[Durham INC] DRAFT July minutes

[Pat Carstensen]

Please let me know about any additions or corrections.  Regards, pat



July Delegate Meeting

First Presbyterian Church

July 27, 2010

 

Attending the meeting
were:

Delegates and Alternates

Burch Avenue – Jennifer Skahen 

Cross Counties – Pat Carstensen 

Duke Park – Bill Anderson 

Long Meadow NA – Chuck Clifton

Old North Durham – Peter Katz 

Old West Durham – Brett Walters 

Parkwood – Mike Brooks 

Watts Hospital Hillandale – Tom Miller 

 

Visitors

Jim Wise – News and Observer

Lorisa Seibel – Durham Affordable Housing Coalition

Jack Preiss – DAHC

Stephen Hopkins – Campaign for Decent Housing

Darius Little – Organizing Chadsford subdivision

 

Tom Miller opened the meeting.  Delegates introduced themselves.  

 

Housing Issues

Lorisa reported that the city is making progress on lien
collection; the list is longer but the average amount owed is lower and they are
doing smarter targeting on of collection efforts.  Also, city has continued to fund special needs housing, not
enough but pretty good in a tough budget year.

 

In other news, the city is looking to put all its federal
community grant eggs for years into the future (from CDBG and HOME) into one
Rolling Hills/Southside basket, leaving nothing (OK maybe promises) for other
areas and for services such as weatherization, Teen Court, and community
kitchens.  Also, this flies in the
face of long-time community efforts to develop 5-year plans based on looking at
needs across the entire community. 
Everyone agrees that Rolling Hills/Southside desperately needs to have
something done on it, but we need to find a bigger pot of money (like from the
developer?) or scale the work down. 


 

A proposed resolution:

Whereas historically the City and County have used federal
HOME and Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) to house the homeless, feed
the hungry, and improve the quality of neighborhoods, and

 

Whereas the InterNeighborhood Council of Durham (INC)
supports continued funding for affordable housing and for community services
needed by families, youth, disabled, homeless, and residents of working class
neighborhoods, and

 

Whereas the INC believes in honoring plans developed by
citizen committees, and

 

Whereas the City has proposed to redirect most of the
federal HOME and CDBG funds to the redevelopment of Rolling Hills/Southside,

 

Therefore, the INC asks that before committing more funds to
the Rolling Hills / Southside redevelopment, City Council and County
Commissioners commit to continued funding of affordable housing and community
services across Durham.

 

Billboards

There was an energetic discussion of the PAC meeting that
discussed the Billboard Ordinance. 
The dates to remember are August 2 at City Council and August 9 at the
Board of County Commissioners (BOCC).

 

751 Assemblage
Rezoning Report

Tom gave a summary of where we are; we could have had INC
meeting in the lobby of the BOCC meeting. 
It’s important that the process works right (in spite of the vigorous
attempts of some to mess it up) because no-one will be able to afford appealing
the unfairness or blatant illegal aspects of the process because of the cost of
the appeal bond.

 

Other business and neighborhood reports:

·     
The August meeting will look at forming a
committee to do neighborhood awards that celebrate a new class of heroes (eg.
maybe public employees)

·     
The August meeting will have a presentation on
assessing how the UDO is doing for neighborhoods.

·     
Old North Durham got great press about 

 

 The meeting was
adjourned.

 

 




 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
HTML attachment scrubbed and removed