Dear Neighbors,

As many of you know, 5 years ago, SHA proposed closing our community’s access to/from Route 29 northbound. Through community organization and a coordinated response, we were able to persuade them to develop a better alternative. There was extensive analysis of options by SHA hired experts with our input and guidance. We encourage you to review the details, including the solutions proposed by SHA on this website.

Five years ago when SHA proposed to close off the northbound access to 29 from our community, we formed a working group to gather information, gather community feedback through petitions, email, and meetings, and share that with SHA. We also enlisted the support of our elected representatives who were very supportive.

The working group has re-formed to address SHA’s latest proposal. When this happened 5 years ago, we found that a single point of contact with SHA was very productive. Most of that was done through the working group and specifically Stephanie Cates-Harman. We believe it will serve everyone’s interest to coordinate our communication with SHA through Stephanie and the Working Group.

SHA has scheduled an informational meeting on Thursday, February 13th from 6-8PM at Hammond High School. Your attendance at this meeting is critical to how effective we are in getting their attention. The last time we had several hundred folks show up and we made it clear to SHA (and our elected officials) how important this issue is to us.

The working group thought it would be helpful to hold a neighborhood meeting in advance of the February 13th SHA information session. We will share information and gather feedback for SHA. The neighborhood meeting is set for January 23 @ 7-8pm in the Church of God meeting room (downstairs/around back).

If you know a neighbor who is not on the community group email list, please send their name and email to Sue McCarty (sgmccarty <at> gmail.com).

We are also asking folks that are on the group email list (https://groups.google.com/…/route-29–rivers-edge-road-inte…) to please consider limiting near-term use to critical messages. In the past, the flood of emails from our neighbors became overwhelming making the list ineffective. Let’s share our ideas at the community meeting and collect them into a single concise message for SHA.

We look forward to working with you to preserve and improve safe access to our community from Route 29.

The Rivers Edge Working Group