Community is a Participation Sport

By Geoff Lang, Port Ludlow Village Council President

Thank you to all who participated in our October events! Both our Annual Meeting and reception and the Canine Costume Parade and Scarecrow Walk were well attended. At our Annual Meeting, we drew the final two prizes of our Summer Raffle: Frances Coletti took home the Sound Bank gift basket and Jannese Hunt the beautiful quilt from Port Ludlow Quilters by the Bay. Congratulations Frances and Jannese.  Thank you for supporting PLVC!

We also began a new tradition of recognizing one of our volunteer participants for their tireless work on behalf of PLVC and the community. The First Annual Volunteer of the Year was presented to Barry Luke. We welcomed newly-elected board members Nancy Bamberg-Jones, Karen Brattain, Michael Gubala, Christie Lang, Dan Martin, and Caroline Miner. We look forward to their participation! With the growth of our Board, we will be launching a few new committees. We will stand up a Welcome Committee to reach out to and welcome new residents to Port Ludlow. We will also start a Strategic Planning Committee to work on board retention and recruitment, the future of the council and long-range consideration of issues facing the community. We are also going to separate the event-planning piece out of Communications into its own committee - Community Involvement. There is plenty of room for everyone who wants to participate in these new or existing committees. Please Join Us!

This month we will be co-hosting a Veteran’s Day Celebration on Wednesday, November 11, and as of this writing, the agenda is not final, but it will be a time to share stories and recognize the veterans of our community. PLVC will also host the annual OWSI Townhall on Thursday, November 19, at the Beach Club. Bring your questions, concerns, and comments. In early December, we will co-host with PLA, our traditional Holiday Tree Lighting Celebration, featuring a festive atmosphere with cookies, cocoa, music, Santa, and most importantly, your neighbors! Participation is as easy as showing up and enjoying the evening.

We have had a lot of inquiries this year from our neighbors about a variety of issues. Strong, resilient, connected communities rely on participation. We need volunteers to participate in every meeting and event that we host, and without you, we can’t exist. We need our neighbors to participate by attending our Board Meetings and Informational Meetings, subscribing to our emails and reading the Port Ludow Voice. For every Board Meeting, we invite representatives from the County, PUD, the Sheriff’s Office, Fire Rescue and PLA. These organizations provide updates about the things they feel are important to Port Ludlow and take questions from the floor. There is no easier way to participate than interacting with those who have a direct impact on our community. Please come out and connect and if unable to, we publish our Board Meeting minutes and recordings each month. 

Finally, donations to PLVC this year are quite a bit lower compared to last year, with less than 3% of our residents offering financial support. We need you to participate with a donation to our General Fund. We greatly appreciate that our Neighbors have historically been generous with pass-through funds for a single issue they support, such as Trails or Emergency or to a specific event, such as PLConnects. However, such funds go directly to the donor-chosen designation, and don’t help us to ‘keep the lights on’ for the council as a whole. Our fixed costs for items such as liability insurance for the board and Trails volunteers using dangerous equipment, web support, PL Voice support, facility rental costs at the Bay and Beach Clubs, printing and storage, totals approximately $12,000 per year.  We welcome any donation, whether it be an hour of your time or $10 to our General Fund! Come participate and do your part in building our community.