History of the Morena Business Association
In 2005, Richard Peñuelas of Design Shack and Tony Damato of Baci's Italian Restaurant, using seed money provided by Tony Damato, invited a handful of local business owners and District 6 Council Representatives from Councilmember Donna Frye's office to a meeting at Baci's. These individuals and others subsequently formed the Bay Park Merchants and Community Association. We voted to collect annual dues of $50 from each member to cover our overhead (post office box, printing, and mailing expenses). At each meeting special guests were invited to discuss local concerns, and we discussed various ways to grow our new organization.
In November 2005, Richard was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Cancer and resigned from the Association. The leadership reins were picked up by Nevin Kleege, who brought a wealth of experience, extensive community connections, and an unwavering commitment to grow the Association. Nevin reached out to his network of friends, politicians, city employees involved with other community associations, to members of an earlier Morena association, whose last meeting was in 1997, and to local owners that he knew. Because the name "Morena" is more inclusive and identifiable than "Bay Park", and because our focus is on business concerns more than residential concerns, the members decided to change the name to Morena Business Association and voted to do whatever was necessary to become a non-profit corporation.
The members of the earlier Bay Park Merchants and Community Association voted to transfer the treasury and membership to the new Morena Business Association. The new Morena Business Association has no ties or connections with the earlier organization that used the same name, other than the possibility of perhaps having a member who had been a member of the earlier organization.
Each year the Morena area receives a Micro District grant from the City of San Diego in the amount of approximately $8,000. Most of the money is used for watering plants and trees along Morena Boulevard. In 2006, however, some of the money was used to hire Gerrie Trussel of the City of San Diego Development Services Department, BID Council as a consultant.
Gerrie first task was to obtain for us a mailing list of Morena businesses from the City. Next, she prepared and sent mailers notifying Morena business owners and landlords of upcoming meetings of the MBA. Because of Gerrie's extensive knowledge and experience with neighborhood Associations, she has guided us on the road to becoming a non-profit corporation. Once we are properly incorporated, Gerrie says that we will be able to secure outside revenue to support our objectives.
Gerrie has helped us find the right people in the City of San Diego to deal with local issues that arise -- graffiti, crime, vagrancy, parking, street repair, etc. Because Gerrie is involved with other business associations in San Diego, she provides our new association with access to the people who run those other neighborhood programs, and through her we have learned which programs work well and which ones do not.
Gerrie is knowledgeable about City, State, and Federal grants that are available to local business organizations such as ours. We credit her with helping us to grow the attendance at our meetings, and she has helped us move the Morena Business Association from being an unincorporated non-profit organization to being a 501 (c) 6 Corporation. We are not there yet, since there is an extended waiting period, but we are on our way.
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