News: Doerr NA Ends

Dear Neighbors,

Six years ago, I created the Doerr Neighborhood Association as a result of my concerns about a violent event that happened in our neighborhood. I wanted to change things and help build communication between our neighborhood and our city resources. And, I wanted to develop events and volunteer opportunities that built a sense of community among neighbors.

Over the years, we have achieved many of our goals with the support of a small but mighty team of volunteers and our board members. We have had help at our workdays from some of you and many of you have attended our events such as National Night Out. We started out focused on traffic and neighborhood issues and moved towards focusing most of our energy on improvements and care of Doerr Park. We made a lot of progress and accomplished many things. Many of our accomplishments are listed and pictured on our webpage, which we invite you to visit www.doerrna.com

Unfortunately, as time has gone on, the number of volunteers has dwindled. For the last two years, most of our volunteer activities (watering flowers, trees, weeding around trees, trash pickup, etc.) have been completed by a very small group of people with just 4 or 5 regular volunteers (including our board). This simply is not sustainable and, given the lack of communication from and continually decreasing support of PRNS and the D9 office, the Board made the difficult decision to end our efforts. So, effective April 1, 2025, the Doerr Neighborhood Association will be closing operations. Our BSJ6 grant funding ends on March 31st so this date makes sense. We will close out our books during April but all operations and advocacy will end on March 31st.

What will change?

·         The Doerr neighborhood will no longer have association representation with the City of San Jose. However, you are always able to contact the D9 office for assistance.

·         We have a limited supply of dog poop bags and will continue filling dispensers at Doerr Park until we run out.

We will no longer:

·         Plant, weed, mulch, and water the trees at the park. Most of the trees we planted have been established for 3+ years and we’ve met our 3-year commitment to water them.

·         Plant, water, and maintain the flower bed/garden spot in front of the Doerr Park sign.

·         Host National Night Out or other community building events.

·         Pick up trash at Doerr Park and in our neighborhood

·         Advocate for repairs or improvements at Doerr Park including the Tot Lot.

·         Advocate for traffic enforcement or other traffic measures in our neighborhood (red curbs, signage, etc.)

·         Advocate for road improvements and other city funded projects.

·         Email city updates to you.

·         Conduct any operations of Doerr NA.

We encourage you to look at all we have accomplished over the past six years on our website www.doerrna.com . There are many photos of our events and the improvements we’ve made with the support of volunteers from our community.

We also encourage you to become involved in our community and find ways to improve things. While we may be stepping back that does not change the need for our neighborhood to have a voice. Hopefully, someone else will start a new association and pick up some of the things that we’ve worked on in the past. The D9 Leadership Group www.D9LG.org is available to assist with starting new associations. If you are interested in adopting Doerr Park you can contact https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/departments-offices/parks-recreation-neighborhood-services/get-involved/adopt-a-park  Please keep in mind that all work at city parks has to be done with permission from PRNS/Adopt-A-Park (this includes planting anything, weeding, watering, etc.)

I’d like to give special thanks to my current and recent board members:

·         Denise Leto (volunteer & board 2022-2025)

·         Lynn Myers (volunteer & board 2021-2025)

·         Al Pippert (volunteer since 2021, board 2023-2024)

And, my original/first board member Erik Levine who served in 2019/2020.

Al Pippert and Chip Christen have been volunteers extraordinaire. Both Al and Chip have been watering trees for over 3 years. Their tireless dedication to beautifying Doerr Park is greatly appreciated and is the reason our 14 trees not only survived but thrive. A big thank you to all the volunteers who have helped us over the years. We appreciate your effort and hope you will continue to support our neighborhood and Doerr Park.

We encourage you to report concerns about Doerr Park to: Park.Concerns@sanjoseca.gov You can check out additional resources on our webpage www.doerrna.com/resources

We thank everyone for your support over the past six years and wish you all the best.

Sincerely,

Rachel Daniels

President, Doerr Neighborhood Association

rachel@doerrna.com

doerrna.com