January 2016
Dear Fishers Island Community,
2015 was a watershed year for Walsh Park.
Among our many exciting developments, one is particularly important for the growth of our organization. In December of last year, we hired our first-ever employee. Matthew Edwards started working for us as our Program Manager in January 2016. He will be in charge of all day to day aspects of Walsh Park and has already demonstrated his ability to professionalize and update our efforts in the community.
Matt has set up shop in the old doctor’s office, so in addition to having our first-ever employee, we also have our first-ever office location. Please stop in and introduce yourself to Matt when you have a chance.
This past fall was a very busy time for Walsh Park. In addition to completing our search for a Program Manager, we also accomplished the following:
- During the course of the year, we brought several new families into our program and added a couple of new students to the school as well.
- We were able to negotiate a new purchase for Walsh Park that will bring a total of 3 additional living units into our inventory over the course of the next 12 months.
- Launched our new website – www.walshpark.org – which is a significant improvement from our previous site and one, which over time, we will continue to improve on and utilize more as a communication and marketing tool to the Island community and potential new residents.
- We continue to explore ways to work closer with the ICB on Southold-related matters and with Karen Goodwin and the School District on joint efforts to attract and retain families to the Island. We also worked with Karen to save a non-Walsh Park family, with several children in the school, from having to leave the island.
- We invested time and money in some long-neglected maintenance projects in several of our rental properties.
Despite all this progress, there is still much work to be done. Many of our properties are in dire need of additional maintenance, the Island has continued to lose families we desperately need to retain and we have only done limited outreach to attract new families to Fishers, in part because our current inventory is fully occupied and we have a significant backlog of on-Island applicants interested in living in a Walsh Park property. We will continue to address these problems and work hard to achieve both our near-term and long-term goals.
As always, we welcome your guidance, input and questions. You can reach Matt Edwards, our Program Manager, at medwards@walshpark.org. Ned can be reached at ncarlson@post.harvard.edu and Andrew can be reached at aburr@chiltoninc.com.
Thank you again for your support.
Ned Carlson & Andrew Burr
Co-Presidents
Walsh Park Benevolent Corporation
