Added to list at meeting:
- Need a forum to resolve issues
- Accurate & timely information.
- Particularly w/Sound Transit.
- Notification for WHOLE COMMUNITY.
(U. Heights will be starting newsletter.)
Goals:
- Make U. District premier place to live &
work
- Support (not supplant) existing community
orgs.
- Keep UCUC work alive
Do we make a full, formal, chartered, separate org.? Or do we make a coalition which is ad hoc.? Or can an existing org be expanded do the job? Or do we just blow it off and assume the city will do the right thing? (Nobody supports that last.)
The AdHoc Forum:
- Unofficial sounding board, no
formalised legal existance/structure, meets quarterly or as needed,
avoids a board. Set up to provide information sharing & discussion,
to interface between city & community, open to all. Organisation
would have no official commenting capacity; people and organisations
would form coalitions around individual issues.
- Could result in multiple positions.
Many in group think this is basically OK.
A more formal organisation:
- A small, focused group focused on
the plan and nothing else. It be an impetus to get all the major
players involved.
A REMINDER:
All of this is to make the city follow
through on various promises and plans. It's not to make a new plan or
make major modifications to the existing plan, which has already been
adopted.
Various comments:
- Sound Transit & UW will set up their own
advisory groups regardless of what we do.
- Implementation plans depend on
other groups. (Sound Trasnit, UW, etc.)
- Strong reccomendation AGAINST trying to
take away authority or autonomy of individual groups. The hyenas will
descend!
- Duplication of responsibility may be a
problem.
- City wants citizens involved
in solving difficult problems that come up in plan stuff. The city wants
to see the compromise worked out across all the neighbourhood
groups. If the city sees that, it follows that. If not - if it sees a
bunch of individual groups presenting it with different opinions - it'll
make it's own decisions based upon what it thinks is best.
- UCUC (as the plan-making group) can't
run it any further, it's sunsetting and has no more budget as of Monday.
- The NE District Council (suggested) can't
do it, has much too broad a mandate and doesn't have
representation from UW, U. Village, et al.
- Existing groups are too narrowly focused.
- Appears to be something of alack of trust
between the four major types of groups in the U. District - neighbourhood
groups, business community, UW, Social Servlces. Plus there's unaffiliated
people (individuals) making sort of a fifth group that doesn't have formal
recognition.
After much discussion, the group present appears to be generally happy w/the Ad hoc forum/joint committee. People present seem to agree w/that mostly. A few people are very unhappy that a more formal organisation isn't being set up.
THAT DECIDED:
Who "runs" - or "conveins" - this thing?
Someone suggests the city and is laughed down. (Included amoungst the
laughers are the City representative... the city certainly doesn't
want it.) Who convienes it, who helps set stuff up, etc. Patty from
The Ave Group is nominated but doesn't have time.
Various comments and questions from this phase of the discussion:
- Where will the plan's "ameneties" come
from? (Various places including Sound Transit and The Ave Group, but
the majority will be from private business as encouraged via zoning
changes, etc.)
- There will be public meetings on various
specific topics (Sound Transit and UW in particular) over the next
several months, regardless of anything we do.
- The Ad Hoc group relies on consensus,
has less ability to do a majority vote override of very unhappy
minorities.
- Do more doing, less talking (HA!)
(And we take a break - officially five minutes, more like fifteen...)
The Decision:
The group present will, for practical
intents and purposes, be the convener. The U. District Chamber of
Commerce offers to convene the first time, and will do so in
cooperation with Julian (who says he'll keep doing it after the
first meeting or two), U. Washington (Bridgit), a social services
group (Eileen), and Neil and John. They'll find a space, set a time,
type up an agenda and even get presenters. UW and the conveining
committee will try to arrange a facilitator from UW faculty.
Possible agenda items:
- City actions to date
- Sound Transit
- UW - how they'll be working with
residential concerns
- Who owns monitoring what parts of
what projects? Who are the advocates & allies?
- 50th St. Station/area oversight?
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