Inter-Neighborhood Council

Making Better Neighborhoods

Http://www.rtpnet.org/durhminc

Minutes of Meeting of July 27,2004

REPRESENTATIVES PRESENT

Pat Carstensen	Cross County	* Chris Boyer	City of Durham
Cheryl Sweeney	Northgate Park	Virginia Bridges	Herald Sun
Mike Shiflett	Northgate Park	Randy Pickle	Forest Hills
Risa Foster	Trinity Heights NA	Dale Stouch	Placid Valley
Helena Cragg	Old North Durham	Fred Foster, Jr.	Old Farm
Mike Woodward	WHHNA	Bill Anderson	Duke Park
Dick Mentock	Hope Valley Farms - South	Lynwood D. Best	City of Durham, Housing & Comm Development
Paul Cornsweet	Morehead Hills NA	Deb Cristie	Colony Hill
B J Council	Police	Carrie Mowry	Old North Durham
Rudy Henkel	PAC4 / HVF North	Larry Revelle	Durham Human Relations
Sharon Williamson	Parkwood	Melvin Whitley	Y. E. Smith
John Higgins	Parkwood	Richard Mullinax	Old North Durham

* Speaker

Administration and Announcements

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

Neighborhood Street Tree Planting Partnership – Forms and more information are available at www.ci.durham.nc.us/departments/works/forestry.cfm.

§ There is $15,000 in the General Fund Urban Forestry Budget and continuing funds from “Water into Trees” water bill rounding and other donations. There has also been grant money for low / moderate income areas. The city would pay up to 1/2 the cost of the tree, plus deal with installing trees and keeping them happy.

§ The deadline for tree planting requests is Monday, September 13; if there are extra funds, later applications will be considered. Preferably there will be a coordinated application from a neighborhood.

§ Tree gators are great for trickling water onto roots so they have adequate moisture.

§ Ideally planting happens Thanksgiving to Easter.

§ Trees need to be in places with no major interference with traffic visibility or utilities, but there is still a lot of lee-way. Consult Urban Forestry about what is possible (chris.boyer@durham.gov)

§ Richard Mullinax led a discussion of benefits from trees and ways to generate cost-sharing money.

Honor Your Neighborhood Hero – The nomination forms are on the website. They can be mailed in, faxed, or e-mailed to Bill or Cheryl; the deadline in August 20. Any neighborhood can participate.

UDO – Neighborhoods should look at their areas and try to understand what could change, not just in uses but also designs. There is a working list of issues but overall the UDO will be a great improvement. Alice Bumgarner is organizing a working group to work on the RU issue. The amount of detail is daunting to understand.

Funding for Durham Courts – We will take up in September.

Citizen Comment at Public Hearings – The issues where there have been problems have been general business items, not public hearings. However, if people have even called in indicating they want to speak, they should get a chance to address governing bodies.

Apex Street Bridge Closing – After a lot of discussion, we decided to that we couldn’t make a decision during the meeting.

Other actions / updates / items:

§ Nominating Committee – They are getting organized.

§ Long range transportation plan – Opportunities to examine the plan on August 3 and 10. See www.dchc-mpo.org

§ August meeting – we will hold one, but topics will be limited to UDO and housekeeping.

Adjournment – The meeting adjourned.