Message from DNBA President Darren Pomponio

Hi everyone…. Happy New Year!  Well, the Downtown Novato Business Assocation finished out the year with a bang and had a lot of wonderful Holiday Spirit, DNBA style. Did you catch the tree lighting? How about the carriage rides? Oh, and Santa was out and about quite a bit as well ... we all had a lot of fun. Thank you all for participating.

Now it’s time to move forward. We have a great 2013 planned and we want to make sure you are all in the loop. This past month, the DNBA marketing committee met for about eight hours to discuss the best way to advertise and market Novato, and specifically the DNBA for the year, and we came up with a great game plan that involves keeping the focus on the DNBA businesses through the website, TV, print advertising and public events.

We are excited about the website results and will continue to invest here. Please bookmark our site, sign up for the RSS feed to get the news when it happens, and visit www.downtownnovato.com regularly to keep abreast of specials, events and news offered by our businesses. This site is serving many functions to assist us all in our marketing, day-to-day lifestyles as well as some good updates on what’s happening in Downtown Novato.

Again, our goal is to get the public to “Stroll Grant Avenue and Downtown Novato” and to be informed about all of the businesses here in the DNBA — services, retailers, building suppliers and auto repair to name a few.  Please realize that things will not change overnight, but I promise you they will change IF we all are patient and we ALL get involved.

Finally, we are looking for volunteers. We just held our general election for board members on Wednesday night. We want to thank our outgoing board member Kebby McInroy and welcome our new board members Randy Stemmer, Phillip Schenkler, Connie Medeiros and Mark Dawson. We still have two  open board positions and invite any DNBA members interested in shaping the future of our town to join us.

Being a member of the DNBA Board of Directors is a volunteer position. Our board puts in many hours of time in service to growing our community. We also need help with the various committees we have for our events: Spring Celebration, Nostalgia Days and other Holiday events. Please contact me if interested and for more detail.

OK, make it a great 2013 and I will be seeing you all on the streets of Novato!

I will always welcome your input and suggestions, so please don’t hesitate to e-mail me at darrenpomponio@gmail.com.

— Darren Pomponio, President, DNBA