EPIC Community Meeting Minutes
January 9th, 2019, 6:30 –
8:50
East
Phillips Park Cultural & Community Center, 2307 17th Ave
S.
EPIC
web address: eastphillips-epic.com
Office:
2433
Bloomington Ave.,
Minneapolis, MN 55404
Phone: (612) -280-8418
Board Roster: Rosie Cruz, Laura Dale, Mary Gonsior, Cassandra Holmes,
Shontal Lajeunesse, Abah Mohamed, Carol Pass, Steve Sandberg, Sarah
Santiago.
Board Members Present: Laura Dale, Mary Gonsior, Carol Pass,
Steve Sandberg, Sarah Santiago, Rosie Cruz
Board Members Not Present: Shontal Lajeunesse, Cassandra Holmes
Members: Jolene Jones, Peggy Clark, Bill
Jones, Rosie Abadomassee, Brad Pass
Guests: Kali Pliego, Shirley Heyer, Claire Baglien
6:30 Social
Time
6:54 Greetings and Introductions
6:50 Approve tonight’s agenda,
MG, LD, approved
Approve minutes from
December community meeting, MG, LD,
amended, approved
6:55 Announcements
·
Next Board Meeting will be: February 1st
at 10am at the EPIC office (2433 Bloomington Avenue)
o
Board Meetings are open to the public
·
Next Community Meeting will be: February 13th
at 6:30 here at East Phillips Park
·
Next Executive Committee meeting is January 23rd
from 7-8pm at the EPIC office
o
Executive Committee meetings are the third
Thursday of every month
o
Executive Committee meetings are open to the
public
·
Next Southside Green Zone meeting is Monday,
January 27th from 5:30-8pm
·
EPIC’s Annual Meeting will be Saturday April 18th
o
EPIC has 4 directors up for re-election
o
Primary qualifications for becoming an EPIC
board of director:
§
Must be 18 years of
age and have attended one previous EPIC General Membership Meeting in the
previous 12 months.
§
Must reside or own
property in East Phillips, OR be designated as the voting representative of an
organization or business in East Phillips
§
Go to EPICs website
for nomination forms
7:05 Crime and
safety Update – Kali Pliego (10 minutes)
·
Updates on community
concerns from past community meetings
·
3rd
precinct Court Watch occurs monthly at two locations
o
community impact
statements have had a large impact – need community involvement
o
Little Earth Court
Watch: 2nd Wednesday of each month
o
Franklin Avenue
Court Watch – precinct court watch (not just for Franklin Avenue) – Friday,
January 17th at 2100 Bloomington Avenue at 10:30am
·
3 pack – 3rd
precinct advisory meeting – January 27 at 6:30pm
o
How to spend money
to support the police
o
Elected community
members lead 3 pack
o
Plan meals at the
precinct for officers
·
Block leader
training - January 29th at 6:30 at the 3rd Precinct
·
Last month question
raised about the plan for the encampment at 25th and Bloomington:
o
3rd
precinct is coordinating with community when encampment arises
§
Officer partners
with organizations to house the people
o
Neighborhood Coordinators
– self generating work – vists encampments
o
Aid in moving people
out of encampments
o
Get rid of garbage
o
There was a meeting
today to get all of the 3rd precinct on the same page and working on
the same strategies with encampments
o
Working to make sure
people are not camping in one spot for very long
o
Partner with
organizations to find housing for people in the encampment
o
Volunteer groups
dropping off food and resources in one place – Sergeant has informed groups
that the donations are not helping the situation and will not be allowed
anymore
o
Community member
asks how will the 3rd precinct measure success?
o
Kali: Volume of
reports, but hard to compare to previous years
·
Concern about
robberies and gangs in the area
o
CERT team has worked
the area around 17th Ave/16th Ave and 29th
Street
·
Community question
about whether we can put cameras out in the areas
o
Community member
shared that it has helped around Little Earth
o
Kali said that there
is a program through the city – purchase permanent camera to light poles -
$7,000
·
EPIC has said that
they have tried to purchase a camera in the past and the city said there were
not enough monitors to watch the footage
o
Kali will look into
this and get back to us about this
7:35 Claire Baglien
– Homegrown Minneapolis – Urban Agriculture Programs Specialist
·
Homegrown Minneapolis has launched their
priority application process, which is open from January 3rd to
February 14th. There are a few available lots located in East
Phillips (check out their garden lot map here), so they want to be
sure neighbors nearest to the lots & most connected to the community know
about the opportunities
o
2 lots available in East Phillips – see map at
link above
o
Anyone interested in starting a community garden
with a blank slate
o
Anyone who wants to lease as a market garden
o
Prioritize people who live in the community
o
There is a staff person to help people through
the application process because it can be bureaucratic since it is a city
program
·
How to get your soil tested:
·
The University of
Minnesota’s Soil Testing Laboratory provides soil
testing services. While they don’t test for arsenic, lead tests
are available for $16
·
The University of
Minnesota’s Department of Soil, Water, and Climate hosts the mobile Soil Kitchen, which provides free
screening for lead in soils to communities across the Twin Cities metro area at
rotating locations.
·
A list of additional
metro area laboratories that perform soil tests are included on page 3 Urban Gardens and Soil Contaminants - A Gardener's Guide
to Healthy Soil
·
Read more about Lead in the Home Garden and Urban Soil Environment,
a publication via University of Minnesota Extension
·
Question about the cost of the program and how
accessible it is to low income people
o
Community groups got security deposit taken out
o
City Council guides the program and sets the
cost
·
The EPIC 17th Ave garden has 32 plots
and has as many as 10 empty plots per year
o
Garden was remediated – fresh dirt
o
Can’t dig further than a foot
o
Must live in East Phillips
7:54 Jolene Jones
with proposal for Little Earth NELC Playground Resurfacing and Fencing
·
Requesting $65,000 from EPIC
·
Looking to replace the wood chips because too
much human excrement
·
Playground equipment does not need to be redone
·
Would like to get the work done as soon as
possible in the spring
·
Will be putting plum and apple trees in the area
·
The city did not go through the correct process
when forcing EPIC to spend $175,000 i.e. going through NCEC
·
EPIC is trying to figure out how much money we
have available:
timeline for revisiting all the rejected proposals
Note: The competitive RFP process used to spend EPIC’s funds was executed by CPP/Minneapolis – this is not a process that EPIC has used in the past, and EPIC is not designing a process for reoccurring funding. This is because EPIC is not a funding organization; instead, EPIC has policies to utilize our CPP funds to serve the neighborhood through “partnerships” with neighborhood institutions such as East Phillips Park, Waite House, Hispanic Baseball League, KALY Radio and more. Unfortunately, the competitive process of soliciting RFPs was imposed on EPIC by CPP/Minneapolis, and it actually created unhelpful tension between EPIC and our partner organizations who did not receive funding through the CPP/Minneapolis process.
Here’s what IS happening: Because of the very short timeframe imposed by CPP/Minneapolis, many proposals that EPIC had prioritized for 2020 were cut out at the start of the RFP process. CPP/Minneapolis staff promised to help EPIC revisit these rejected proposals and help us identify other sources of funding for those projects. That is the task that we set for ourselves going forward in 2020. The review of these proposals will begin this month and we will work as quickly as we are able.
8:30 Are you
interested in joining a committee? EPIC is forming:
·
Events: EPIC is
forming an events committee to plan and carry out EPIC events including the
EPIC annual meeting, Summerfest, Cleansweep, NNO, etc.
·
Garden: EPIC owns
the garden on 17th Avenue between 24th and 25th Streets.
Plots are available and activity will start up in March.
·
Pass around sign-up
sheet
8:35 Updates
1)
Timeline for revisiting all proposals that were not
funded through the Community Driven Project RFP process:
i. Meet
with Ethrophic and Steve (from the city) and determine amount of money
available (CPP and NRP) – will be meeting January 15th
ii. Decide
how much money to disperse via the RFPs and how much to reserve for
organizational needs
iii. Organize
the ‘rejected’ RFPs and ‘accepted’ RFPs into EPIC priority (Community
connection; public safety/crime prevention; new home construction/housing;
environmental justice/community-wide childhood illness; youth and adult
programming; community gardens) categories
1.
Which RFPs are our priorities? Which RFPs fall into
EPIC priorities that we haven’t funded?
2.
Evaluate communities served
3.
Prioritize proposals and recommend proposals for
February board meeting
2)
Smith Foundry – foul odors and pollutants (see safety
data sheet handout)
i. Community
members will be going down to city council on Friday 1/17/20 and demand that
the city recognizes the Health Impact Assessment for the Phillips Neighborhood
MOTION: The East Phillips Improvement Coalition
(EPIC), calls upon the City of Minneapolis to implement the recommendations of
the 2017 Health Impact Assessment for Phillips Neighborhood, and thereby cease
and desist planning, funding, zoning changes, or any activity that will
increase automobile or truck traffic in East Phillips Neighborhood, or in any
other way add to the overburden of pollution in Phillips Neighborhood, StS,
LD, approved
Discussion: One community person was concerned that we did
not have the 2017 Health Impact Assessment for Phillips Neighborhood
3)
Speed bumps on 17th Ave at 29th
Street because kids were killed
i. In
the past EPIC has funded half and the block pays half (usually most of the
block money comes from businesses and door knock the neighborhood)
ii. $7500
in the past
iii. EPIC
will try to follow the success of past blocks, with the leadership of the block
at 17th Ave at 29th Street
4)
Homeless issues this coming spring - TABLED
5)
Urban farm update – TABLED
8:56 Adjourn
