[Durham INC] Fw: DRAFT June INC mintues

[Pat Carstensen]

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

June Delegate Meeting of the InterNeighborhood Council of Durham
NIS Conference Room, Golden Belt
June 27, 2017

Attending the meeting were:
Neighborhoods
Colony Park – Don Lebkes
Cross Counties – Pat Carstensen
Downing Creek – Jennifer Patterson
Falconbridge – Dick Ford
Golden Belt – DeDreana Freeman
Lattamoor – Sharon Leslie
Lochaven Hills – Tom Buhrman
Long Meadow – Matthew Pait
Morehead Hill – Rochelle Araujo
Northgate Park – Debra Hawkins
Old North Durham –Peter Katz, John Martin
Trinity Park – Philip Azar
Tuscaloosa-Lakewood – Susan Sewell
Watts-Hillandale – Tom Miller

Visitors
Will Wilson – DOST
Chelsea Hawkings – County Health Department
Lynwood D. Best – City of Durham, NIS

DeDreana Freeman opened the meeting and those present introduced themselves.  Peter Katz moved and Tom Miller seconded approval of the April and May minutes; this passed.


Affordable Housing Bonuses – Durham is working on new density bonuses that are used (as opposed the current ones that have not added any affordable units since what the code gives developers everything they want without providing affordability) for developments around the future transit stops; details are at https://durhamnc.gov/362/Compact-Neighborhood-Affordable-Housing.  An “affordable unit” is a dwelling unit committed for a minimum 15- year term as affordable, through covenants or restrictions, to households with incomes at 60% or less of the area median income for a family; and where housing costs (rent or mortgage) do not exceed 30% of a family’s income. The bonus would be more height and more units. There was agreement that affordability bonuses was a good thing and this is better than what we had, with most of the discussion around how well the proposed bonuses would work and what they would mean for neighbors.  We don’t have a lot of freedom since disgruntled home builders have found they can get a “legislative solution.” We are still likely to have to put public money in to get much in the way of affordability. Ninth Street Design District has a “core” and “Support 2” and “Support 1” sub-districts, with less height and other conditions in the “Support” rings closest to residential single family; folks need to watch carefully the details as the design districts are developed around other transit stops.


Chelsea Hawkins talked about what Public Health is doing to help folks with diabetes and other chronic conditions. They do a lot of presentations and webinars, as well as providing a presence at neighborhood events. One suggestion is to get information into the coordinator packs for National Night Out. Some neighborhoods still have newsletters and are always looking for content. There are some neighborhood coalitions to work with. Some neighborhoods would be OK to have the newsletter in their list-serves, but ask that content be kept simple.


Committee Reports

·       Communications – The Chapel Hill mayor says that everyone they ask about how to improve what happened in their recent water crisis has said, “I wish information had come over my list-serve.” This comment shows that neighborhoods need to be protective on their list-serves and may want to figure how to make sure someone is cascading emergency information out. They also found out their contact list for hotels was totally out of date so having a neighborhood contact list may have the same issues of having it up to date.  Some neighborhoods are trying to figure out how to avoid getting so many “heavy” (with graphics, mastheads, etc.) pieces of e-mail. We will have a “best practices” discussion with some technical folks, with Phil leading the effort.

·       Neighborhood Hero Committee – Tom Miller has started to get a list of former awardees and their awards in a sustainable format/media.  There is still information on the floppy disk they haven’t gotten to. Not all of Bill Anderson’s write-ups have showed up.

·       The candidate forum dates are set September 14th for mayor’s races and October 12th for city council.


Announcements / Neighborhood News

·       Fourth of July events include Durham Bulls Athletic Park (6:30 – 9:00 PM), the 68th Watts Hospital-Hillandale Neighborhood Association Parade (10AM – noon), Downing Creek Parade and Lattamoor Pets on Parade.

·       The Beaver Queen Pageant was very successful and fun.

·       We might need to get our brochure out to National Night Out folks.

·       The Post Office is back to trying to get mail boxes at the curb, which is against their own rules; Mike Woodard got on it immediately.

·       The Duke Beltline Steering Committee is still meeting.

·       After almost 2 years of the Latta-Guess “Publix” proposal, it was defeated in City Council. The neighborhood groups did a coordinated presentation to have multiple speakers talk to a set of slides, each doing 2 minutes. Publix contacted everyone who had purchased stuff at Publix anywhere in the country, including residents of Cary, to ask them to support the store. We will have to be more aware and to up our game to meet this challenge.

·       Cornwallis Road is building to the existing zone, and will get a cluster subdivision of 60-ish homes, going away from constructed wetlands, and leaving the area zoned commercial alone.

·       Can the new planning director come talk to us?

·       The Durham County Library is having their summer reading program, with a Building a Better World theme, so you can get a cute rubber duckie, among other things, for reading.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.deltaforce.net/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20170629/c9fd2524/attachment.html>