Minutes of CONA Meeting

7:00 p.m., January 20, 2010

City Hall Building

Bloomington, Indiana

Board Members Present:
6th & Ritter - David Walter
Elm Heights - Kathy Holland
Green Acres - Jane Spearman
Eastside - Molly O'Donnell
Maple Heights - Greg Alexander
Southampton - Richard Carr
Prospect Hill - Sarah Ryterband
Old Northeast

Guest: Vickie Provine

Program

1. Vickie Provine went over the HAND calendar for 2010.
2. Vickie announced a new neighborhood leadership class sponsored by HAND. It will consist of quarterly meetings with city staff to learn more about city land use issues. The Citizen's Academy will be held again in the fall.
3. Vickie indicated that a second round of Neighborhood Grant funds will be held for neighborhood projects. She also indicated that CONA could request grant funds by sending in a proposal.

Business Meeting

1. The minutes from the November 18, 2009 meeting were approved, there was no CONA board meeting in December.
2. David Walter reported treasury balances as follows: Checking: $107.54 and Savings: $7,943.25. David also gave a summary of funds being held by CONA for neighborhood associations as follows: Waterman's - $251.87, McDoel Gardens - $26.10, Bryan Park - $290.83 and Green Acres - $351.67.
3. The Board discussed the membership dues. It was pointed out that the fund available for CONA had not changed significantly over the past two years. The major expenses are the post office box rent, filing fees for the corporation and grants for projects. Greg Alexander made a motion not to collect dues from neighborhood associations in 2010. The motion was seconded by Sarah Ryterband and the motion passed on a voice vote.
4. The CONA web site needs updating - several of the neighborhood contacts are wrong and the photographs are old. Greg Alexander has been hosting the web site on his computers and is willing to make changes to the web site. Vickie Provine said that she could share the City of Bloomington's list of neighborhood contacts with CONA - David Walter said that he would take care requesting the list and also correct the content of the web pages on the CONA web site for Greg.
5. The Board discussed the decline in representation from neighborhood associations for the Board meetings. Once the neighborhood contacts list is updated, it would be easy to make up a telephone tree for contacting individuals to remind them of the meeting time and date. Along with this, Richard Carr recommended that CONA Board meetings should feature a guest speaker to talk about neighborhood issues. The Board came up with several topics including: property tax cap legislation, road improvements, city council legislative updates, utility infrastructure improvements, community schools and affordable housing.
6. Kathy Holland mentioned that she had noticed several land sales for the Victor Oolitic Stone Company in the newspaper. A few days later there was an article in the H-T about the stone company going bankrupt and the assets having been purchased by an outside investor. David Walter said that the stone company owned over 2000 acres in Monroe County and it appeared that the land transactions were moving parcels to a new corporation.

There being no more business, the meeting adjourned at 8:00 PM