15 October 2019 / 6:45 PM / Missouri Foundation for Health

MEETING MINUTES

6:45 Meeting Called to order (Vincent Chewning)

FPSE Neighborhood Business

6:45 – 6:50 pm Announcements (Community)

  • Halloween Carnival & Movie Night, October 26th starting at 4:00pm at Chouteau Park. Movie starts at dusk, which should be at 6:10pm. If anyone wants to volunteer please email Clarissa at clarissa.a.kenyon@gmail.com.
  • Costumes encouraged, not required. Will serve hot dogs, hot cocoa and snacks. Looking for candy donations for prizes and if anybody has a pop-up tent or two, would love to know if they can borrow it for the evening.
  • Green Street Development Presentation on October 29th at 5:00pm at Adam’s Park School. There were many proposals presented at last month’s Forest Park Southeast Development Committee meeting. The Forest Park Southeast Neighborhood Association asked if the developers would come back out and re-present their proposals, this time with more lead time on notifications for residents to attend. Developments total about $75M in developments across different blocks of the neighborhood. Notification will go out soon, and we invite everybody in the neighborhood to come out, learn and comment. Questions prior to the meeting can be sent to forestparksoutheast@gmail.com  
  • Jess of WUMCRC: Holliday outreach program is coming up. They adopt families and provide gifts and are accepting applications for families through November 1st. 

  • General Member: October 24th hearing at City Hall for proposed CID.
    • (Secretary’s note for more detail) The is Board Bill Number 18, Introduced by Ald. Roddy: An ordinance approving the petition to establish the Newstead West Community Improvement District, establishing the Newstead West Community Improvement District.
  • General Member: Organization for Black Struggle is having a meeting on October 19th at 10:00am, at 1401 Rowan. They’re showing the movie Benign Neglect.

Crime and Safety

6:50 – 7:00 pm Crime and Safety Report (Ed Slade, SLMPD Liaison)

  • Car break-ins are driving crime reports
  • Call in for suspicious activity; they’re getting a lot more calls for people messing with door handles
  • Crimes against persons are down
  • There were very few disturbances during Grove Fest
  • Cold weather usually draws more homeless people into neighborhood entertainment districts. The city has resources that will come out and talk to people in need of housing or food to help them. You can email Ed Slade for the city to do well-being checks for these people. 
  • General Member: Is there more information on the woman shot and killed on Swan at Boyle?
    • Officer Slade: Suspect was taken into custody. Not clear if it’s a domestic right now. They’re going through the investigation and he’s not at liberty to talk about it at the moment.
  • General Member: Is there a way I can talk directly vs indirectly to an officer?
    • Officer Slade: The available numbers to call is the non-emergency number 231-1212, or 911.

Treasurer’s Report

7:00 – 7:05 pm Treasurer’s Report (Adelina Mart)

2020 Board Nominations

7:05 – 7:15 pm Nominations for the Forest Park Southeast Neighborhood Association Board. Nominations include:

    • President – Vince Chewning (Current President)
    • Vice President – Dan Scott (Current VP), Sarah Wilson Mangapora
    • Secretary – Dan Doelling (Current Secretary)
    • Treasurer – Adelina (Current Treasurer), Don, 
    • Member at Large – Tom Charliville (Current Member at Large)
  • Elections will be at next month’s November meeting.
  • General Member: Can a candidate run for multiple positions or “slate down” and run for lower positions? Election committee will look into the matter prior to November’s elections.

Special Presentations and Discussion

7:15 – 7:35 pm Park Central Development (Park Central)

  • Vince Chewning: We’re happy to have Park Central here. They’re coming as a guest. We’d like to use this time to get to know Park Central and understand their role in the neighborhood. We’re doing a Q&A, via notecard, to allow us to organize questions and follow up with questions that we don’t have time to answer. 
  • Abdul, Executive Director of Park Central: Park Centra is a 5013c community development corporation that works to strengthen and attract investment that creates and maintains equitable vibrant urban neighborhoods and commercial districts through the four tenets of neighborhood planning and services, major infrastructure projects and improvements, administration of special taxing districts and working with the investment community to attract and facilitate private investment into the community.
    • Value statement 
      • Provides and facilitates full services neighborhoods. A lot of services the PCD provides historically is because the City of St. Louis is unable and unwilling to provide.
    • They are a 15 person Board of Directors.
      • 7 residents within CWE, FPSE, Academy, Chouteau Park Botanical Heights, and Fountain Park
      • 5 institutions made up of SLU, SSM Health, MoBot, WashU Medical Center, and Coretex 
      • 3 business/commercial representatives
    • On staff at Park Central includes:
      • Abdul Adbullah 
      • Ashely Johnson, Director of Special Taxing Districts 
      • Kyle Oberle, Project Manager in the Special Taxing Division. Works more extensively with The Grove CID and the CWE Special Business District
      • Linda Nguyen, Coordinator of Neighborhood Initiatives and Engagement
      • Annette Pendilton, Community Development Administrator
      • Interns who will assist in different planning efforts throughout the Park Central footprint.
    • Operate in 10 neighborhoods, with core neighborhood being the 17th Ward where PCD started. Used to receive $350k block grant money until the City cut the fund seven years ago. Since that cut, they have transitioned from a 17th Ward based organization and to continue to operate and provide services, Have moved towards a different entity and operate as a full service CDC.
    • Core neighborhood is the CWE. 
    • One of the important things that were important to Abdul as an executive director is that they have been blessed very much with the resources and institutions… but at some point you have  to be able to push this when you’re talking about equity and building equitable neighborhoods across this Delmar Divide. Since he’s been here over two years, they’re now operative in Fountain Park, Academy and Sherman Park.
    • Components that will be covered today: Human Services, Community Impact Fund, Parking Districts, Infrastructure Committee, Development Committee, Special Events, the growing CID, and neighborhood planning and assessments they do (a database of every sidewalk, every tree, every light every mural… everything that goes on that needs to be repaired in the neighborhood. Because what happens is you have to know what needs to be fixed, so that when the Infrastructure Committee gets together, sometimes you have sidewalks that need to be fixed in portion of the neighborhood, that portion of the neighborhood might get the lion’s share; when you have a database of information that says ‘hey this is what needs to be fixed, this when it was fixed, you’re able to make equitable decisions that will be a little more fair.
    • FPSE Neighborhood
      • Human Services – A lot of people don’t know that we actually started it in the past year when he got here… one of the things he noticed when he got here was one of the divisions we had here was a focus on planning, developing, but one of the things we weren’t focusing on was human services. So he created a program with Lynda called the Human Resources Counseling. 
        • Community Resource Counseling – In 2019 throughout PCD entire footprint, they provided 1:1 counseling to 14 individuals and families who are experiencing difficult situations who need help and connection to resources. They also provide financial assistance. They started offering emergency and utility assistance because there are people who really need. As of August, they’ve provided over $600 in emergency and utility assistance. 
        • Neighborhood Job Fair – Had second annual job fair. Focused on the FPSE, Tiffany and Botanical Heights neighborhood. Had 14 employers within a mile and a half radius. Work with 13 residents within FPSE to attend that job fair. At least two have gotten jobs, and maybe a few more because nobody has come back/they can’t find them.
        • Lynda on the Coalition of Housing Justice and Neighborhood Diversity. It’s a coalition that the City Garden Montessori started about 4 years ago trying to address housing displacement. Have gotten 10 to 15 providers around the table providing resources. One of the events that have been popular is the Housing Resource Fair, looking at folks who want to stay in the home and folks who want to build credit to buy their own home. There’s also Financial Wellness Seminar doing more small 45 minute workshops around financial topics including crediting, budgeting as well as retirement planning for their future. She wants to emphasize collaboration advocacy so that folks in our neighborhood have access to those resources so they can continue staying in the neighborhood. 
        • City Greens Market – Co-directors have recently left and PCD as a board have taken the role of executive director and provide staff evaluation and hiring the right staff
      • Abdul on Affordable Housing: Over the past two months they have worked with Rise to do a re-syndication and secure a renovation of Park East Apartments because one of the things they need to do is keep that housing affordable. One of the things they’ve been able to do with RISE is help with support for re-syndication and renovation funding for Park East Apartments with MHDC to preserve 73 units of affordable housing in FPSE.
        • Abdul: have to keep this neighborhood mix income 
        • General Member: Does affordable housing apply to home ownership? No, this is strictly for the rental units category.
        • Abdul says they only had $1,500 budgeted for emergency and utility assistance across the PCD footprint an allocated the lion’s share of money to FPSE. Lynda notes that as a nonprofit PCD has a limited amount of money. She notes that there are a lot of programs that will provide utility assistance. When Lynda meets with people she makes sure that they’re applying to all partners for assistance. 
      • Abdul: Community Impact Fund – The fund was created to help stabilize the neighborhood and to be an anti-gentrification tool long-term. Home repair is an issue. It’s something that’s needed. 
        • Funding and priorities: Used for home reporting funding for residents, ADA accommodations, utility assistance, infrastructure, improvements, beautification and economic development. 
        • On infrastructure: They do it in some neighborhoods they work with and they don’t have street lights. 
        • On home repair: What a fund would do, when we raised money for it last year, most of the money was earmarked for neighborhoods and projects. It was up to him to create a fund where PCD can give access throughout with the greatest dollars. They raised $36,000 and have only collect $21,000 from people who made good on their donations.  
          • Priority Neighborhoods
            • Fountain Park/ Lewis Place: $10,000
            • Academy-Sherman Park: $10,00
            • FPSE: No funding for 2019. Need to go out and raise that money to be able to have dollars for FPSE. It’s a private fund that requires us to go out and raise it own our own. It requires them to tap their networks. Happy to help the NA raise money for the neighborhood.
            • Tiffany – haven’t gotten dollars.
          • General Member: Is Rebuilding Together still active? Abdul: Yes. Lynda: We just had a rebuilding day this past Saturday where a disable homeowner received $8,000. Rebuilding Together is a nonprofit provides minor home repairs for low income families in the city and in the county using volunteers and skilled contracts to provide home repairs that are done in one day. For this family, they were able to put in new flooring, worked on plumbing, and applied new paint. 
          • FPSE Development Corp has offered help and PCD plans to ask this spring for their help.
        • How the Community Impact Fund priorities are selected for non-earmarked funds. 
          • Committee will be formed. Applications for committee selection will open in January 2020. Recruitment for members will take place via website and social media. Committee will be selected in March 2020. The committee will consist of no more than five stakeholders within the PCD footprint with at least one being from FPSE. By the time the PCD annual Gala comes around in April or May of 2020, this formed committee will decide what projects that the Community Impact Funds will go towards.
          • Secretary’s note: Abdul shared additional information on the committee and its process but this information was not captured during the meeting and inaudible in our recording. This information will be provided in Park Central Development’s PowerPoint slide.   
      • Lynda on Parking Districts

        • PCD has been doing parking administration in FPSE for 8 years. Is community-driven process in which the resident on the block has to have a petition on that goes through with a super majority that needs to agree that they will become part of a parking district. When it becomes a private parking district, you have to prove you are living on that block to get a parking permit.
        • Role is to provide admin services for residents to secure permits in Park Districts and act as a liason to the Treasurer’s Office for issue within the Parking District. Park Central assumed this role as a service to the neighborhood as the Treasurer’s Office will not provide admin for Neighborhood Parking Districts. They only provide the enforcement.
        • 4400 block of Gibson recently joined as a private parking block and as of today (October 15) enforcement will begin.
        • General Member: Overflow has started to happen onto Arco. Gibson is empty during the day, but now unfair that those cars are now parking on other streets.
        • General Member: Is there a way to  get rid/reverse of the parking districts? Abdul: Yes, with petitions with at least 60% of the signatures of neighborhood block residents. Petition must be from a resident on the block they wish to remove the park district. Lynda says she can give you the petition and you can change the wording to remove the parking district.
        • General Member: Wonders why the parking district is only limited to the people who live on the started, or why there isn’t a two grace period to accommodate tax-paying shoppers who come to the neighborhood. Lynda notes that, for example, Hello Juice has two hour parking. They do try to accommodate business. The new 4400 Gibson district is only during 8-5 business hours. 
        • General Member: Supports the idea that the process should be expanded include people in surrounding blocks because right now the process makes it somebody else’s problem. Abdul: If that’s something you want to do, we’ll help you with the petition process.
        • Vince Chewning: Proposing that since this is a wider neighborhood issue and not a block by block issue that we can discuss amongst ourselves some options to address the issue. PCD just administers the districts, they don’t create it. We we can work with Alderman Roddy, other representatives and PCD to see how is it that as a neighborhood how we can address it. Abdul notes that we’ll have to look at it block by block since that’s how established because that’s how it’s established. Vince says that it might be a neighborhood-wide way that we tackle it. Some residents have already started good work on the issue. We’ll continue the discussion and it needs to be had.
        • Abdul on future plans:In the works is a mobile app. They have lost money, about $16,000 a year over the last two years administering parking in FPSE. By 2021, they plan not administering this at all or will have to increase the price in order to administer. They are working with the Treasurer’s Office to get this back to what they’re doing. By 2021 they will completely cut off administering or increase the price in order to do that.
        • Vince Chewning: Proposing that PCD comes back to present the remaining sections. Or as an ongoing basis, maybe a section a meeting. Asks membership if they are okay with this proposal. Wants to be sensitive to the time and effort of the membership and PCD. Abdul says PCD is happy to come back. 
        • General Member: Wants to know about infrastructure. Notes that sewers south of Manchester are collapsing and wants to know about main sewer along Taylor. Abdul: There is a plan on the table that is attached to some workforce housing that has been proposed to provide $2,000,000 of that infrastructure along Taylor (open the streets back up, repave, overhead lights) between Newstead and Hunt.
        • Neighborhood assessments of things that need to be and have been fixed
      • Vince Chewing: We encourage you to attend the Development Committee meeting on October 29th at Adam’s from 5:30-8. 
      • General Member: On the meeting on the 29th, will there be a deeper dive into the proposed CIDs? Vince says it’s up to the developers and we’ll ask Green Street if they can dive into how the CID might look like.

Final Announcements

7:55 PM Final Announcements (Vincent Chewning)

  • Forest Park Halloween Carnival on October 26th
  • Development Committee on October 29th 
  • Elections next month

7:56 PM Adjournment (Vincent Chewning)

You can listen to the recording of this month’s meeting on Anchor and wherever you listen to your podcasts.

You can download this month’s meeting minutes below.

October 2019 Meeting Minutes