The March Madness Spring Cleaning Walk

We all met up at @ Woody's today  for coffee/tea & to gather the group.   Steve Ma (the owner of Woody’s) provided us with water and cereal bars for the journey (We walked for 1½ hours or so).    We walked a circuitous route, cleaning all the way.

Thank you to the City of Oakland Public Works set us up with tools/supplies AND picked up the trash we collected!  Great. Thank you to Jennie Gerard (of Pat Kernighan’s office) for helping us out whenever we need anything ever.

Thank you all and of course, Steve Ma and Woody’s!

Earth Day Planting

Hi!

I wanted to see if you could get the word out there regarding the start of a few beautification projects that I hope to roll out in our neighborhood this year (the first hopefully for Earth Day) and I also am looking for volunteers to help out in a variety of roles.

 

One of the projects is taking over the medians that block some of the intersections and landscape them as neighbors in the same manner as the Buddha garden at the intersection of E 19th Avenue and 11th Avenue. I have my eye on the one at E 20th and 12th Avenue and I know there are others. We would like to landscape at least one of these for Earth Day on the Weekend of April 20/21. What I need is for someone at one of these intersection to act as the lead and be a block captain in the surrounding block to drop fliers in mailboxes and speak to neighbors to get their contact info, tell them the date and get them to show up on planting day. Once emails are collected from neighbors I can coordinate from there. We'll also have a potluck afterwards to celebrate the new planted space(s). 

 

The other project I need block captains for to do outreach to neighbors upfront is landscaping of the sidewalk strips between the sidewalk and the street curbs. We can plant trees (do the appropriate approval from the City) and also plant drought tolerant plants in the spaces and then fill the top with decomposed granite which will keep the weeds out and the moisture in. We've done this in San Francisco many times and it transforms a block when it is all nicely landscaped and maintained. And my partner, Josh, is a landscape designer so he will work with each neighbor to design a garden that needs minimal water (like once a week) and little maintenance free of charge. We will remove cement in the spaces where new gardens can be placed but most homes already have areas ready to plant. We will be working with a non profit that plants city trees for a reduced price to bring down the cost where we plant trees

 

Please contact me @ skopff@sbcglobal.net or 510 479-3660 to ask more info or volunteer for any of the roles. We also will be looking for donations (which should be tax-deductible since I've set up a non profit) to help the neighbors who want to participate but need a little financial assistance as well as to fund the landscaping of the public spaces.

Steven J. Kopff, CPA
1218 E. 21st Street
Oakland, CA 94606
510 479-3660