Meeting Summary
The following items were addressed in order to continue moving forward on our Council Application with a goal of being officially recognized and certified by the City of Kent by the beginning of September.
Neighborhood Council Name
The attending group has decided to move forward using the name “Mill Creek Neighborhood Council”
Neighborhood Council Boundaries
It was debated on whether or not to include:
- Both sides of Summit Ave N which is one street East of Alvord (our current cutoff). This addition was requested by City of Kent Councilwoman Elizabeth Albertson who lives on Summit and would like to join our Council.
- Include some of the homes North of James Street from Prospect East to Hilltop. (Our current cutoff is Prospect.)
The boundary decision will be put to a vote with the existing Neighborhood Council members. The two map options have been sent out via EMAIL for you to review and vote. Votes must be emailed or phoned in to NgocDzung Smith (253-373-0500) by July 15.
Neighborhood Council Bylaws
i. A committee was established to review the sample bylaws provided by the City of Kent. This committee will meet to recommend a set of bylaws appropriate for our group. These bylaws will be voted upon at our next Neighborhood Council meeting (tentatively set for Thursday, August 16, 2007).
ii. Committee members are: C. McClimans, T. Hainer, W. Kohler, D. Hardy, S. Bersaas
iii.The complete set of sample bylaws will be sent via EMAIL to the Neighborhood Council members for review prior to the committee presentation. Please let me know if you do not receive these bylaws or need a hard copy.
Neighborhood Council Elected Positions
i. As a neighborhood council, we must elect 3 members to the following Officer positions: President, Vice-President, Secretary & Treasurer.
ii. We are currently accepting names of anyone who would like to run for any of these offices. Please email or call me with your information and for which position you would like to run. A list of candidates will be sent out via EMAIL at the end of July. We will run the election on August 7 at our Neighborhood’s National Night Out event. Results will be announced at our next meeting on August 16. If you can not attend on August 7 and would still like to vote, please contact me before that date to cast your ballots.
Potential Future Projects
During the course of the meeting, the following topics were brought up as potential future projects or goals for our neighborhood.
Temperance Street from Clark to Kennebeck
i. Request the City to help with clean up and restoration of this area. Issues affecting this area include drainage, vagrancy, a rickety bridge, illegally parked cars, etc.
Homes on Temperance
i. Homes on this street are affected by flooding when ever there is flooding or overflow from upper streets. There is no curb or existing barrier to prevent these waters from invading the lower homes.
Mentioned was Aqua Fence as a solution to annual flooding of Mill Creek (info@aquafence.com).
Mill Creek Student Volunteers
i. It was suggested that we form a committee to establish to volunteer projects for their student volunteer programs such as cleaning up the creek area.
Vendor Committee
i. It was suggested that we form a committee to communicate and work with businesses in our Neighborhood Boundaries to deal with issues that are caused or are related to their doing business in our community. Examples of issues are trash removal, lights in the business affecting homeowners, traffic concerns, etc.
Neighborhood Beautification
i. Some sample ideas included a neighborhood park, signage for our historic neighborhood, planting trees along our streets, sidewalks, speed bumps or traffic calming solutions, etc.
NATIONAL NIGHT OUT – TUESDAY, AUGUST 7 6pm- 8pm
The "24th Annual National Night Out" (NNO), a unique crime/drug prevention event sponsored by the National Association of Town Watch (NATW), has been scheduled for Tuesday, August 7, 2007. We cordially invite you to be a part of our NIGHT OUT 2007.
NATIONAL NIGHT OUT is designed to:
- Heighten crime and drug prevention awareness;
- Generate support for, and participation in, local anticrime programs;
- Strengthen neighborhood spirit and police-community partnerships; and
- Send a message to criminals letting them know that neighborhoods are organized and fighting back.
Our Neighborhood Night Out is tentatively planned as a Dessert Potluck to be held in the Museum Parking Lot (pending permission). Please SAVE THE DATE!
Posts
3 comments:
Just a quick note; under Meeting summary item 4, on electing officers. Please see the sample by-laws. This may be a bit early to elect officers. The council will first need to vote on excepting the by-laws. As it stands right now the sample by-laws if excepted by the council, sets the board of directors who shall appoint the president and other officers. We first have to decide how many board members there shall be. It may be more benifical for us to have a meeting prior to Aug 7 to vote on the by-laws? Or instead of taking names for the officers have names submitted for the board of directors. The number of directors still need to be decided on. the sample laws recommends 5 to 9 directors. The board is a good way to go just to keep the officers in check.
Not trying to be a stick in the mud here but there is some proper proccedures to follow on determing the officers and there respected duties. Please let anyone who has a question or
recommindations on this matter contact me at 253-852-6525.
Thanks
Chris McClimans
Chris:
I think that you bring up valid points. I did also notice the organization presented by the sample bylaws. However, for our application purposes, only having the elected officers is required for application. Having all the board members is not required. I suggest that we continue forward with the current participating members of the neighborhood voting for the elected members. These elected officers can maintain their seats until the end of the year when we can then have another election that is based upon the set of bylaws that we elect. These temporary officers simply have the duties of continuing the application process and acting organizers for the rest of the year.
Having run other volunteer organizations, I have found that it is important to show members that you are making progress and that their time and investment in the organization is bearing fruits. Sometimes being bogged down in too many technicalities at the beginning can stagnate the process. I suggest that you all, as the Bylaw committee, review the Bylaws and recommend something that fits for our organization that can still help us progress quickly through this application process so that we can continue to address our memberships concerns and needs.
If you all decide that you would like to recommend waiting, then please present me with a proposal that I can send to the current membership upon my return and we can let the membership vote and make a decision on how they wish to proceed.
Thanks.
NgocDzung Nguyen Smith
Nguyen
Since there has not been any real discussion about electing people to these positions and you have an urgency to register with the city. Let’s do this. These positions should be name only, having no power or authority at all. Until the Board of Directors can be elected and they appoint the officers. Since these positions are only so you can register with the city.
I would not have any problem with electing people for that but I do have some major concerns about not limiting these positions to start with. As you have stated before these are so you can register with the city. These positions should only be symbolic in name only to complete the registration forms, only.
Also who has decided that there should be a vote?
Chris McClimans.
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