Thank you all for sharing your time, your passion, and your ideas! You made Saturday’s retreat a resounding success for Neighborhood Planning Unit M! About 50 neighbors came out from all over our NPU, several from surrounding NPUs (X, V, and Z), an at-large council member took part (Andre Dickens, Post 3), Jay Tribby came from our District 2 council member’s (Kwanza Hall) office, and our District 4 council member (Cleta Winslow) gave $200 to defray costs for the retreat. Several seniors came, several millennials, lots of us in between them in age, and one committee ended with hugs all round between some excited millennials and seniors.
Structure: Each committee discussed possible priorities for the coming year, and the flip charts from those conversations are attached here. Committees will always be open to your input, just like the General Body meetings. Each neighborhood will have one vote on each committee, but any resident, business owner, or organization representative within the NPU M boundary will be heard. The committees will be reporting to and advising the General Body and Executive Committee on issues brought to them by neighbors and the representatives appointed by each neighborhood association. They’ll also be following issues and legislation pending before their respective City Council committees and reporting back to us. Committees will choose their officers soon, and will have a chair, vice chair, and secretary. For more information on our committee structure and operation, our bylaws and rules can be downloaded here. Scroll down for summaries of each committee’s work from the retreat.
How to get involved and stay informed: Contact vicechair@npumatlanta.org for more information on how you can get involved — it’s not all just meetings, there’s lots of ways to be part of making NPU M and our neighborhoods even better. We’ll continue to be in touch by email, our website (npumatlanta.org), on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/npumatlanta), and on Twitter (@NPU_M). And be sure to check back here and come to our monthly meetings for more information, too! The fourth Monday of each month, at 6:30 PM, we meet as a General Body of the entire membership — at Helene Mills Center, 515 John Wesley Dobbs Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30312.
Don’t hesitate to contact us! You can sign up to get our email updates using the tool on our webpage.
Sincerely,
Matthew Jones, Vice Chair
vicechair@npumatlanta.org
NEXT STEPS and committee discussion summaries:
Utilities
Next meeting: February 25, 5pm at Cosby Spear highrise – 4th Wednesday
- Reduce energy usage by turning light poles off during the day
- Areas of interest
- Airport
- Street Abandonment
Education
Next meeting: February 12, 7pm at Condesa Coffee
- Title I Funding on Day 1 of school year.
- Hope Hill Playground – Phase I – City Park Playground II & III – APS property
- Superintendent Search
- Allocation of resources – Budgeting
- Centennial Conversion from Public to Charter
- Inman Middle & Grady capacity issues and solutions
- Mentor Program / Parent Involvement
- Elementary School Partnerships i.e. Hope Hill Elementary and Morningside
- Access to APS facilities not in use
- Howard Gym
- Howard Field
- Walden Field
- Meetings with Board of Education Members
- Leslie Grant
- Courtney English
- Cynthia Briscoe-Brown
- John Esteves
- Matt Westmoreland
CD / HR (Community Development and Human Resources)
Next meeting: February 16, 3pm at TBD location
- Temporary shelter for homeless
- Codify process of when to open
- Warming centers
- Atlanta Workforce Development (quarterly reporting)
- Invest Atlanta (quarterly reporting)
- For funding of economic development
- Zoo Atlanta
- Georgia Aquarium
- Jobs!
- National Center for Civil and Human Rights Museum
- Atlanta Housing Authority
- BeltLine
Transportation
Next meeting: February 25, 5pm at Cosby Spear highrise – 4th Wednesday
- Street Usage
- Movement of vehicles
- Parking
- Road Safety / Pedestrian Sidewalks / ADA Compliance
- Repair of Sidewalks
- City streets vs. State routes
- The Gulch / MMPT (Multi-modal Passenger Terminal) – Infrastructure of viaducts
- Transit connections (MARTA / suburban coaches)
- Transit economic stimulus (Streetcar / port of Savannah)
- Bicycle paths
- BeltLine cycle tracks
Committee on Council
Next Meeting: February 24, 5:30pm at Condessa Coffee Shop – 4th Monday
- ½ of committee attending APAB Leadership Training
- “Watchdog” + “Oversight” of council
- Personal passions as a focus
- Meet + Greet with Mary Norwood
- Keep track of council agenda and documentation (disseminate to NPU M committees)
- Recruit from 4th & SAND and Marietta Street Artery
Land Use / Zoning
Next meeting: February 10, 6pm at Atlanta Medical Center Pavilion
- New monthly meeting time TBD (proposed 4th Thursday)
- Events
/ Festivals & Permits (back up from city on apps) - New Zoning Ordinance Process
- Process / Relationships with applicants
- Ordinances on zoning from council
- Set back variances
- Members
Public Safety
Next meeting: February 6, 6:30pm at Helene Mills Senior Center
- Sub commitee that does strategy
- Less than 50% of the meeting will be devoted to what has happened in the pass
- Mini task forces – example add camera’s to APD systems
- Analysis and prioritizes social media and compare to APD report ( for example the person’s who home in Auburn area…we should have reached out that person and gotten them a face to face with APD)
- Coordinate and create a relationship with private patrols in NPUM
- Bring all video stream into private to identify who are our offenders
- Fire safety – identify seniors and others that need smoke alarms and batteries – Volunteer outing for time change with Fire Department
- Boulevard and Ralph Mc Gill – kids have to walk around the street to get to school (look at maybe having a patrol to assist)
- Code enforcement – each neighborhood create their own list
- Topic Meeting – Business
- Know your neighbors
- Public Safety around public feeding (code and other violations)
- Connect Land Use to add a list of neighborhood issues and add safety