Meeting Minutes 03.02.04
Attendees
Kimberly Shepard, Schuyler Merritz, Ken Chenette, Paula Palmer, Keath Lewin, Dick Hanson, Maggie Stier
Minutes
Minutes from Feb. 3, 2004 meeting were distributed and accepted.
Jill Seifried was sick and could not attend.
Update on Business:
Paula recapped the meeting of the Concord Business Development Group that four ADNA members attended at the Red Blazer last month. Ken, Paula, Kimberly, and Maggie heard reports from city officials and planners on what lies ahead, and enjoyed making some new networking connections. The CBDG is interested in getting feedback, and there is lots of opportunity for good planning to preserve neighborhoods now. Micro-loans will be available for small businesses. Ken will be getting info to Dick Patten at the Concord Monitor since he knows him from the Grange.
City Master Planning:
Kimberly attended a forum on Feb. 7 at Concord High and says she was the only rep from our area but worked with other south end residents to ?“design?” locations for more housing and green space. Our neighborhood is in the ?‘opportunity corridor?’ and we will play a key role as the city works to build business on Main Street and deals with I-93 expansion and improved traffic flow in and around the city. Kimberly encourages everyone to get involved, attend the meetings, and sign up to get the Concord 20/20 newsletter. Check out www.concordmasterplan.org. Karen noted that last Sunday?’s paper had a good article on sprawl.
ADNA Programs:
Karen is already making contacts for our participation in Market Days and the River Jamboree (July 17) again. There was lively discussion about having a booth at Market Days and trying to get the organizers of this event to extend the activities onto South Main Street.
Jill and Karen have talked about a workshop on researching the history of your old house?—perhaps in October at the West Street Ward House. We might see about partnership with City Planning to get date plaques made for houses.
Maggie is organizing an ADNA forum on Ideas and Resources for your Yard and Garden, to be held April 3. CATCH has agreed to host this; Groundwork Concord has agreed to present. Other potential speakers have been contacted as well. We will do flyers and use our street captains to help get these out to homes.
Issues
The city has hired a firm to conduct a space needs study of all Elementary Schools. The PTO?’s will be asked to participate. Deb MacNeish, principal of Rumford, doesn?’t feel that her school is in immediate danger of being targeted to close. But we want to be supportive of Rumford School and want to get a seat at the table when the invitation is extended.
Unrelated to that issue, Karen and Kimberly will do a presentation on ADNA at Rumford this Thursday.
Another issue in the works is transportation for kids from our area to get to Merrill Park (at Exit 16) for summer camp (pool and tennis courts there).
Unsupervised youth in the neighborhood is another issue of concern. We are coordinating with Paige Kingsley of Parks and Rec, and she wants to have a meeting in April to get feedback from the kids themselves. Pizza nights at the Green Street Center may continue every other Friday night; these have been very popular.
Strategic Plan:
Kimberly handed out a seven-page document that she has prepared for our group. She reviewed all meeting and planning notes for the past year and a half, then organized the feedback into seven goals, with objectives, community partners, and subcommittee structure necessary for each one. This document represents a phenomenal commitment of time and energy, and everyone congratulated and thanked Kimberly for her effort. Though we did not have a lot of time to discuss the plan, we decided that everyone should take it home, read it, and bring comments and feedback to our next meeting. Kimberly will review the membership surveys to see what other people we might recruit to help with our goals. This may become a Five Year Plan?—it?’s very ambitious.
We also discussed the idea that we might not want to use the term ?“membership?” which implies that you have to join up. For our group, we serve everyone in the community and we take all volunteers willing to work on its behalf.
Kimberly?’s major objective with this Strategic Plan is to get more people involved as board members, committee chairs and volunteers, and to build a comprehensive mailing list of owners, renters, and businesses. This is her way of handing over the vision to a bigger crew of workers, she said.
Please call Kimberly with comments, feedback, etc. at 227-9093. No calls at work, please.
The next meeting of ADNA will be on Tuesday, April 6th at 7 pm.
Posted
by
keath on 03/18/2004
