23rd Avenue Corridor Action Team

23^rd Avenue Corridor Action Team
November 10, 2003

Meeting Notes

In attendance: Mary Achatz, Heather Hood, Susanne Takehara, Elena, Don, Karen, Michelle, Deb, David, Jess, Jennie, Randy, Eric C., Diana Williams, Sara McKay, Michelle Clarke-Clough

Announcements

• November 24 at 6 p.m. at YEP—follow-up on one-to-one safety interviews
• Groups not supporting each other—only two groups attended EBAYC cleanup

EBALDC Proposal

• Housing: half time
  • Housing
  • Staffing Real Estate Council
  • Fundraising for development projects
  • Housing plan for LSA

23rd Avenue

• Does this person drive specific projects or are they the glue for different projects in the plan?
• Teams driving projects. Staff person tracks teams
• Request for clarity around how we organize ourselves. So many areas of activity. Clear on priorities and accountability
• Is 23rd Avenue a half-time position?
• What other staff support could we have?
• Graduate students, Americorps/VISTA
• Different CBO partners take lead on specific projects/task groups. What level of responsibility do agency partners have?
• Worried about implementation. Worried that we’re adding another layer of planning. Skills don’t reflect implementation role
• Person will drive groups of people—can’t do all the work in a half-time position
• Person will create initiatives
• Agree—we need focus on implementation. Person sees projects through to implementation. That’s their main role. Person should have a fundraising role for projects. Bring in other resources
• Need a full-time person for 23rd Avenue work. Time we start talking about funding very frankly
• Maybe Casey gives release time to staff of partner organizations—buy time of staff. Hard time to do anything on back of CBOs
• Need 2 FTEs
• Up to the work group to put out a proposal. Initially want to start with one person. Prove case you need two. Part of work is to identify other funding source (other than Casey)
• Are agencies already doing work going to step up to plate
• Ways that housing work can support 23rd Avenue work

UE Plan

• Final text due on November 17
• Finished printed plan by first week in January
• Laid out different pieces of plan. Elena rewrote paragraph on gentrification and the arts. Trying to break trend of artists bringing on gentrification
• Comments on action points. Work group needs to define clear next steps on action points. Maybe we identify implementers for each action point. Could have been more of a theme of residents being involved in an ongoing way—defining next steps, prioritizing, giving ongoing input, advisory group. Plan didn’t make that statement clearly enough. Jennie has a list of ten next steps:
  1. Identify other staffing resources
  2. Clarity around EBAYC role—relate to whole organization
  3. What’s involved in staff person attending meetings/other tasks
  4. Define a core group of people to take responsibility for projects
  5. Decision-making procedures
  6. What are committees? How much can they take on? Are they made up of collaborative members or do we need to recruit others?
  [TEN NEXT STEPS STOPS AT NO. 6—OKAY?]
• Can cut Take Action section and give to committee in the form of memo
• Need a process for communicating between 23rd Avenue planning process and EBAYC Safety Campaign
• Don’t cut Take Action section out
• Take Action out. Not evenly developed. Should be a supplemented document

Staffing Position

• Concern about staff person for Real Estate Council being placed at EBAYC. Conflict of interest
• Need the institutional knowledge of an organization like EBALDC
• Talking about position as if Casey is going to fund this. Need to blow this open. EBALDC needs to commit to helping to raise money for position
• Issue is a startup issue. Once we set ground rules, should be okay
• EBALDC would have conflict of interest only around very large-scale projects
• We’re having discussion around full- vs. half-time position. Shouldn’t be having that discussion. Need to look at Casey pot of money—put all the priorities on table and discuss how money is being spent
• Go through plan. Have a conversation about how goals of plan mesh with each CBO priority. Candid conversation about agendas and priorities
• CBOs would like to meet to talk among themselves
• Casey has impacted relationship of CBOs. Casey could give tips on how to divide common money pot. How do we talk about reasonable roles of CBOs. Would be good to know what each other is getting
• Money for position available after first of year
• Reasons to link housing and 23rd Avenue
  • Linked or in same position
• Can we guide Real Estate Council to focus on 23rd Avenue
• How much money was given out and to whom over course of initiative? What’s happening in 2004

• December 15, 12 – 2 p.m. meeting with Fred
• November 19, 12:30 – 3 p.m.
  • 2 – 3 p.m. Fred