NFB Board Meeting – December 19, 2018
7PM at Julie Jones’ house.
Present: Julie Jones, Anthony Eshmann, Mark Gonzalez, Tyler Harwood, Steven Jacob, Brian Luckett.
We started by talking about our “Bywater Goes Bananas” party, and all agreed it was a big success. The panel of neighbors telling stories about the neighborhood was a highlight. Everybody really liked the music and we sold a good amount of daiquiris! Mark requested we give $20 to the neighbors who provided electricity to Clouet Gardens and we all agreed it was a great idea. He also requested we make a donation to Clouet Gardens, and we decided to give them $100. We also agreed that Cherry May was incredibly helpful, and we should thank her with something special, like Champagne!
{At this point we were still waiting for other board members to show up so we would have a quorum… we paused to call missing members, messages were left.}
Our next general meeting would fall on January 2nd. All agreed this was not ideal, and we discussed whether to cancel or postpone until January 9th. It was suggested via email that we could just have a social, but we technically just did for the banana fest. Mark suggested we could do a “year end review” and discuss what we have worked on in the last year and what we will or should be working on in 2019. If we cancel the meeting this could just be an email newsletter. We decided to try and contact Kristen Palmer to see if she would like to come and also give us her “year in review”. We’ll wait to decide if we are having the meeting or not until we hear back from her office and if Stallings Center is available. Julie is contacting both. If we have the meeting Brian agreed to bring food and Steven J will bring water.
How do we get more folks to our meetings and events? Anthony said he talked to a few neighbors that didn’t hear about the banana fest, despite our promotional efforts. He said some have heard of NFB but don’t know what we do. Tyler volunteered to make new posters, and this time we can make some smaller handbills for coffee shops, etc.… Julie suggested twitter, but this was not taken up.
We should let Kristen Palmer know our thoughts on her proposal for new STR regulation. {overview can be seen HERE}. Ms. Palmer has requested it not go before city council until next month to allow time for feedback. We couldn’t find an exact date. Brian informed us that Allen Johnson from FMIA wants to form a group from historic core neighborhoods to talk with Ms. Palmer regarding better regulations for commercial STRs.
A few board members went to an ARC meeting regarding the hostel (now a hotel?) which is still planned for 4019 Chartres St, and described it as a waste of time. Noise is still a considerable concern, and is seen as a design issue, but Committee did not address it. We wondered if the conditional use was dependent on the building’s use as a hostel, not a hotel. We also wondered if the two year extension for the conditional use granted by Bob Rivers was ever found to be legal. Because of the way the approval went through Kristen Palmer says that if anything changes with the plans they will be required to go back to city council for approval.
Meeting ended at 8:06 PM
Respectfully submitted,
Tyler Harwood, co-secretary