Leadership Richardson is accepting applications for its next class, which will begin in September and go through May 2017.

The community leadership development program was created by the Richardson Chamber of Commerce in 1985, and the objectives of are to: 

•     Identify and motivate emerging community leaders

•     Acquaint participants with a local historical perspective and with current community dynamics

•     Assist participants in identifying and addressing community needs, issues and problems

•     Challenge participants to increased community leadership

•     Develop personal and organizational leadership skills 

The application deadline is June 17.

Leadership Richardson requires a commitment of time including a once-a-month, full-day meeting, plus a leadership retreat in September. Candidates must live and/or work in Richardson or the Richardson ISD boundaries. Candidates who do not meet this requirement, but who are significantly involved in the Richardson community, should contact Kim Quirk at kim@richardsonchamber.com. 

For more information or to apply, visit www.leadershiprichardson.com 

Sponsorships

This year, the Richardson Chamber is launching a new opportunity for chamber members to officially sponsor Leadership Richardson, giving local companies and organizations an effective way to build visibility with current and potential civic leaders.

The following sponsorship levels for are now available: 

$500 level

• Logo on shirt
• Recognition via social media, LR collateral, Richardson Chamber communications

$1000 level

• All of the above plus
• Lunch sponsorship and speaking opportunity

$2500 level

• All of the above plus
• Company marketing materials at one event
• Social media blast

$5000 level

• All of the above plus
• Company marketing materials at every event
• Signage at every event
• Tickets to and speaking or video opportunity at graduation

For more information about sponsorship opportunities, e-mail Kim Quirk or call her at 214-532-3771.

Richardson Real Heroes has chosen four volunteers to recognize this year for their unselfish and unheralded work that improves the lives of Richardson residents. These four volunteers will be honored and fêted at 7 p.m. April 14 at the Richardson Civic Center.

The honorees and the organizations for which they volunteer:

• Barbara Gatti, The Warren Center
• Margie Golden, NETWORK of Community Ministries
• Marty Korn, Richardson Volunteers in Police Service
• Carol Levy, Eisemann Center 

The four were chosen from a group of nominations made by citizens and nonprofit organizations of all types serving the community. All of the nominees were worthy, but the Real Heroes committee chose this group for their extraordinary and longstanding contributions, with little public recognition, said Bill Zeigler, chair of the Real Heroes committee.

Friends and coworkers of the Real Heroes are encouraged to leave personal comments and anecdotes about the Real Heroes here. Selections from the comments will be used for a keepsake memory book compiled for each Real Hero.

The 2016 Richardson Real Heroes

Barbara “Barb” Gatti - Barb has left her volunteer fingerprints all over Richardson, but was nominated by The Warren Center specifically for her work there.

Among her activities at The Warren Center, she hosts the Taste of Eastside fund raiser every year and is a major helper with auction items, tickets and other operations for
 Fantasy Football, The Warren Center’s major fund raiser. She also recruits companies and individuals to collect toys for the Center’s Toy Drive. This year, Barb chaired a new fundraiser, High Tea at the Chocolate Angel, which brought new donors and friends to The Warren Center.

Warren Center staff say they are constantly receiving phone calls and emails from new friends and donors that say, “Barb suggested I contact The Warren Center.”

The Warren Center’s mission is to assure that children with developmental differences or disabilities, and their families, receive the resources and support they need to reach their full potential.

Barb also serves on the boards of the Richardson Chamber of Commerce and Animal Luv and volunteers with numerous Richardson nonprofits including Berkner Park, NETWORK of Community Ministries, Metrocrest Food Bank, Carter BloodCare, the Eisemann Center, Richardson Boys & Girls Club and the Methodist Richardson Medical Center Foundation.

Margie Golden - Margie Golden started her volunteer career at NETWORK of Community Ministries in 1985 when NETWORK first opened its doors.

She has spent more than 500 hours each year working in the various departments, ranging from the food room to interviewing clients.

She is a founding member and President of Women in NETWORK (WIN), an auxiliary of NETWORK. WIN raises funds to support several NETWORK programs including Toyland Express, Backpacks for Richardson and Richardson ISD children, Big Meals for Little Kids and dental supplies for city and Richardson ISD children. She was the creator and power behind WIN's "High Tea for Tots," a successful fund raiser for WIN’s programs.

Those efforts in WIN add more than 350 additional hours each year as a volunteer, giving Margie more than 850 hours annually devoted to NETWORK. Margie also has made generous financial donations to NETWORK, particularly when shortfalls appeared in programs supported by WIN.

Margie enjoys working with people of all ages and will go the extra mile to make sure their needs are met. While performing the essential but delicate task of interviewing NETWORK clients, she has displayed that caring heart while at the same time setting boundaries where appropriate.

Martin “Marty” Korn - Through Richardson Volunteers in Police Service (VIPS), Marty has contributed 7,462 hours in the past 11 years. 2015 was his fifth consecutive year to exceed 1,000 hours.

As a uniformed VIPS Field Operations Volunteer, Marty supports first responders with traffic control at accident scenes and citywide events, such as parades, the Cottonwood Art and Wildflower festivals, and by performing house watches for residents. During the past Thanksgiving holiday, Marty did 28 house checks in one day alone to ensure the security of homes with traveling families.

He also assumes other time-consuming tasks that allow better use of paid law enforcement personnel time. As an example, Marty and a volunteer partner used license plate technology to locate a wanted person for DFW Airport police, leading to an arrest, and to locate a person reported missing so that the Richardson Police Department could confirm her safety.

As a Volunteer instructor, Marty oversees certifications and maintains more than 200 pages of procedures for the Richardson PD, updating them as necessary. He has used his law background to research insurance liability for volunteers.

Dedicated to education, Marty has chaired the Scholarship Committee for the Richardson Citizen Police Academy Alumni Association, which awarded $6,000 in scholarships in 2015. 

In addition to his Police Department hours, Marty also volunteers more than 100 hours annually with First Richardson Helpers through First United Methodist Church, a resource for seniors with basic home maintenance needs.

Carol Levy - Carol migrated to Texas via Mississippi and Louisiana. As a graduate of Mississippi State University with degrees in math and computer science, she took her skills to work at Electrospace, E-Systems and Raytheon. 

Carol began her volunteer service with the Eisemann Center 13 ½ years ago, before the facility was finished. She helped the administrative department as one of the volunteer receptionists during construction, a period staff members lovingly call their “trailer days” before the Center’s opening. The Eisemann Center staff estimates Carol has almost 7,000 volunteer hours split between administrative work and ushering at events.

The Eisemann Center has used her administrative and computer skills with several special assignments and projects. For a few years, she assisted House Management in training new ushers joining the Eisemann Center’s volunteer program. For the past three years she has used her computer skills to enhance the flow of client data, designing a program to provide trend analyses to management. She was one of the inaugural participants in the “Friends of the Eisemann Center,” a donor program.

Carol assisted a local scout in earning his Eagle through a project at the Eisemann Center. Together, the pair renovated, reorganized and updated the Eisemann Center’s Archive Room, a space that had been neglected over the years.

Carol has also volunteered during the past 12 years with the Richardson Police Department’s Neighborhood Crime Watch Patrol and The Dallas Opera, transporting guest artists to and from DFW airport and assisting them if needed while they are in town.

Richardson Real Heroes was founded by and is funded by The Richardson Coalition, a political action committee, with the motto of “Honoring Silent Generosity.”

More facts about the Richardson Real Heroes Program and award recipients can be found at www.richardsonrealheroes.com.

For more information on this story, contact Tom Brooks, publicity chair of Richardson Real Heroes, at tom@tommywrites.com or phone 214-415-2551

Richardson Real Heroes want to honor volunteers doing great work on behalf of Richardson, Richardson residents or schools serving Richardson. Nominations for the 2016 Real Heroes awards are open and can be submitted online through the group’s website.

Real Heroes will honor three to five volunteers. The basic criteria:

-        The service must be on behalf of Richardson, Richardson residents or schools serving    Richardson

-        The individual receives no monetary compensation for the service

-        The individual does not receive significant public recognition for the service

-        Elected officials are not eligible.

More detailed criteria and the entry form are on the Richardson Real Heroes website at www.richardsonrealheroes.com.

“These people are heroes before they walk in the door,” said Bill Zeigler, Real Heroes chairman. “We just want to recognize and honor them, their efforts and their organization in a public way. This is your chance to get public recognition for someone whose dedication might otherwise go unnoticed.”

Nominations will close at midnight Dec. 23, 2015. Those chosen as 2016 Richardson Real Heroes will be honored at an awards presentation on April 2016.

Richardson Real Heroes is in its seventh year of operation and was founded and funded by The Richardson Coalition, a political action committee.

For more information, contact Bill Zeigler: bdz75080@gmail.com or (214) 783-5634.

By Ken Hutchenrider,

Chairman, Richardson Vote YES Campaign Committee

The Nov. 3 election on our city’s Bond Issue and City Charter amendments is another opportunity for citizens to keep moving Richardson forward as a great place to live and work. Our committee of citizens who, like you, choose to live in Richardson, endorses them without reservation.

Both of these efforts take care of our city in three ways:

• They are a direct response to citizen input
• They are proactive in fixing infrastructure and governance before there is deterioration or a crisis
• They are fiscally sound by upgrading services, public safety and governance without raising taxes.

Bond Issue

The bond issue is for $115 million in four separate propositions: public buildings, streets, parks and sidewalks. Virtually every section of the city is represented in the expenditures. The proposals represent good, solid and basic infrastructure needs. There is no Taj Mahal in these proposals.

And the best part is, NO NEW TAXES. We are receiving enhanced services and better protection at no real cost to the citizens. The funding is there because old bonds were paid off early.

Buildings, at $67 million, account for 58 percent of the funds. The largest project is the expansion and renovation of the Richardson Public Safety Complex at Belt Line Road and Greenville. Also included is funding for renovations to several structures including the Richardson Animal Shelter, Fire Station #3 replacement, Library updates, and the addition of a parking lot for the City’s Fire Training Center.

Street projects will receive $38.57 million to renovate streets and alleys in various areas of the city, add turn lanes at busy intersections, upgrade traffic signals and deliver a flood prevention project impacting West Belt Line Road and Cottonwood Drive.

Parks will receive $7.2 million to replace five neighborhood playgrounds, expand hike and bike trails, renovate the Richardson Senior Center and provide an updated pool building and equipment for the Canyon Creek Public Pool.

Sidewalks will receive $2.2 million to replace more than 10 miles of sidewalks in five of the city’s 27 sidewalk regions. (In the 2006 and 2010 bond referendums, voters approved projects in the other 22 regions not included in the 2015 proposal.)

City Charter

A group of 11 volunteer citizens representing a cross section of the city spent nine months meeting and reviewing the City Charter, a document required by state law that governs how the city operates. It was last reviewed in 1989, and many of the changes are of a housekeeping nature to prevent the Charter from conflicting with state law and federal law.

Key among changes in the proposed Charter is a provision that requires the City Council to review the Charter at least every 10 years. That provision should prevent the City from facing this many revisions in the future.

The change that has attracted the most attention governs how the City will fill vacancies for the mayor or City Council positions. The current charter has language left over from our old system of choosing a mayor, which was done by the council choosing a mayor from among its ranks. When, by popular referendum, the City switched to an elected mayor, the old language of replacement still stood. The new language requires the City to call a special election so voters can fill the vacant mayor’s slot. For Council members, the language calls for a special election if there are two or more vacancies.

Another change grants the City Council the right to prohibit public input when it calls an emergency meeting. An emergency Council meeting has been called only once in recent history, and that was when the City agreed to house and offer services to refugees from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It seems appropriate for the Council to keep its focus on the issue at hand when it is an emergency.

It is important to note that these Charter amendments were proposed by a group of citizens, not politicians.

The only downside to the Charter is that you, as a voter, are required by state law to choose for or against on each of the 83 proposed changes.

Please take the time to vote FOR on each of the proposed Charter amendments, and FOR on the bond proposals. Let’s keep Richardson moving forward!

Ken Hutchenrider, Chairman,

Richardson Vote YES Campaign Committee

  (More information on these issues can be found on the City’s website,www.cor.net)

Two Richardson friends turned a personal adventure into a fundraiser for a favorite charity for military and first responders, paddling mostly non-stop down two Texas rivers for 80 hours and raising more than $10,000 for Carry the Load.

Adam Keller and Philip Athey decided they would tackle the grueling Texas Water Safari, 260-miles of self-inflicted physical abuse that bills itself as “the world’s toughest canoe race.” The event stretches from San Marcos to Seadrift on the Gulf coast. Paddling day and night in the summer heat with only brief stops to replenish supplies and take cat naps, the pair were advised in advance that turning the trip into a fund raiser would help motivate them to keep moving.

Sleep deprivation was the biggest challenge, and both men wanted to quit at times during their 80-hour adventure. They carried the names and photos of fallen military heroes with them. That and the commitments to each other, their families, their team captain and the people who donated to the cause kept them going during the times their will was otherwise lacking.

The idea started innocently enough. One of Athey’s high school friends completed the race and then Athey read a story about it in Texas Monthly magazine.

“We’re going to do this next year,” he told Keller. Besides being friends, the Richardson residents are partners at Atlas Wealth Advisors, a Dallas wealth management firm.

After committing to the trip, Keller spoke of the plan at a family gathering that included a cousin, Cletus Bianchi. It turns out Bianchi did the race in 1994 and still had a boat that would be serviceable for the pair. Bianchi agreed to serve as team captain and it was his suggestion to do a fundraiser to increase the motivation to finish.

Athey and Keller had heard Clint Bruce, co-founder of Carry the Load (CTL), speak and were supporters of the organization that was founded to remind us of the true meaning of the Memorial Day holiday. They also had the blessing of Atlas Wealth Advisors, the wealth management firm where they are partners. They reached out to clients, friends, vendors and their network in the community to rally fund-raising support for CTL.

Yeti, the premium cooler make, provided three coolers to use for supplies at their brief stops along the river, plus a support team that helped chronicle the event.

The constant paddling, heat, insects, portaging around dams, logjams and sleep deprivation worked to sap the will from the pair. Nights were the worst, and typical of the challenge was what occurred on the third and final night. They could see the orange glow of lights from the Invista Plant where their next stop was, but that section of the river was full of switchbacks. They kept paddling, but the lights were a tease and didn’t seem to be any closer.

“I was ready to break down and cry,” Keller said. Finally, they arrived, but Keller exited the boat announcing, in what he described as colorful language, that he was taking a four-hour nap! After food, a brief nap and a pep talk from Bianchi, they were back in the boat for the final run to Seadrift on the Gulf coast, and the finish line.

Looking back, the pair agreed they want to do it again and realize that they were working for a much bigger cause.

“It was fun for us, and heeding the advice to leverage our adventure to aid the community made it even more fulfilling,” Keller said.