Well, well, well, there's a new deputy in town wanting to be sheriff. A note for Mr. Williams even though we have not met I have heard about you in great detail.
A few questions for you.
1) Who wanted a neighborhood association?
2) Were there elections?
3) Why the association homepage?
From what I hear you are being a coward and e-mailing everyone privately and not discussing issues about the neighborhood on-line publically.
If you are who I think you are than you have lived in this neighborhood for quite some time and I would like to know 4) How does it feel to be you? 5) Do you sleep well at night? 6) who died and made you emperor of Meadow Oaks? This neighborhood has never been a ''problem neighborhood''. One thing great about Meadow Oaks is that everyone minded their own business. Now you are making neighbors private lives into a public affair. To me, that is borderline harassment. I have never seen and I have lived here over 20 years. That's because we live on opposite sides and like everyone else I minded my own business. However, driving by today I wonder when will that trailer be moved and did you do all your home repairs legally, makes me wonder...7)What happened to you in your life that you all of a sudden you had to start caring what others are doing in with their private properties. Especially if it doesn't concern you. Mind your own business! I think you need a strong opponent and I believe I am the one. I think I am going to start up a boycott Jim Williams campaign! So whom ever wantsto join, hop on it's free. Please join me...

Don't fix what isn't broken!

Dear Anonymous,

I found your comments in our forum page to be interesting and quite worthy of a sincere reply. To begin with, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Russ Young. I, too, have lived in the neighborhood for many years. Perhaps the best place to start is an attempt to answer your questions.

1) Who wanted a neighborhood association? The city of Roseville established a system of neighborhood associations several years ago. You can see a map of the various associations at: http://www.roseville.ca.us/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=3361. Individual association maps are available at: http://www.roseville.ca.us/services/maps_n_gis/neighborhood_associations.asp .

2) Were there elections? Actually, there were no elections. That would have been great, but it appears that no one wanted to get involved. It was one of those “Hey, somebody oughta’ …… Who me? Oh no, I’m too busy ..etc., etc.” The Roseville Coalition of Neighborhood Associations Chairman asked Jim to head up the organization of a group to represent our neighborhood, including the selection of a chairman. Try as he would, no one would step forward, so Jim volunteered to hold the position for a year and then pass it off to someone new. At the end of that time we still did not have anyone who was willing to take the job. Jim set it aside and went about the business of his own life. The general functions of the Roseville neighborhood went into a steady deterioration for a few years. Finally, the City pushed for revitalization of the system and Jim was asked by the Coalition to re-establish the Meadow Oaks Association. He agreed to take the helm once more until we could come up with a committee, or at least a new chair person. We are still looking for someone to take over in a responsible manner and let Jim off the hook. There are a lot of us who appreciate what the Association has done and we encouraged Jim to stay on until we can find another person who is interested in spending the time it takes to maintain an association that will work for the good of us all.

3) Why the association homepage? I am not sure what this question is addressing. The “homepage” was provided by the Roseville Coalition of Neighborhood Associations. They gave individual neighborhoods access to their web site for the purpose of developing individual community home pages for their own community use. We were fortunate to locate a successful local realtor who would serve as our webmaster. Although very busy with her work, she found time to work with our neighborhood for the betterment of us all.

Having tried to respond to your questions as directly as I can, I would like to move on to some response to your other comments. To begin with, your input sounds like you have been “enlightened” by someone who feels that there is no responsibility to each other in a community. As for your question about Jim’s “private communications with everybody and not addressing neighborhood problems on-line publicly.”, I have never heard of Jim communicating with everyone privately, by email or any other method.

(Please advance to the next Response for continuation.)









By Russ

Don't fix what isn't broken!

Continued from previous Reply

The real truth is that during his early months we learned the hard way that it does not serve our purpose to go public about names instead of discussing the problems a bit more discretely with the involved individuals. Jim took a lot of heat, mostly from those who seem to think that their house and home is an island that is not affected by neighbors and seem to think they can trash up the community as an individual right. Jim came down a bit hard on some of those folks, resulting in considerable unpleasantness in both directions. A group of us sat down with Jim and convinced him to be less straight forward with the criticism. He agreed and asked several of us to serve as chairperson or at least work with him as advisors. He got the usual response of, “Gee, I would like to, but I have all these other things to do…..” Finally he did convince some of us to piecemeal some help for him. There are a few of us who have agreed to listen to his thoughts and discuss his planned actions or correspondence before he puts them into action. When he emails us about a problem or a proposed action, those are private emails and only go to his few “advisers”. Contrary to your accusation, or that of your source, if Jim had a weakness about people whose actions or lack of actions tended to reduce the overall quality of life in the neighborhood, it was that he was too straight forward and publicly hurt the feelings of the neighbor in question.

Jim does have a “secret” list of email addresses which serves a rather honorable purpose. That is the mailing list for our now famous Bad Guy Alert. If you already get the reports, you will know what I am taking about. If you don’t get them, you are missing out on a worthwhile free service that takes no small amount of time to maintain. The list is secret in that all addresses are sent out as BCC to prevent compromising of private email addresses, a service that is appreciated by over 400 recipients. Jim guards that list very closely. The Bad Guy Alerts were designed to be a vehicle for rapid notification of criminal or other unsavory activities in the community. Sometimes they are used to spread other news such as announcing meetings and identifying planned discussion topics (Including neighborhood problems to be discussed.) Some of the news that goes out to the 400+ recipients is complimentary in nature. Some of the topics might irritate some neighbors because they feel that the topic is about them. Sometimes they’re right, it is.
Questions 4, 5, and 6 appear to rhetorical questions that are based on misinformation.

You may also have the wrong person in your sights since you refer to “moving that trailer”. Jim has no trailer to move. You also seem to have some knowledge of home repairs being done and your concern that they were done legally. We are curious about what repairs you have in mind. Actually, I should give you credit for hoping that a neighbor does repairs to his/her home legally. I appreciate your apparent concern in that area because some repairs, such replacing or installing a gas water heater can be quite dangerous to the home and to the homes of the neighbors if done improperly.

(Please open the following response link)


By more from Russ

Don't fix what isn't broken!

Continued from previous Reply (Final)

You seem to have a questionable list of the neighborhood association problems. Are you aware that the neighborhood association has provided free yard care for several elderly and disabled neighbors? Did your informant tell you that Jim worked with the local Sierra Garden School and was instrumental in obtaining grant funding for school improvements. I invite you to contact the Sierra Garden school principle and see what she thinks of Mr. Williams and the Neighborhood Association. We have a member who monitors malicious graffiti tagging on the flood control wall along the bicycle path. Our association was totally responsible for the renovation of the street median, including a Welcome to Meadow Oaks sign engraved in beautiful granite stone which was designed and supervised by another neighbor who is a commercial landscaping contractor. That activity had the backing of an enormous majority of our neighbors. In fact, after the installation was completed neighbors sent in so many cash donations that we had an excess of funds which were spent installing a stairway down a dangerous slope to the walking path at Dana Way. The same landscaping contractor took extra funds from his own pocket to complete the stairway. We have a neighbor who volunteers her personal time to develop and edit our neighborhood newsletter, which is very popular with the neighbors. She has a very busy full time job. The newsletter delivery staff is mostly full time employed neighbors who spend some of their personal time serving their neighborhood. We have trimmed back a jungle of vines along the path to the school, destroying a popular hide out for hooligans who harassed the school children. We just learned that our request for lighting at the footbridge has been approved by the City. This list could fill another page. This “ogre” you addressed, and misidentified in your public letter has been the moving force in the form of coordinating, leading, supporting or otherwise being involved. Yes, we have a great neighborhood and we hope to overcome the pressures from a small minority of the neighbors to let it slide into a deteriorated community reminiscent of Rio Linda. There are a lot of very nice folks who live in those areas but we do not really want our homes and investments to slide in that direction.

I do whole heartedly agree with you that we should mind our own business and let our neighbors enjoy their privacy and enjoy their rights. I’m afraid that I am convinced that a person’s right to trash up the community ends when exercising that right endangers surrounding homes or creates an environment that reduces the financial value of other homes in the community.

I am excited about your offer to replace Jim Williams, if that is what you have in mind. I guess I should be realistic about that when I notice that your public letter calls the object of your animosity a coward and then you sign your letter “Anonymous”. I prefer to think that you are a solid citizen who has just been given some bad information. I would be pleased to sit down with you over a cup of coffee at the deli at Rocky Ridge and Cirby way for a peaceful discussion of these items, especially if you are willing to shoulder the responsibility of Neighborhood Chair Person.


I apologize for the length of this reply, but I felt that the facts should be set straight.


By The last part