City asks NLC to help reactivate, sustain neighborhood associations

The Neighborhood Leaders Council met October 26. From the City’s Neighborhood Involvement office, Robert Brack.

[00:00:08] Robert Brack (City of Eugene): There’s some community interest in the West Eugene Community Organization to reactivate. And so I’ll be meeting with some community volunteers in that area to discuss what activation could look like and what support they may need. Those neighbors aren’t getting a chance to participate in a lot of the same processes that we all do.

Our office is starting to look at that a little bit more: How are we working to help support all of the neighborhood associations and that history of associations having a surge of activity and then that falling off again and people not continuing to help their neighborhoods be involved in their association work. And so we’ll be looking at that and we might even reach out to some neighborhood associations, just to have you all interacting and helping to support some of those other communities. And just see if there’s some creative ways to keep neighborhoods active. I’m super interested in that topic and connecting you with communities that are looking to reactivate. And so I might be sending out emails just to try to help connect people who are interested with you all who have been doing this work for years, and seeing if there’s any any changes or suggestions or support that we all may be able to provide so that neighbors can be represented.

Just a reminder from Cindy (Koehler of HRNI) that the second allocation of funding is set to be delivered by November 1st. And if you have any questions about that, please reach out to our office Cindy or myself, and we can get those funding questions answered. And just a reminder that March 1st is when that third funding allocation gets distributed.

For the at-large neighborhood representative to serve on the MUPTE application review panel, you’ll get all the information after November 1st. From there, you’ll have about about a week to set up a meeting for neighborhood boards to then review the applicants. Your board can start to meet and then go over the applicants and then can decide what you’re ranked choice voting is. But you have about two weeks from that November 1st date. Voting will close on November 14th and then on November 15th, we’ll be able to announce the results. I’m happy to share any of the information that I sent out or explain any of that.

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[00:02:29] John Q: The NLC continued to move forward after dissolving its wildfire committee.

[00:02:37] David Monk (Southeast Neighbors): For those of you who were at the July meeting, you realize, you recall, we had a raucous conversation about the dissolution of the Wildfire Preparedness Coalition committee of the NLC. What I had tried to convey at that meeting, and I’m going to tell you now, is that we received grant monies from ODF. They told us it was a $4,000 grant. What we did was we spent about $2,200 in that outreach effort. there’s virtually $1,800 left that I had cleared with Eugene Neighborhood Inc., with their board members, to write a check to them. So that $1,800 is really unencumbered in that regard.

And I wrote the grant report and basically what I said was, I assumed that we would be using that money to further the work of the Coalition and I didn’t specify anything specific. ODF really didn’t put any parameters on that. So I can certainly go back to ODF staff and ask them if that would make it easy for you all to decide where to deposit or who oversees that money.

[00:03:45] Tom Bruno (Laurel Hill Valley): I guess we need to make sure that we are in compliance with whatever the grant said. Before I would vote, I would like to see something or somebody an email sent that this was what we wrote for the grant. And this is what we received the grant for.

[00:04:05] Anne Milhollen (Northeast Neighbors): I just have a request. I really appreciate it if David could send us a copy of the grant proposal so we could see in general what they said they wanted to use the money for, and it might help us if we’re gonna apply for grant funds, to know at least the general description.

[00:04:27] Tom Bruno: I understand David wants to pass the money to an organization. I don’t have a problem with passing money. I just want to know who’s in charge. I think that’s kind of how we got in trouble with Tom Peck in that there was a lot to be done, but it was never documented. So I’m just, just don’t have a warm and fuzzy on what we’re trying to do and who’s in charge.

I would like to recommend that David and I work out a memorandum of understanding so that everybody understands and can read what we’re signing up to. We could write up a memorandum of record that said, this is what happened. This is the intent and these are the standing rules, a specified task, the implied task. And once it’s been massaged by appropriate people. It’ll come to the NLC for final approval, but I think we need something in writing.

[00:05:25] David Monk: I’m happy to help Tom with that. And then of course we’ll submit that to you all and you revise it, however you see appropriate.

[00:05:31] John Q: The NLC will take up the memorandum at its November meeting.

[00:05:40] Randy Prince (Amazon Neighbors): Yeah, Randy Prince. I have been on the board of the Eugene Neighbors Inc. And we are having our annual meeting on November 3rd. It is a zoom event and the neighborhoods that belong, which is most of them, receive an email inviting you to please come and so we can have a quorum and keep this organization, which is able to provide financial support and sponsorship for neighborhood association projects, alive and going. That’s November 3rd. Because of the Zoom format, we’re going a little later— it’s around seven. It will be a short meeting. There’ll be reports from neighborhoods about what you’re doing and making sure that our nonprofit, which is some 20 years old, is meeting the needs of all of you. Please get in touch with me or Jerry Finigan or Pete Knox, another member of the board. Thank you.