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April Delegate Meeting
First Presbyterian Church
April 21, 2010
Attending the meeting were:
Delegates and Alternates
Jennifer Skahen – Burch Avenue
Chris Wilcox - Colonial Village
Pat Carstensen - Cross Counties
Rosemarie Kitchin – Falconbridge
Melissa Rooney - Fairfield
Craigie Sanders – Grove Park
Moe Rivera – Old North Durham
Brett Walters – Old West Durham
Tom Miller - Watts Hospital Hillandale
Visitors
Lynwood Best - City of Durham (NIS)
Jim Wise – News and Observer
Scott Pearson – Olive Branch Road
Diane Baren – Cross Timbers (in Woodcroft)
Lorisa Seibel – Durham Affordable Housing Coalition
Minutes
Tom Miller opened the meeting. We will try to have Planning Director Steve Medlin at the May 25th meeting. We would also like to meet with legislators at some future meeting.
Delegates introduced themselves. There was no quorum so we didn’t vote on the minutes and the bylaws changes.
Lorisa Seibel talked about inspections of rental housing, penny for housing, inclusionary zoning and affordable housing around transit. Greensboro has a successful rental-housing inspection that we can use as a model. It was implemented with fairly minimal cost, there is no cost for landlords, and units that pass inspection are in a public record on the web. One advantage to landlords is that if an inspector says the unit is up to code, they have some evidence if a renter has been tearing up the place.
On Penny for Housing (www.ipetitions.com/petition/pennyforhousing/), Durham has over $800,000 in uncollected liens. Some are on property owned by elderly folks who can’t pay, but much is money we could use – to pay to fill the 2 vacant inspections positions, for example.
Charlotte got a lot of new development around their rail project, but almost none of this was affordable housing (except, of course, to whiners who think that they can’t afford what they deserve on 6 figure salaries). The enable legislation for Triangle rail says we have to have a plan about having affordable housing around transit corridors. Even without transit, we have a lot of re-development around town and should have some that remains affordable. So we need to figure out mixture of carrots and sticks that will make this happen.
Weatherization is also important.
Two resolutions were proposed for discussion by neighborhoods:
1. INC urges the Durham City Council to devote the resources and take the steps necessary to enforce its accumulated liens for housing violations and to direct the funds collected to housing and housing enforcement. (Moved by Rosemarie Kitchin and seconded by Melissa Rooney).
2. INC urges the Durham City Council to include in the 2010-2011 budget fund equivalent to one penny of the tax rate for housing programs. (Moved by Rosemarie Kitchin and seconded by Moe Rivera).
On billboards, Tom Miller spoke at the Planning Commission hearing, conveying our opposition of changes in the ordinance; the Planning Commission voted 0 for changes, 12 for no changes. City Council and the Board of County Commissioners will probably vote on the matter before the July recess; please plan on coming to these meetings.
Neighborhood news:
· Falconbridge is pleased with their neighborhood watch.
· Burch Avenue has won a KaBOOM! grant to revitalize their pocket park. They also got a grant of $5000 from Duke for their community garden. And they are almost through all the steps with national registration for historic designation (which makes property owners eligible for tax credits for historically-sensitive rehab).
· National Night Out is coming up – you can register now.
· Old West Durham had over 100 people at the spring West Fest for pot luck, music and fun.
· Lynwood Best talked about the upcoming Landlord Training Workshop and about ComNet.
The meeting was adjourned.
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