Hello, everyone. Welcome to our second annual neighborhood meeting. We made it through our first official rotation. Overall it looks like we had a great year and we're hoping for an even better year this next rotation. We had our first experiences with home businesses and hopefully we'll see more business at residences and community lots in the future. We hope to see more expansion in the future with offices and workplaces closer to home. So far we've experimented with this in the education system and it has worked very well.
Speaking of the education system, we're planning some changes for this year. First is the addition of the new elementary school. This year the elementary school will have four students enrolled and we will expect to see more in coming years. James McMillian has been busy designing and constructing the new building and while it isn't finished yet, it should be ready for students by the first day of school. Construction on other parts of the building is expected to continue during the school year. Jessica Ebadi will be teaching the elementary aged students while Rich Cormier and Hope Miguel will stay on at the Jr. / Sr. High with the older students.
Starting this year, school updates will be once a year for each of the three education levels, elementary, secondary, and higher education. Although we'll be seeing fewer semesters, we're extending the length of each semester to allow each subject to be studied in greater depth. For the time being, updates are scheduled as follows, elementary in the spring, Jr. and Sr. High in the winter, and university in the fall. We may offer a summer camp session if there is sufficient demand. Rich Cormier has agreed to post an education notice to discuss plans for all three educational levels in more detail later this spring.
One major change that all sims will notice this year are changes to the aging and calendar system. Instead of aging 3 years per rotation, sims will only age 1 year per rotation. Each household will experience a full three day season during each sim year, but sims will no longer age one year per each simday. While we found that have a system of three days per rotation worked better than only a single day, as we did in Eden, aging seemed to happen too quickly and unevenly when comparing households at different ends of the rotation. For older sims it probably doesn't make much difference, but for younger, school-aged sims this should be a better system for making sure children are in the correct grades with their peers and no one skips ahead or is left behind just because their household happens to be at the beginning of the year or the end of the year. For other sims in the neighborhood the slower aging system has the added advantage of giving sims more time to pursue careers, hobbies, and families. Also sims will be able to have children that are closer in age to one another, if they so choose, since pregnancy time will be equivalent to one year rather than three.
We've considered changing our calendar so that all households are set to the same season, to promote neighborhood unity, but for the time being we are keeping the varying seasons per simyear. We have decided to limit the number of festivals per year. Instead of a summer and winter festival every year, we will have one seasonal festival every year. That should be enough to keep neighbors in touch without overwhelming our event planners and neighborhood budget. Our tentative plan is to have a community event every three seasons, with the next one scheduled for next fall.
The next change I'm going to announce may cause some initial confusion, but I hope that it will simplify things in the future. We have decided to change the numbering system for the simyear. This last year was 2001, since it marked our first regular rotation in New Eden, but we were also still using the old numbering system from Eden, which meant that New Eden Year 2001 was equivilant to simdays 107-109. Shawn D'Sim has come up with a suggestion to combine the two into one numbering system. This upcoming year will be 2010 to represent that this is the 110th simday since Eden was founded. If we considering the founding of Eden as 1900, this numbering system will allow us to easily convert historical events into current dates while keeping a system of years more consistent with the current trends in other neighborhoods around simNation. It should be pretty simple and if not, we will send out a pamplet to explain this, hopefully more clearly than I have. But for example, say if a sim was born on simday 83 in Eden, under the new numbering system their birthyear would be 1983. This next rotation will be 2010, as I already said, and the rotation after that will be 2011. Each simday will no longer be numbered individually, just the simyear, which will match with the new aging system.
The next item on our agenda is the neighborhood database. We are in the process of compling a database on all residents' vital information. We hope this will enable us to get to know each other and maybe even ourselves a little better. We will be sending out forms to each household to collecting information about each family member. The type of information collected will include, age, careers, personalities, traits, likes and dislikes, that kind of information. This is information we've had for quite awhile, but are trying to integrate into our lives more. We hope that sims will use this data when making decisions or when making decorating or clothing choices.
We're also asking each household to have a family picture taken to be included in the database. Fawn Thayer has kindly offered her services and will take photographs either in her studio or in individual homes with no sitting fees charged. If you would like to order prints for your home, they will be available at a discounted price. Contact Fawn Thayer for details.
Now for the part I'm sure no one is looking forward to, hood finances. So far we have not collected any taxes or even have a tax system in place, but we will be looking towards developing one in future years. Several households took out building loans upon moving to New Eden. This year we will be doing a household funds assessment and each household that has taken out a loan will be expected to begin paying it back in 2011. Each household will have 10 simyears to pay back their loans without penalties. We hope that this revenue will allow us to delay having any further taxes for the next few years to come. At the end of 2010 each household will recieve a statement detailing how mnuch money they are expected to repay from their loans and how much is due each simyear.
I believe that was all that needed to be discussed tonight. Let's wish everyone a wonderful and prosperous 2010!
Wow, a lot of changes. I like hw you combined the two aging systems.
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