UNC meeting – January 6, 2016
# of members: 10
# of guests: 2
Start time: 7:05
End time: 8:04
1. Officers’ reports
• Vice President Marcus Hendrick reports that he has been tracking and working on the Park Morton redevelopment and the permanent disposal of the Bruce Monroe Park site, which have become one project because city developers have selected the Bruce Monroe site as their first-build choice for Park Morton.
The city has hosted several community events and Marcus has tried to attend all of them. These are opportunities for the community to provide input on the units on the site, green space, and other amenities at the site. Right now both sites have planned green space, but there are many questions about what that will look like. All are encouraged to attend as many meetings as you can. The city does seem to be listening and have incorporated community input as the process progresses. The architects are particularly interested in hearing input, so during the design phase this is a worthwhile engagement opportunity.
• Treasurer Janisha Richardson is not present and did not have any reports.
• Secretary has nothing to report.
• President Chris Waldmann has hard copies of membership forms and community members can also join via the website, parkviewunc.org.
Chris also reports that he attended a neighborhood walk with the Mayor that went from the Metro down Spring Rd. in Ward 4 to Georgia, over to Warder and Park. Community members were able to point out issues to the Mayor. Many streets issues were mentioned to the Mayor, including sidewalk and streets repair, tree boxes, litter, illegal dumping, etc. Chris will circulate the final report that Gabriel sent out.
Ms. Matthews asks how the community was notified that the walk was happening because only a few people were alerted. Gabriel Rojo from the Mayor’s office explains that there are periodic walk-throughs run by Ward core teams and once a month the Mayor decides which walk to go on. They are not publicized to the public because they become too large and difficult to manage. They usually include ANC commissioners and Core Team members.
Sarah S. suggests that in the future the community leaders get more time to select members of the community that will be able to provide good input. Ms. Matthews also notes that there have been other processes to provide input on street repairs (e.g. age-friendly walk) and that the walk-throughs should not be duplicative and the Mayor’s office should draw on these other processes.
Kent Boese indicated that he got very little notification and requests better information in the future.
2. Committee reports
• Sarah S reports that the Streets Working Group has met twice now and hopes to meet again in January. We need to prioritize the list that has been compiled so far. Gabriel also shared a list of safety study opportunities that we can look at. Please contact Sarah if you are interested in joining this group. [Add Sarah’s #]
• Sherita Alexander reports on Friends of Park View Park. There is a grant application in the works that will go to the ANC for an African Dance and Drumming event. ANC would be happy to put it on the agenda next week if the application is completed. There is discussion of the role that the UNC will play as the fiduciary agent for the grant.
3. Community announcements
• Ms. Matthews asks Gabriel Rojo from the Mayor’s office to report to the 4th District Commander and substation that our area is consistently losing people in the PSA to other PSAs and she expresses frustration that the community has to go back to square 1 when new people come in. She says there is increased crime activity by Georgia and Newton they are not getting sufficient response. Kent adds that we need stability in the police force if we are to have stability in addressing long-term safety in the community. Chris asks Ms. Matthews to send him her list of known hot spots.
• The next Park Morton Steering Committee meeting is TBD.
• Community members note that the trash problem between Quebec and the metro on the eastern side of Georgia is becoming a huge problem.
4. Filling board slots
• Marcus nominates David Morrison and Sarah nominates Judy Mason
• Kent and Ms. Matthews second
• Vote is unanimous with no opposition or abstention.
5. Community priorities for the UNC in 2016
• More community cleanup activities, particularly beyond the park/rec center which tends to be the place where these activities have happened in the past. This could be done in conjunction with the Park View Beautification Crew and the Luray-Warder Civic Association.
• DCRA should come talk about illegal construction. We need to know who to call for different problems regarding development.
• 311 representative. There is also no mechanism within 311 to report overgrown grass/weeds.
• Earth Day event this year. Instead of replanting the Rec, we can discuss putting plantings in the tree boxes near the Metro. The City does not appear to maintain these boxes; it is usually civic associations. If this is on Metro land we will need to ask WMATA.
• Bring in business owners and the Main St. organizations (we are getting a Georgia Ave. main street org) to discuss partnership opportunities. We should do more to reach out to the businesses on Georgia Ave. Businesses are also not keeping up with the litter in front of their stores and some businesses are putting their trash into the public trash cans.
• Summer movie night on the field at the rec center? Apparently DPR has done this in the past – could we partner with DPR next time to publicize?
• School lottery/elementary school administration meeting? Would need to be February
• Could we organize a shovel team when it snows to shovel for elderly and disabled community members? There is a snow crew volunteer service that the city runs. Gabriel circulates sign-ups for the DC resident snow team.
• The website – David would like to make it more of a resource center and get community feedback on how to do that. Ideas can also be sent to parkviewuncdc@gmail.com
Marcus moves to close meeting at 8:04 and Sarah seconds.
