Durham INC

Inter-Neighborhood Council

Making Better Neighborhoods

Http://www.rtpnet.org/durhminc

Minutes of Meeting of March 23, 2004

REPRESENTATIVES PRESENT

* Speaker

Administration and Announcements

President Cheryl Sweeney opened the meeting, and members introduced themselves.

Rental Property Panel – As a first step in creating an action plan around rental property, the panel explained what is being done in Durham and elsewhere. In areas with a neighborhood standard, rental property should be visually the same as owner-occupied property. The objective is to have codes so that where there are more people, there is space to support them (and their cars). There is a 3-person rule, limiting how many unrelated people can live together, but it is nearly impossible to enforce. The only successful case was a group of students that wanted out of their lease. If Section 8 housing is involved, the extra people may change the income enough to create some leverage (there are different messages on this and we hope to resolve it by the next meeting). If the regulations made perfect housing, many homeowners would be pestered – not to mention the cost of enforcement. Asheville has had mandatory inspection at every change of occupancy, but that was to address specific quality issues. There was a real horror story about a duplex full of criminals (it is possible to file civil case if neighbors are making it impossible to enjoy the peace of your home). There are multiple ways to report issues (911, zoning, etc.) so we need to sort out whether problem is civil, regulatory, or just bad communication. Code enforcement folks go home at 5 or need to be paid overtime, which complicates catching evening parking and car repair shops. The Planning Department has 4 zoning enforcement people, to deal with 6 districts. The new Uniform Development Code will address issues involving new units. Look at the work of the Raleigh Neighborhood Preservation Committee, which looked at a lot of these issues.

Durham Call Center – Scott Reed gave a presentation on the new call center. To relieve some non-emergency 911 calls, decrease the number of misdirected calls, and improve overall customer satisfaction, Durham is creating a One-Call Center (560-1200). It will be staffed with people from departments with a lot of calls. The software will be able to track when something should have been done about citizen questions or requests. The departments being served will be responsible for keeping data that the agents use up to date. One of Durham’s problems is that it has a lot of disjointed phone services so forwarding calls is hard; the software used by the Call Center will be able to handle this as other systems get upgraded.

Approval of Minutes – The February minutes were approved.

Good Neighbor Crime Prevention Wish List – We will vote on them next month.

Speed Bumps – People driving too fast want the shorter and people trying to protect tranquillity of their block want them taller. The big issue is Durham’s monitoring of quality. We passed the following resolution:

WHEREAS Durham has a limited amount of money to spend on traffic calming so all efforts need to be as effective as possible

WHEREAS citizens have measured 8 of the 100 or so speed humps being currently installed, and found the humps do not meet City of Durham specifications in that they are too short, have the wrong shape, and will not calm traffic as intended.

WHEREAS IT APPEARS THAT City Engineering forgot to include the clause stating the acceptable variance so they cannot make the contractor meet the requirements

WHEREAS we don’t want to develop a reputation that Durham doesn’t care about how well work meets specifications since this will be an open invitation to contractors to do shoddy work

IT IS RESOLVED that INC asks that the contractor be required to install speed humps that meet the design standard and correct the deficient ones.

Further, City Engineering needs to have processes that ensure contracts are written and monitored to avoid this kind of problem in the future.

Adjournment – The meeting adjourned with a reminder to look at the events listed at the bottom of the agenda.