I attended this month’s East District Neighborhood Council meeting on behalf of Unpaving Paradise. It was a great: UP told the Neighborhood Council about John and Summit and the Neighborhood Council told UP about all kinds of interesting local policy developments. The highlights are below:
The good news from Stella Chao, director of the Department of Neighborhoods
- The Department of Neighborhoods didn’t get hurt by last fall’s major city budget cuts; they actually got more money from the mayor for the Neighborhood Matching Fund. Good news for neighborhood project types.
- In the middle of last year, the DON also received $500K to jumpstart acquisition and development of P-Patches. The DON’s priorities are to find and develop more properties as fast as they can – Stella hopes that they can move forward this year. DON has already submitted a spending plan to the mayor’s office – Stella believes that they will be able to get 600-800 new gardeners in the program with this plan. This is on top of the 2 million dollars that is going to come from the newest Park’s Levy.
City policy update from City Council President Richard Conlin
- Councilmember Conlin’s major speaking point was the City Council’s Priorities, both the ones the Council accomplished in 2008 and the new set of priorities they’ve decided on for 2009.
This ordinance does not apply to street trees or trees in parks, but it does apply to the school district and the Housing Authority
Last but not least: Dennis Saxman was unanimously elected to be the East District Neighborhood Council’s representative on the Neighborhood Matching Fund Citywide Review Team.
Congratulations, Dennis, and have fun reviewing all those nifty neighborhood project grant proposals…like the one for John and Summit.
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The next meeting of the EDNC will be at Yesler Terrace in April. For more information on the next meeting or the EDNC in general, contact Jose Cervantes, East District Neighborhood Coordinator: [email protected], 206-684-4574.
Many thanks for the meeting notes, which are all as I remember the meeting.
FYI: a more up to date (and legible) Neighborhood Districts map is at: http://tinyurl.com/bgapac
Mayor Nickels’ Strategy to Boost Payrolls: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008735147_ni