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July DIA Newsletter

At our July meeting we will talk about:

  1. Reorganizing the DIA
  2. Making a Dimond brochure
  3. Getting a DIA telephone.

In August there will be no DIA newsletter or meeting. See you in September!

Report on DIA Outreach
How many households are there in Dimond? About 5,000? How many of them know that Dimond has a neighborhood organization? Maybe 300? How many belong to the DIA? About 120. We need to get the word out, but how?

Here are some ideas the DIA is working on to improve the Dimond Community Network

  1. making a neighborhood corner in the Dimond Library
  2. creating an attractive brochure for door-to-door distribution and for use by local realtors and retailers. We're also thinking about whether the DIA should have a voice-mail phone line.

DIA member Rick Banker is working on layout and design for the brochure. We could really use help from someone with an art background who could draw or paint a stylized Dimond map for the brochure.

We could also use more ideas, especially about how to reach out to residents who rent their homes in the Dimond. All too many people assume that the DIA is a homeowners' association; this is a perception we need to change.

Janet Broughton is the contact person for the DIA Outreach Working Group. Call her to volunteer a little time or to offer your suggestions about outreach in Dimond. You can reach her at 532-1645 or broughtn@socrates.berkeley.edu

Dimond News
Peace in the Park
On June 5th DIA member Jim Hill spotted the posters: beneath a picture of huge amplifiers, people were invited to bring beer to a June 11th Dimond Park jam. There was no phone number for the jam, and no park permit. Would we have a replay of the 1998 mini-riot?

Within two days, the police had a plan in place, and the 11th came and went peacefully. Special thanks go to Niccolo De Luca, assistant to Councilmember Dick Spees, who made sure our concerns were heard.

Trucks on 580
On June 20th, the State Senate transportation subcommittee voted to approve a bill by Assemblymember Ellen Corbett that would make the 580 truck ban permanent.

Bike lanes
At its June meeting, the DIA board voted to support bike lanes on MacArthur, provided that they end at Lincoln. Everyone at the meeting thought that bike lanes extending into the business district would be unsafe; we would first need a traffic plan for relieving local congestion.

Email list update
If you are on the Dimond e-mail list, you should have received several messages during the past month. If you sent us your e-mail address but haven't been getting messages, then you are probably one of several people whose e-mail information got lost. Please send it again! If you haven't sent us your address and would like to get up-to-date news about the neighborhood, please send your name and e-mail address to: list@dimondnews.org

Did you know?
"In 1870 a new water company, the Sausal Water Company, headed by Caspar T. Hopkins, extracted water from Sausal Creek to serve the Fruitvale area and Brooklyn. The Sausal Water Company quickly ran out of money and was bought out by Anthony Chabot. Sausal Creek then supplied water for all of Oakland and Brooklyn until 1872." -Sherwood Burgess, The Water King: Anthony Chabot, His Life and Times.

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