October 2021 Annual Meeting

Audubon Annual Community Meeting

and Board of Directors Elections

Online Zoom Meeting

October 4, 2021 7pm

Agenda

Acknowledgement of Outgoing Board of Directors, Vice President Anne Bechtel

29th Avenue Task Force Update, Blake Hampton

City Council Update, Council Member Kevin Reich

Audubon Farmers Market Season End Update, Deborah Brister

Review of Audubon Programs and Projects, Deborah Brister

Finance Report, Deborah Brister

Audubon Home and Business Grant and Loans, Deborah Brister

Vote on ANA Operating Budget, Anne Bechtel

NE Storm Drain Challenge, Michelle Spangler

Vote on Audubon Neighborhood Association Board of Directors

Outgoing Member Acknowledgement, Anne Bechtel

I want to give some props to the board members who are outgoing at this at the end of this term now. So we have had Nick Willner, our finance officer who's been instrumental in the grants and loans programming that we've been able to do this past year. He's outgoing this time. Sarah Richard has been a board member for six years. Always has really great feedback and ideas for us, Jill Vowels, has served as the secretary and the vice president of the board in the last four years.

29th Avenue Task Force, Blake Hampton

The task force has been working diligently on a survey. The survey confirmed thinking as far as what the priorities might be. Because pedestrian friendliness and safety were number one, followed closely by how the whole project will look and then truck traffic.

What's still kind of up in the air is when this project will actually get done. My understanding is that the mayor left this completely out of the newest budget. And councilmember Reich was hopeful that we might be able to change that and or use perhaps some COVID funds to get it back on track.

City Council Update, CM Kevin Reich

First of all, thank you and thank you all the people who make a neighborhood group tick. I'm a big believer in the neighborhood association network. And I certainly rely on it and next season many of the updates you have really go to the heart of why community members can take a leadership role and have authentic connectivity to their neighbors about what's going on in the community. And I think that's vital to inform how the city spends its money or how projects develop. And so I think Audubon is one of the exemplary ones in that in that regard. And I would say the leadership of the 29th Avenue Task Force, actually just really exemplifies that.

I'm going to be pushing for 29th Avenue solely and exclusively as my top priority and aim if there's any way we can prioritize it for incoming funding from the federal government that we should do that and there's actually strong agreement, that 29th Avenue will will be that type of project, which actually underscores why we should be doing some advanced planning as a community because we can have some broader ideas. They can do some preliminary drafting of work on their end, to make it not necessarily engineered, but certainly like it would demonstrate the quote unquote, readiness of this project. The the actual receptivity of the project from a community standpoint, sometimes those are criteria for what qualifies for project readiness.

And Tthis is this is going to be the candidate to make a street actually an asset for the community. What I'm hearing from neighbors are a full range of different mobility issues, a strong sense of safety, a strong sense of how a street connects to very important things, particularly youth related things like the school and the park, and how it's the connects people to the epicenter of the community on 29th. I think through Deb's coordination was the Watershed Management Organization to look at not only is this a street for how people move, be a walking, biking, or driving or taking school bus, that it's also could be an opportunity to deal with some of the flooding issues particularly closer to central at the bottom of the hill. And how can it be something that can maybe feed into environmental best practices for greening of boulevards. Right now, it does not have any boulevards. It's kind of sad that way. We also talked with the principal of Northeast Middle School, and he's got a lot of ideas. And he had some point we'll be coordinating some of the people who work and live there and maybe you have a PTA to further reinforce some of his insights, because we want it to function for that.

And of course, at some point we probably maybe have a park user meeting as well, and something that closer to Central Avenue. So every stretch of the way we'll have a little pocket of deeper understanding that'll have to feed into the overall thing. And of course, at the middle of it are your great volunteers on your committee.

Central Avenue was awarded, again through the transit advisory board process and I serve on that board is now the next arterial BRT transit line, which is a real big deal. So the $40 million project 25 plus million from my council has been approved for Central. The matches will of course come in we applied for different other funds that will take it to the next level and the city has its own little coffer for central avenue of transit that we put away for potential streetcar line. Electrified Bus Rapid Transit is so similar to when streetcars provide promised to provide 15 years ago when I started working on this before I was even elected.

And one of the things that I think will be key for community is not only general input on that line, but really the same at Central Lowry right now. The worst place to wait for the bus should be the best place.Sometimes politics is about just saying things over and over and over again to certain people. And what I've been saying there my mantra is that should be a transit hub. It should look like a transit hub. It should feel like a transit hub and should accommodate people and make place a sense of place like a transit hub would, of course, I would serve the new ABR team. And so to that end, all three neighbor groups who talk to each other, kind of regroup and pick a couple of people.

Questions from Community

When do you know anything about the Johnson Street project and when might that be? How's that going? And when might it be wrapped up? My other question is, if infrastructure federal infrastructure bill is passed, would that impact positively these projects that you just mentioned?

Responses, Kevin Reich

The latter question. Absolutely. It certainly would. And yeah, it really it really worked. And so you know, this is one of those things where you really knock on wood.This this state and I would say the Mac console, partially because they we've been modifying their funding equations to be more fit city. centric, but sort of, you know, need centric and how transportation investments. So we've benefited from that. That's how central kind of was nowhere on anyone's list and all of a sudden, boom, it's on top of the list. Similarly, when when the federal money comes down, you really can start doing prior priority projects and because our lens now is more urban centric than it had been before, that only can benefit communities like northeast. And in particular, my argument when I'm asked those, those discussions, is to show the big map in the metro region.So federal money now has a place to go. And in terms of the first part of the questio. You know, I've kept saying get it done by Halloween. They keep saying the second week of November.

Audubon Farmers Market, Deborah Brister

We had yet another successful year with the Audubon Farmers Market in spite of the pandemic in spite of the Delta variant, and in spite of having, you know, half of Johnson Street closed down for the entire season. We had a lot of neighbors come out and support our market and we had a survey done from University of Minnesota. They were asking various questions, one of which was what was your mode of transportation to get to the farmers market? And he told me informally without counting his data. I haven't I haven't gotten his data set yet. But he said the majority were neighbors walking over from the neighborhood to support the market. So I think that was awesome. We had a we've had an ongoing part of produce program that we did again this year. For those of you that don't know what the power produce program is, it's basically an opportunity for kids to fill out a sheet and every time they come to the market, they put a stamp on the particular date, and then they get a $2 token, which they can use to purchase produce from any of our farmers. And so that really encourages them to interact with the farmers. teaches them what the names of vegetables and fruit are. They learn how to prepare them. It's it's just such a great win for the kids that participate in this thing. And this year, we had 197 kids participate throughout the season, and I think that's pretty amazing. The Power Produce program is actually supported through individual donations. And business donations, and we will continue to do that next year where we're really excited about that program and and we love to see kids getting excited. Michelle Spangler was our interim assistant farmers market manager this year she helped us manage the market for the entire season and big thanks go out to her for assisting. And I'd like to extend another thank you to Anne Bechtel, our our Vice President of the Association for coming every week. To not only help with the market, but to table and engage with our neighbors and talk to them about neighborhood events and things like that, and then help us break down every market so we really, really appreciate that.

We're looking forward to next year, and there may be some changes depending on what what the spring looks like. One thing is that we may be relocating the market to move it from our current 27th and Johnson location and possibly move it more towards the Johnson Street business area nom closer towards 29th. We have been in discussions with the Johnson Street Merchants Association to possibly use that that large parking lot Thursday nights and it would be really kind of a win for us and a win for the merchants because while people are ordering food for instance from the restaurants, they could shop the market and then pick up their food at home. But it was a great year this year. And so I thank everybody for helping out with that.

Home and Business Grant and Loan Programs, Deborah Brister

: Last year, the Audubon Neighborhood Association Board of Directors made some decisions in terms of how best to allocate our funds that we had set aside through the neighborhood revitalization revitalization program. That has been a long term program 20 plus years.

$500,000 was set aside for home and grant, home and business grant and loan programs. And the city was giving us very, very strong nudges to create some grant and loan programs that the neighborhood could use, otherwise we might be at the risk of losing that funding. And so the board did I think a great job and thanks especially to our treasurer, Nick Wellner for being instrumental in helping create these grant loan programs. They they are still active and they are still available for business owners and and homeowners alike.

At present right now for our home rent loan programs, we've got still $390,541.26 available for the various home and grant programs and you can take a look on our Autobahn Neighborhood Association website. For details on those programs.

Also on our Audubon Neighborhood Association website. There are links to CEE who who administers those grant and loan programs. So if you are a resident or business owner within Audubon, I highly recommend you checking them out and taking advantage of them if you are interested. So along with that, when the board made those decisions and created those grant loan programs, we also set as we the board also set aside an earmark $70,000 for ongoing operating costs for the Audubon neighborhood association to have as really kind of a a rainy day, source of funds for us moving forward from you know, 2022 and beyond and one of the requirements we have to do is as a neighborhood vote on allowing that $70,000 to go towards operating costs.

Very briefly, to give you all an idea of what we're working with in terms of funds for operating for Audubon Neighborhood Association. We basically have proximately $6,000 in our bank accounts. At present. We have also money that we draw on from the city and other grants that we have available to us and that for about $24,500 from our current contracts and so we currently have approximately $30,000 that we have for ongoing programs and projects and for operating expenses. And so we typically run between 70 and $80,000 per year when our programs are up and running full on the operating students this also includes salaries and wages. We also as you know, hire Farmers Market Manager to run the markets as well. So a portion of those funds also go to salaries and taxes. We also pay a fair amount for insurance for general liability for directors and officers for workers comp and things like that to also licenses for the farmers markets and so on. So basically what we have to do is to unlock the $70,000 That was for us to appropriate that for our operating expenses for 2022 and beyond. Basically we need to have a community vote to approve that. Before we do that lets talk about the various programs that we actually do run especially when we're not on a in a pandemic situation.

We typically have our spring festival that we were not able to have for the past couple of years.That's always a big draw of for our neighborhood.We have our ongoing 29th Ave task force, we do pollinator and rain garden design grants that we offer and we work through with Metro Blooms.. We have engagement with our seniors in the form of Boomers Cafe, that again, we had to cut during the pandemic. We also do the Audubon Walkers that in the morning walks through the neighborhood and not only is a social event, but also a way that we can kind of control the neighborhood basically and just kind of see how things are going within the neighborhood and it's generally almost always very quiet. We have our Northeast Storm Drain Challenge. We also do Storm Drain Saturdays in the fall to clean out the leaves and things from our storm drains.We have our home and business grant loan programs that I was just talking about. And of course, our loved Autobahn Farmers Market and the Power of Produce clubs. So those are just a sample of some of the things that we do with the Audubon Neighborhood Association. And we're looking forward to working with other neighbors as they are candidates for the 2022 board. of directors and hearing their ideas and visions. But at any rate I wanted to give you an overview so when we vote on the $70,000 allocation, you have that background.

Vote on Operating Expenses, Anne Bechtel:

So the issue at hand is to just to make sure that we have the funding that we need for our operating expenses, I I moved to allocate the $70,000 for operating expenses for the Audubon Neighborhood Association. And we're going to take a vote. So in perhaps maybe just in the chat if you want to say yes, yes or no for that.

Second, Blake Hampton

We need a second on that first. I second that.

Anne Bechtel

Vote by chat. Thank you. I see overwhelmingly we have a majority. So, that's settled. Thank you very much for that. Much appreciated.

Northeast Storm Drain Challenge, Michelle Spangler

Two years ago, I started the Northeast storm drain challenge. And the goal was just to raise awareness about the role that our storm drains play in their house and our of our Mississippi River and everything that goes in the storm drains goes straight to the river. Last year was our first year with the challenge with some really great strides in protecting our river. Last year, Audubon residents adopted 41 storm drains just last year and then, so far, I've got the data through August of this year, and the Audubon neighborhoods adopted 31 more storm drains. Thank you to all the great neighbors for really showing up and adopting those storm drains and taking care of them. I see a lot of the adopted drain insignias on the storm drains when I go for walks and so cheering you guys on as you adopt those. And some of you might have questions about what it means to adopt a storm drain. There's a great program through Hamline University that allows you to adopt a storm drain it's adopt dash a dash drain.org And I'll put the link in the chat before I leave and adopting a storm drain just means you know find a drain near your house you could adopt a couple and you just keep an eye on it when it looks nasty when you see leaves or trash or sticks things like that. You just get out there some simple tools like a rake or broom and sweep that up. You can dispose of it just like you normally would either with yard waste or trash or recycling. And it takes maybe about 15 minutes a month to take care of that. So it's not a big responsibility. What I really like about the program is it's actually great for renters, because if you move, you can just adopt that storm drain and then let you know someone who moves into your neighborhood later adopt that when you can adopt a new one. Wherever you move to. It's a statewide program. And so I really liked that the flexibility of that and lets you do something to take care of the earth no matter where you're at and whatever stage of life you're in at the moment.

It's easy to think of leaves as being a good thing because they're natural, but they don't actually belong in streets. They belong, you know, decaying on forest floors or in our yard. So when you see your grass clippings on a sidewalk, or especially in the fall those leaves in the streets. That's what we're trying to keep out of our storm drains and it has the added benefit of if we can really focus on keeping those storm drains free of leaves in the fall. In the winter. When they they freeze. We often freeze in these great big frozen blankets of leaves that cover our storm drains. So then when our snow melts in the spring, it's just this big ice sheet. It takes a long time to thaw which causes our intersections and streets to flood and sometimes our basements too. So we can really set ourselves up for spring success. If we're keeping our storm drains, clean up leaves in the fall. So those are just some of the things that I wanted to highlight and open it up in case anybody had any questions.

Board of Directors Elections, Deborah Brister

So the Board of Directors really is the engine for what drives all of our programs.

They are the creators, a lot of times decision makers all the time and assist assistance for you know, getting a lot of these things done so for instance, the the festival and the farmers market and most things that we talked about earlier. Those are all driven by the board of directors, and so they have a really instrumental role in terms of what the neighborhood looks like and what we can achieve. And if a lot of it depends on the interests of the particular board members, and if they want to take the leads on particular activities, whatever that looks like the board essentially decides how they want to proceed.

We typically have a strategic visioning session every few years to get an idea of what the neighborhood really is interested in and the issues that they have and the programs and activities that they would like to do. But we also do that within the board itself. And so that will be one of the first things that we work on. As a new board of directors.

The board, if you are on the board, you'll serve a two year term, typically, and officers are generally elected the next board meeting we meet monthly as a board in terms of the days that we meet that will depend on what you as a board member decides works best for the entire group. So every year that that can change and that can shift. We also review the bylaws to see if we need to make any updates there as well. We typically run between five board members and up to as many as nine board members.

Currently we have six board members. We have three outgoing members this year and we at present we have three candidates that have submitted applications. And so what I'd like to do right now is open it up and ask if there's anybody else who is interested in running as a candidate and we can we can include you in this conversation and include you in the voting as well. So if anybody is interested, if you want to unmute yourself and let me know otherwise we'll go through the candidates and just ask a couple of questions. And and then we'll do a vote. So it's it's fairly informal in that respect.

We have one candidate that is present and then I've got two other candidates that have submitted applications so they are valid as well too for voting. So I think what I'd like to do right now is Christian Hawkins is one of our candidates. And I'd like to ask you to unmute Christian and perhaps just give us a little taste of who you are and why you're interested in participating in the board and perhaps just give us a little a little a little overview.

Candidate, Christian Hokans

my name Christian Hokans.. I moved to the neighborhood with my wife and bought our first house here going on three years ago, and we absolutely love living here. I always say I never want to move. I want to live in my house here for the rest of my life. I never want to leave out of the park.I really enjoy the neighborhood. I like the trees. I like going to the farmers market. I live on 27th and Lincoln so great bad farmers market. And I guess I've just been looking for a way to get more involved in my neighborhood. I'm an attorney and I have a pretty active pro bono practice. My wife says I have a problem with not saying no enough to people who come to me. So I represent and instant eviction court, government benefits recipients, all sorts of people and pro bono stuff at my firm and I'd really like to find a way to do that sort of work in a way that helps my neighborhood.

Our next candidate is Dawna Strand.Dawna had picked up an application at our farmers market and got some information about the board of directors there. I don't see her on the call tonight here. So I'll just briefly give you overview that she is a resident of Audubon neighborhood.

Her big issues are parking. And I believe that they are they are issues with a number of people in the neighborhood.

Our other candidate is Elijah Schwartz. He's also a resident and I chatted with him at the Audubon farmers market as well. And he really enjoys the community feel of Audubon. He is interested in more events. Especially, festivals and other other activities like that. And he's said that he can help the board with Operations and Technology activities. So those are our three candidates. And because we have we have three open seats.

Vote by chat.

Write in all candidates okay or if you have a preference or any other type of votes, you can make that clear in the chat. Vote for all three approved. Any objections? Congratulations to Christian Dawna and Elijah as our new Audubon Neighborhood Association Board of Directors.

So what I will do next steps our next board meeting will be in November that it's always the well, at present. It's the first Monday of the month at six o'clock, but I will I will reach out to each of our new board of directors and provide you with more information via email. And you'll also receive a manual of our bylaws and we'll get you on boarded. We do have training our we work with the city's Neighborhood and Community Relations Department to assist us with onboarding and so you'll you'll all get a idea of what is going to happen with our board of directors And how we move forward.

Anne Bechtel

Okay, thank you, Deb.

Jonathan Harms

When is the next full community meeting?

Anne Bechtel

It will be December December 6. Thank you

Jean-Luc Kamin

Yes, we do have the monthly meeting. But I will say any opportunity to get in touch with the board and, you know, get involved or, you know, have any inquiries, please do not hesitate. I don't know if you want to give our you know, the email but contact to the website as well. Yeah, the contact information. And the reason for it is I think we we are we are coming in at a time where we really need to do some exciting things for for the neighborhood. And so any input or any feedback, any type of enrollment is greatly appreciated. So just wanted to add that.

Deborah Brister

Thanks, Jean-Luc. I've just put the our email in the chat so if you would like to reach out to us and and if you want to direct your comments to anyone particularly on on the board, I can forward that email as well.

Anne Beichtel

Thank you for everyone for attending. We'll wrap up and we will see you in the neighborhood and we'll see you at the next meeting in December.

Meeting adjourned