Lineberry Alliance Blogs

District D Neighborhood Alliance (DDNA) Meeting on August 16, 2008.

Another great turnout at today’s DDNA meeting. Today we welcomed guest from the Raleigh Police Department, Police Chief Harry Dolan and Lt. Perry, to discuss the new changes coming to the PROP in January 2009 and other concerns from District D.
Attendee’s:

• Special Guest: Police Chief Harry Dolan
• Special Guest: Lt. Perry
• Jason Hibbets, PRR-Watch, Lineberry Alliance / SWCAC
• John Reaves Jr., Caraliegh / SWCAC
• Mildred Flynn, Caraliegh / SWCAC
• Connie Crumpler, Caraliegh / SWCAC
• Les Sykes, Cameron Park / Hillsborough CAC
• Mary Belle Pate, Fairway Acres / SWCAC
• Phil Poe, Glenwood-Brooklyn / 5-Points CAC
• Lana Dial, Lake Johnson Harbor
• Joe Boisvert, University Park
• Jim Paumier, Fairview Acres
• Mark Vander Borgh, Avent West / WCAC
• Chris Weedy, Boylan Heights
• Jimmy Creech, Boylan Heights
• R. Bethea, Historic Method / WCAC
• Thomas Crowder, District D Councilor
• Russ Stephenson, At-Large Councilor (attended end of meeting)

Meeting Notes:
Introductions around the room.

Chief Dolan began with a brief update on several matters of interest. First he mentioned that RPD is currently recruiting for the new PROP ordinance position that will start in January 2009. Raleigh IT is currently working on a data management system that can be used. The Chief stressed that he like benchmarking and is why Raleigh looked very closely at the Minneapolis, MN model before adopting the solution that now include criminal elements and a registry program. Lt. Perry is a key person driving the program in it’s current state.

Chief Dolan and Lt. Perry shared and highlighted some of the changes are:

• addition of criminal elements to the PROP, beyond Noise and Party Ordinance (NPO) and Public Nuisances
• dedicated PROP officer to a PROP team, currently only one officer that looks up NPO and Public Nuisance violations
• a registry program for all rental units, regardless of size (ending the 20 unit or more “exemption”) – what was learned and stressed from Minneapolis was that if you are going to add criminal elements that a registry program is key
• NPO is now a criminal element because it will be a civil penalty fine, mainly due to the fact that judges are reluctant to convict persons violating NPO’s; this will automatically trigger a strike against the PROP to the property owner
• a notification process (notifying the property owner) will be in place since the property would be registered with the city

We then opened the discussion up to questions.

First question, is there only one officer for the city or is this per district?

There could be more than one officer, but to start things off, there will be one representing RPD on the PROP team. It’s best to think of this resource as a project manager. All officers will issuing citations, the PROP resource will be responsible to follow-up and program management.

Another question was about getting the information out about the program changes, what type of notifications are going out to create public awareness?

The IT department is currently building a database with existing tools and connecting some resources together. The biggest effort will be “internal marketing” to landlords and property managers.

Around the horn:

• Pleasant Ridge & Ramsgate Community Watch – Had a very successful National Night Out, read more at: http://lineberry.org/blogs/2008/08/06/did-you-miss-it/
• Caraleigh – Two liquor houses finally taken care of
• Question on minority officer recruiting – Chief said it was not where he would like it to me
• SouthWest CAC – 6 pawn shops out of 15 city wide (that’s 40%)
• Five-Points – Speeding
• UPHA – How are we going to motivate landlords to register? There are fines if they do not register, $200/day up to $2,000/month if they are not registered
• A suggestion about getting ROTC or Police Academy programs into High Schools
• Fairway Acres – lots of vacant houses, potential for future activity
• Brent Road – concerned about bike safety, Chief said helmets for cyclist are critical
• Boylan Heights – Speeding on Boylan Heights Avenue. Wanted an update on the annexation of all of Boylan Heights neighborhood into the downtown district (currently their neighborhood is split between two police districts).

We thanks our guest for attending with a round of applause.

There were a few other topics that we mentioned including Site Planning approval, updating the sign ordinance (concerns about convenient store robberies and the association of cluttered signs in the windows), vacant commercial building needing to be boarded up (new state legislature about this, used in Charlotte and Greenville already), and talking about PBOD – Pedestrian Business Overlay District. Mainly the PBOD for Cameron Village with a rezoning case going on in that area.

For events, we’ve got Raleigh Wide Open 3 coming up, Neighborhood Exchange, and a Brent Road Mini Festival coming up on August 21, 2008.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 10:57 am and is filed under DDNA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.