This was our first meeting in the new YMCA building, and it looks great! It's also the biggest meeting we've had so far, around thirty neighbors were there. We started with introducing ourselves and summing up the minutes from our last meeting.
Toya has sent of a couple applications for grants, and she's about to send one off for the garden. She's also looking for in-kind donations from local businesses, and a grant to set up a comunity bulitein board.
Our bank account has been set up with Commerce bank, and we've got a bit of money right now.
We have an update from the Community Garden Committee. The garden has been registered and we're good for two years. It has to be re-registered every two years. We're hoping to have an organization called "Green Guerillas" at a future meeting, in order to give us some tips. June also mentioned that she's trying to get the contractors that are currently occupying the west part of the garden to donate some plants in order to fix the area they're using right now.
We also have an update from the Block Party Committee. Kisha says that they're thinking of a carnival theme, and building some carnival-style games. There's also been discussion about setting up some music and the possibility of using the church's parking lot on the NorthWest corner of the block. Contact Kisha to help with the Block Party Committee. We'd like to have the party on July 14th with a raindate of the 21st.
We'd also like to invite representatives of the different NYC comunity agencies to attend out meetings and hear us. There is a new police captain at the 79th Precinct, Donald Lyons. We hope to have him at our next meeting. We'd like to talk to him about the problems we've had with double-parking tickets on stret-cleaning days. There was a suggesion to get a representative from the Botanical Garden. Also we'd like to see a representative from Sanitation. There's been some confusion and dissatisfaction with the service we've been getting lately. Someone mentioned that the cardboard recycleables have been getting picked up at 2am on Tuesday morning, so most people leaving there cardboard out in the morning find it still sitting there when they get home from work. Someone also mentioned that there's been problems with putting recycleables in non-clear bags. Apparently sanitation only wants recyceables to be placed in clear bags, not blue or black.
Kisha and Maliza gave their report on the 79th Precint's council meeting, which they both attended last week. There's a new scholarship that's been set up. Also, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly will be at the next council meeting.
Lorna Davis, the president of Madison Block #2, stopped by to give us some information on the health of our neighborhood. She passed out a community health profile of our neighborhood, information on diabetes, and HIV/AIDS in our neighborhood. We have much more information about the health of our community thanks to a recent survey. We have a disparity in out neighborhood of HIV, diabetes, heart disease, health care availability, and asthma. We have a higher smoking rate than most of Brooklyn, but teen smoking has been down. 40% of our high-school age shildren are overweight. Our death rate for HIV is down, but 10% of people are infected in the neighborhood.
Christopher Kim then went through the new bylaws. There was concern on how we would determine voting members. We don't want to exclude anyone, but we will need to start collecting dues. Voting on financial issues will be limited to dues-paying members, the logic being that people who contribute money should be able to say how that money is spent. We'd also like to keep all information on members private and confidential. We don't want any marketer or advertiser ever getting their hands on our emails.
The official name of our group is "Madison Street #3 Block Association", as it's the name we registered with the IRS.
OLD BUSINESS:
Apparently the program to get free garbage cans through the health department has ended. Toya is going to be ordering some new stickers, the kind that say what is and is not recycleable, and she'll bring them to the next meeting.
NEW BUSINESS:
There's been problems on the block in the past few weeks with the new construction happening on the site of Joe's old parking lot. It sounds like they've been taking up all the parking on their side of the street and using "Police Line: Do Not Cross" tape to rope parking off for themselves. Barbara said she got a ticket for parking near the construction site with the cause being listed as "pedestrian walkway." Chris Kim said that all legal curb cuts are located on the NYC Department of Buildings "Building Information Service. June said she's had luck with 311 reporting problems with construction crews.
In order to have a legal curb cut, it's important to remember that you need 18 feet from the edge of your property to the front of your house, not from the stret to your house. You need at least 18 feet for the car to rest in so it can be completely off the sidewalk. You can get a ticket around 2500 dollars for parking in an illegal driveway, so please be careful.
And there it was! A really busy meeting! I hope to see you all next month. Please remember to shut off your cel-phone ringers before the meeting.
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