Goss-Grove Neighborhood Meeting, January 20, 2011

Goss-Grove Neighborhood Meeting Minutes

January 20, 2011

Attendees:  Jerrie and Jon, Jenny and Stephen, Mary and Maria, Amy, Michele, Mindy and Kent,  Loren and Andrea, Jeffrey and Cynthia, Sarah (web designer) and Rich (Community Cycles)

Food:  Shrimp gumbo, two kinds of brownies!!, fresh baked bread, salad, wine, chips, three layer bean dip.  Yummy!

Sarah presented the new web page she has designed for the neighborhood. You can find it at www.gossgrove.com.  Sarah has a business called Balanced Community, you can find her web site at http://balancedcommunity.com/ and is involved in hyperlocal activities.  She donated her time to design this site and it is totally awesome. Check it out!  On it, you will find:

-Our blog (which is also at www.goss-grove.blogspot.com

-Pictures from our neighborhood which are posted on flickr.  If you want yours to stream past, just label them as Goss-Grove and upload them to flickr.  You need a yahoo account to do this.

- City and County news releases

- Events, links, various feeds…

-Community bulletin board (rooms for rent, for sale, etc.)

- There is some movement afoot to have a quarterly neighborhood member profile

You can register on the site, which will then allow you to post to the forum or put in content.  Anyone can view, only members can post. Sarah will moderate and upkeep for one year.  After that, we’ll see where we’re at.  Thank you, Sarah!

One cool thing you can do if you want to let officials know of a problem in the city is to go to www.seeclickfix.com.   I took a look at what activity there was and the last thing I saw posted was months ago, but it was commented on by the Boulder traffic engineer so the comments do get picked up.

Mindy Hurd (no relation to Jerrie and Jon)  took another look at whether we could somehow get eco-passes in the neighborhood.  She was not successful because an eco-pass program has to be for a contiguous area and it’s hard to get enough people for it not to be too expensive.  Appreciate the effort, Mindi!

Rich rolled out a large map of the Goss-Grove neighborhood (well, part of it, between 17^th to Folsom, Canyon to Arapahoe).  Lots of discussion about how to make this neighborhood more friendly to bikes.  Suggested items included, pedestrian islands on Arapahoe at 21^st and 22^nd so we could get across more easily (kind of like at 17^th and Grove on the south side of the intersection).  Add one of those to the north side of that intersection, too.  Make crossings at Grove and 21^st and Grove and 23^rd less treacherous for bikes (angle of crossing and ballards).  Contra flow between 16^th and  17^th for bikes.  Next step to have design charrette with city.  Mindi, Michele, Mary, Jerrie and Andrea are all interested in participating.  Rich mentioned a grant which he thinks would be good to apply for from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program, in April.  The program would include some sort of program for students which would include help with local job placement (so bikes can be used to get there instead of cars), membership to carshare, access to bike shack (at Naropa, currently run by Community Cycles).  Students have to pledge to not have a car. CU is also on a mission to get students to reduce car usage (on campus, anyway). 

Mary gave us an update on zoning.  On the one hand, there does not seem to be much going on, but then there is a meeting scheduled for  February 16th from 5-7 on the Comprehensive Plan.  The next meeting after that is March-April time frame.  Jerrie and Mary said they would find out what is happening at the Feb. 9^th meeting; someone probably needs to be there. The City did not like all our zig/zag lines we drew for our neighborhood.