Greater Avenues Community Council Meeting Minutes

BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: Judith Locke, Michael Hughes, Phil Carroll, Jaynie Brown, Steve MecGham, John Sittner, Jill Van Langeveld, Walter Jones, Dave Jonsson, Thella Mae Christensen, Shane Carlson, Jim Jenkins, Alieen Olsen, Trish Orlando, Long Richardson, Kelley Stevens, and maybe others.

REPORTS:

POLICE: Officer Evans

3 burglaries in the area: One was bad checks done by a friend; another was a forced trespass by a friend who came in and took a phone; the last was a real burglary with a side entry door forced opened and a VCR, TV computer stolen. Car thefts: Honda Accords are being stolen often in the Avenues and downtown area. If you own one, you should take steps to disable it if you leave it. One way is to take the distributor cap off; they can’t steal your car. It is easy to put on and off.

LEGISLATURE: Senator Scott McCoy
The biggest thing will be the budget and the tax reform. They say there is going to be a $1 billion budget money surplus, much of which is one-time money. The democratic Caucus had a press conference on some great education issues. We are doing a Legislative Questionnaire that will hit your mail boxes in the next week. We want you to tell us your priorities and it details some of the big issues. About 6 of those are related to the tax issues.

Rep. Ralph Becker: Questions on anything that you are concerned about?
QUESTIONS: We are concerned that there is a bill that is drafted that will seriously alter local government ability to direct land use within their jurisdictions.
RESPONSE: That is true and we will be watching it very closely.
QUESTION: Major Disaster Planning in Utah?
RESPONSE: In preparing for the Olympics we did more planning than any other state in the Union. We have an agency that has that assignment. Our communications ability is one of the finest in the US. I ran some legislation on Disaster Planning at the State Level. Yet I am sure we are not as well prepared as we could be. Would Police like to comment on that? “We are very well prepared; we do large exercises at least twice a year and smaller exercises often. Peter Corroon: Utah has a great search and rescue team with lots of supplies that actually went down to New Orleans. Sen. McCoy: We have also updated our response and quarantine rules for Bird Flu. Ralph Becker: Everyone should have the ability to get along (food, water, flashlights, matches, candles, etc) if everything breaks down, or shuts down with a major disaster. And that is the responsibility for each member of the community to take care of themselves. Sen. McCoy: Those who were prepared got out of New Orleans, but those who didn’t were at risk. Private Citizens should also look out for their neighbors if they have someone without a car, or are too elderly or disabled, to look after them. Comment: We need to have more advanced notice of community disaster drills so we can get the information out to the people. We got less than 24 hours notice for the planned drills. The trainings need to be in the news...

Peter Corroon: Things are going great in Salt Lake County. Just finished my first year and I love my job. We do a lot of great things, and as a city resident you don’t see all of it, as much as the unincorporated areas. We run all the arts facilities and Abravenal Hall. The Health Department is run by the County and we operate the landfill as well. We hope to be doing some great re-cycling things there. We put a lot of money into the Arts that you help pay for. We also have 30,000 volunteers and provide over 1000 meals a day to shut ins on the Meals-On-Wheels, so ewe do a lot of good. QUESTION: What about recycling computers and batteries? We have an opportunity to do that. I will get the information to Steve Mecham. Glass recycling is by the zoo. QUESTION: I am most impressed with the Senior Program and the ability they have to help the elderly. Could they expand the ability to transport seniors? I will pass that on.

CITY: Gwen Springmeyer: We invite you to attend the Brown Bag and Freedom Forums. The latest Freedom Forum will be on January 25th on overdose prevention. Lately several people have not called 911 and their friends died. January 17th the City Council meeting at 7:00 will be the State of the City Address. It promises to be an interesting speech. It is open to the Public or on cable channel 17. The Sundance Film Festival will have a lot of activities on 300 South between the two theaters. City officers are closed on the 16 of January and the 20th of February. Telephone number is: 535-6338. My email address is gwen.springmeyer@slcgov.com.

IHC: Notes to neighbors were sent to neighbors. There is some construction on C Street between 9th and 11th Avenues. The re-paving activity impacted an old utility tunnel that has not bee n used for a long time and unfortunately the City put a hole in it doing their paving. There will be some traffic diversions. Then the tunnel will be filled in. IT is a major financial drain for the hospital, which they are taking care of... We hope it will have major impact. We have changed our email addresses. Now they are intermountainmail.org. If you have any problems during construction call Mikelle Moore 408-1838 or email at micelle.moore@intermountainmail.org.

Zoning Issue: Richard Doxey: We have a Duplex at 587 -10th Avenue and _507 - “I” Street. We have had it as a duplex since 1953, but as we have been getting ready to sell it, we found that the City did not do the work as needed on the zoning ordinance. It was built as a single family dwelling in 1941 but changed to a duplex in 1953. We notified the neighbors. We also have off-street parking with a 2 car garage. Any public comment?

State of the Avenues Address: Jill VanLangleveld

What have we accomplished this year?
One goal was getting Neighborhood Watch going. Unfortunately, we have one area organized, Steve Mecham’s area. We have not done as well on that as we needed to. Could each area set a goal to get their neighborhood Watch going?

We also got the Olympic Park Memory Grove Project going and got it almost completed, but we ran out of money. We are hoping to get it finished in a few months.

4th Avenue Stairs are still in need of repair. Our request for one grant was turned away, and we are waiting to see on the rest.

Ottinger Hall project is coming along, but it won’t be ready for Youth City for a long while.

We had concerns about the Monster Home issues. The City Council

We had a wonderful Street Fair

We had a wonderful Memory Grove Clean up.

We did get our new BY-Laws approved.

We have much more to do. Let’s get going.

REPORT GANG UNITS: LT. Doubt: I am in charge of vice and gang issues. We want to talk about the graffiti and gangs. Gang Graffiti and Tagging are different and they mean different things to the community. Need to understand the differences. Tagging is not an organized group here to do criminal acts. They have a lot of bubble letter, drawings, and different colors in their artistic vandalism. (West side Tagging Crew) They usually are not violent in Salt Lake. They just compete to see who can get the most stuff up.

Gang graffiti is the street newspaper for the gangsters. They are going to have violent criminal activity in the neighborhood. They have threats, profanity, numbers, backwards letters, and role-call of names, cross-outs, pitchforks up or down. Numbers: 187 is the California penal code for murder. (Crips and Bloods are two major gangs in Utah; also Alley Boys Gang; they declare war on each other.)

If you see Graffiti in progress call the police. If you see it up, but not in progress, call 972-7885 immediately. We need to get if off immediately so they know that people are watching and they care. The same with the broken windows.

We have been very active in immediately contacting the gang leaders so they are down (violent crime) down by 34% from last year. Property crime is down by 47%. We have 15 gang suppression officers and several more to oversee the efforts.

Our strategy is to put the hardcore gang offenders in long-term prison for their crimes. We identified the three most violent gangs and the top five members in each gang, and we track those. As we put one in jail, we added one more from their list of members. Recently we got search warrants and recovered fire arms and got those gang units put away. We also got the families involved in the process and that got mom and dad and siblings to affect the younger gang members and that has been effective. So we are going to continue that same activity this year.

Gangs use drugs and they sell drugs.

QUESTION: Do the ones in prison get rehabilitated in jail? RESPONSE: We work with the younger ones, but the older ones are so hardened that they don’t respond and they go to Federal Prison away from Utah and stay for long-terms.

Most crime in the City is down. Drive-by shootings are down, once we found out who was doing most of the shootings, and we put him in jail.

If you see

Gang: Hotline: 799-4114

Graffiti Hotline: 972-7885

Police Non-emergency: 799-3000

AVENUES HOUSING COMPATABLE COMMITTEE:

The new ordinance was passed on December 13th.
1)There are dimensional limits for Over-the Counter Permits. If you don’t meet them then you must go to the “Routine and Uncontested Special Exception Process (100 percent of signatures of joint property owners, or show that it meets the pattern on the block at the Administrative Public Hearing Process.)
2)Administrative Public Hearing Process requires 14 days notice to all property owners on the block face in lower avenues. It is different in the upper avenues.
3)Appeals process from Board of Appeals.

“Infill Zoning” is actually infill into an existing area because all the city is essentially filled in. “Overlay” is a locally affective zoning law within specific neighborhood boundaries. Historical houses have different guidelines in addition to these.

Find detailed info.

Meeting dismissed at 8:50 pm.