LICTON SPRINGS COMMUNITY COUNCIL

Directors Present: Liz Kearns, Jerry Owens, Kay Mesirow, Tom Meyer, and Ellen Beck.

Board Representatives Present: Ken Thompson (Liaison to North Precinct), and Kathleen Braden (List Serve).

Visitors: Orestes “Monty” P. Monterecy (NSCC Vice President of Administrative Services, Director of Facilities and Operations and Capital Projects Manager NSCC), Melanie Davies, Hadi Patiran (student at NSCC and on Sustainability Committee), Jan Brucker, and Margaret Bartley.

President Liz Kearns called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. There were introductions around the table.

Treasurer’s Report. Ellen Beck had received the Verity Credit Union Statement of Account for March from Debra Willendorf and this statement was passed around for review. LSCC has a bank balance on this statement of $5,411.98. Tom Meyer questioned if it was possible to gain interest if monies were placed into savings and not left entirely in checking, which appeared to gain no interest. Discussion followed. Liz is going to ask Debra about savings and checking at Verity.

NSCC. Monty Monterecy gave us an update on NSCC. He has three different titles because of cutbacks on staffing: Vice President of Administrative Services, Director of Facilities and Operations and Capital Projects Manager NSCC. Monty told us that he has been working on smaller projects that improve the impression a person gets when first coming to North. On the weekends they have been power washing the buildings and having a sealer put on them. They have had the public restrooms professionally cleaned and sanitized so that the staff will have an easier time of cleaning them. They are also modernizing the public restrooms, as resources allow. They have re-cabbed the elevators to modernize them, and are refurbishing classrooms. The tree canopy has been raised, pathways improved, and flower pots with plants that will provide color all year round, all improve the campus. Monty calls these improvements “little bites.” His goal is to use bits of funding when they are available to make updates and improvements to North.

Monty has delegated and given responsibility to staff members for certain areas. Putting staff in charge of areas gives them pride in what they are doing for North.

He reported on the renovation work for the Technology Building. The work there will begin this summer and provide 370 jobs and cost $26 million. It will create a center for the campus. There will be a new cafeteria and student gathering spaces on the ground level. Those areas will have the ability to open up to the outdoors during good weather. It will be a “village green” and gathering place.

New electronic signs have been approved. They will replace the 1960’s signs that really need to be modernized. The present signs need to be hand lettered and some interesting messages have occurred in the past. Electronic signs will save man hours and allow for messages to be easily changed. The plan is that the new signs would be scaled to be readable from the sidewalk and the street. The ordinance that allows the electronic signs does not limit use, but Monty said he will coordinate with the community and the signs would not have to be on 24/7. The hope is for the new signs to be installed this year.

Monty said that it’s a challenging environment now, but NSCC has good people, nice people, who do a good job! He will attend our meetings as the NSCC representative as often as he’s able. He told us that he was born in Cuba and moved to the U.S. with his parents when Castro was going to take power.

He said he would like to move our meeting place to the new Opportunity Building. There are several rooms to choose from there. Liz said that she would leave the meeting room choice to Jan Brucker.

Jan said she hoped there would be opportunities to showcase neighborhood art and build connections to the community.

Oxbow Farm. There was a discussion about Oxbow Farm, which followed up on an email sent to meeting attendees. Monty said that the College had assessed Oxbow Farm and okayed them. It was noted that Jan had raised concern in the e-mail string that LSCC shouldn’t endorse one entity over others. Discussion followed. It was determined that the List Serve was not the vehicle for mentioning Oxbow Farm. Kay said that she would do research on the web and give information on farm produce availability (including Oxbow Farm) in the same format that she gives information about farmers’ markets in the E-Currents.

LSCC Elections. The following directors were nominated at the March meeting: Jan Brucker, Melanie Davies, Liz Kearns, Tom Meyer, and Ellen Beck. Jerry Owens moved, and Kay Mesirow seconded a motion to elect these directors by acclamation. The motion was unanimously passed.

LSCC Hotmail Account. Ellen requested that someone else take over the monitoring of the Hotmail account. Liz volunteered to do so since she checks her own Hotmail account in the mornings. Ellen said that our account has been flooded with e-mails related to the Blanchet lights!

Northwest District Council. Jerry Owens said he had been traveling and missed the last meeting of the Northwest District Council. He could tell us that the Bylaws had been finalized and that that had been a big deal! Jerry told us he is involved with his Union at work and is now an officer and involved in negotiating. He said it would be great if someone else could be the primary person to attend these meetings and he would be happy to be the backup for that person. The meetings take place at the Greenwood Senior Center, 525 North 85^th Street, the fourth Wednesday of the month, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. There was discussion about the work of the Council.

Liz said she had been Jerry’s backup. The meetings are interesting and the Council does important work. LSCC has applied to the Council, successfully in the past, for funding for sidewalks on North 100^th. The Council ranks the applications for funding and makes recommendations to the City. Liz noted that we are going to be able to do three more sections of sidewalks on North 100^th.

Tom Meyer agreed to be our representative to the Northwest District Council. Thank you, Tom!

City Planner. It was agreed that it would be useful to invite the City Planner for our area to come to a future meeting. Discussion continued. We would like to know the demographics for our neighborhood, zoning and impacts of light rail and Rapid Transit. Liz said she would research who the City Planner was for our area and contact them.

Highway 99. Margaret Bartley asked about our section of Aurora Avenue North and why it was not improved. Discussion followed. The Aurora Merchants have been very much opposed to any changes in their area. They want unchanged car access to their businesses. Jan agreed to do outreach with Faye Garneau and the Aurora Avenue Merchants Association¹.

We were urged to look at what the neighborhoods of Shoreline, SeaTac, and the Bridgeport section of Lakewood have done with their sections of Aurora.

Land Use. Tom reported that there was nothing coming up on land use in Licton Springs other than small residential remodeling projects.

Tom searched for permitting in connection with the Blanchet lights and nothing appeared. This made him think that he needed to do more research on how he programmed his searches. Perhaps his searches aren’t bringing up everything. He noted that there were new subdivisions in Haller Lake, where single residences were being replaced.

Bylaws. Liz announced that the “ball” had been dropped on the amending of LSCC’s Bylaws. Tom had the red-lined version that was used for discussion. Liz said she would give copies of the Amended Articles and Conflict of Interest Policy (once she received them from Ellen), and the red-lined version of the Bylaws to all directors. She would like us to complete our amendment of the Bylaws so that this project does not fall to Jan. So come ready to discuss Bylaws at our May meeting.

Brainstorming Meeting at Jan’s. The brainstorming meeting at Jan’s was discussed. A number of folks were unable to attend on April 21^st. Calendars were consulted and a new date of April 28, 2012 was selected.

North Precinct. Ken Thompson said the discussion was ongoing: rebuilding a two to three story Precinct on the site, or dividing the Precinct into two (now receiving resistance) because it entails buying two sites, building two facilities, and having two staffs.

1 The Aurora Avenue Merchants Association was formed in the mid-1980s to reverse the trend of gang graffiti, prostitution and drug dealing that had created an unsafe feeling for our section of Aurora.