BOARD MEETING MINUTES – Monday, November 19th, 2018 – 6:30 p.m., Fuller Park
Board members present: Joy Gottschalk, Dan Williams, Pat Collins, Steve Wohlford, Brian McDonald, Ryan Fisher, Briana Daymont, Dirk Nicholson, Kellie Hanson, Carl Arrell, Dick Fiala, Erik Brenna, Valerie Hurst
Board members absent: John Dukich
Also present: Rachel Hoben (park director), Sally, Jeremy Schroeder, Tom Balcom (neighborhood historian), Barbara Balcom
Called to order: 6:34pm
Due to other committments, Gabe has resigned from the board.
Council Member Schroeder Update
Jeremy presented TNA with a Minneapolis Green Business award recognizing TNA’s effort to help eliminate the use of PERC in dry-cleaning businesses in the city.
Jeremy is working on the upcoming City Budget, the City’s comprehensive plan, and inclusionary zoning, among other things. He will also meet with Sally to talk about the Neighborhoods 2020 process which reworks how neighborhood organizations like TNA are funded. The Neighborhoods 2020 recommendation is due before the end of the year, the city will hold listening sessions in January and February, and the final proposal will come before the City Council in March.
He also gave an update on the 2040 plan. He is focusing on energy sustainability and seniors issues, like ensuring “universal design” is a guiding principle, that 1st floor development accounts for seniors’ needs, determining funding senior services, and the proposed shoveling plan. The council will hold a final vote on December 7th.
Jeremy also gave an update on the homeless encampment near Hiawatha. The City is continuing to place residents into housing where possible. They are also funding $1.5 million for “more permanent” temporary shelter at the Red Lake Nation location and are working with the tribe to amend their existing agreement for temporary structures through April. However, Hennepin County is usually responsible for homeless services which limits what the City can do itself. There are already 800 people on waitlist and those people need to be balanced against the 300 currently in the encampment.
Officer Reports:
Secretary – Steve made a motion to approve the November minutes, Dick seconded. Voice vote, all in favor, motion approved.
Treasurer – Brian presented the year’s financial report through Nov 12, 2018. TNA had a bank balance of about $51,000 but is keeping $10,000 reserved to cover an advance we have not yet paid back to the city. Steve thought the T-shirt revenue looked too low and thought the amount may only represent cash sales, not PayPal. Sally promised to double-check.
Executive Director Report
The TNA holiday gathering will be hosted at Dick’s house on December 17 and will not be a TNA meeting. The next official TNA meeting will be January 21.
Open Streets Lyndale will be June 2. The board had no problems with that date.
Sally suggested a “thank you” gift card for Chriss Joyce, our TNA interim coordinator for part of 2018. Joy made a motion to approve a $50 gift card which Carl seconded. Voice vote, all in favor, motion approved.
Sally’s performance evaluation would normally be done in November but she is just returning from an absence and many board members are new and haven’t worked with her. She suggested her review be done in February instead.
The City is holding Neighborhood 2020 meetings over the next few weeks and will vote on the final plan in December. These meetings are critical to TNA’s future funding and Sally suggested board members get involved and send comments while the comment period was still open.
Sally presented the FY19 proposed budget. Board approval of the budget allows her not to return to the board for every expense. She brought up the sponsorship category which may not be cost effective and said she would come back to the board with a proposal for reworking the sponsorship plan. Steve asked how the items in the budget correlated with the neighborhood initiatives plans and whether some items in the budget should instead come from the initiatives funding. Sally agreed and will review budget expenses once we approve specific initiatives. Steve also asked whether Sally keeps separate track of money we can spend for non-city-approved costs. Sally said she did and that we have enough money to fund small non-city-approved expenses (like food, bagels for volunteers, etc). Brian also pointed out that the budget is balanced.
Sally showed the board the old Tangletown NRP action plan totalling about $314,000 and said that Stacey wanted to make it clear that all the old initiatives would be zeroed out when we approve our new action plan. However, one old NRP contract for communications for $20,000 would still be left open.
Carl asked if we should keep our non-NRP/CPP revenue (from events, t-shirts, etc) off the budget to begin building unencumbered reserves. Brian and Sally replied that it was technically already done that way, but Carl thought it would be clearer to keep it separate from the official budget and cover as much as possible from NRP/CPP. The board agreed that this was a good idea and any unencumbered money will show as a positive balance in the budget.
Sally met with City of Lakes Community Land Trust to explore a partnership for utilizing the $90,000 of housing-designated money. CLCLT has several locations in South Minneapolis that TNA could help fund as long as the board is willing to consider funding projects outside of Tangletown. One option includes rehabbing a condo rather than purchasing property which would have quicker turnaround time (about 6 months) than a full property renovation. Other options will take more time. Sally asked CLCLT to present options at the January meeting. Steve noted that we had discussed creating a separate committee to handle the housing funds, but Sally said the process would be fairly hands-off once the board decided on the path. Val asked what the timeline was, Sally said they close on the proposed property in April and if TNA were interested in quick turnaround, CLCLT would need funding before then. Dick asked what our financial risk was if CLCLT defaulted; Sally replied that any loan would be backed by the property as collateral.
Committee Initiatives Review
Steve’s was concerned that the budget amounts seemed arbitrarily tied to quickly made initiatives and that reduces flexibility in the future. Sally replied that the amounts aren’t really locked in because what really matters is the City NRP/CPP contract categories into which the specific initiatives are combined. Steve proposed that $5000/year or less for any initiative could be automatically approved by the board in this meeting. Dick agreed. Carl asked that future meetings build in time for committee status updates.
The board then discussed each initiative.
1.1: Bri asked whether stenciling would be a large part of the cost. Joy replied that stenciling had not changed but that they removed one event for a reduction of $3000 from the budget. Steve was previously concerned about overlap with the City’s (and Hamline’s) program but the committee will coordinate with the City to make sure that doesn’t happen. Bri noted that the BPS committee will also be reaching out to artists and that the Sustainability and BPS committees should coordinate on artist outreach. The board approved this initiative as budgeted.
1.2: Steve thought this was way under-funded and that there was opportunity for increased funding. Joy replied that the item was prioritized lower in the first year, and the committee would like to have success with energy and water before waste reduction. The hope to leverage other organizations doing similar work. Steve thought this might be higher priority than other committee’s initiatives and if there was extra money from other initiatives he’d like to see it added here. The board approved this initiative as budgeted.
1.3: Steve thought the remediation rebate item ($500 each for 40 houses) would not benefit enough homes and that a broader impact would be preferable. Joy said the committee looked at other options but those could not be spent on housing. She also said that if we exhaust the funding we could find more money for the initiative. Carl suggested covering the energy squad visit and then negotiating with the remediation vendors to offer Tangletown residents a blanket discount instead of rebates. Joy thought that was a good idea but difficult to implement. Steve noted this was another initiative that could receive funding from other initiatives if budgets elsewhere were reduced. Bri suggested that the committee discuss Steve’s concerns and come back with any changes they might want to make. The board approved the funding amount but not the implementation details.
1.4: The board approved this initiative as budgeted.
2.1.1: Carl thought this item should really receive more money from other items in the BPS budget. The board approved the funding amount but not the implementation details.
2.1.2: The board approved the funding amount but not the implementation details.
2.2.1: The board discussed why the items’ funding was so low versus other things TNA could do. The committee had discussed various concrete options and decided that most weren’t TNA’s responsibility or weren’t financially feasible. The goal was mostly to keep conversation open and to keep an item on the initiatives list. The board approved this initiative as budgeted.
2.3.1: The board approved the initiative as budgeted, conditional on continued coordination with other committees.
2.4.1: Steve would prefer to wait a year and spend the money in Tangletown. Carl thought that if the property was outside Tangletown TNA should charge below market interest, but if the property was in Tangletown then TNA should waive interest and re-invest the money here. Erik asked if the intent was one project at $90,000 or a few smaller projects; Sally replied it would only be feasible as a single project. Brian asked what the argument for doing a project outside Tangletown was now, rather than waiting for a project in the neighborhood to appear. The board requested that CLCLT attend the January board meeting to present options before approving the implementation of the initiative.
3.1: Joy requested that the EWC committee consider more reusable/multi-functional items like the heavy canvas bags rather than the polypropylene reusable grocery bags). The board approved this initiative as budgeted.
3.2: Steve thought this funding could be better utilized elsewhere and that perhaps we should ask people to sign up rather than send unsolicited materials. He suggested the committee could re-allocate the money to sell nicer items at events instead. Dirk suggested TNA-branded freebies for attending meetings and events. Carl suggested incorporating a coupon in the newsletter or e-newsletter. The board generally agreed with Steve, Dirk, and Carl’s suggestions and approved the funding but requested the committee come back to the board with implementation details.
3.3: Steve thought the amount was too low to hire a long-term consultant. Dick said he would rather spend the money on training for Sally. Kellie suggested using the board/team’s expertise too. The board approved this initiative as budgeted.
3.4: The board approved the funding but requested the committee return to the board with implementation details.
Dan made a motion to approve the budgets for each initiative conditional upon committees returning to the board for implementation approval where noted. Steve seconded. Voice vote, all in favor, motion approved.
Next Steps
Bri presented a committee initiative detail sheet that each committee should fill out for each initiative and return to Sally to start implementation. Committees should start with high priority items since Sally will begin implementation of those first. Sally is creating a survey to use for evaluation of initiatives and will send a draft to the board.
Adjourned: 9:00
Minutes submitted by Dan Williams, TNA Secretary