The new home of Cooking in Central makes its debut this weekend.  It is a 16 acre open field at 10305 Blackwater Road.  I have driven past it going to and from church several times each week most of my life and it never struck me as Amazing.  It fronts on Blackwater Road and wraps around in an L Shape behind the home of a friend and sits just beyond the back yards homes in Monhegan Subdivision.  It is lined with trees but is really just an open field.  So why has it been named “Amazing Place?”

    I have driven and walked the property for the past 18 months, watching and photographing the slow progress of grubbing out the rocks and stumps, leveling the ground and filling in the holes.  Plumbers and electricians have donated time and resources to service the brand new 12,000 square foot, cement-floored, metal-roofed pavilion.  Surveyors have worked the drainage over and over to be sure parking is solid.  Roads have been created and worked to give access to the entire property to make Cooking in Central a safe and enjoyable success.  I guess I could say that all of this work has been Amazing, and it has been, but that is not why this is an “Amazing Place”.

    I got a glimpse of the Amazement Monday evening at the wrap-up meeting of the Cooking in Central members and volunteers in preparation for this weekend’s event.  A hundred friends and neighbors gathered under the massive pavilion in perfect spring weather to work out last minute details, share a meal, and just visit.  We had a great time, but far short of the kind of Amazing that this Place will be this weekend.

    Show up Friday evening for Central’s biggest crawfish boil of the year…Amazing.  Spend three or four hours visiting with your family and friends and meet a few hundred or a thousand neighbors you didn’t even know you had…Amazing.  Come out Saturday and experience the greatest Cooking in Louisiana, watch Central’s young talent entertain on stage and enjoy the biggest silent and live auction of the year…Amazing.  Turn the kids loose in the play area provided by Central’s up and coming young leaders…Amazing.  Be a part of our City’s single largest display of as tens of thousands of dollars are raised for Veterans, Schools and Children in need…Amazing.  By the end of this weekend I think thousands of people will agree that Central has an “Amazing Place”.

    I can give you two good reasons to help Central Leadership for Tomorrow make the second annual “Central Cleanup Day” a big success this Saturday.  I can also tell you how to spend either a few minutes or a few hours helping, so let’s start with the time details.  If you can’t come out to the parking lot at Hooper and Sullivan Saturday at 8 AM and walk Central’s roads until 11 AM picking up trash, you can help by leaving your empty trash can out by the side of all major roads until noon.  If you do, you are likely to see the cleanup crews dropping a filled trash bag in your trash can here and there.  This will mean MUCH less work in going around picking up the bags of trash at the end of the morning.

    The Mess:  The most obvious reason to spend your Saturday morning cleaning up Central is the Mess.  No one likes to see our roadsides and ditches littered.  Is it your responsibility to clean up after inconsiderate people and pick up debris that fell off of garbage trucks?  No it is not, but that is why it is called community service, doing it just because you care and not because you have to.  Cooking in Central is just a few weeks away and what an added bonus that the crowds that come to Central once a year can see Central at its best.

    The Message:  More important, in my opinion, than cleaning up the Mess, is the Message we send to the community and to the next generation of leaders in the City of Central.  For our community, this event serves as a reminder, a Message that if you litter someone eventually has to clean it up.  Please think before you toss the soda can out of the window.  Still, the biggest Message is the one we send to the organizers of “Central Cleanup Day”, Central Leadership for Tomorrow, or CLT.

    CLT is a group of young Central citizens, 18-45, who have banded together to promote community involvement, voter registration, and support for worthwhile causes in the Central community.  These are young singles and young parents that are balancing jobs and kids and school and still are making time to do their part to improve this community.  Organized less than two years ago, CLT provides the children’s activities at Cooking in Central, participates in the Christmas parade and charitable events of the Christmas season, encourages voter registration and now is hosting the second annual Central Cleanup Day.

    So, if less trash on our roads and a more attractive Central motivates you, come out and help.  If you would like to but can’t, just leave your trash can out by the roadside until noon.  But most of all, if you are like me and are convinced that the long-term success and prosperity of the City of Central is directly dependent on our younger leaders, come out just as a show of support for CLT.  I hope to see you there, because Central Leadership for Tomorrow is Good News for a Great City.

    “Those players would run through a brick wall for Coach Sid.”  That is the first description I was given when I asked someone how the new head football coach was doing at Central back in 2008.  As I have gotten to know Sid Edwards in recent years, I understand why those brick walls are in danger any time Coach Sid steps in to motivate and coach young athletes.

    Sid would like for you to believe that he knows nothing about coaching, and that all he does is to surround himself with capable coaches and let them do the work.  He does indeed recruit great coaches onto his staff, but don’t be fooled.  No one who can’t coach wins state titles in both Football and Basketball and is one of the most highly sought after coaches in the state.

    Indeed, Coach Sid surrounded himself with good coaches when he took over as the CHS Softball Coach this year, and they have had a turnaround year, making it to the playoffs and winning more games than this program has seen in years.  In fact, if you attended a softball game this year you would not have known that Sid Edwards, sitting quietly in the dugout, was the head coach.  The actual coaching and teaching, and the day to day grind of producing a winning softball team has been handled by the talented coaches he has recruited, and he gives them and his dedicated and talented players full credit for this year’s success.  However, there is a confidence and belief running through the heart of this team and every team he coaches that can be traced directly back to Coach Sid Edwards.

    When I talk with Sid it is rarely about a particular game or a specific play or a strategy, it is about his players.  He tells me about the successes of building confidence in a player or about how many football players showed up in service to the community at an event.  He talks about former players who use their high school experiences to become winners in life outside of athletics.  He gets quiet and struggles to find ways to help the ones who just can’t seem to get their lives together.  Sid Edwards is what is known as a “Player’s Coach”.  The young men and women will always be more important than a win or even a state title.  Sid has shared with me more than once “Some coaches see plays, I see players.”

    I know that the Central Community School System is academically one of the best in the state.  I also know that about 500 of the 1,200 students at Central High School are involved in some way with athletics.  Central is fortunate to have a man like Sid Edwards as our Athletic Director, having a positive influence on all of these students.  Let’s never lose sight of the primary goal of school, to prepare our students for life, jobs and further education.  However, let’s also remember that we have exceptional mentors like Coach Sid Edwards who are instilling in our young men and women the commitment, desire and willingness to run through a brick wall for what they believe in.

    I would like to give a special thanks to our Central Fire Department. Today upon stopping at Frog's on Greenwell Springs Road, for gas, I pulled up next to one of their fire trucks. My 3 year old son loves Firemen and fire trucks so upon seeing a real fire truck he got very excited and wanted to say "Hi". I approached the gentleman who was putting gas in the fire truck and asked if it would be okay if my son said hello. He gladly said "Sure". I brought over my son and 4 year old daughter and he and the other gentleman on the truck were so awesome! They let them see the inside of the truck, let them sit on the drivers and passenger seats, they even let my son honk the loud horn. To top it off, they gave both kids little fireman hats. 

    My son has not stopped talking about this experience all day and I'm sure he'll speak of it for months to come. I sadly did not get the names of these two men but I am very grateful that they were so nice and made two little kids very happy. They are very appreciated and I want them to know.

Sincerely,

Jill Sygula

    Central has always been rural.  Central is still rural.  If we play our cards right we can keep Central from ever becoming over developed.  Our City of Central takes in 66 square miles.  As a comparison, Baton Rouge covers 77 square miles, San Francisco 47, St. Louis 62, and Washington DC 69 square miles.  No doubt, these metropolitan areas have expanded far beyond their actual city limits, but it give us an idea of how truly expansive Central is.

    Creating one of the premier School Systems in the state has made Central a very desirable place to live, so much so that we have grown while much of the state is stagnant or losing ground.  In fact, in order to sustain our excellent schools and keep our roads, sewerage and drainage on pace with that growth, we actually NEED growth, but not just any growth…..Smart, Controlled Growth.

    Enter, stage left, The Master Plan.  Our Master plan is not a single document.  It is made up primarily of a land use map, new zoning classifications, recommended zoning changes across the city, and a pattern book to control the look and quality of new buildings.  Behind these documents are a great deal of research on traffic, floodplains, population, school growth, infrastructure availability, citizen preference, lifestyle, and many other elements.  All of this is scheduled to come together to be formalized and become a part of Central’s ordinances during 2013.

    In a recent look at the Master Plan progress I asked whether we have planned well enough to accommodate the commercial growth Central needs without losing the rural nature of the community.  I found that our major intersections and roads such as Wax, Hooper, and parts of Sullivan and Joor will indeed experience commercial growth by design.  I also see that if these areas are fully developed there will be enough commercial space in Central to support a city several times our size.  By my estimation, this leaves about 80% of Central untouched by commercial development.

    The last piece of the puzzle seems to be all of the unknowns.  What will our population growth be?  Where can new neighborhoods be built?  Will more retail and office space be needed?  What happens when Central is faced with truly significant opportunities such as a job and sales tax producing industrial facility or outlet mall?

    Fortunately, our Master Plan is a living document.  I am not in favor of random and frequent exceptions to the Master Plan, but we will, as Central matures, have the opportunity to re-evaluate and improve that plan to meet the needs of the Central community.  There is no such thing as “Smart Growth” unless there is growth, but there may be no such thing as rural if development goes unchecked.  I say let’s keep a watchful eye out and find the balance of the two.  That would be, Good News for a Great City.

 

    “I can’t believe they are building a Roundabout in front of the new schools.  The one on Lovett Road is too small and that will never work on Sullivan.”  That was the general sentiment among many people when the roundabout was announced for the Sullivan and Gurney intersection.  I will admit that my first question for the School Board and other officials was “Will it be bigger than the Lovett roundabout?”  With the answer being “Yes”, I was on board.

    As a resident of Jackson Park, just a few yards from the roundabout, I can say without a doubt that it was a great decision.  Once everyone, well almost everyone, understood that you don’t always have to stop before entering the intersection and you should not stop in the middle of the roundabout to let people in, traffic has rolled through the intersection even through the busy times.  In fact, I can’t remember ever having to come to a stop to get through it.  I have no roundabout complaints except about drivers stopping when they don’t need to.

    I’d like to take a moment be fair to the Lovett Road roundabout, which was the biggest (or smallest?) reason people were against the one on Sullivan.  Yes, it is a small roundabout, but it has slowed traffic on Lovett and accidents in the curve just east of the roundabout dropped off drastically when it opened.  It was designed as a “traffic calming device” in addition to being a safe entrance to the new neighborhood.  I’m not sure I would like to see any more that small, but the Sullivan roundabout is a new example as to how well they can work.

    Let’s also remember a few other benefits of roundabouts.  They don’t stop working after a storm or a power outage like traffic lights do.  They are inexpensive and easy to maintain.  And, best of all, they are safer since accidents in roundabouts are generally glancing blows as opposed to the “T-Bone” accidents in traditional intersections.

    Why talk about roundabouts since these are already built?  Because across the country they seem to be the preferred traffic device of the future, and Central is growing.  The planned Hooper Road extension over the Amite River includes a roundabout at Hooper and Greenwell Springs as one possibility.  As I hear discussion of other intersections such as Gurney and Lovett the word roundabout tends to come up.  So, if Sullivan at Gurney has not been in your path of travel since the roundabout opened make a point to detour out this way and see it for yourself so you can have an educated opinion if you hear one is coming to an intersection near you.

    “I’ve got good news and bad news…which do you want first?”  I know we have all said that or heard that at one time or another.  There are usually a few tense moments of silence after that question while you wonder whether the good news will completely cancel out the bad news.

Here at Central Speaks we get a lot of news, and most of it is good news; Winning teams, 90th birthdays, improved roads, great schools, budget surpluses and more.  We could fill the pages of Central Speaks every week with nothing but good news, but that would not be fair to Central.  There are no TV or radio stations dedicated to the news of Central, so aside from what we hear from our friends, Central Speaks is the only weekly source of news about Central.

    So…”I’ve got good news and bad news…which do you want first?”  I’ll just go ahead and decide for you, good news first.  The good news is that most of the news in Central is Good News.  The bad news is that there are criminals and crimes right here in Central.

    Recently the EBRSO has been very cooperative in providing details of crimes in the Central area.  In addition, Crime Stoppers has now partnered with Central Speaks and will be providing us with information on fugitives that may be in our area.  The bad news is that these things happen.  The good news is that the Central community can be aware of them and take steps to make Central a safer city.

    As you read Central Speaks this and every week, enjoy all of the good news.  When you come across the bad news, remember that we are raising awareness and encouraging everyone to be careful and to keep an eye out in their neighborhoods.  Also, we are sending a message to would-be criminals that Central may be a sleepy little suburban city, but we are sleeping with one eye open.  That is Good News for a Great City. 

    Heads Up! There is a Knight in Shining Armor in the City of Central! Well, maybe the "armor" was more in the line of plaid shorts, and the "shine" came from his beautiful smile.

    This afternoon, 3/13, I had a flat while traveling Hooper Road in front of Our Place Restaurant. I sat in my vehicle on the side of the road for a few minutes, fearing for my life, as motorists sped by. I decided it would be safer off the side of the highway, so I limped along to the nearest business. A young man (who lived near) viewed my auto's impaired gait, jumped into his auto, followed me into the business, and changed my flat tire. We engaged in pleasant conversation while he worked quickly & skillfully. I learned that he loves to work on race cars, drives a KIA, and has a two yr. old. What I forgot to find out was his name!

    Anyway, Chivalry is NOT dead! Kudos to the young man who rescued this old woman. Because of his random act of kindness, I drove away with a smile….warmed by the "neighborly" kindness offered by a resident of our little City of Central….

    Cooking in Central, our city’s largest charitable event, is May 10th & 11th, a little over a month away.  Mia and I have gotten progressively more involved in this event each year, and I’m betting that more than a few of you have gotten caught up in Cooking the same way.  This is the start of a crafty little recruiting process that I call “Cooking Lessons.”

    What starts off the first year as a casual drop-in to check out this new “cook-off” event, progresses over the years to participating in the silent auction, and suddenly finding yourself hauling food around or setting up tents, tables and chairs.  Then you find out that the event doesn’t just magically appear, but that there are meetings and work going on pretty much all year long.  And now you have come to expect an email every month letting you know when the next planning meeting will be.

    The community support for Cooking in Central is amazing.  If you are one of the thousands who simply take some time Friday night to come out for Crawfish and fellowship, or Saturday for all of the fun, music, auctions and great food, you MAKE Cooking in Central a success.  Here are some things I have learned in seven years of “Cooking Lessons”.

    Spring is here and Central’s ball fields will soon be busy 7 days a week, an obvious reminder of the popularity of youth sports in our community.  Now imagine raising a child in Central without any youth sports leagues.  Imagine the first time a kid gets a chance to play any organized sports is in middle school or high school.  Imagine how much less competitive Central’s high school teams would be.  I ask you to imagine these things because that is what it would be like without Central’s many volunteer coaches.  Take a minute this week to thank a coach.

    Yes, in most cases, their child plays on the team, but they have committed to be there WITH their child, and yours, for every practice and every game.  But wait, there’s more.  First the coach has to remind every other parent and child when practice is and when the next game is, collect league fees, buy balls or bases or nets, reserve practice fields, show up early to set up, and stay until the last parent delayed in traffic arrives 30 minutes late to pick up their child.  Stay a minute after practice this week and say thanks to a coach.

    As a softball coach for many years I’ll be the first to admit that there are great rewards in coaching.  There are life-long friendships and the pure satisfaction of seeing young athletes learn teamwork, competition, and the value of hard work.  They do it for the pure love of the game and their players.  They don’t get paid, so let’s give them all something money can’t buy and tell them how much we appreciate the gift of their time.  It only takes a moment to say “Thanks Coach!”