MEETING MINUTES Project: Oaklawn Park NIP (City project 512-01-045) Purpose: Public Meeting #3 Place: First Baptist Church West Meeting Date: August 12, 2002 Prepared By: Jennifer Penick In Attendance: Bruce Miller – City E&PM Ralph Poindexter – City Neighborhood Development Kate Labadorf – City Stormwater Services Mike Davis – Charlotte Dept. of Transportation Doreen Szymanski – Charlotte Department of Transportation John Howard – Planning Commission John Fishburne - Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utility Jennifer Penick – Qk4 A Public Meeting was held on August 12, 2002 at 7:00 PM at the First Baptist Church West on Oaklawn Avenue. The purpose of the meeting was to present the preliminary plans for infrastructure improvements for the Oaklawn Park Community. The meeting gave residents the opportunity to participate in the planning process through review of the preliminary plans and making comments, suggestions, and asking questions. Mr. Poindexter began by thanking those attending the meeting and introducing the key officials, neighborhood representatives, and the project team. Mr. Poindexter explained that there is a program within the city called Neighborhood Matching Grants Program whereby the neighborhood can get money from the city to match for improving the quality of life in the neighborhood to include: crime and public safety, recreation, educational resources and beautification projects. However, the community would have to match those city funds with either in-kind donations, sweat equity or some other type of funding source. There is a process that the community would need to go through to gain access to these funds beginning with a pre-application workshop and culminating in the submittal of a complete application. The next deadline for submittal of a completed application is September 15, 2002. According to Mr. Poindexter, there is currently a lot of money available for this type of grant from the city and it would be a bonus to the community for additional beautification projects in conjunction with the neighborhood improvement project. Mr. Poindexter then introduced Mr. Bruce Miller with Engineering and Property Management to begin the presentation of the Neighborhood Improvement Project. MEETING MINUTES Mr. Miller began by thanking those attending the meeting and asking how many of those in attendance were there for the first time. Five of people raised their hands. He then presented a brief overview of the project’s history, funding sources and a summary of the minutes from the September 18, 2001 public meeting. Some of the items discussed at the last meeting were: Drainage issues in the Dean/Waddell area, existing drainage ditches and catch basins needing maintenance, and location of additional sidewalks on Gunn Street and Miles Court. The time line for the project was then provided as follows: Preliminary Plans complete – Fall 2002 Construction start date – Fall/early Winter 2003 Jennifer Penick of Qk4 then presented the details of the preliminary plans. During the map presentation, attendees viewed the large (1” = 40’ scale) presentation map showing the proposed locations of new valley gutter, sidewalks, planting strips, drainage improvements, required easements and new ROW lines. Ms. Penick began her presentation by indicating the locations of proposed sidewalks, planting strips and valley gutter and provided reasons for the current sidewalk placement such as: amount of pedestrian traffic; community requests; location of community buildings, parks and/or churches; and/or engineering judgment. She stated that the main streets accessing the neighborhood would be receiving sidewalks (i.e., Fairmont, Condon, and Mulberry) along with some streets accessing parks or providing access through the neighborhood (i.e., Renner and Grier). In addition, handicap ramps would be provided on the sidewalks to facilitate ADA accessibility in the neighborhood. Ms. Penick indicated that the proposed stormwater pipe and structure locations were shown on the plans. However, the locations of stormwater pipes and structures are still preliminary. To allow for the proposed neighborhood improvements, several types of easements will be required: Permanent Stormwater Drainage easements, Sidewalk easements, and Utility easements. Ms. Penick explained the use of each type of easement and stated that a request would be made for the easements to be donated to the City. Ms. Penick then explained that several of the streets in the neighborhood that did not meet the City’s minimum width standard of 22’ would be upgraded to meet this minimum width, turning radii at many street intersections would also be improved to meet the city minimum standard of 20’ radii. As shown on the map, most streets will also be receiving valley gutter and storm drainage improvements. Ms. Penick discussed the need for additional ROW donations in several areas due to the existing maintained roadway being outside of the existing R.O.W. or the need to widen the streets to meet the City minimum standard of a 22’ wide travel surface. It was explained that the additional R.O.W. required would be similar to the easements and would be requested from the residents as a donation to the City. MEETING MINUTES Ms. Penick stated that the Charlotte Mecklenburg School district is currently renovating the neighborhood school, Oaklawn Elementary. The school is closed for this school year to facilitate the renovation and site changes, but will be open for students for the 2003-2004 school year. Due to the school’s location and the apparent lack of pedestrian connection to the west side of the neighborhood, a pedestrian connection has been proposed to extend between the dead end of Renner Avenue and Mulberry Avenue through the existing Renner Avenue Right of Way. Mr. Doreen Szymanski was introduced to introduce and detail the plans for this possible connection. Ms. Szymanski stated that CDOT was currently assessing several locations for connectivity throughout the City of Charlotte. Due to the proximity of the neighborhood school in this neighborhood, it appeared that a multi-functional pedestrian way that was well lighted would assist the children needing access to the school from the west side of the neighborhood. She showed a conceptual picture of the way the area might look with lights and the concrete walkway. The attendees were asked if this was something that they felt was important and necessary. The attendees agreed that it might be a good idea, but they indicated that they lived on the eastern portion of the neighborhood so it did not appear that it would affect them. At the end of Ms. Szymanski’s presentation, Ms. Penick opened the floor for comments and questions then she encouraged those in attendance to view the large scale plans on which she and the City Representatives would help the residents find their property on the plan sheets and discuss impacts to their property(s) in detail. During this time, residents were also encouraged to view the before and “after” photographs of selected streets in the neighborhood showing what the improvements might look like. During the question and answer session and plan sheet viewing, the following questions and/or comments were discussed: Comment: The slab-type catch basin located behind the houses on the northern portion of Dean Street needs to be cleaned out as it does not function properly. Answer: This drainage appears to be from the private properties within the area bounded by Dean and Waddell Streets and Russell Avenue that traverses the properties and drains down the fence line separating the properties fronting on Waddell and Russell until it enters the catch basin at the rear of one of the houses along Dean Street. From this catch basin, it flows in a pipe to the street drainage system in Dean Street. Ms. Labadorf stated that she would send a stormwater specialist out to assess the situation; however, she stated that drainage stemming purely from private property is not usually considered to be in the purview of Stormwater Management. Question: Can drainage from the area behind the houses along Dean Street be improved to stop stormwater from crossing the properties and draining down their driveways and into Dean Street? MEETING MINUTES Answer: Ms. Labadorf stated that she would send a stormwater specialist out to assess the situation; however, she stated that drainage stemming purely from private property is not usually considered to be in the purview of Stormwater Management. Question: It was stated that additional street lighting is needed along Fairmont Street for public safety concerns by the police force. In addition, the street lights in the cul-de-sac on Dean Street are not currently working. Answer: Ms. Szymanski stated that the lighting issues would be looked into for Fairmont and Dean Streets. Comment: Streets. Mr. J. A. Swain asked if speed bumps could be added to Russell Avenue and Dean Answer: Ms. Szymanski stated that there is a list of items that must be met in order for a street to meet the requirements for speed bumps or other traffic calming devices. One of those is a minimum daily car count that Dean Street would probably not meet. In fact, Russell Avenue probably will not meet the requirements. However, she said that a petition could be circulated to lower the speed limit on the street to 25 mph. Comment: Can the sidewalk along Dean Street be extended southward from Waddell to the culde-sac? The residents are concerned about the number of children who walk in the street here. Answer: Dean Street The city and the consultant will review the addition of sidewalk to this portion of Comment: Mr. Johnson, who owns the property along Renner Street and fronting on Mulberry Avenue, asked for a more in-depth discussion with Ms. Szymanski and the project team concerning the proposed multi-use sidewalk connection between Renner Street and Mulberry Avenue. He expressed a concern over the amount of loitering at the corner of Condon and Renner that currently exists and felt that a sidewalk – even a well-lit one – might attract the loiterers down in front of his home. He would like to see the ROW abandoned between the dead end of Renner and Mulberry Avenue. Answer: The community police officer stated that he thought that the multi-use sidewalk would be a positive addition to the neighborhood as the police officers ride their bikes around to patrol the neighborhood so this would allow them to better patrol this area. CDOT stated that no decisions are being made at this time as they are in an “information gathering” mode at this time. It was stated that the connection could even wait to be built until all of the neighborhood improvements have been completed to see if the connection was still a good idea. MEETING MINUTES The next meeting will be held in early 2003 and the exact time and location will be announced within the neighborhood newsletter. The purpose of that meeting will be to present and discuss the final plan design. If you have any additions, or corrections to these minutes, please contact me by August 23, 2002. END OF MEMORANDUM JLP/jlp file: 01552 – Meeting Minutes cc: Attendees Tim Gibbs, CATS