[Durham INC] Fw: DRAFT January Minutes

[Pat Carstensen]

I am forwarding in anticipation of tonight's meeting.  I don't think we approved the Nov/ December minutes so they are also in this e-mail.


________________________________
From: INC-list <inc-list-bounces at lists.deltaforce.net> on behalf of Pat Carstensen <pats1717 at hotmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 31, 2016 9:55 PM
To: inc listserv
Subject: [Durham INC] DRAFT January Minutes

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.



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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<mailto: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


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