From Bruce Spader:

This is in response to an email from Chuck North, BNA Treasurer, who
speculated that the demise of the Brentwood Newsletter might also
bring on the demise of the BNA itself. As a past officer of the BNA I
agree with Chuck's statement.

The BNA was founded in the 1990's in response to a News & Observer
article that featured Brentwood and concluded it was a classic, old
Raleigh subdivision going down hill. That conclusion didn't sit well
with many Brentwood residents, including many who were among the
subdivision's original residents in the 1960's.

So the BNA was founded, as a neighborhood association, with the goal to address
issues that impact the quality of the community.

The term "quality" was soon broken down into a number of areas:
public safety, government liaison, school, park, information
dissemination and so on. Individuals and groups took responsibility
for each area and attempted to define issues that most impacted the community.

For those who did not experience the first five years of the BNA's
existence, there is quite a list of issues that were addressed and
for the most part resolved. To address issues of people
communicating with each other and important information reaching all
households the email forum and newsletter were established.

• To address public safety the earlier neighborhood watch program that had gone dormant was revived, and direct communications were established with the Raleigh Police Department.
  
  
• The school group worked with Brentwood Elementary to help secure upgrades of the school and to make it an attractive choice for community residents with children.
  
  
• The park group established a relationship with the Raleigh Parks
  Department to help revive Brentwood Park and make it a safer
  recreation asset for the community.
  
  
• Efforts were also made to work closely with existing Brentwood organizations, such as the Brentwood Exchange Club.

At the beginning, few envisioned quite how much a neighborhood
association can accomplish.

• When a local nightclub became a genuine endangerment to Brentwood, the BNA worked with and pressured the City of Raleigh until the club was taken to court as a public nuisance, a first in North Carolina. The club was closed down.
  
  
• When cut through traffic rose to a level in terms of volume and speed that it too had become an endangerment to Brentwood, the BNA worked with and pressured the City of Raleigh to put a traffic calming program in
  place, the first of its kind in Raleigh.
  
  
• When group homes took their sights on Brentwood and began creating an endangerment to the community, the BNA worked with and pressured the City of Raleigh, shutting down one group home and getting another home changed so that there were no longer violent residents being housed there.
  
  
• In addressing Brentwood Park, the garden club worked with and pressured the City of Raleigh to get underbrush cleared, paths fixed and lighting installed. That together with extensive landscaping earned
  the BNA a Raleigh Park Volunteer's award, the Fred Fletcher Award,
  the first time it had been awarded to a community for adopting and
  significantly changing the character of a park.

These are just some highlights. So much more has been done through
the BNA, over these years. City ordinances have been changed, stormwater management programs resulted in major upgrades
of Brentwood waterways, and so on.

The point is, the BNA put Brentwood back into media recognition as a community that takes care of itself, even if it has to demand solutions that go beyond the status quo.

Rather than falling into a cycle of deterioration, as predicted by that N&O article in the 1990's, Brentwood has more than held its own as a robust community with quality and value. Without a BNA, who knows what may have happened?

The BNA could never demand dues of it residents, since it wasn't a homeowners' association. Many enterprising ways were found to raise money to pay for, most of all, the newsletter, but also things like insurance.

Plant sales were held, for example, each year at the Brentwood Community Day, That raised enough money to also buy annuals to be planted in the park, and at community entrance signs. But the reality has always been there that a neighborhood association does have some expenses, and ways have to be found to cover them.

It has often been claimed that the efforts of the BNA improved the
value of Brentwood real estate by at least 10%. If that were true,
would it not be fair to ask each homeowner to make some contribution
annually to keep the BNA active? And when such things get put into
perspective, would a contribution of $15, $25, or $50 each year per household be so much?

Over more than a decade, the BNA proved again and again that there is
strength in numbers, that what one household or individual may not be
able to get accomplished, a whole community, banding together, can
leverage and succeed. Keeping the BNA alive is about believing in
community, and a community's future.