Hello,

The Essex Dog Park committee plans to speak at the upcoming Essex Town Meeting Day,  It is this coming Monday, March 4th at 7:30pm at the Essex Community Educational Center (The High School). Members of the Essex Dog Park Committee are planning to speak during the open floor time and will ask to increase the town budget to allow funding for the Essex Dog Park. This ONE action if approved at town meeting will allow the Essex Dog Park to begin construction as soon as we could line up contractors to due to work, most likely this would be Spring 2013. Essex Dog Park will be at the informational period before the meeting (starts at 6:30pm) handing out information and answering questions.

We NEED you at town meeting to show your support for the dog park. If you wish to also speak at town meeting expressing your desire to increase the budget to allow for a dog park please do so. If you are able to attend, please send an email to admin@essexdogpark.org so we can get an idea of the kind of support we can count on at  Essex Town Meeting day. 

Some information: Last monday night we gave a presentation to the Selectboard requesting these funds, due to timing we were too late to get it added to the 2014 budget, this is why we are going to Town Meeting Day. We are planning to request $15,000 to supplement the fundraising we have already done. We have spoken with the town and they have indicated that this amount will affect the average homeowner's taxes by approximately 15 cents for one year.

I would like to thank you for the support the community has given us over the past 5 years, and hope that we can count on your support again so we can begin construction immediately. 

Additionally, Saturday, March 2nd, Essex Dog Park will be serving food to raise money for the dog park at the Annual EJRP / EPR Winter Carnival from 10-3pm at the ADL School. Come down and get some food while attending this free event, and help support the dog park as well!

Thanks Again, and please remember if you can attend Town Meeting Day to send us an email so we can get an idea of the support that will be in attendance.

Matthew Reed
Essex Dog Park

Our next meeting is this Wednesday (1-30-13) At 7:00pm at the EJRP facility (75 Maple street, Essex, aka Maple Street Park)

We Will be discussing Fundraising and the 2013 Essex Dog Days of Summer! Hope to see you all there!

Also we sent out Thank you cards to everyone who donated cash to the Essex Dog Park this year, These cards can be used as a receipt for a donation to a non-profit organization for tax purposes. If you didn't get one in the mail, please reply to this email and let me know, we'll make sure we get one out to you ASAP.

Those who are friends on our Facebook Page may have already seen this annoucement, but for those that havn't, The entire Essex Dog Park Committee would like to thank the Edwards Foundation of Essex for donating $5000 to the Essex Dog Park. We have now raised over $11,000 for the dog park. Thanks again to all of the personal donations that many of you have made over the past year. Now that we have a substantial chunk of cash for the dog park we will soon be solictiing new estimates for the work at the park.

Hello Everyone,

I know its been a while since you've seen anything about the Essex Dog Park pop up on your Facebook feed. And While had been taking a brief brake from meetings to catch up on things in my personal life, I think I'm about ready to kick this thing in overdrive and push this thing through to the finish line. First off thanks to everyone that seems to have continued to donate even without much action from the committee members, our total is now up to $6,100, which happens to round out nicely to about 25% of our goal! And may even be more than 25% once we are able to secure some deals from businesses on materials and labor. 

Great News everyone!
 

Essex Dog Park is one of the 15 Finalists IN THE COUNTRY for Petsafe's Bark for your Park competition. They said over 1000 cities entered, and we made the top 15!
 

Voting is now more important than ever, you can still vote twice per day once on their site and once on facebook (Links Below)

With the great news I think we need to call a meeting for this Monday, June 18th at 7:00pm to discuss our plans for promoting the Bark for your Park competition over the next two weeks, and the upcoming Essex Dog Days of Summer event. Also if anyone has connections with a screen printer, please contact them to get prices on printing T-Shirts for the event and bring those prices to the meeting on Monday. I have yet to verify with Brad if we can use the conference room at EJRP so we may be out at the Gazebo out back at Maple Street Park. The weather looks to be super nice so we might want to be out there anyways!

Again, my personal thanks to everyone that has been voting and got us nominated.
Everyone in the committee is very excited to be selected as a finalist. 

Matthew Reed
Essex Dog Park Coordinator

Links to Vote!

http://www.essexdogpark.org/bark

http://www.essexdogpark.org/bark2