Duke Park Shop
Neighborhood Photos
DPNA Meeting Minutes
DPNA Meeting, January 11, 2007
Neighbors present: Dan Read (president), Melissa Godwin (vice president), Pam Campa (treasurer), Claire Doyle (secretary), Kara Van Dam (member at-large), Michelle Old (member at-large), Barry Ragin (president ex-oficio), Courtney Stanion, Andrew Preiss
Duke Park Bathhouse:
We were close to signing a lease but the city
is now throwing up road blocks. The city
now says that even with renovations, the
building will not meet code. Cracks in the
foundation are now considered a structural
issue. Things that they said were OK before
are now problematic. Is it possible to have
it declared historic? Then some of the code
issues would not be applicable.
Dan is waiting to hear back from Mr. Fleischer (zoning department) to find out whether our using that as a meeting place is an allowed use.
There was discussion of going to the media about this. Barry will contact Jim Wise. Dan will ask Michelle (who had not yet arrived at the meeting at this point) if she can ask Sara Dowdy for her history of the bathhouse.
Brookline Ave.
There was discussion of some stuff being stored
on Brookline, and questions of when the stuff
would be moved and the road converted to
a trail as planned. We will bring that up
when we talk to NCDOT about the Roxboro/Knox
intersection, and planting landscaping. Barry
will take pictures.
Landscaping along I-85
Dan wrote to the NCDOT division engineer: he
said they’re working with the city
on designs for fall 2007. The are planning
on planting maples, red bud, others.
Share Your Christmas
Adopted a Hispanic family in the neighborhood,
a mother, father and 10-year-old boy. Carol
Donin shopped and brought the gifts and delivered
them along with Cindy Current’s mother
, who helped translate.
Treasurer’s Report
All luminaries sold. $2332.13 in the bank.
Pam needs the Speedeeque invoice from December
(Speedeeque has since been alerted to send
it to her).
Yard waste
We have a stated resolution
from 2005, which was passed by the Inter-Neighborhood
Council (INC). The goal is to change the current
situation where only 20% of people participate
because payment is voluntary. There is a new
head of Solid Waste (3rd in eight months),
Donald Long. Melissa met him at the PAC2 meeting.
He says he’s open to the changing the
current situation with yard waste. She will
be a meeting at the next INC meeting (4th Tuesday
of January at the Herald-Sun building on Pickett
Rd.) where Long will be a guest. Barry offered
to go to the meeting.
Other enforcement issues:
There is now a solid
waste code enforcement officer.
Melissa spoke with owner of the property next to the yellow house on the corner of Washington and Mangum. He’s OK with the fact that the city is cleaning up the piles of trash that are frequently dumped there. The impact team should be billing the owner, but that is obviously not happening.
Barry moves that we request that the police log be made available online and published to PAC listservs. Motion passed.
Next meeting
The next meeting will be the 2nd Thursday
in March (March 8) Location TBD.
Newsletter
Melissa will take over editorial after Kara
leaves town in June, but would like to partner
with someone. She would like to get a bigger
pool of authors. Claire will assist Kara
and Melissa in porting the files to Microsoft
Publisher so that they can lay out future
issues.
Ellerbe Creek cleanup
The DPNA board committed to April 14 as a cleanup
of Ellerbe creek (The 1st Saturday in the
spring after easter). The cleanup will be
between the trail and the creek, between
Markham and Green.
Neighborhood “big trash” day
The neighborhood cleanup with the Impact Team
is set for May 5. Barry has coordinated this
in previous years, but he will not be in
town so someone else will need to be the
point person this year.
Dan would like to have everyone on the board to have a phone tree of eight people to let people know about neighborhood cleanup.
Roxboro/Knox intersection
Dan is going to talk to the NCDOT engineer.
Mike Woodard replied to our barrage of emails
on this issue. Mike worked on the Broad/Perry
intersection, which now has a light where
several pedestrians were hit. Broad St. is
a state road there. Barry would like to see
a walkthrough of Roxboro/Knox with Mark Ahrendsen
(transportation manager for the city of Durham)
NCDOT engineers, and some neighbors, to meet
at the corner and examine the intersection
for safety. Barry cited concerns about the
wheelchair ramps being on the 6-lane side
of the intersection instead of the 4-lane
side.
Rand Ave. issues
There are trees at Rand/Markham that Duke Power
wants to cut down; the city is preventing
them from doing so.
Rand between Green and Markham looks like it had once been paved; it has curbs and drainage, but is now maintained with gravel. Nobody will own up to it ever having been paved or having it paved again. Melissa has been talking to the city departments of Street Maintenance and Engineering. She also wants to find out how to get trees planted in front of the substation.
The next DPNA meeting will be the Spring Potluck on Thursday, March 8.