The SouthWest Citizens Advisory Council (SWCAC) starting looking forward to 2011, eyeing goals for the new year, at their monthly meeting on Monday, December 13, 2010. This month, we hosted our friends from the West CAC to discuss items of interest to both groups. The agenda included the usual parks report and Raleigh Police Department (RPD) call log with joint CAC items for boundary discussions and rezoning case Z-1-11.
Toward the end of the meeting, SWCAC attendees discussed goals for 2011 that included an awareness campaign to target neighborhoods currently not active in the CAC and getting more businesses involved with the CAC. More details on this a little later. About 25 residents from both the West CAC and SWCAC gathered to discuss the topics.
Nickey Brewster provided some program updates for Park & Recreation. The new Leisure Ledger is out–it has information on all classes and programs being offered by the City of Raleigh Parks & Rec. If you have a 4-5 year old, Littler Kickers (soccer) is happening at Carolina Pines from January 3-24 and costs $28.
Officer Upchurch reviewed the police calls from the last month for both WCAC and SWCAC. Lots of activity out there keeping RPD busy. For SWCAC, I noted there were 31 animal calls, 5 attempted break-ins, and 27 residential break-ins. On a good note regarding the break-ins, there have been numerous arrests made and next month, RPD hopes to report some closure to some of the break-ins. The quality of life calls sounded something like this: 9 loud music calls, 5 loud noise calls, and 15 loud party calls. We asked about the number of citations issued for each–and that information was not available. Officer Upchurch stated that at least 5 of the party calls were issued citations on-site. There could be more from the PROP side of things.
Mark Vander Borgh, WCAC Chair, helped lead a discussion on proposed boundary changes on Trailwood Drive. Currently, our western boundary on Trailwood Drive, splits the the Trailwood neighborhood. The proposal is to either move the boundary west to Gorman Street or east to the Centennial Campus boundary. Our primary goal is to have the Trailwood community in one CAC. Ultimately, Mark and I would like the neighborhood to decide.
The handful of WCAC folks in attendance voiced opinions that they would prefer to move the boundary so that their neighborhood would be in the WCAC. The boundary discussion will continue at the WCAC meeting on January 25th. At that time, Mark and I hope to have the Trailwood community make the final decision so that we can report back to the Raleigh CAC (RCAC).
Harrison Ellinwood presented on rezoning case Z-001-11. [PDF] The request is to rezone 1.28 acres from Conservation Management to Office and Institutional – 1 conditional use. The conditions limit the use of the property to residences and the property is near the southeast corner of Avent Ferry Road and Gorman Street. There were numerous questions about the rezoning brought up at the meeting and the first public hearing will be held on January 18, 2011 at City Council. The petitioners will also present at the next WCAC meeting.
The SWCAC adjourned our WCAC friends and started looking forward to 2011. We talked for a few minutes about any projects that we wanted pursue during 2011. One idea was to start a vision for southwest Raleigh for mass transit. The concept was to look at connecting our area and places beyond, like Clayton, to downtown Raleigh. Where would connections and stops be made in our area?
Several folks volunteered to help set goals for 2011. The SWCAC is interested in growing our current organization by doing some type of targeted awareness to neighborhoods that currently aren’t represented. I’d like to see an increase in (monthly) attendance and start to understand what these “new” neighborhoods would like from the SWCAC.
The other goal we talked about was getting more businesses involved with the CAC. There are several different routes we could go with this. One suggestion was to bring in the Food Lion and Raleigh Oaks shopping center management. I’ll look into bringing in a representative from the Chamber of Commerce in for the January meeting. Other ideas were to bring in a different businesses each meeting for a brief presentation.
2011 is looking like it will be an exciting time for SWCAC. A time for growth and exploring new things. We also talked about reviewing the new census data to figure out how to make South West Raleigh a better place to live.