[Durham INC] DRAFT January Minutes

[Pat Carstensen]

January Delegate Meeting of the InterNeighborhood Council of Durham
NIS Conference Room, Golden Belt
January 26, 2016

Attending the meeting were:
Neighborhoods
Colony Park – Don Lebkes
Cross Counties – Pat Carstensen
Downing Creek – Dick Ford
Duke Park – Bill Anderson
Golden Belt – DeDreana Freeman
Morehead Hill – Rochelle Araujo
Old Farm – David Harris
Old North Durham – John Martin, Pete Katz
Old West Durham – Jesus Gutierrez
Trinity Park – Philip Azar
Tuscaloosa-Lakewood – Susan Sewell
Watts Hospital Hillandale – Tom Miller
Woodcroft – Scott Carter

Visitors
John Killeen – City of Durham, NIS
Will Wilson – DOST
Annette Smith – Durham Parks Foundation
Lynwood D. Best – City of Durham, NIS


President DeDreana Freeman opened the meeting.  Members introduced themselves.

Candidate forum – The announcement went out that the Board of County Commissions (BOCC) candidate forum will be on February 4th in the BOCC chambers; it will be televised.  Instead of asking 10 candidates the same question, there will be 3 questions on a given topic, with each of the 3 questions going to 3-4 candidates. Please submit questions.  There will be an OpEd in Sunday Herald Sun and there was an article today.  There was interest in having a presentation from Board of Elections next month.

We will poll neighborhoods about their priorities / concerns some time this spring.  It will be posted on the list-serve when we do it.

There is no formal committee around communications with the Hispanic community, but Philip met with Jose and Jesus and we will continue outreach.

Old North Durham – Peter Katz gave an update on the house at Trinity and Roxboro, which a developer from Raleigh said he wanted to fix it up when he bought it.  In early December the neighborhood learned on Friday the developer had decided to tear down the house on the following Monday.  There was a huge response to list-serve alarm, and it hit the news.  The developer didn’t tear they house down on Monday due to bad weather, met with the neighbors, and offered to sell it for double what he paid for it.  The neighborhood is looking for lot to trade for it and is still waiting.  Wider significance: it was 2-bedroom and would be replaced by BIG house so we would be losing affordable housing, in addition to the loss of the historic house and the effect on the character of the neighborhood, plus we don’t like being lied to.  Affordability and historic are much more aligned than what they might have been in the past.  This feeds into small lot / pocket neighborhood discussion.   This led to a re-discussion of proposed changes in how Durham designates historic districts.  Susan Sewell moved that INC form a committee to develop and implement a plan to get movement on the pending historic district designations.  Tom Miller seconded the motion and it passed.  A committee was formed of Tom, John, DeDreana. Rochelle, Susan on e-mail, Philip maybe.

15-501 Re-design – Susan Sewell said that TLNA would love comments on the 15-501 re-design as they want to give feedback to council on process and results.

Colony Park – Don Lebkes said that at 5:30 on February 9th, the Planning Commission will be doing a hearing on the single family homes being proposed next to Colony Park.  The homes along the border need to be more of a transitions (there are 8 houses / acre along border and they lined up like conventional soldiers, shoulder to shoulder).

Parks and Recreation – They have a new assistant director.

You now should bring household hazardous waste to a new entrance place (land-fill entrance).

Problems with nuisance rentals – Peter Katz talked about Old North Durham’s experience with a particular problem rental.  Neighborhood pressure made the landlord improve on the OND property, but the owner’s business model is to skip background checks so he can charge more for people who won’t pass a background check but have cash.  The property in Duke Park with residents accused of murder has the same owner.  It’s not clear what is going on politically with the city, but the nuisance abatement strategy that worked early in century apparently isn’t being pursued.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.deltaforce.net/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20160201/d95b19b4/attachment.html>