[Durham INC] Nov/Dec DRAFT INC minutes

[Pat Carstensen]

Please let me know about any additions or corrections.  Happy holidays, regards, pat


















November/December Delegate
Meeting of the InterNeighborhood Council of Durham

NIS
Conference Room, Golden Belt

December 15, 2015

 

Attending
the meeting were:

Neighborhoods

Colonial Village – Brendan Meyer, Anne Guyton

Colony Park – Don Lebkes

Cross
Counties – Pat Carstensen

Downing Creek – Dick Ford

Emory Wood Orchards – Elaine C. Hyman, Robert E.
Desmarais

Golden Belt – DeDreana Freeman

Lochaven Hills – Keith LePage

Long
Meadow – Pakis Bessias

Morehead
Hill – Rochelle Araujo

Northgate
Park – Debra Hawkins

Old North
Durham – John Martin, Pete Katz

Stage Stop – Dolly Fehrenbacher

Trinity
Park – Philip Azar

Tuscaloosa-Lakewood
– Susan Sewell 

Watts Hospital Hillandale – Tom Miller

Woodcroft
– Jose M. Sandoval

 

Visitors 

Will
Wilson – DOST

Lynwood
D. Best – City of Durham, NIS

Aaron
Cain – Durham City/County Planning

 

President
DeDreana
Freeman opened the
meeting.  Members introduced themselves. Pat
Carstensen moved to approve the October
minutes, Rochelle Araujo seconded and delegates voted to do this. 

 

Aaron Cain
is the manager of a new customer service group in the Durham City/County
Planning Department; one goal of this new department is to be more proactive in
providing information to the community. 
Elected officials need to vote each year on Planning’s work plan, which is mostly mandatory things like doing
building permit reviews.   This year they
are finishing up 4 projects and have “room” to take on new projects so they are
gathering community comments on what is important to take on.  Suggestions from the meeting included: review
of the neighborhood protection overlay idea, pocket neighborhoods, how to
respect the character of established neighborhoods, simplification of the UDO
or citizen guides / classes / case studies, “boulevardization” (including
medians) to include specific streets.  Having
Golden Belt and Holloway Street historic districts as “discretionary” provoked
a lot of discussion.  There are a bunch
of proposals for changing the process for getting a local historic preservation
district, and the general agreement was that whatever the process is, it needs
to be timely, include enough teeth in the plan to let the HPC have grounds for
disapproving bad ideas, and deal with the problem of limited staff resources.

 

Committee Reports

Outreach and Membership – Dick Ford and Don
Lebkes have started work
on a candidate forum for the Board
of County Commissioners primaries.  The
problem is location since City Hall would not be free for a county-oriented
event.  Don and Dick are trading off TV
access, cost, and number of seats provided. 
Tom Miller moved and DeDreana Freeman seconded that we allocate up to $500 for costs;
this was passed.  We are not partnering
with the League of Women Voters.

Zoning/Planning – See the concerns about the
historic district planning process above. 
Also, the city and county actions shenanigans around renovations of the
Old Judicial Building would create a very dangerous precedent.  Concerned that they would not get a
certificate of appropriateness for changing the “skin” of the building, they
are claiming they are demolishing the building (nothing is coming down), which
takes away authority of the Historic Preservation Commission to
disapprove.  If a mere change of “skin”
counts as “demolition,” just about any change of appearance would slip through.
 In other planning news, there are a
number of big zoning cases to watch: Cornwallis Road near Colony Park and
Shoccoree east of Cole Mill are examples of extraordinary breaks with existing
neighborhood patterns, Guess Road (Publix) has concerns about using mixed use
to skirt the need to get a vote on a land use plan change and about the
definition of “commercial nodes,” Roxoboro has Old Farm concerned, and
Farrington & 54 muddles the compact neighborhood planning process for the
area (the first 4 are going to the Planning Commission, while the last is going
to City Council next). 

 

Neighborhood
Reports and Announcements


 Will Wilson
     reported on Durham Roots Farmer's
     Market, which will begin at Northgate this April. The Durham Roots
     market will be held on Saturdays from 8 am until noon, in the parking lot
     outside the Stadium 10 theater. There will be ample parking and easy
     entrance and exit, making this market extremely convenient for customers.
     What makes this market unique is that all the vendors are agricultural
     producers who farm in Durham County (or urban farms in Durham City).There
     will be no crafts at this market. 
     The market is looking for community volunteers, who might be
     interested in becoming members of this market as Community Members.
     Community members help the market in various ways including assisting the
     Market Manager Intern, possibly helping develop a website and other tasks
     to help get this market off the ground. 
     The contact person is John Monroe 919-620-0779 or archtrees at aol.com.  They will also have a community member on the board, but there is no formal
     search at this point for one.
 Debra Hawkins
     said that the Indy Gift Guide has prizes and drawings for giving.  Tuesday was a particularly good day to
     give to the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association.
 Elaine Hyman
     reported that Emory Woods Orchard has had a number of developers look at
     completing their site plan, and it looks like they have someone who will
     do it.
 The great mailbox
     scam of telling folks to put their box at the curb has popped up again.
 Old North Durham
     has concerns about a house at 204 East Trinity, which was supposed to be
     restored, but then resold.  The new
     owner kept secret a permit to demolish for a month before he told the
     neighborhood on Friday that demolition would happen on Monday.  A flood of e-mails caused him to pause
     (if not re-think); they are still talking and there is an effort to put
     together a package to buy the house.
 The “canonical
     date” for luminaria is December
     20th this year; some neighborhoods had lovely luminaria last
     weekend.
 The county tax assessments are out.  Check out the comparison tool.  http://dconc.gov/government/departments-f-z/tax-administration/revaluation


 

 

 		 	   		   		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.deltaforce.net/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20151218/5e664aa4/attachment.html>