NAC 6 Minutes 1/29/04

PRESENT: Katherine Jones, Trish Cunningham, Paul Dienes, Sarah Finefrock, and Chief Kim Dine

Our first order of business this evening was to discuss formalizing our meeting process. Our NAC has had some trouble getting up and running, and feels a little behind in our charge. Therefore we have decided to meet twice a month for the next 6 months. Our future meetings will be on the second Monday and last Thursday of each month.

Our meetings will be at 7:00 p.m. on February 9, 26, March 8, 25, April 12, 29, May 10, 27, and June 14, 24. Sarah will secure meeting rooms for these dates and they will be published on our website.

We discussed further structure of the meeting. As none of us are willing to commit to being either chair or secretary, we decided these tasks could rotate for each meeting until someone volunteers to be a more permanent chair and secretary. Katherine will prepare the minutes from the 1/29/04 meeting, and circulate them before the next meeting. Whoever takes the minutes will accept proposed changes before the meeting, and we will approve a copy for posting on the website at the following meeting. Paul will take minutes for the next meeting.

At our next meeting we will discuss additional organizational proposals. Katherine will circulate some proposals for discussion before the 2/9/04 meeting.

The NAC then discussed a previously made proposal. We will sponsor a series of 3 simple "Meet Your NAC Members and Neighbors" picnics over this coming summer. The purpose of the picnics will include: introduce the NAC members to the neighbors they represent; learn our neighborhood resources; check out our park resources; allow neighbors a forum for expressing any concerns they may have; begin a telephone and email list for interested neighbors, for announcements and for emergency purposes.

There will be a picnic at each of our NAC parks: Max Kehne Memorial Park, Rosedale Park, and College Estates Park.

We will solicit donations from the 7^th Street Safeway and Giant Eagle grocery stores, from the Sheetz on Rosemont, and from Deer Park Water. Katherine will prepare a draft solicitation letter. She will forward the letter to Sarah and the other NAC members for comment; Sarah will prepare a NAC 6 letterhead for the solicitation letter. Katherine will approach Sheetz, Paul will approach Giant Eagle, and Trish will approach Safeway and Deer Park. We will each first call to determine how to address the letter, will then fill in the letter appropriately, and will follow the letter up with a telephone call.

Sarah will check for dates through 2004 when we should not schedule the picnics.

In previous meetings we have discussed, in a very informal manner, various traffic concerns. While several specific issues have been raised, we decided to narrow our focus to one problem at a time, develop a proposed solution to recommend to the city, provide notice to NAC residents to provide input on the proposed solution, and allow a period for comment by residents of the NAC before we make any proposal to the city.

Paul Dienes raised the first issue we will address. Wilson Place has been marked by city signs to prohibit through truck traffic between Rosemont and 7^th Street. Unfortunately, the signs do not seem to be working to reduce the traffic. Although increased enforcement would help, we recognize that our police force is small, and may not be able to effect a change. Paul suggested changing the stop signs along Wilson so that the "through" traffic would have to stop for the cross traffic. The NAC may want to suggest doing the same for all of the "through" streets in the neighborhoods from Rosemont to 7^th between Fort Detrick and Route 15, in order to keep the Wilson Place problem from moving into the other areas of the neighborhood. We agreed to prepare a flyer to announce this proposal, invite residents from the neighborhood who would be affected by this traffic change to at least two meetings to discuss the proposal, following our distribution of the flyer. We will post the announcement in the city papers, on the government channel if possible, on our NAC webpage, and we will hand deliver flyers through the affected neighborhood. The 4 of us present volunteered to distribute the flyer. Katherine offered to prepare a draft of the flyer. Sarah will copy and prepare the flyers for distribution. Paul will develop a list of the neighborhood addresses we will want to distribute to.

Chief Kim Dine appeared to discuss his view of the relationship between the police and the NACs. He provided a flyer about his view. We will try to post this on our website.

We discussed our next agenda. Our agenda is open to additional items proposed by any NAC member or any resident. Just email or call one of the NAC members to get an item on the agenda, or appear at the meeting and we will address the item at a portion of the meeting we will set aside for such items.