Oakley Neighborhood Association Meeting: 11.16.21

In attendance: Officers-5, others-3, total:8

Location: Fellowship Asheville

Introduction: Bess McDavid

• ONA officers present

  1. we are actually interim officers

  2. we need to approve our by-laws and looking to get our 501c3

  3. newcomers are encouraged to visit our website: https://www.oakleyneighborhoodassociation.com

  4. And also join our email list: oakleyneighborhoodassociation@gmail.com

Attendee: I didn’t know about meetings until just now

Micheal Stratton: We definitely need to get the word out!

• Our Open Streets Oakley event, held to spread awareness for traffic calming/multimodal transportation, etc., was very successful. We partnered with MTO and Asheville Bikes. We are looking forward to hosting another one in the spring.
  

• County Commissioners voted not to close any county libraries, including our very own Oakley library. We will be having a pizza party in the Murphy-Oakley Rec center Sat., November 20 from 4-6pm to celebrate our successful efforts (signs, attendance at listening sessions and communicating with our county commissioners).

Grants

• We now have a liaison person to AARP - George G. Holt. We will be having a meeting with them to see how they can assist us with funding.
  

• We have applied for 2 grants - an Oakley trees grant ($600-700) and a neighborhood matching grant ($2000) to help us with creating our branding and to launch our brand.
  

• Soni has been researching Dogwood Trust to see how they could potentially help us with funding as well.

  1. They have a few different funding categories we might fit into- health and wellness (Fairview Resilience Gardens), transportation, education (library programs), housing

  2. Impact investing- for start up businesses that fit their program

  3. Dogwood Leverage Fund- if you are applying for $100,000+ grant, you could get access to professional grant writers

  4. Unsure how their typical funding is awarded

• So, we need to establish what we want to do and complete a needs assessment, potentially for each committee.
  

• Buncombe County Tipping Point Grants- we need another 501c3 to sponsor us, we can get up to $5000, no matching necessary. Purpose: to assist community efforts.
  

• 501c3 update (Betsy Nesbitt) - after researching what goes into applying for a 501c3, we need to get a professional to help us here. If things are not done right, board members could be financially liable.

  • Attendee says that she has a neighbor who is a lawyer and might be willing to help.
    

• For these needs assessments we need to apply for these grants, we’ll have to be able to contact most households - there are grants to help us do this.
  

• Our branding grant has a small outreach portion - to hire people to conduct door-to-door surveys.
  

• Maybe statistics students at UNCA would be willing to help collect and compile demographics are part of coursework - Soni volunteers to reach out and see what is available.

Ramada Inn Follow-up

• Waiting for county to vote on whether they will help with funding

• If city buys it, there will be a Request for Proposals (RFP) ready to go.

Committee Updates

Garden Committee/Fairview Resilience Garden:

• Was created to provide food for local food banks for COVID relief.

• 2nd season doubled output! 1000 lbs of produce donated.

• In need of volunteers for final mulching.

• Committee will do a needs analysis.

Q: What is defined as the neighborhood (aka Oakley)?

A: Muni golf course, to Biltmore, bounded by parkway, Swannanoa River Road, not Shiloh. Admittedly answer is quite subjective.

Q: Should we move our emailing to mail chimp? Might be more useful for 501c3 requirements. And should we use funds in the treasury to purchase a subscription?

A: Vote to use funds to purchase a mail chimp subscription passed unanimously. Comment: make sure these emails are not getting kicked into people’s spam/junk folders

Library Committee:

• Pizza party celebration Sat., November 20 for saving our library

Q: where did the money come from?

A: left over from a Go Fund Me.

Community Watch:

As for Oakley Neighborhood, here are the summary counts for calls and incidents for last month.

• The highest volume of calls came from between Fairview Rd and Fairview Ave near Baldwin St and around Ledgewood Village.

• Crime occurred most often in Ledgewood Village and near Bleachery Blvd.

• If you have any questions, please let me know.

FINAL UCR - CFS

Total

All Other 74

Disturbance 21

Suspicious Activity 20

Medical/Check Welfare 18

Traffic Stop 17

Accident - Non-Injury 15

Civil/Court 10

Domestic Dispute 9

Theft 4

Animal Call 3

Accident - Injury 3

Noise Complaint 3

Alarm Call 2

Ordinance or Code Violation 2

Drug/Narcotic Violation 1

911 Hang-Up/Open Line 1

Building or Area Check 1

Grand Total 204

CLASS

TotalAll Other - Non-Criminal 7

Assault - Simple 4

Drugs/Narcotics Violation 3

Burglary from Motor Vehicle 3

Vandalism 2

Theft 2

Disorderly Conduct 2

All Other - Criminal 2

Fraud/Forgery 1

Death Investigation 1

Grand Total 27

• Agreed that trends would be more informative; will ask for those next time.

• Will also ask what APD defines ‘Oakley’ as.

• Rich Lee witnessed a high- speed chase through Oakley recently.

Media:

• Needs members.

• We would like to do an editorial page and/or blog.

• Website is up to speed and working well.

• Would like to do garden spots/updates by a chicken - most likely Nellie. :-)

Transportation Committee:

• Mandate: make this community more livable.

• At last city council, $96,000 was given for traffic calming. In the notes, a policy was written in 2000 and updated in 2014 (11 pages) as to how to get traffic calming dollars. But it looks like the only way to get those $$ is for the city’s transportation committee to reach out to you or the council, planning committee, zoning committee; the multimodal commission should be on there.
  

• Any issues should be reported on the app or by email since the more reports an issue has, the more likely it is to be addressed.
  

• Looks like there is a traffic study on East Street- potentially tied to development down on Thompson Street.
  

• Goal: to have a transportation meeting at some point

Q: how do we find out about committee meetings?

A: Email head of committee, but we should post on website.

Trees Committee:

• Has applied for a grant.

River Clean-Up:

• Not present/unknown.

Events:

• Not present/unknown.

Branding/Design:

• We need members here if we receive grant money.

Close

• We are trying to get by-laws set.

• Let’s think about if we are interested in a candidate forum.

• Ramada Inn - we need to develop a position on this w/input from community.