Armatage Neighborhood Association Meeting     /     October 18, 2016 Minutes

Meeting was called to order at 6:35 pm by board president Denis Houle.

ANA board members in attendance: Denis Houle, Ryan Antkowiak, Sara Emmenecker, Kelly Falsani, Steve Johnson, Bri Keeney, Michael Kootsikas, Laurel Luxenberg, and Judy Vecere

Others in attendance: Nikki Lindberg- ANA Coordinator, Nikki Frederich- Park Coordinator, Ken Dahler, City Council Rep, Matt Perry, President of SW Business Association & 1 neighbor – Me’Lea Connelly

Park Update (Nikki Frederich, Park Director)

• Winter/Spring Registration is November 9th
  • Basketball Registration is November 2^nd.
• Trunk or Treat event scheduled for Friday October 28^th (6-8:30pm).
• Park lights will be on the Saturday of Halloween until 10PM
• Nikki thanked the board for approving the reupholster of some furniture in the community center.

City Council Update (Ken Dahler, City Council Rep)

• Absentee ballot is already available for the upcoming election
  • 4 poll locations – Downtown, North, South, East
  • Voter information online @ vote.minnepolis.gov
• Fall street sweep began this week
  • Takes four weeks to complete
    • Keep eye on signage as cars will be towed if they are not moved during intended street sweeping hours
  • City Council Member, Linea Palmisano co-authored a resolution for bird-safe glass for the skyway system
  • Construction/Traffic Update
    • The construction on 54^th Street will be completed for the year in mid-November. This will reopen again next summer.
    • The new street light on Xerxes/60^th will be completed within 2 weeks
  • Denis Houle wondered if Linea Palmisano has a stance on the recent street car proposal
    • Ken Dahler did not believe she did but he would encourage her to contact us for further discussion

Park Updates

• There will be no formal updates until next year. The city will be reevaluating all neighborhoods.
• As a board, we felt we should brainstorm and prioritize what items we’d like to tackle in the coming year. Set a goal to submit all park improvement ideas to Nikki by Halloween. This way we can discuss them at the Happy Hour which should make for interesting conversation. Also, we talked about actually engaging the Happy Hour attendees in the topic as well to get their feedback.
• Goal would be to have our preferences in line so when the city is ready to pull the trigger, we are prepared to have that discussion.
  • Ideas which were already tossed out for discussion/consideration….
    • Putting up shade trees/structures – very costly ($15,000 – $25,000)
    • Getting AC for the community center
    • Additional picnic tables/benches
    • Improvements to the Tot Lot
      • Me’Lea/Bri to solicit feedback from Tot Lot users.
    • Having an ongoing “Street Competition” in an effort to promote comradery/community among the streets represented in the neighborhood
    • Youth Entrepreneur Education Series/Summer Program
    • Better engagement towards seniors
      • Safe walkways program?
        

Committee Updates

Safety Update (Nikki Lindberg)

• New inspector and Assistant City Attorney to attend our November meeting.

Community Engagement Update (Bri Keeney)

• Bri & Me’Lea had a very productive meeting about how to better engage renters
• Decided the first “workshop” should be more of a social event engaging renters to seek their feedback surrounding what they’d like to get from the neighborhood
  • May look to have a separate event (pizza party was brought up) or leverage one of the existing happy hours to engage renters

Coordinator Update (Nikki Lindberg)

• 2017 Calendar updates
  • June 3^rd will be the Garage Sale date for 2017
  • Targeting Sunday, August 13^th for Summer Festival
    • Initial event window is 3-7pm
  • Fix It Loan program
    • All the money has been loaned out
      • We can look to extend this if we want to make a further investment in our future
    • Un-Contracted Funds
      • It was discovered that we have un-contracted funds which we need to work to contract so not to risk them being clawed back by the city.
        • Many options surrounding how to contract them. Will look to more specifically contract these funds at our next meeting.
          • Ideas discussed included park improvements, existing the fix it loan program, mini-grants, enhanced event budget, initiating an Armatage speaker series
        • Two pools of un-contracted funds exist for a total of approximately $82,000
          

Treasurer Update (Judy Vecere)

• There are two checks which have not been cashed. Otherwise the income/expense report is up to date.
• There are and have always been two checking accounts. We believe long ago the two accounts were set up to segregate restricted funds from unrestricted funds but they have been commingled in recent years.
  • Discussed (pending board approval) that we keep two accounts but one does only retain restricted funds while the second is unrestricted. Go live with this 01-01-17 pending board approval.

Coordinator Contract Discussion (Nikki Lindberg was dismissed from this discussion)

• Nikki has been working without contract since June 15^th.
• Proposed getting her under contract retro-active to June 15^th but only under contract through year end. Beginning in January move to an annual contract (January – December)
• Discussed her current contract
  • Windom contract pays Nikki $27/hr
  • Armatage contract pays $23/hr
  • Current contract allows for a maximum of 600 hrs/year.
  • On pace to exceed that by a wide margin. Only about 75 hours remaining.
  • Nikki has been averaging about 58 hours per month for Armatage.
• Motion to raise from $23/hr to $24/hr – retroactive to June.
  • Board approved
    • No hours requirement for this contract. Reassessed for 2017.

New Business

• Green initiatives will be discussed in more detail next month
  • Solar gardens
  • Pollinators
  • Ash borers

Denis motioned to adjourn. Kelly 2^nd. Meeting was adjourned at 8:13 pm.