West 46th Street Block Association, Inc.

November 7, 2006/ Hartley House at 413 West 46th Street

Nov 03, 2007

Minutes
Tuesday, November 7, 2006, 7pm
Hartley House at 413 West 46th Street



1. Reminder to vote! If you live between Ninth and Tenth Avenues on 46th Street, here is your voting place: PS 51, Poll Site Number: M0256, 520 West 45 Street, Manhattan, Voter Entrance: 520 West 45 Street, Handicapped Entrance: West 44 Street. Here is your district info: Election: 091; Assembly: 75; Congress: 08; Council: 03; Civil Court: 03; Senatorial: 29 http://vote.nyc.ny.us

2. Welcome and Introduction

3. Reading of the Minutes of Prior Meeting

4. Guest Speaker- Christine Berthet of the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition http://chekpeds.com In the last two years 11 intersections of Ninth Avenue have become two or three times more dangerous for pedestrians. Holy Cross School is the most dangerous school to walk to in Manhattan. This all started when the Port Authority decided to close some entrances to the Lincoln Tunnel and push more cars onto Ninth Avenue. Indeed this neighborhood suffers 70% more death from chronic lung diseases than the Upper East Side. EMS vehicles and fire trucks cannot go through. Not only does it slow down their response time and lives are lost, but their honking combined with the ones from cars, cabs and trucks is insufferable. Our members decided to reclaim Ninth Avenue. For the last two years the administration has ignored our pleas and the solutions we have proposed. We will not accept that Ninth Avenue, our main street, becomes a New Jersey highway. Our coalition was formed to bring the city to do its basic job to provide safe streets for children and pedestrians in our neighborhood.


5. Reports of Officers
5.1. President?’s Report
5.1.1. Report of Internet site activity:


Oct 2006 Sep 2006 Aug 2006 Jul 2006 Jun 2006
Entire Site 262 222 317 146 267
Home Page 86 78 153 40 96
Community Calendar 14 6 17 7 21
Discussion Area 7 6 4 2 0
Newsletter 33 40 9 7 14

5.1.2. Use of Intellicontact http://www.intellicontact.com for contact management: The President manages almost 300 contacts to conduct the block association?’s business and is finding Microsoft Outlook to be an unsatisfactory means of communicating with our constituents. IntelliContact is a leading on-demand email marketing service. IntelliContact allows organizations of all sizes to easily create, send, and track email newsletters, RSS feeds, surveys, and auto responders and will allow others in the leadership team access to our mailing list.
5.1.3. Five-hundred dollar contribution from Touchstone Television Productions, LLC "The Knights of Prosperity"!

6. Reports of Standing and Ad Hoc Committees
6.1. Parks & Recreation (Christina Boers, chair)
6.1.1. Partnership for Parks It's My Park! Day was October 21st: Allison Tupper, Mark Robinson and Hans Dudelheim participated from the block association along with four people from St. Luke?’s who pitched in very effectively. We planted 300 bulbs and raked all the leaves, leaving the park looking beautiful.
6.1.2. Matthews-Palmer Playground Name Unveiling- Elliott Sykes, Park Manager, is checking with Adrian Benepe
6.1.3. Mural Painting- Hans is investigating having a nonprofit entity re-paint the mural as a project.
6.1.4. Alexandra Palmer Memorial Garden Sign- Funding has been received from Mary Clark ($100) and St. Luke?’s Lutheran Church ($400) for a proper sign to mark the location of the Alexandra Palmer Memorial Garden. We need someone to research our options for buying such a sign.

7. Unfinished Business
7.1. Nominating Committee Recommendations- officer terms are two years, according to the by-laws distributed during the August meeting. This committee submits a slate for the block association?’s four offices: president, vice president, secretary and treasurer, to be voted on at the December meeting. (Hans Dudelheim, Seth Sibanda)
7.2. Holiday Party (Hans)

8. New Business
8.1. Proposal to make contributions to the following entities: the following table shows our historical contributions and the President?’s suggested 2006 contributions. These figures were not developed by the Executive Committee and are merely suggestions to start our discussion.
Expense 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Contributions
Hartley House $150 $150 $200 $250
St. Clements 150 150 150 250
HCC 25 0
Citymeals on Wheels 100 100 $100

Since a quorum was not present, the vote was postponed until the December meeting.

9. Public Announcements

10. Adjournment