March 3, 2004

Willow Glen’s eList is a wellspring of information

By Carol Rosen
Editor

The Willow Glen Neighbor-hood Association’s (WGNA) eList offers a large variety of timely information.

The email can help Willow Glennites find out anything and everything about the neighborhood, its people, its businesses and its history. It also gives them a place to vent about problems, offer congratulations, dispell rumors or just have a dialogue with neighbors. It’s the place to go to find out just about anything and everything pertaining to Willow Glen.

Preparing to celebrate an anniversary in April, the eList has been a source of information and entertainment for nearly five years. It all began when people at a neighborhood association board meeting mentioned that people in other neighborhoods were using an email type forum to communicate.

“The people in the Naglee Park area had a similar list up and running about a year before we started the eList,” said Larry Ames, WGNA’s eList administrator. “We formed ours based on it and got a copy of their bylaws” so that there were rules and regulations. “About a year after our eList started, a member of the WGNA moved to Santa Cruz and started up their own eList based on ours,” Ames added.

Currently, there are 450 registered names on the list. Ames recommends reading the bylaws before you start using the eList because sometimes people don’t understand the system. Once someone came on and tried to sell real estate. That’s not okay, he said. Recently, a candidate tried to do some politicking by asking for volunteers. That’s also not okay, he added.

“I was displeased. He wanted to join [the eList] and said he’d read the bylaws. He obviously hadn’t because if he had he would have understood what he could and couldn’t say,” according to Ames.

When members do not follow the rules, they can be kicked off, he said, but typically they are admonished by the administrator and asked to clean it up. If they don’t, then they are removed. People are not allowed to flame others on the list, snide comments are tolerated but not to excess. Most of the time, the readers admonish each other without needing the administrator to clear things up.

For example, last November eList readers were commenting about renovations and a name change for The Glen. Many readers commented on it, bringing up past allegations of problems. Finally, one reader posted a message stating that it really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things what anyone wrote, that if you didn’t like the new name or the food, it would be a good idea not to go there and spend your money. After that, the discussion pretty much died a quick death.

Other topics on the eList include questions about finding doctors, dentists and chiropractors, plumbers, house cleaners or remodeling contractors, where to find specific items and so forth. Other areas include discussions on what’s happening in the area, publicity about bazaars, boutiques, bake sales or other attractions, crime waves, upcoming meetings or activities and news.

The eList also has helped to preserve the neighborhood, according to Ames. About a year or so ago, one eList member noticed a For Sale sign by the railroad tracks near the Coe and Lincoln Avenue intersection. The eList member wrote about it asking what was going on. His curiosity resulted in a community meeting and got District 6 Councilmember Ken Yeager and the city involved. Although two parcels had already been sold, the city is working to ensure that the area which is planned as part of the Los Gatos Creek trail, will continue.

“If it wasn’t for the eList, more parcels of land would have been sold on the Willow Glen Spur trail and it would have been too late to do anything about it. The discussion on the eList got things going and we managed to save the area around the railroad trestle from getting sold off and developed,” Ames said.

The eList also is good at dispelling rumors. A while back, a local newspaper reported four murders at Willow Street Park. The area just doesn’t have much crime, said Ames, and people were amazed and scared that suddenly four people were dead at a neighborhood park in Willow Glen.

It turns out that what actually happened was that four elderly people in a nearby nursing home had died in a short time period. The police report counted them as bodies in the park because the nursing home was within a quarter mile of the hospital and that’s how it got reported. Through neighbors writing back and forth, the truth about the four dying from natural causes came out and cleared up what had been perceived as a scary incident.

Other eList breakthroughs have come through posts dealing with car break-ins, alerting people to problems so that they are on the look out for the criminals. It’s also a good place to find out facts. At Christmas, people were asking about Lincoln Avenue carriage rides, they got information and also took care of some members who were griping.
The eList is easy to join. Just go to WGNA’s Web site, www.wgna.net, and click on eList on the left. Follow the instructions and you too can help and have fun.