Inter-Neighborhood Council

Making Better Neighborhoods

Http://www.rtpnet.org/durhminc

Minutes of Meeting of October 28,2003

REPRESENTATIVES PRESENT

Administration and Announcements

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

Facilities Assessment Process – The result will be a detailed engineering-level assessment that will show the funding needs (how to catch up with deferred maintenance, how to plan for normal life-cycle costs such as replacing carpets, and how much maintenance staff is needed), all in time to be useful to the budget process in March. It will include buildings, other amenities like water fountains, and active areas. The consultant, Carter-Burgess, has 2200 employees in 36 offices nationwide, and has award-winning proprietary software to turn observations into budget requirements. They use a 4-step process of planning, investigating on-site, documenting, and analyzing. The analysis will give Facility Condition Index for each facility, lots of slicing and dicing of budget needs, and scenarios for what happens at lower budget levels. Trees are important but not included in the process; Chris Boyer of Urban Forestry is who to talk to about this. There is a huge gap in maintenance to close just to keep the buildings safe. Flooding is also an issue in some areas; they will identify problems and recommend $$ requirements, but solutions will take co-ordination with organizations such as Storm Water.

Guillo Rodriguez is fine-tuning the public involvement and publicity aspects, but they expect to use a lot of ways to make the inspection schedules public since they see it as critical to talk to people who see what is going on day-to-day. They are also looking at taking written comments. The Parks Strategic Plan looks more at uses so will help in coming up with solutions but doesn’t do the detailed engineering work needed for budgets. They will build on years of conversations about needs of some parks.

2003 Bonds – There were presentations on the 4 bonds – Durham Public Schools, Durham Tech, the Museum of Life and Science, and the Libraries. It is an excellent time to be borrowing money, the bonds are within keeping AAA bond rating, and this should last until 2008 or so. Everyone likes the old dinosaur at the Museum. There was a straw poll in favor of the bonds.

Information / Committee Reports / Business

§ The September minutes were approved.

§ Thanks to Housing and Community Development for hosting Annual Summit. Will see some good changes from this.

§ Thanks to University Towers and Herald Sun for support of Awards Event. We honored 14 people who have made a difference – a very good thing to do.

§ There is a new UDO draft. Frank Duke has volunteered to come talk to INC. The UDO Committee will probably start up again soon.

§ The DOT Committee will meet November 6. They are looking at producing a FAQ and perhaps a workshop.

§ In addition to these committees, there are volunteer opportunities in helping with list-serve and making recommendations on boards and commissions.

§ It sounds like people are willing to continue having list-serve reply to everyone. Pat Carstensen will send out discussion of plusses and minuses of two reply options.

§ The November and December meetings will be combined on December 9.

Events / Announcements

§ Civil Rights Heritage Project on November 15.

§ Durham Voter Coalition candidate forum at Bryant Center – previous one was quite lively.

§ Night of Lights events are mostly the 2^nd Sunday of December.

§ Stop the Violence 2^nd press event on Friday at 3PM.

§ Senior Center ground breaking Thursday at 9AM.

§ November 13 is the School Board vote on Watts Montessori proposal.

§ Q&A around East Campus Duke / Durham Interagency Policing, November 11, 7PM.

The meeting was adjourned.