A Fox 43 news clip from March 30, 2011  about the Y-FI partnership with the YCEDC

There has been some discussion about the upcoming York City Planning Commission meeting and the zoning ordinance draft.  We wanted to make sure they were available for review. The City Planning Commission meets on Monday, September 13 at 7:00pm in City Council Chambers.

DRAFT Zoning Ordinance UPDATED 9-13-2010

Proposed Draft Zoning Map

This blog is the first of a regular series of guest blog posts from folks around York City who contribute to the growth and progress of a great city.

Stacey Burroughs is a York County resident and lover of the good people, places and things in York City. She blogs at The Good In York City. Follow her on Twitter @stacey_loves.

On July 15, 2010, The York City Human Relations Commission held the 10^th Annual, and final Unity March. Over 1200 participants showed up and marched under the scorching sun and oppressive heat from York City’s Penn Park to Farquhar Park. The march represents the literal and figurative steps each one of us can take to end hate, prejudice, violence, discrimination, bias, and exclusion.

Opening remarks were given by York City Mayor C. Kim Bracey, the Reverend Ron Rengilian of the York Unitarian & Universalist Congregation and others. Nathaniel Gonzalez, a sixth grader at Edgar Fahs Smith Elementary School was honored as the winner of a t-shirt design contest for the event. He was one of 35 students to submit artwork for the contest. Nathaniel beamed from the stage and told the crowd: “This shirt represents the unity!”

The Reverend Kate Bortner has been an organizer of this annual event since its inception in 2000. Reverend Bortner said that the event is “…part of passing York’s history on to the younger generation and at the same time, changing history step, by step.

The march aims to “promote good will and harmony among inner-groups” according to Ms. Stephanie Seaton, Executive Director of the York City Human Relations Commission.  Ms. Seaton was the Education and Outreach coordinator for the Commission when the annual march was first organized in 2000 and has since been promoted to Executive Director of the Commission.  She reflected on the gains the York community has made in ten years in the interest of unity, diversity, tolerance and acceptance of all people. She noted that the York County Community Against Racism and the YWCA’s Race Against Racism were formed within the last ten years as well as the Leadership for Diverse Schools and YorkCounts with one of its Indicators being Relative Diversity.

Numerous organizations and businesses were represented at the march including the Salvation Army, the Northeast Neighborhood Association, Helping Hand, Kinard Trucking, Wolf, WLCH FM Radio Centro, Planned Parenthood, the York City Police Department, The York County Chamber of Commerce, the YMCA and YWCA and the York County Sheriff’s Department. The YMCA alone, brought about 100 children between the ages of 5 and 10 years old to the march.

Six year old Aalisia said that her Mom told her that the march was “…about having peace, unity and fairness in our hearts.” I’m not sure that I knew what “peace, unity and fairness” meant when I was six years old, but because of the Unity March, Aalisia has grown in her understanding of these concepts. Young Aalisia witnessed and participated in this peaceable assembly on the streets of York City. She is one of hundreds of children who will carry these principals forth.

Silent Witness Peacekeepers Alliance participated in the event acting as a firewall of protection between Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Individuals participating in the march and protestors who come to speak out against participants. Silent Witness representatives carry jumbo- sized rainbow colored umbrellas that they use to shield participants from protest signs and language of a hurtful nature.

Ms. Seaton noted that despite the end of this decade-long march, there is still much work to be done in the arena of unity and diversity building. The Commission plans to ramp up its existing outreach and education components through continued contact with organizations and individuals.  Ms. Seaton spoke of the positive changes in the social and political climates in the past ten years.

She said “I was emotional at that last march.” She spoke of the time, energy and dedication of the community. She said “I’ll miss this. We accomplished what we set out to accomplish”.

Long live love, acceptance, peace, fairness, inclusion and Unity in our city, York City.

As each day passes on, the divide is growing larger. Those that have easy access to the internet can gain information and conduct business that those that do not have easy internet access can not. At Y-FI, our aim is to assist in reducing this divide.

Next American City: The Digital Divide

Most readers of Next American City take the Internet for granted, a utility like running water or electricity. You e-mail at work and communicate with colleagues using instant messenger; you check blogs for the latest news or gossip. At home, you download music or movies, pay bills online or Google old friends. Civic life, too: instructions on obtaining a marriage license, the date school starts for the kids, how much the house next door sold for and how it will affect your property value, all can be found on city websites. Heck, if you want the city to fix a pothole, you send the info over the Internet.  (Read the rest of the article here…)

At Y-FI we are continuing to search and develop partnerships that that will get our free internet service into the homes and onto the computers of those that most need it.  If you, your business or a community organization wants to partner with Y-FI to bring free wifi internet to your neighborhood PLEASE contact us.

We’ve been busy working on the network but slacking at keeping the blog updated.  We’re excited to announce that we have brought on partners at both the East and West ends of the central business district and right smack in the middle of the central district.

On the West we have Star Systems Engineering, Inc. at 232-236 West Market St.  On the square Inside Out Creative has graciously allowed us to install a repeater on their network and provide signal to a large portion of the square. And finally on the east, at the intersection of Philadelphia and Queen street we have a repeater installed in the basecamp/home of the local musicians “Free Breakfast”  All three partners deeply care about the resurgence of energy that’s currently growing in York City and are eager to participate in our network which allows freedom of movement to work and play and use the internet to get things done.

Stay tuned, we have other exciting things coming up soon!  As always if you’d like to help our network check out our page on how to contribute

Click here for more info about Faith in our City

Here at Y-FI we are working to continually expand our network. We currently have 15 network nodes placed in and around the area of N Beaver Street with Central Market being the epicenter of our growing network.

We gladly welcomed new support for our network from Idea Tree, a software development company. As a young software startup, Idea Tree sees the value of providing our free wifi using our mesh network and was eager to help us expand even before their office space was complete. The staff at Idea Tree regularly telecommute and enjoy central market and have found the Y-FI system to be invaluable.  Idea Tree who recently relocated their office to Clarke Ave just behind Central Market gave us a great launching point to expand our coverage into Cherry Lane which has been a target for us since our network’s creation.

Our coverage now extends into Cherry lane court and covers the seating area.  The shade tree coverage and the tables and chairs make Cherry Lane and excellent place to take your work outside and enjoy the fresh air.

If you haven’t checked it out, take a look at our network node location map.

Tomorrow York City will host the Governor’s Awards for the Arts in Pennsylvania festivities and awards program. We will be out and about all night and will be tweeting and possibly doing live video streaming from various parts of the evening. If you’re on twitter follow #govawards to keep up with the action. Check out our Ustream.tv page for videos we post.

A week ago we saw and heard the media clips prepared by local high school students for this year’s DriveAware media push. Tonight we’ll see who won and the awards that will be given out.