Website Policy statement regarding Paid Advertising

I understand the need for funding. I know that the neighborhood website may be a great way to derive some income. I have pretty strong feelings that adding advertisement to this medium would detract from the purpose I had in mind establishing this site. My fundamental reason was to provide this for the neighborhood was to create a central online resource and hopefully give our neighborhood an image and central repository for information about this area with out special interest influence. Our first web site had advertisement and for that reason, I created this new presence add more information content to it when I moved from Neighborhood link to Martindrive.org.

I wanted the site to be a resource and service to neighborhood and businesses. I view this as a neighborhood image marketing tool. From what I see, with ads on other websites, all they are is annoyances that people put up with to get the information they need or want. Sometimes they give up the attempt to get the information because of the ads and slowdown it causes. It affects and targets primarily people with slow internet speeds with slow delivery of the information content.

To date, the Martindrive.org web site has not had any negative financial impact to the neighborhood and today doesn't need funding using the current support model I operate under. (Please remember that I purchased the domain name on the internet for the neighborhood as a service, I own the computer hardware and software to create and operate the site, and provide the internet connection and maintain the server as best I can and provide the battery backup and power to keep this online at no cost to neighborhood.) I personally feel that if the neighborhood group felt that it was in the best interest of the martin drive web site to have advertisement, I would step down from this roll of operator and administrator.

If I do step down because of change that this organization want to take with its web advertisement direction, I would want to make the transition as smooth as possible. I would transfer the domain name to new name servers, plus pass the complete HTML code on CD and transfer the domain name ownership from my name to Martin drive executive committee to own legally. The committee would need a new hosting service (or local host server) and a administrator/maintenance person to oversee this operation ( I would step down after transition). We can discuss moving the existing server as loaded, I may consider this too. Keep in mind that if you host this site that there will be costs associated from the host provider and if you operate this from the existing hardware (if agreed) there will be electric, server maintenance, and internet charges that will apply. This will depend on the market at the time of transfer.

I have every intention of continuing running this site without advertisement for the foreseeable future as my schedule allows. I would welcome one or two people to work with me to develop new applications on the site or maintain existing sections of the site. For most part it has been very simple after initial setup. All pages are created with FrontPage in combination with Microsoft word and Adobe acrobat for creation of PDL's..

I have no opinion about newspaper advertisements direction and that decision is independent of this letter. I do understand the need for funding activities and events. I applaud the many volunteers that make this neighborhood a nice place to live.