February 2nd Minutes

We started off our February 2nd meeting talking about our plans for block beautification, including the most effective way to put planters on the block. We'd like to have planters similar to the ones on Madison Block #2.

There appears to be work going on to the building on the Northwest corner of Bedford and Gates. We'd like to find out what's being planned. We might be able to find out through the community board meeting. There appears to be a demolition order filed for 1124 Bedford Avenue, but I'm not sure if it's the same building.

We've heard that Officer Lyons has been promoted from the 79th Precinct, but I was unable to find information about any promotion on the web. He's still listed as the department's head on the 79'th website.

There was also talk of a bad car accident that happened on the corner of Madison and Bedford the previous night.

Treasurer Andrew Robinson reported that some money had had been stolen out of his bank account had been mixed up the the block association's account, as they both have his name associated with them. He's currently trying to iron out the problems.

We discussed whether a mass mailing of the newsletter might get more attention than dropping them in mailboxes. The general consensus was that it would be best to avoid the additional confusion and cost that the mailing would create. We'd also like to start passing out meeting reminders on Thursday rather than Saturday morning to give people more advance notice of our meetings.

We still have 264.88 from last year's grant that needs to be spent on block beautification. We're going to be getting some planters to place on the block. Madison Block #2 has 10 or 11 planters, so we'll probably need some galvanized planters and bricks to place them on. Tires won't work, as they slowly deflate. We plan on buying the planters in bulk, and think the most expensive part of the process will be getting all the dirt to fill the planters.

We then had a unanimous vote to spend some of our grant money on paper, mailing labels, and other office supplies.

There was no Public Safety meeting in January.

In March we'd like to have a tour of the neighborhood's community gardens with Green Guerrillas. It would be helpful to see how the other community gardens work.

Our calls to 311 seem to have helped the situation with our missing streetlights.

For information on dealing with and avoiding predatory loans in our neighborhood, check out www.nedap.org and www.changernyc.org .

Our next meeting will be held at 6:30 on Saturday, March 1st.