It brings up an interesting situation. Residents who are looking to join a nearby recognized Firewise Community (FWC) should also be aware of any groups in the application process.
Also, residents might be already be in one of these groups (recognized or pending) without knowing it, and should know how to contact them in either case. It’s a useful tool to promote participation or expansion.
Do we need to distinguish between recognized and pending FWCs? Can we provide contact info for the pending FWCs for folks who want to reach out to them?
Spruce/Vassar is still pending. But we accept both neighborhoods in formation and already certified groups. In anything, groups in formation actually have higher needs for communications.
Because it takes a while to get your map together when you are getting ready to apply (it takes many months to go through the process, and the final map sometimes gets finalized a few days before), it is rarely possible to have a good map until you apply. So, by default, the general neighborhood map shows a star rather than boundaries, which is already a distinction between the two states of being.
Beyond that, should there be more distinction? It may be best to just leave each pending group free to decide?
That is a great suggestion for pending Firewise neighborhoods!
Thanks for these comments. I agree that it may be best to leave the decision to the pending FWCs, but I suspect they will be happy to include their contact info on their My Neighborhood page.
They can as soon as it is migrated from @system to one of their editors, in the same manner as 🚨 About North Berkeley Hills 🚨 is linked to Robin (you can see him name as the author on the page, and look him up).