expressed confusion about the website and how often the website is updated and the difficulty in keeping up with updates. Not to mention the increased job duties of the Archives/Technology Officer (me).

As a result, the website will now be updated at least twice a month and at least one blog will be updated each day, however this will no longer be reflected be any special notation. Instead when the website is updated a list of blogs (by family) that have been updated will be listed.

This will be effective Dec 1, 2007

Hood Council Note: Publishing Hood Council Meetings

The online hood council meetings are not going well-residents are not visiting the online forum and there isn't much incentive to maintain the forum. Instead we're going to publish the notes of the hood council meetings. This will be done on the website-not a blog type posting-but actual minutes of the meetings and concerns raised.

Hood Council Note: Farming Rights

There's been a lot of discussion about farming rights and food produce for the hood, so I decided to do a formal report.

Number of households: 13 (not including house on BAP Campus-thier food source comes from national sources)

Current Number of Residential lots: 15

Number of ground plots needed to feed each lot: 5

Total number of ground plots needed: 75

Only one family has farm rights. These farm rights include:

• Must develop/harvest a minimum of 22 ground plots, 3 fruit trees or any combination of the two to equal 25 (ie 20 ground plots/5 fruit trees; 10 ground plots, 15 fruit trees, etc).
  
• Must develop at least one plot of each food: Tomatoes , Strawberries , Cucumbers , Pole Beans, Peppers , Eggplant.
  
• Must have at least two fruit trees variety: Apple, Lemon, Orange
  
• May reside on a 3x3 to a 4x3 lot
  
• $300 incentive each season

Mendenhall Farm: 30 plots (5 plots of each variety) + 6 fruit trees (2 trees of each variety) + 3 bee hives that each produce 4 jars of honey simdaily (12 jars (6 servings each (72 meals total)) simdaily)+ small pond with healthy fish population.

There are no grocery stores and Smokey Jane's reduced it's selection of fine wines and cheeses that can be purchased-thus families pay an additional $50 delivery fee for processed food. This is an incentive for families to buy fresh local produce from the Farmer's Market. As long as prices are kept reasonable, the hood council will be able to support the farm and local produce.

Hood Council Note: Hood Employees

The hood has several employees-most are paid according to a basic salary and fee, but others (like the pastor and teacher) are paid differently:

The Centre
Bank Teller (fair salary scaled based on skill/badges)
Newspaper Editor (fair salary scaled based on skill/badges)
Welcome Center Cashier/ Travel Guide (fair salary scaled based on skill/badges)

The Medical Centre
Medical Center Director (fair salary scaled based on skill/badges)
Nurse (fair salary scaled based on skill/badges)

AV Historical Church
Pastor (flat salary + benefits)

AV Secondary Academy
Principal/Administrator (flat salary + benefits)

The hood has numerous job openings-thinking about giving talks and assesment tests to the teenagers and university students to help them realize where they would fit into the hood's economy. Will talk to Rayne about this venture since it falls under her duties.

Hood Council Note: Musik Faire

The Musik Festival has been approved. It will be the last day of summer, a nice event for the teens, at The Foundry. It will be in the evening of the Summer Festival and we're importing special snack kiosks for the event, as well as making sure there is ample room and restrooms.


Performers
Sam Jones, Mayfair Plaza: pending
Selena Farrell, Mayfair Plaza: pending
Sergio Gitano, Harper's Cove: confirmed
The Fighters, Palatial Heights: confirmed

Special Guests
Chad Vanderburg, MC: confirmed


There will be a re-release of Alisa Crawston's CDs and concert tees; and the sales of the other performers CDs and tees. Tickets will be on sale for $50 and VIP tickets will be on sale for ~$150 and will feature access to the VIP lounge, meet and greet with performers and a special souvenior backstage pass. The profits will go towards the purchase of new computers for the school.

Archives/Technology Note-Update

Another update report:

Assist in the management of family tree information: Goal is to update the family tree document bi-monthly. Uploading this as we speak along with an updated map of the hood. Revamped the family tree to allow links bewteen each family and to allow the database to be smaller. This is taking more time than anticipated and will be uploaded later this year.

Collect community & residents registry: Template and tools are now online for other hood administrators to download. Trying to decide if we should collect skill and badge information since this is very dynamic.

Test and implement 3rd party technology: With the new deal working on implementing a "patch" to the hood's infrastructure. The testing folders are quite large as residents buy more items online and ask for it to be tested. Will look into limiting the amounts of items residents may purchase. Also, the folders are due for a cull-will do inventory of cc items and delete little used items by the end of the year.

Perform back-ups of resident information: Another backup was done right before the "patch" was implemented. Patch was implemented, still in testing to note any changes and ill-effects.

Serve as local reporter: on track.

Manage the local library: Still not so well. Plan on creating a reading incentive plan with the community director.

Hood Council Note: New Lot

The Garden Association met with me today. They presented a proposal for a botonical garden. The garden would reside on a lot as small as 2x2 to as large as 3x3. In addition to the numerous flowers, plants and walking paths, there would be a greenhouse (with a space for weddings), stage for performances.


The club even had a mock-up design of the garden with a japenese garden, country cottage garden, space for the stage, and coffee shop.


They emphasized that this would not duplicate the purpose of Celebration Park in that the botanical gardens would be mostly educational, an area for beautiful weddings and special events such as concerts. Which Apple Valley does need.


I reviewed thier proposal and looked at some numbers. Also I have determined a suitable location for the site-and the site is now nearing final construction.