Happy New Year, Crossroads!
My name is Ricardo Cosentino, and I’m the Treasurer of the Crossroads Community Association. I’ve lived in the community for over eight years and have been attending meetings and volunteering at the association for the past three years.
In the past three years, a lot has changed at the association. We’ve gone from having empty volunteer positions and a handful of meeting attendees to a full board and executive with new committees and many more volunteers. Several new initiatives have started, such as the Community Park Committee, which is overseeing a $200,000 park enhancement project. We’ve also started holding new events like our semi-annual NorthYeast BrewFest.
Our work hasn’t been limited to just the community hall and its programming, however. We’ve also been a louder voice for the community, which has resulted in better lighting at the Max Bell – Barlow LRT station, better accessibility in the industrial area, and we’ve also convinced the City to widen the sidewalk on the 8th Ave bridge to allow cyclists to cross more safely.
We’ve accomplished a lot, but there is still a lot of work to do. I know that the messaging from the province and the City recently makes it seem like there are limited opportunities to improve our community, but that’s simply not true. There are still large pools of funding available to us as a community, but we need two things for change to happen. First, we need your ideas. We need them so we can start advocating for them and determining a roadmap to get them completed. The second thing we need is…you! The more people we have helping organize these initiatives, looking and applying for funding, and facilitating conversation with the City and other stakeholders, the more likely we are to have these ideas come to fruition.
I know that volunteering can be daunting for some, but I’ve found my three years at the association to be a very rewarding experience. I hope that a New Year’s resolution for a few of you will be to come out and help us build a better community!
Ricardo
CCA Treasurer
