SUMMIT MEETING NOTES

May 11, 2006

 Location: Cincinnati Children’s College Hill Campus

 ACTION ITEMS

The key action items as agreed to in this meeting are as follows:

ATTENDEES: (See Abbreviation Key)

ABSENT:

AGENDA

• Welcome and Introductions

• Agenda Review & Modification

• Review of Minutes from Last Month’s Meeting

• Opening Prayer

• Review of Action Items from Last Month’s Meeting

• Special Announcements

• College Hill Housing Team

• New College Hill Development/Cincinnati Herald Article

• Community Learning Center/College Hill Schools

• City Camera Funding

• Gateway Project

• Cincinnati Magazine Article

• Community Collaboration

• Community Events & Announcements

DISCUSSION:  

1.   Special Announcements

(a)  Jim Bodmer indicated that they are trying to find out if the surveillance cameras are operating correctly.   The community is being asked to make a decision about the cameras, but lacks this information.  Marty added that City Watchers needs 30 days notice, per the contract, to shut down any or all cameras.

(b)  The location of the next CHBA meeting has been changed to Llanfair.

(c)  Officer Noble handed out copies of the latest College Hill crime report.   It was not discussed. 

2.   Review of Feb & April 2006 Minutes
The corrected minutes for the February and April meetings were agreed to, with no corrections.  

 3.   Review of Action Items from Previous Meetings

A.  Discussion of Summit Goals for 2006 was done later in the meeting.

B.  Summary of Summit has been forwarded by Ron to Tom Strothers for inclusion on website.

C.  Other action items from April meeting were not discussed. 

4.   College Hill Gardeners – by Elaine Ludwig

Several items were covered:

Þ    The Plant Sale last Sat. May 6 was successful,  approximately $1200 profit.  It will go toward helping to maintain the streetscape planters.

Þ    The Farmers Market has been moved to Thursdays from Tuesdays, but will be same location (Llanfair and Hamilton Ave), same time (3 pm to 7 pm), but with new managers.  It will run from May to October.   CHG will set up May-June to sell plants CHG grows at Aiken Greenhouse.

Þ    CHG will plant a container on the Purple People Bridge on Sat, May 20.  All planters will be judged twice this summer and the winner announced in Sept.

Þ    On June 6, CHG will have a regularly scheduled meeting, but will begin at 7:00 pm with an Open House to highlight some of their projects and events.  At 7:30 Ron Wilson and Rita Heikenfeld will present "From the Garden...To the Kitchen".  It is a presentation on container gardening with annuals, perennials, water plans, vegetables and herbs.  Ron works for Natorp and is host of "In the Garden" on WKRC.  Rita is an author and local TV and radio cooking expert.

Þ    CHG’s Annual College Hill Garden Tour is Saturday, June 24^th, from 11 am to 4 pm.   The tour is self-guided and leads to 8 local gardens.  Tickets cost $8 and are available at - College Hill Coffee Co., Schwartz Jewelers, Visconti-Lechler, Piazza-Discepoli, PNC Bank, National City Bank, Hartman and Erhmatraut and LaRosa's.

Þ    This year’s Pumpkin Patch will be Sat, Oct. 7, at Town Hall Park. 

5.   College Hill Housing Team – by Phyllis Schoenberger

A proposal was made to CHCURC requesting they approve of being the overarching non-profit entity for this effort, with some tentative agreement, pending more discussion.   The Housing Team is proceeding to work on choosing between two existing rehab developers who have both the expertise and interest, has met with three established housing rehab developers, Working in Neighborhoods, and Cincinnati Housing Partners. 

A secondary goal of the Housing Team is to stimulate volunteer maintenance (such as painting and hedge-trimming) of homes which are not for sale or abandoned, but whose owner has not been able for various reasons to do the work themselves.   In line with that, Phyllis has applied to “Give Back Cincinnati”, a non-profit organization which enables young professionals to volunteer their time and energy to projects for exterior community maintenance.   They typically would organize to paint up to 25 houses in one day with 400-500 volunteers.   The College Hill application is for June, 2007.

In the meantime, volunteers are already coming forward from the local churches to do maintenance this summer.   CCCH has agreed to own this effort, but needs a volunteer project manager to coordinate it. 

6.   New College Hill Development – by Elizabeth Sherwood

Elizabeth brought copies of a recent article in the Cincinnati Herald newspaper in which a new development in the College Hill area was described.    It described a project sponsored by Rev. Charles Winburn of The Encampment Church to build a “massive human services complex to be known as the Cincinnati Dream Center …. on 10.5 acres of land adjacent the existing church at 2129 North Bend Road.”   The article goes on to say:

 “The proposed $10 million Dream Center will provide a number of services, including employment and training, workforce development, business development and family counseling, adoption foster care assistance, HIV counseling, unwed fathers and unwed mothers assistance, a pregnancy center, and obesity counseling for children.”

“The Dream Center will house more than 100 ministries, two training amphitheaters, an academic childcare center, health and wellness center, and a 2,000-seat auditorium along with a 1,000-seat fellowship hall for weddings, banquets, seminars and community meetings.”

Elizabeth indicated that this information was a surprise to her and other members of the Forum, and asked if anyone else at Summit had any information.    No one did.  Kevin Ward agreed he could ask some of his new contacts in College Hill about this. 

7.   Summit Goals Discussion – by Valerie Hershberger

At the March meeting, it was found that few organizations had done the requested prework for Summit 2006 goal setting, so Summit members briefly reviewed the goals/interests of their individual organizations for College Hill.   In order to keep making progress, it was agreed that Valerie would draft potential goals for Summit based on the input received so far and the organizations’ goals.   This was done and handed out at this meeting.  (See Attachment #1)    During the discussion, it was felt by some that a better process would be to brainstorm within the meeting, so this was done.   (See Attachment #2)  It was agreed that this brainstormed list would be reviewed at the next meeting, and added to if appropriate, and then Summit members would go through a process of prioritizing the items to find the few most important to the group. 

8.   Community Learning Centers – by  Helen Habbert

Cincinnati Public Schools has been gathering input from the residents and organizations of College Hill to help plan and design the new or renovated school facilities of Aiken and CH Fundamental Academy.  They are seeking a vision for what education in College Hill is all about.  A Core Team with representatives of all community organizations is meeting twice per month to analyze the data as it is collected, and to develop ideas and plans.   Plans will include both academic enrichment programs and what the community wants for non-school hours.   The Core Team needs to converge by June in order to plan for renovation of CH Fundamental Academy.   Aiken will be done in 2007.

Helen walked through an example of their process with the Summit members.   She posted lists of input already collected through other venues, and asked Summit members to “power dot” the lists based on their own opinions.   Items heavily power-dotted by Summit were: job resource center/vocational and career services, sports fields and playgrounds, after-school activities, mentoring, and tutoring.

The Core Team is targeting to summarize all the input collected to date and to present that at the next Forum meeting.  

The timeline from this point is:

(a)  Develop consensus on the vision in early summer 2006

(b)  Identifying and developing partnerships

(c)  Identify and select architects    

9.   City Camera Funding – by Marty Weldishofer

Jim Bodmer had to leave the meeting early, so Marty spoke to the camera issues.  Marty reminded everyone that money is still needed to pay for the City Watchers cameras if they are operational.  A decision is needed as to whether to turn off all cameras while waiting for the new city operated system to be designed and installed, OR, whether to keep just one or two key cameras.   During the discussion, everyone realized that who and how to make this decision was unclear, and that there is no clear leadership other than the fact that CHCURC signed the contract with City Watchers.   And that CHCURC will terminate the contract if no money comes in.

After further discussion, Summit members recommended the following process:

CPOP will make a recommendation to Forum Community Council to shut down all the cameras, with the support of all member organizations of Summit.   Phyllis said she would follow up with CPOP.   Forum Community Council will then accept, reject, or modify this recommendation.   Given the need to give City Watchers a 30 day notice, the schedule will then be worked out and the financial needs identified.   Marty pointed out that the cameras will need to be removed after being turned off to avoid giving residents a false sense of security. 

10. Gateway Update – by Marty Weldishofer

Architects Plus and the design team did a community presentation to which everyone was invited.  All attendees were favorable toward the design, and the project is now moving forward.   The next step is acquiring easements; the southern end easements have been obtained, but the northern end is still not settled. 

11. Cincinnati Magazine Article – by John Copenhaver

John expressed delight that College Hill was highlighted as a great neighborhood in the May issue of Cincinnati magazine, but also dismay that the final line in the otherwise positive article was:  “On the downside, Pleasant Hill Elementary, the neighborhood public school, is in Academic Emergency.”  He acknowledged that this is true, but feels that it fails to present a balanced picture of the educational situation in College Hill in general, or in Pleasant Hill, specifically, since significant progress has been made and is continuing to be made to improve the academic situation.

John asked that the community give Cincinnati magazine feedback on this, and the discussion that followed led to a consensus that the appropriate group to do this would be the Forum. 

12. Community Collaboration – by Kay Steinmetz

Kay joined the Summit meeting as a guest, seeking to understand what the Summit was all about.   Kay is an activist in a downtown community, and is trying to get all 52 neighborhoods in Cincinnati to come together, since most of the issues faced by each community are the same as in all other communities.  

Kay expressed that she was favorably impressed with the level of cooperation she observed in the meeting, and asked that College Hill prepare some kind of manual for other neighborhoods to learn from.   While no one in Summit agreed to this, after some continued discussion, Valerie did agree that she and Ron could prepare a concise one-page summary about facilitation of Summit.   However, Valerie did emphasize that the community was already functioning well, with a great deal of good-will, prior to Valerie and Ron joining as facilitators.    

13. Community Events & Announcements – by All

¨      Rec Center Open House – Ric shared that the Rec Center was having an open house / celebration in conjunction with Aiken College & Career the evening of May 11.

¨      Clean Cut Initiative – Kevin handed out a flyer on the CCCH Clean Cut Initiative.  He expressed the need to get enough work for these young men to keep them away from less wholesome activities.

¨      Block Party 2006 – Wayne indicated that this year’s Block Party will be the first 4 days of August.   The team planning the block party was meeting at 11 am at CHPC May 11, and he invited anyone who was interested to attend.

¨      Rhythm Race – this year’s Rhythm Race will be Aug 18, starting at Pleasant Hill School. 

Next Summit Meeting:
Next Summit Meeting: June 8, 2006 @ 8:00 am at St. Clare’s Catholic Church

Summarized by:
Valerie Hershberger
May 27, 2006

Abbreviation Key: