Minutes

DISTRICT 16 PLANNING COUNCIL

SUMMIT HILL ASSOCIATION

Board of Directors Meeting

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Linwood Recreation Center

Members Present: Biron, Breymeier, Broton, Clapp-Smith, Fervoy, Flahaven, Hedberg, Krogstad, Lein, Lucke, Odman, Rathman, Rulff, Sutherland, Verweij, Wefel, White, Winsor

Members Absent: Barrera, Haas, Wichman

Others Present: Jeff Roy, Jane McClure

Meeting began 7:02 p.m.

Past Minutes: The previous meeting minutes for November were approved. Lucke made the motion that was seconded by Flahaven.

Wefel gave the President’s Report and thanked the Development Committee for fundraising efforts which are going well.

The discussion of old business included committee assignments for Board members. Lucas Rulff will revive environmental committee as the committee has not been active recently.

The Board discussed the 2007 SHA Goals & Objectives and the 2006 Evaluation documents to be submitted by the Board to the City as part of the city 2007 city contract. The President commended the board for its good work and opened the meeting up for comments on the documents. Next year, we will increase the lead time on this task so that committees will have more time to determine Goals & Objectives for 2008.

The following were suggestions made by the Board as revisions to the 2007 SHA Goals & Objectives and the 2006 Evaluation:

Evaluation document:

Goal 3 Obj. 2

Winsor: Have consistent wording regarding East Grand Ave. Zoning District.

2007 Goals and Objectives

Remove

Goal 1, Obj. 7
Goal 2, Obj. 6
Goal 4, Obj. 8
Goal 5, Obj. 4 (Executive Committee letter should be sent to the city regarding stump removal and tree planting both as a result of the recent street rebuilding project and past tree replanting that was not done. This item will be placed on next Executive Committee agenda.)
Goal 7, Obj. 6

Change wording on

Goal 3, Obj. 1: add additional business organizations (Metro IBA) to include more than just GABA.
Goal 3, Obj. 2: strike “tangible”
Goal 3, Obj. 1 & 2: replace “Communications Committee” as responsible for this Goal to “Executive Committee”
Goal 4, Obj. 5: “Maintain” effective communications
Goal 4, Obj. 7: change to “Staff/SHA Board” responsible for this objective
Goal 6, Obj. 4: add that monthly incident reports are sent to Block/Building Club Leaders “and SHA Board members”
Goal 7, Obj. 2: “Recruit new Board and committee members based on skills needed.”
Goal 8, Obj. 2: “Continue annual fundraising solicitation efforts for contributions.”
Goal 9: change goal to include “To promote and implement…”
Goal 9, Obj. 2: make it a new Goal 10

Add

New Goal 5, Obj. 1: Evaluate and develop a set of goals and objectives for environmental stewardship in the Summit Hill neighborhood.

Breymeier made a motion to approve 2007 SHA Goals & Objectives and the 2006 Evaluation documents. The motion was seconded by White. Approval was unanimous.

New Business

Grand Ave. Parking Task Force Report

Windsor gave a report on the recently completed Parking Task Force. Winsor moved adoption of a motion to establish the SHA Parking Committee working with a simple majority decision-making process as opposed to consensus. The motion was seconded by Odman. Krogstad was concerned about having a “simple majority vote” being used in the SHA Parking Committee. Winsor stressed that the Parking Committee is an advisory body to the Board, but that the consensus decision-making process used by the recent task force allowed one person to prevent creating a draft solution. Odman stressed that we need to have a public meeting to review any draft plan coming out of this committee before it goes to the city.

Clapp-Smith proposed to amend the original motion to remove the section “…the SHA Board may vote to terminate his/her membership on the committee.” This change would leave it to the committee to take care of the issue of members not attending meetings or other matters. The motion was seconded by Verweij. Amendment approved.

The group continued discussion on the resolution regarding how many members should be allowed on the SHA Parking Committee. Broton proposed an amendment that the number of committee members be raised to 11. Maureen seconded the amendment. Breymeier made the comment that the amount of at least 7 members could get out of hand. Broton withdrew his amendment and proposed a new amendment that membership be “at least 7 members”. Vote on Broton amendment was 10 aye and 6 nay. Amendment approved. Question called and approved. Original motion with Executive Committee amendment and the additional 2 amendments was voted on with 13 ayes and 2 nays, 1 abstension. (See attachment below for final wording of resolution.)

Wefel continued the meeting by saying the Board will have no CIB requests to the City this year, however 2007 CIB task force appointments from D16 to the following task forces are:

White: Streets and Sewers

Rathman: Community

Broton: Economic Development

The motion was made and seconded to accept the CIB appointments and was passed by unanimously. The Executive Committee will appoint alternates.

GABA Report

GABA is looking for a new Executive Director now that past ED Amanda Schultz has left the position for another opportunity.

Treasurers Report

Breymeier gave the treasurer’s report, discussed the 2006 P & L and noted that the SHA 2007 budget reviewed and recommended by the Executive Committee is balanced with $40,726 dollars in reserve. Hedberg moved passage of the 2007 budget. The motion was seconded by Broton and passed on a voice vote.

Committee Reports

Communications: Odman reported that the Communication committee will have a committee report next month.

Development Committee: Haas reported that the committee is ramping up efforts to further promote the annual fundraising appeal which has already received 1,640 donations , $2000 dollars above last year’s mark.

Pedestrian Safety & Traffic Calming: Hedberg reported that the committee worked on its 2007 goals at the last meeting and continues to attempt to work with the City on issues of concern.

Zoning & Land Use Committee: Flahaven reported she was quoted in an article on carriage houses in the (?) magazine. It is also rumored that Punch Pizza may be going into the old Hazelton Connection location on Grand near Avon.

It was also noted that Flahaven will be honored at the Jan. 19^th Citywide Honor Roll Celebrations at St. Thomas - for all her valuable work in the community.

Meeting was adjourned at 8:46 p.m.

Re: Resolution to establish a SHA Parking Committee

The East Grand Avenue Parking Task Force recently wrapped up nearly two years of work by issuing to the community and the St. Paul city council its “Report to the Community on Improving Parking Along and Around East Grand Avenue.” As explained in the report, “despite exhaustive examination of the many complex and interrelated components of the Grand Avenue parking system, the Task Force was unable to reach a consensus on a comprehensive set of recommendations for improving parking.” Although many recommendations were proposed and many were not implemented, the Task Force should be commended for the quality and quantity of work that was accomplished.

The parking problems on and around East Grand Avenue may not disappear. It would be unfortunate to not leverage the work done by the Task Force and even more unfortunate to potentially have parking changes imposed from outside. Therefore, we recommend to the 2006/2007 Executive Committee that the SHA Board of Directors appoint a special committee of at least 7 people (per Section 7.3 of the Summit Hill By-laws) to move the work of the Task Force forward and make recommendations on parking to the SHA Board of Directors. The SHA Board of Directors will use the committee’s recommendations to send a parking proposal to the City Council for adoption.

Size and Composition of the Advisory Committee

We recommend that the committee be composed of at least 7 members who live, own a business, or own property in the neighborhood. This size will facilitate an efficient process for moving forward while allowing the committee to include representation of the major stakeholders who are impacted by parking issues on and around East Grand Avenue.

The committee will include at least one SHA board member, who will serve as the committee chair and liaison to the SHA Board of Directors. All committee members will be expected to read the Task Force’s research, attend committee meetings, examine issues, and look at the total impact of parking issues on all stakeholders. Although recommended, not all stakeholder groups need to be represented on the committee so long as processes are adopted to ensure that their voices will be heard and ideas considered in formulating a parking proposal to present to the SHA Board of Directors. .

The stakeholder groups include:

Ø Residents who live on Grand

Ø Residents who live off Grand

Ø Business Owners

Ø Employees

Ø Property Owners

Ø Institutions

Selection

The SHA board will announce the SHA Parking Committee formulation for East Grand Ave and the surrounding area and invite interested community members to apply in the SHA newsletter with additional notice to GABA and Metro IBA. Applications will be received and screened by a sub-group of SHA board members including, but not limited to, SHA Board members who served on the Parking Task Force. The sub-group will compile their recommendations for committee members to send to the SHA Board. The SHA Board will appoint community members to voluntarily serve on the SHA Parking Committee. At any point during a committee member’s term, the individual may resign.

Voting

When it began, the East Grand Avenue Task Force adopted a rule requiring consensus for any recommendation. Ultimately this rule made the adoption of any substantial recommendations impossible. Therefore, we recommend a procedure requiring a simple majority for all parking committee recommendations.

Executive Committee amendments to proposed resolution:

that as an SHA chair of this proposed committee would have considerable responsibilities facilitating meetings, at least two SHA Board Members would serve on the Parking Committee;
that a deadline of on or before Sept. 1, 2007 be set for this Parking Committee to make recommendations on parking to the SHA Board of Directors;
that after the SHA Board receives recommendations from the Parking Committee, and prior to the Board voting on any recommendations, SHA will hold a public hearing to allow community input on the Parking Committee recommendations.