Oakley Neighborhood Association Meeting: 11.16.21
In attendance: Officers-5, others-3, total:8
Location: Fellowship Asheville
Introduction: Bess McDavid
ONA officers present
we are actually interim officers
we need to approve our by-laws and looking to get our 501c3
newcomers are encouraged to visit our website: https://www.oakleyneighborhoodassociation.com
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.
They have a few different funding categories we might fit into- health and wellness (Fairview Resilience Gardens), transportation, education (library programs), housing
Impact investing- for start up businesses that fit their program
Dogwood Leverage Fund- if you are applying for $100,000+ grant, you could get access to professional grant writers
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.