Wednesday, January 26, 2011

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 17th 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 21st and 22nd so we could get across more easily (kind of like at 17th 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 21st and Grove and 23rd less treacherous for bikes (angle of crossing and ballards).  Contra flow between 16th and  17th 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. 9th meeting; someone probably needs to be there. The City did not like all our zig/zag lines we drew for our neighborhood.  

Monday, January 24, 2011

Rich's Videos on Bicycle Blvd's

Here are some videos Rich Points sent to give a better idea of Bicycle Blvd ideas. Used to live in Portland, Oregon area. I'm familiar with Lincoln Street and this really was an improvement for the NE part of that city.

www.StreetFilms.org-Berkeley Bike Boulevards

StreetFilms-Portland: Bicycle Boulevards

Friday, January 21, 2011

test 17

have confirmed that posts will go to my yahoo address.  Have added blogger to group membership in googlegroups.  Now we'll see if this actually gets forwarded...like it used to with no problem.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Go Boulder Wants US!!!!!

Need another reason to come to the meeting tomorrow?
Check out what Rich Points wants to talk about and Go Boulder's interest in us!!!

Hi Jerrie,
So I'm going to try to make it to your meeting tomorrow. I met some folks from GO Boulder today to talk about the campaign and see how they could support our Goss Grove efforts. They are very supportive and want to look for opportunities for innovation. Go Boulder would like to have your feedback by February so they can allocate 2011 resources towards it.

What they need from the neighborhood is input. I guess there are two ways we could go forward. 1) would be to have me bring a map to tomorrows meeting and I could give a quick overview of what we've talked about in our brainstorming sessions. From there we'd solicit your feedback; ideas, critiques and so on. I could see this taking up a big chunk of your meeting time. 2) Another option would be to form a committee or we could call a special meeting of the neighborhood association to go over the nuts and bolts of this.

I prefer the later but I'm willing to do what it takes to keep this moving.

Please let me know asap and I'll plan accordingly.

I've CC'd Graham and Karen from Carshare here.

Ride On!
Rich

Friday, January 14, 2011

Eight Reasons To Be At Next Neighborhood Meeting




1. Shrimp Gumbo
2. Sarah McClain will demo Goss-Grove hyperlocal website (cool stuff)
3. Rich Points will update us on the bike/carlite and/or Eco Pass project
4. Mary Hey will have the latest on the rezoning issue with the city
5. We tentatively have a police officer coming--always depends on what's happening that night.
6. Shrimp Gumbo
7. The stuff you bring to go with the Shrimp Gumbo
8. Good talk, fine neighbors, fire in the fireplace, fun . . .

January 20, Thursday, 6 p.m. at Jon and Jerrie Hurd's house 2010 Goss St.