Madison Park

August 14th, 2006 Meeting Minutes

Aug 22, 2006

August 14th, 2006 Madison Park HOA
Meeting Agenda Minutes
www.neighborhoodlink.com 28210 Madison Park

Meeting Called to Order 7:30 PM by President Martin Doss

Councilman Andy Dulin stopped in to say hello. He said he was impressed that we had so many residents that cared enough about their community to come out to our meeting on a hot summer day.

Present were 53 members
Captain Adams from South Divisions
Sergeant Lester from Westover Division
4 officers that included Officer Del Duca, Officer Woodlief, and Officer Hairston

Westover Crime Stats
631 Seneca Place Hit and Run
536 E. Woodlawn Road Breaking and Entering
427 Gilmore Drive Larceny from Vehicle
4832 Gilmore Drive Larceny from Vehicle
4873 Oglethorpe Place Larceny from Vehicle
4712 Lamont Drive Breaking and Entering
5547 Wedgewood Drive Larceny from Vehicle
4712 Hunter Crest Lane Breaking and Entering
5217 Murrayhill Road Hit and Run
5044 Murrayhill Road Vehicle Theft
130 Holyday Court Larceny
814 Stanfield Drive Larceny from Vehicle

South Division
5200 Block of Londonderry Road Armed Robbery
5400 Block of Londonderry Road
5000 Block of Valley Forge Breaking and Entering
5200 Block of Seacroft Road Theft of Mail (This is the second time mail has been stolen in this block in recent months)?…Youths around the age of 12 were observed stealing mail the first time, and were actually yelled at to STOP by a resident of Seacroft. The youths took the mail anyway)! Make sure you do not put mail out for pick up. Take it to a Blue Postal Box or the Post Office. Watch out for your Neighbors.

When coming home especially at night, Police suggest that you make sure you are not being followed to your home. If you notice a car seems to be following you circle the block. If the car appears to continue to follow you dial 911 and report this immediately to the police and follow any advise from 911. This could keep you from becoming a random victim of an armed robber.

Crime is on the increase in our community. Residence must look out for each other and report all suspicious persons at once to 911. Be leery of people knocking on your door to do yard work or home repairs. This could be just a trick to see if you answer the door. They could then come back and target your home.

Captain Adams from South Division presented slides to explain and discuss the upcoming redistricting of our area. South of Tyvola is currently patrolled by South Division. Starting Jan. 1, 2007 the area will become Westover Division, as the North Side of Tyvola is already in Madison Park.

Westover will patrol all of our area for the first time. Westover will have pretty much the entire South CATS Light Rail line under their division. The only exception will be Dilworth end through Uptown, and the tip end near 485 and South Blvd.

The divisions are being realigned to provide quicker response times. This will also put neighborhoods under one division, and not split them as Madison Park has been split for years. Westover will gain a few more officers.

POLICE DEPT. REDISTRICTING Reason for the redistricting

The police department is planning to implement a redistricting plan in
January 2007. This has been approved and will add one patrol division
which will be located in the University area. The following are reasons
this has become necessary.
- Workload is no longer balanced
- Staffing levels are extremely unequal
- The disparity in span of control raises management issues in divisions
with large numbers of officers
- Growth in the outlying unincorporated areas, and future growth
the proposed plan simply divides the CMPD jurisdiction differently while
using existing personnel resources to handle the same total workload.
With the 13 division plan factors in the hiring of 58 additional police
officers approved in the FY07 budget.

Sergeant Lester from the Westover Division, the New Divisions for all of Madison Park come January 1st, 2007 was on hand as well. She passed out contact info sheets for the Westover Division.

President Martin Doss thanked Sgt. Lester for arranging the barricades for National Night Out. He also thanked Sgt Lester and Officer Hairston for arranging the officer that escorted our Mini Parade on the Eve of National Night Out. The parade went throughout our community and was used to invite people out to the NNO Event, and to build excitement. He also thanked all the officers for their help with National Night Out!

Guest Speaker Mary Ciminelli DVD and David Nelson Q & A Presentation on Greenway

THE GREENWAY
David Nelson, park planner along with Mary Ciminelli, Ciminelli
Associates presented a short DVD update of The Greenway. Progress is
being made on schedule with The Greenway.

David Nelson answered several questions about The Greenway near The
Queens Sports Complex & Little Sugar Creek area. A statement made by Mr. Nelson caused some concern after the meeting. President Doss has sent an email requesting
clarification on why the soccer/lacrosse fields are not going to be
available to the neighborhood and surrounding community as stated in the
ground breaking ceremony last year, and the Dedication Ceremony earlier this year. Queens has from the beginning told us that the fields would be available for community use
when not in use by Queens. (There will be an Update next month on this topic)

President, Martin Doss has a few DVD?’s of the presentation on the Greenway if any residents would like to borrow one to see the presentation on the Greenway.

National Night Out Feedback & Recap
President Doss heard only Positive Comments from those that attended the Street Party.

Andy Dulin said ?“You folks had a great turn out second to none.?”
John Lassiter e-mail early the next day saying family responsibilities interfered with his plans to join us. He had sent an e-mail the week prior saying he planned on spending the evening at our event.
Susan Burgess said the next morning that our ?“NNO event was the Largest, best organized and Most fun!?”
Officer Kimbell1 with the CMPD said we did a Great Job. She sent a second e-mail that said our event looked great from the air. She was circling over our street party in the helicopter.
President of Madison Park, Martin Doss said ?“We All Did a Great Job?”, HE appreciated all the extra hands that we had the day of the event with set up, event staff, and breaking it all down.?” I think the event had an amazing turnout considering we had a heat warning in effect until 7:00 PM the day of the event.

Special thanks
Patrick Stallings Thank You for supplying us with the ice cream. Patrick and his family live on Montford.
Thanks to Target Pineville for the donation of 130.00 gift card, and Wayne Knight from that location, along with his two associates that came and worked at our NNO event.
Thanks to the new Rivergate Super Target on South Tryon for donating a 100.00 gift card, and their produce manager for ordering extra watermelons for 2.99 each for us.
Captain Jolly and his Firemen for bring the Fire Truck and the Smoke House.
CMPD for the barricades and all the officer support we had for the Street Party and the Mini Parade on 7/31. Officer Hairston and Sgt. Lester are always most helpful in providing us with requested needs, so a Special Thanks to both of them!
We Thank Candy Bridges, with Parks and Recreation, for the Snow Cones, Cotton Candy, and the Giant Inflatable Slide. Candy worked all evening making snow cones. We appreciate Parks and Recreation for their Support of our community events each year.
Member Holy Harper for arranging for the live entertainment. The Band was great and worked for just tips. The other three members in the band were not from our community and we appreciate them taking time out to perform for us.

Officer Allen for the reverse 911 Calls for the National Night Out Street Party Phone Alerts
Note: Several People mentioned they had gotten multiple calls for the event from the reverse 911 system.
Martin forwarded this information to Officer Allen. Officer Allen responded that he was waiting on a software upgrade to correct some defects in the system. If the call is not answered a message is left on the answering machine. This is not a successful call however. The system waits a designated amount of time then tries again. That is the reason you have to press a button to retrieve the message when you receive a call. If no button is pushed the system thinks a machine answered. Anyway bottom line this is a very nice tool for us to be able to access as a community, and we think Officer Allen and the CMPD for their help in promoting our community wide events. All I do is make a list of all the Streets I wished to include, and send it along with a message or messages, and when I would like the messages to go out. Officer Allen then programs this in the system and the message is recorded and sent.

Door Prize Winner was Lydia Massey of Sandridge. We Thank the Marriott for donating the 1 night stay for two with breakfast, and our Treasurer Dee McCandlish for arranging this for us.

Parks and Recreation South Advisory Council Request
As many of you know President Doss has met and made presentations at several different advisory councils for Parks and Recreation, on his suggestions last March 06, on a possible plan for us to all gain a traffic light on Tyvola. An additional light that several members have requested I try and help get. VP John Olsakovsky and President Martin Doss both made a pitch to CDOT in April; Martin then made presentations to the Greenway Advisory Council, Marion Diehl Advisory Council, and the South Advisory Council. This traffic light would allow us to enter the South Side of Tyvola anytime at a traffic light, and at the same time give Queens University and Marion Diehl Senior Center the traffic light they desire.

This plan has been endorsed in writing by the Madison Park Homeowners Associations Board. The information has also been shared with Montclaire and Starmount our neighboring associations. We have had over 10,000 visits to our web site, since this information first appeared on our site. We have had no negative feedback. The topic now appears in at least 3 areas on our web site and has for the last several weeks.

Former Director of Parks and Recreation, Wayne Weston, liked the suggestions from the beginning. President Doss also felt the bike lanes would work for us in a dual function. We could travel safely to the park and future greenway, and use the bike lanes to get to the future light rail. Tyvola and the Woodlawn areas will all have bike lanes at the intersections on South over to the rail line stations.
The Board of Madison Park was not sure what would happen with the suggestions, since Mr. Weston is no longer the Director of Parks and Recreation.
Parks and Recreation however has now requested that we take a vote at our meeting, so that it is reflected in our minutes.

We are also requested to collect as many signatures as possible prior to the August 30, 2006 meeting where President Doss is to submit the requested information to the council.

Parks and Recreation said this support will go a long way in making this all possibly happen.

Remember the plan is not really just to gain a traffic light. It also calls for a center turn lane between Wedgewood and Farmbrook on Tyvola, and Bike lanes on Wedgewood between Seneca Place and Tyvola. Then bike lanes on Tyvola between Wedgewood and the new proposed entrance to the park at Farmbrook. The old entrance would be closed to Marion Diehl and relocated to align with Farmbrook at a traffic light.

FARMBROOK TRAFFIC LIGHT
Since the petition had been circulating for signatures for a traffic light at
Tyvola Road and Farmbrook. A motion was made by Ted Peters to open formal
discussion on this proposed traffic light. The topic has been brought up monthly since March 2006 at our meetings with the exception of July, 2006. None of the board of Madison Park had reporting hearing any negative feedback on the plan.

The following
concerns/questions were raised during the open discussion from three members.

Candace Armstrong ~ concerned about future cut through on Fairbanks. Board does not see this becoming a problem. Residents are already using Fairbanks to reach the only traffic light currently on Tyvola Road at Wedgewood. If anything it might decrease volume with second light.
Ken Davis ~ Celanese plant development on Archdale might be a possible traffic problem in future. Ken was concerned that it might increase traffic/speeders on Farmbrook. Resident did not feel current speed humps slowed down speeders. They asked if Stop Signs could be added to Farmbrook. Doreen Szymanski with CDOT is making a presentation at CDOT that supports lowering the current 1000 vehicles in a 24 hour period this month. If this goes through it could go to City Council for final approval in Sept. Currently you either get Stop Signs or Speed Humps for Traffic Calming measures, but not both. (Update Traffic officers are going to crack down on speeders on Farmbrook. This is already happening)
April Mays ~ said she supported the traffic light, but requested lights be closely synchronized due to the short distance between them. There are many traffic lights in our city as close and in some cases closer than these two planned traffic lights. CDOT has already discussed this concern when they met with Our President and Vice President in April 2006 and said they would have to be programmed to work together.
Candace Armstrong ~ questioned why we could not get a light at Londonderry. President Doss has addressed this issue with the city before. It can not be done since there are no turn lanes in that area of Tyvola. CDOT said it would increase rear in collisions. While Queens Sports Complex is being built is the time to request and get a traffic light possibly for this area. Queens and Parks can change the entrance for their complex to align with Farmbrook. This is why it is important to get the traffic light at Farmbrook now. The Traffic Light will give Queens Sports Complex a traffic light they requested, just at a different entrance and it would serve our community at the same time.

After no more questions or comments were raised a motion to close the discussion was made by John Olsakovsky, with a second from Lamar Gunter. Those in attendance voted unanimously to close the discussion.

Dee McCandlish then said we needed to take a formal vote on the proposal!
Ted Peters then made a motion to accept the proposal for a traffic light at the new Tyvola entrance and Farmbrook by bringing this to a vote by the Association membership. Lamar Gunter seconded the motion. A unanimous majority then voted to accept the proposal with no verbal objections. The minutes were noted to reflect the above by our President Martin Doss.

Montclair Neighborhood Associations board has endorsed the proposal in writing as well. They will be collecting names for the petition for the traffic light at their August 28th, 2006 monthly meeting.

Panhandling
At our June 2006 Meeting a member inquired to our officers about the increase panhandling in our community. Officer Del Duca had commented that South Division had pushed the panhandlers this direction. President Martin Doss witnessed the problem first hand a couple of weeks ago, and inquired to South Division and Westover Division Officers what we could all do about this problem. What he saw going on at Starmount was clearly just a scam to get cash. There was 6 people working the lot, and group of people at the empty lot across South Blvd. next to the then boarded up Burger King?…(good news that is being turned into a new business). The ones in the lot at Starmount appeared to be working from a van.

The police responded it was bad problem, and they had little luck getting them to move on. Sergeant Will Farrell from Westover responded he thought Martin?’s observations and comments about South were fairly timely and accurate. The two met the following afternoon to discuss the problem. He showed Martin a report where from Woodlawn Road to Archdale that robbery had doubled just this year. That very day that the Sergeant and President Doss met was when the body of a man was found behind an abandon home on East Woodlawn, just East of Murray Hill on the North Side of Woodlawn Road.
One of President Martin?’s concerns is that some of the increase crime is also possibly linked to thee homeless panhandlers, which is spilling over into our community. Car windows smashed for pocket change would be one of his suspicions.
He is also concerned once the light rail opens that these people will be all moving to the train platforms causing riders (our residents) to not feel safe. Mayor McCrory replied that this is a major concern of CATS, and will be a major component of their Transit Public Security Plan that is being developed.

The signs at the intersections that say No Solicitation require that an officer actually see the person accept money before they can be arrested. The best thing is not to give them money according the police. They end up buying drugs or alcohol many times with it according to Sergeant Farrell. Tyvola having so much traffic with many not local drivers but tourist makes it a prime location to Panhandle.

Mayor Pro Tem Susan Burgess said she was going to look into the problem. Martin suggested that the City find out what works in other cities with less of a problem and try to duplicate. Otherwise he fears we are going to look like San Francisco, where you have to step over the panhandlers. That was exactly the way he said he felt up at Starmount the afternoon he witnessed the problem. He heard from a Montclaire director that they were concerned with the problem. He was also told Starmount had the same concerns as well.

Property behind Auto Bell owned by Auto Bell?…..Resident reported there have been problems including a shooting. The member contacting President Doss thought a night club was operating. Police however reported that there is a sports type venue in one of the buildings, and that the owners were caught serving alcohol illegally, but this has since ceased. The resident contacting our President was concerned, since the shooting was reported to be gang related.

Question from a Member Asking about Reclassification since Madison Park is approaching 50 by a Resident to our President
This Response came from Mark Griffin our Zoning inspector for the area.
The Charlotte Mecklenburg Planning Commission facilitates/sponsors such overlay districts. It is difficult to get ''historic district'' status. Witness: Myers Park. About five or six years ago, residents of that community petitioned for historic district status. It was bandied about City Council and the Planning Commission. It was the subject of much intense scrutiny and discussion. The final result was that there was so much opposition to the proposed historic status, City Council dropped the idea.
The major objection is that there are additional steps for obtaining even rudimentary building permits. A homeowner must obtain a Certificate of Appropriateness by petitioning the Historic District Commission. It takes longer, sometimes several months. Applications are often times denied, and then the homeowner has to appeal the decision. Basically, a lot of neighborhoods don't want to go through the additional steps and attendant scrutiny.

Madison Park does not intend to seek this reclassification for the above reasons!

Yorktown Info on that property on Tyvola Road
Martin contacted the owners of Yorktown, J S Proctor and they responded, ?“I am not sure where the rumors are coming from, but we have no plans for Yorktown to be torn down.?”

As for your comments about crime,

?• We work very closely with the CMPD and hire officers for extra security.
?• We are extremely careful to screen our residents and do not allow anyone with drug convictions or felony charges to live in our units.
?• Should one of our residents be arrested and convicted we give them a notice to move.

If crime is an issue in your area, maybe you should look for other causes in addition to Yorktown.

We will be more than willing to meet with your association to address any concerns you have and work with you on a community watch program if you would be interested.

Martin invited them to attend our meeting, but did not hear back from them. He told them many of our residents would like to see the place go away with something new taking its place. He also let them know we currently work with two police Divisions, and that our previous minutes will note that some of the criminal activity in our community has been directed back to their apartments at our meetings from comments by our police.

Treasury Report Dee McCandlish
Dee reported we had 394.46 dollars

New Members/First Time Attendees
We welcome our newest members and first time Attendees. Please remember Madison Park Welcomes all residents of Madison Park, including renters to join us each month. Landlords and Property Management Companies in our Community are also encouraged to attend and participate. Remember if you have yard signs to put those out by Thursday prior to the next meeting. The next meeting is Sept. 11, 2006 so yard signs should go out on the 7th of Sept. 2006. Please remember to pay your dues. The dues are just 15 dollars per household a year!

Open Discussion/Issues/Concerns

Lamar Gunter showed the new Swat A Litter Bug Post Cards. They are available on our entrance tables to our meeting each month. The plan use of the cards is to report drivers you see littering the roads. Fill the card in and drop it in the mail. This can also be done online by following the Swat A Litter Bug link on our home page at www.neighborhoodlink.com Madsion Park 28210. Violators will receive a letter from the State of North Carolina, and a Second letter from the City if the violation involves a local County residents from Charlotte. The letters will state the driver was observed littering the highways/roads. It tells them what would happen had they been observed by an officer, and how much it cost to clean up trash. If caught littering it can result in points on your driver?’s licenses, causing your insurance to rise.

Lamar Gunter also mentioned Tyvola Adopt A Street needs to be picked up. We will do the pickup as planned in Sept. President Martin Doss already removes signs as he sees them illegally posted on Seneca Place and Tyvola Road. He actually e-mailed one of the violating companies recently and requested they not put up their We Buy Houses Signs in our community. He explained to them he takes them down as they go up, and this would save them money and his time of having to remove them. The company apologized and said they would not put any more of their signs up.

Candace Armstrong announced that the County Horticulturist, Aaron Lancaster will be making a presentation at our Sept. 11 meeting. She will be discussing timely tips for fall and lawn renovation.

Upcoming Picnic for the fall?….watch for date upcoming date either end of Sept. or around the first of Oct.