Inter-Neighborhood Council

Making Better Neighborhoods

Minutes of Meeting of February 24,2004

REPRESENTATIVES PRESENT

Virginia Bridges	The Herald Sun	R. Gaye Weaver	Old West Durham
Pat Carstensen	Cross County	Barbara Deason	Morehead Hill
Cheryl Sweeney	Northgate Park	Renata Wend	Tuscaloosa-Lakewood
Cathy Abernathy	Hope Valley	Randy Pickle	Forest Hills
Risa Foster	Trinity Heights NA	Dale Stouch	Placid Valley
David Harris	Old Farm	Timothy Bellamy	Old Farm
Tom Miller	Watts Hospital - Hillandale	Bill Anderson	Duke Park
Howard Price	The Brickman Group / Guest Speaker	Lynwood D. Best	City of Durham, Housing & Comm Development
William Crosmun	Parkwood	Duane Clark	Durham Police Department
Vicki Schneider	Woodlake HOA	Lugenia Mason	River Forest
Robert Larson	Grove Park	Mike Shiflett	Housing Appeals
Ned Kennington	Watts Hospital - Hillandale	????	Durham Public Schools

Administration and Announcements

President Cheryl Sweeney opened the meeting, and members introduced themselves.

Park Maintenance – Howard Price of the Brickman Group gave the basic costs structure for various aspects of grounds maintenance. The Brickman Group is a national provider of landscape maintenance; locally they take care of grounds at a number of large corporations and malls. Each case is different, depending on what is acceptable (mow 40 times a year or 8), what needs to be done (using a 21” mower is 7 times more costly than a 60” mower), and what kinds of technology and materials are being used. There are some easy things to do – such as mulch around trees so that mowers not tempted to get so close to trees that they bang into them and do things the right way at the right time of year (quit planting trees in June). Simple trash pick-up is daunting in some areas. We agreed to have Brickman Group look at costs of doing maintenance at Oval, Walltown, and River Forest parks to get some benchmark of how efficient the city is being. Other items discussed:

1. Adopt a Park – In spite of question of needing to pay taxes and contribute to park maintenance, having an umbrella of city liability for work being done can be good.

2. Raleigh is nationally known for their parks program. What are they doing different?

3. Forest Hills raises money and has work days; pays for some of the grounds work.

4. Durham Parks Trust – Sell off some parks that don’t fit parks needs, use proceeds plus 3 years tax base as endowment to take care of parks left. The controversy is what to do about places that currently have no parks.

Speed Humps – Ned Kennington and Tom Miller gave a presentation on the height of speed humps. Durham is in the process of installing about 100 new ones around town. All 8 humps recently installed in the Watts-Hillandale neighborhood were found that violate City of Durham standards by being too low (more than the 1/4” allowed) and being of the wrong shape. Ned and Tom demonstrated the method for measuring speed humps in case other neighborhoods want to check the ones in their neighborhood. City Engineering has not been effective at responding to concerns. We will also bring a resolution (see below for proposed text) to the next meeting.

INC Priorities – We put up about 4 pages of possibilities and did dots on them. Executive Committee will compile for next meeting.

Information / Committee Reports / Events

§ Dues are due. 11 neighborhoods have paid dues. We have about $1100 in the treasury.

§ Homeowner Association Pool and Pond Workshop, March 13 at Grove Park.

§ Great Human Race, March 27, to raise money for non-profits. Dale Stouch is looking for volunteers to seek sponsors for Durham Literacy Center.

The meeting was adjourned.