Inter-Neighborhood Council

Making Better Neighborhoods

Minutes of Meeting of March 25, 2003

REPRESENTATIVES PRESENT

Richard Mullinax	Old North Durham NA	Johnea Kelley	Duke Park NA
Ketan Mayer-Patel	Rockwood	Tom Miller	WH-HNA
Bill Anderson	Duke Park NA	Robert Larson	Grove Park HOA
Barry Ragin	Duke Park	Melvin Whitley	W. E. Smith
Pat Carstensen	Cross Country NA	Carrie Mowry	Old North Durham NA
Gaye Weaver	Old West Durham NA	John Compton	Old North Durham NA
Lynwood D. Best	City of Durham	Dale Stouch	Placid Valley
Risa Foster	Trinity Heights NA

Administration and Announcements

President Melvin Whitley opened the meeting and members introduced themselves.

§ Rockwood’s park has enough standing water that the mosquitoes make it impossible to use in summer. Members suggested they may get more help from the stormwater (engineering) guys than Parks and Recreation, and School of the Environment or other university programs may give them some design ideas.

§ Duke Park has a new website.

§ Unified Development Ordinance Committee had a written report.

§ YE Smith neighborhood reported the Good Neighborhood Wish List is on the consent agenda for City Council.

Neighborhoods and DOT

Some of the problems identified with working with DOT are:

§ Large bureaucracy – neighborhoods need info on how to get things done and when you need a bigger hammer to get things done,

§ Not accountable – the DOT Board is appointed, often as political patronage, so neighborhoods aren’t necessarily a customer,

§ Commitments aren’t being kept – the unpaved streets that connect to state roads, which they are supposed to pave but haven’t,

§ Genuinely difficult design decisions,

§ Not transparent – Have a layer that asks for opinions, but then engineers do their own thing (and engineers are more political than claimed)

§ Notification – Need better list, not just road closings but when working all night, etc.

§ Long time horizons – Hard to keep watching from time they start talking to when built

§ Fuzzy standards – Comes down to who is pushy and determined and connected enough to get mitigating stuff.

Ideas about what can be done:

§ Build information on who is on TAC, what the policy is, what has worked, how decisions made

§ Do better at affecting who is DOT Rep, who is on TAC

§ Long-range get DOT Board elected instead of appointed

§ Do better at supporting one another on their neighborhood objectives and sorting out priorities internally – avoid being pitted against one another

§ Support Tom Miller’s proposed bill:

§ Will be introduced by Wib Gulley

§ Called Major Highway Impacts Mitigation Act

§ Policy: Citizens of NC should be protected in the homes, schools, and places of worship and recreation, from the noise and visual impacts of major highways

§ Key point: Require DOT to provide walls and berms to screen the homes, schools, and places of worship and recreation, whenever they are within 300 feet of the highway, as part of any major highway project

§ Definitions: A major highway is a limited access highway of 4 or more lanes. A major highway project creates or improves the major highway. It would apply if there were 6 homes within 1000 feet parallel to highway.

Report on Planning-Related Boards

Tom Miller and Carrie Mowrie gave reports on openings on Planning Commission and Board of Adjustment (BOA). BOA has an opening for someone outside the city – it is worth trying to recruit someone for that. For county appointments, we voted to let Board make endorsements if there is no general meeting in time to do so.

The meeting was adjourned.