MJNA BOARD MEETING

September 8, 2014

7:30pm

Armstrong home

Attending.

Bruce Odell, Harry Holsinger, Rick Zeller, Laine Armstrong, John McLaren, Robert Brickman, Martha Levering.

1.      October picnic.  Bruce explained that he was proposing an earlier than usual date for the picnic, October 5 (with a rain date on the 19th), partly to avoid the long weekend of the following week, which would reduce attendance, as well as to avoid the colder weather.  He also unveiled a proposed set of written guidelines on how to set up the picnic, for future reference to help future organizers, but also invited suggestions for revision.  This draft of written guidelines will be available on Google Docs.  Bruce also raised the issue that we may be short-handed at that time (he in particular will be out of town), and there are doubts that enough hands will be available to manage the fall picnic.  The board discussed the possibility of skipping the fall picnic this year to focus efforts later on the spring picnic, or postponing it to the 19th when more people will be present to help (with no rain date).

Finally, it was decided to move the picnic to October 19, with the understanding that Bruce will ask the membership in the President’s letter for volunteers.  The venue will be the Stewarts’ house.  Wine and beer will be offered for a $1 donation.  Laine will handle signs.  Bruce will call about picnic tables and chairs.  Rick will take care of pizza and eating utensils as well as drinks.  Kristen will handle games.  Harry will handle the membership table.

2.      City’s “Town Meeting,” now scheduled for February.  The city has been arranging ‘town hall’ meetings around the city with one neighborhood at a time.  Bruce reports that the city’s ‘town hall’ that includes our neighborhood on the agenda has been grouped with Woolen Mills, a neighborhood quite far from ours, and scheduled for February, when Bruce suggests that turnout will be low because of weather.  The board encouraged him to request a better schedule and he said that he would do so.

3.      Electronic newsletter.  Martha and Harry reported on progress on conversion to an all-digital newsletter.  Harry has been compiling the email addresses of neighborhood residents who would prefer to receive the newsletter electronically, and setting up the system for electronic distribution.  Martha spent a whole weekend canvassing the neighborhood to update and complete the email roster after it prove to be more difficult than expected to delegate this work, but a significant amount of canvassing remains.  A difficulty is the need to return to the same address multiple times in order to obtain a response.

Martha and Harry have developed a detailed system for completing the canvass.  Canvassers receive detailed instructions with printed canvass sheets for entering the needed information. Harry obtained all of the neighborhood addresses from the city database, put them on a spreadsheet, and checked them against our list of email addresses.  The sheets that are used by canvassers have a list of all addresses on each block, together with whether these addresses are already on the email list or not, so that canvassers can focus attention on those that are not.  For rental properties, the city list provides the name of the owner, so canvassers are instructed to indicate the name of the resident in parentheses.  Various board members volunteered to help complete the canvass.

The problem of keeping the database up to date in the future was discussed.  Bob suggested that each newsletter remind people to let the association know about any new neighbors, and to let the new neighbors know about the association.  Bruce suggested that in the near future the board will likely want to reduce the number of block captains and increase the territory covered by each one.

4.      Status of Octagon ‘chiller’ problem.  Bob Brickman reports he and his wife sent a message about the problem to Kristen Szakos, who responded immediately.  Shortly thereafter, she arranged a meeting with the owner of Moore’s Heating, Dale Moore, at the site of the chiller, at which point it was discovered that Moore’s staff had never come to the site to inspect the problem.        Dale Moore has now offered a personal assurance that he will fix the problem. There is a possibility that a new chiller, scheduled to be installed by November 9, will be quiet enough.  There is also a possibility that construction of an enclosure for the machine will help. Kristen Clarens has indicated an intention to sue if the problem is not fixed quickly.  Bob emphasizes that the noise is a serious impediment to the sale of any house in the area, and that the company under existing case law would be liable for the economic damage caused by depressed property values, in addition to pain and suffering of residents.  Under existing law, the latter damages are measured subjectively from the point of view of the plaintiff residents.  As a result, he and other parties in involved are emphasizing that the company may be liable for millions of dollars in damages.  Bruce also emphasized that this problem risks ‘poisoning the well’ of relations between Octagon and the neighborhood association.

5.      August meeting with Neighborhood Development Services (NDS).  The only neighborhood representative attendees at the August meeting were Rick and the representative from Woolen Mills.  A suggestion that had been presented at the earlier charrette was to line streets with large trees, partly as a traffic-calming device.  Despite some concerns about damage to cars in the event of a collision and also about maintenance cost, the city is becoming more positive about the idea.  Jim Tolbert, the NDS director, indicated that the NDS has lost some staff and that this is slowing the planning process.  The earlier idea of having city officials and planners on a walkabout in the neighborhood with neighborhood members to review plans has been postponed, to the disappointment of Rick and others on the board.

6.      “Walk the City” request from The Bridge PAI.  This organization has contacted various neighborhood associations to organize neighborhood walks to promote solidarity.  We currently do not know much about the proposal; Bruce will forward the email to board members to see if we are interested in participating.

7.      NDS Grant Application, due October 3.  Neighborhood Development Services has asked for grant proposals for small neighborhood projects.  Grants are not to exceed $2,500.  Bruce asked if the board had any suggestions.  A suggestion that was suggested is that the association could apply for funds for a printer, to print, for example, the copies of the newsletter that are still going out in paper form.  Another was hoods for the streetlights to keep the glare from pointing upward into the night sky.  A third possibility is converting the lights in Maplewood cemetery to permanent electrical lights to deter nighttime vagrants.  Bruce will announce this grant request from NDS in the President’s letter so that anyone who has an idea for a project will be able to present a proposal.

8.      Other business. Harry reported a balance of $1,068.59, up from $1008.47.  Additions of $60 from new members and membership renewals as well as twelve cents of interest were noted.  The previous meeting’s minutes were approved.  The next meeting will be Monday, October 13, at 7:30pm, at Bruce’s house.