In attendance: Maurice Loridans, Cynthia Keith, Steph Pedro, Brian Salvatore, Susan Fontaine, Caroline Majors, Garrett Johnson, Feico Kempff
The group discussed the bylaws. Fontaine said she has looked at the by-laws and edited them.
It was agreed the dues would be largely for the CPA costs of establishing the non-profit. Majors suggested a tentative budget of the costs we anticipate as a rationale for the dues. Demerath agreed, and later communicated via email he would draw up a rudimentary budget to review for the meeting on Monday.
Pedro suggested a installing a paypal button on the ABS home page that would allow donations. It would be convenient if all the dues and donations could go through that button; it would significantly save on the work for Fontaine, or whoever would be handling the treasurer duties. Could also have an option button for dues vs. donations. There is a 4% charge for using paypal; some thought that was too much to sacrifice while others thought it was a cost of doing business that could be afforded.
NEW MEETING FORMAT OF THEMES WITH SPECIFIC CHAIRPEOPLE
It was agreed that the regular meeting format would shift to themed meetings. We can reserve 15 or 20 minutes per meeting for updates at beginning, then shift to the focus for that week.
It was also agreed the each week’s meeting would be co-chair by preferably two people. Those people would also take responsibility for publicizing the meeting to members of the public who might be valuable contributors at the meeting because of their interest or expertise. Majors said they could work like “public conversations” as were hosted by one guy in Seattle who’d gather particular people together for the conversation; it wasn’t led or with experts, but just to get the ball rolling.
The following are the themed meetings the group listed, with co-chairs or targeted people to invite listed for each. Only the next meeting has been set for a theme. All other themes have yet to be decided for their respective dates:
January 24: Event Planning: events to plan might include a hike of the Coates Bluff trail; ride in the St. Patricks Day parade (they choose one philanthropy to donate to each year; maybe the dog park could be the beneficiary; could do a green dog float 4shreveport.org), Cyclovia, makers fair (april 30th), cleanup for TACA (april 23rd that’s tentative maybe moving to the 9th), history walks, downtown tours (bike rides are more popular and can always be borrowed, collected in advance, etc.) can do both a ride and walk simultaneously; Jane’s Walk -- (May 7th and 8th) cities all over the world plan specific walks; individual walks that the community makes; e.g. TACA could do one.
Education: Brian and others; could follow the Aspen Inst. night that is focused on education.
Economic Development could follow the release the Strategic Action Council’s release of a report on accelerating minority business development; good report that includes solutions. They’re bringing in consultants from North Carolina to talk about it. Brian will get us the info. The following are either chairs or people we’d like to invite for each meeting. (Brian has since forwarded the report.)
Coates Bluff (land trust progress, etc.) - Loren, Jon, and Feico
Bike Ped Plan - Caroline and Steph
Dog Park - Cynthia, Step
Downtown Redevelopment (Shreveport Common, TACA, retail, residential, red river district, etc.; would be an opportunity to bring people together with a shared interests and could lead to connecting efforts) - Loren, Caroline, Maurice
Micro-brew-pub - Garrett and Susan and Maurice and Loren
Bike Coop - Maurice and Garrett
Architectural Salvage - Dan Marcalus and Steve Shelburne and Loren
Community Supported Agriculture, Community Gardening, Food Coop - Leia Lewis, Jen Courtney, Maurice, Gregory Kallenburg, Grace Peterson
Coalition for Better Bus Stops - Jeannette Ginsburg, Steph, Gene Eddy
Parking Day -- Caroline; it’s taking over parking spaces and making them into parks, to take over and make into parks; can do design competitions; just feed the meter and buy the space for a day.
UPDATES on Red River District, Community Foundation Meeting, Dog Park
Demerath updated the group on the Red River District Committee, and described the discussion at the first meeting as much like that in ABS that previous Monday; he described the mayor’s charge as relayed by Dale Sibley, the importance of planners that Demerath articulated, etc.
Pedro and Majors met with ThinkFirst, a safety organization that does a lot bicycle safety outreach; Donnna Cavanaugh is the executive director and would like to be the lead advocate to support the bike-ped plan’s application to the Community Foundation, and wants to be on the steering committee too; she’s more focused on safety and injury prevention, but the interests are aligned.
They also met with NLCOG, and tomorrow meet with Parish commissioners including Matthew Linn.
On Pedro, Majors, Demerath, and Kempff’s meeting with Paula Hickman and Margot Shideler of the Community Foundation using the Foundation as the holding entity for the dog park funds that we raise; Hickman said there should be an explanation in the solicitation of funds that if for some reason a dog park doesn’t arise the money could be used for a similar purpose; something to help dogs, or pets generally, for example.
Also discussed at that meeting was the Coates Bluff land trust. The gist of the meeting was that we’ll work with them about how to build a land trust for all of Northwest Louisiana; not just for recreation purposes but for urban agriculture as well. She’s waiting to meet with Southeast Louisiana land trust and Feico will lead the way with that.
Dog Park Committee met at Naked Bean the week before as well; Jake Toloso was there and Oliver had suggested that we invite him join us because it was on his platform; Carolyn Manning provided a lot of good strategies for fund raising; already there’s been some donations of services from Paula O’Neil who has a pet photography business; she’ll also photograph the area when its chosen. Pedro noted that we’d like to seek input from the community as to the location and nature of the park; one issue is whether it should be in a neighborhood area or a public area; walkability to it, policing power, how would people feel about policing a public area vs. a neighborhood are issues; Demerath showed the Betty Virginia vision of Ian Webb’s; brought up the issue of how it would be more public for all if not in a neighborhood. That said, neighborhood parks serve the walkability function that would be used regularly; could have people nominate locations and have people vote on the area. Another strategy would be to have a fence in the Hammell’s park that keeps dogs from going onto Clyde Fant; don’t want to fence in Hammell’s cuase of bike path; could just be an off-leash area; allows for flooding. Could be simultaneously established with a more fenced area. Keith noted that a dog park is also for people who don’t have dogs: elderly, students, young kids who can’t have dogs but would enjoy watching.
The next meeting is the following Monday at 6:00 as usual, but the first of our themed meetings! This time it will be all about event planning after a quick (we hope) vote on the by-laws!
No comments:
Post a Comment