Minutes, Executive Meeting – Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Location: Glebe Community Centre 175 Third Ave
- Sue Stefko
- David Perkins
- Maja Rakocevic
- Lee Cunningham
- Joanne Benoit
1. Call to Order
2. Amendments/Approval of Agenda
Motion to accept the Agenda made by Maja, seconded by Joanne.
3. Amendments/Acceptance of minutes of last meeting, March 20th, 2018
Motion to accept the minutes was made by David, seconded by Lee.
4. Business arising from the minutes of the last meeting
5. Civic Hospital New Campus Engagement Group (The Campus Engagement Group: CEG)
GACA intends to have a representative as part of the group. It is a three (possibly up to five) year commitment. The CEG will consist of approximately 20 people engaged from all different areas, including community associations, non-profit organizations, environmental groups, senior groups, and other stakeholders. GACA has been working with the Glebe Community Association, Dalhousie Community Association and Dow’s Lake Residents Association, all of whom are putting names in for consideration for the CEG. This Civic Hospital new campus will affect all its surrounding communities. It is important to have a voice. Issues will include the impact of traffic, parking, public transit, and green space.
6. 289 Carling Avenue
The land transfer of the federal land at 289 Carling to the City of Ottawa is to take place today, March 20th. Michael Reid from our City Councillor’s (David Chernushenko) office, is working with the City of Ottawa to set up a town hall on the Request for Proposal (RFP) for 289 Carling. We expect that Saide Sayah, program manager of the City of Ottawa’s Affordable Housing Unit, will be speaking at this meeting. We will not find out what precisely will be in the RFP itself at this meeting, however – only once the RFP is released. The upcoming meeting will focus more on the upcoming process now that the city owns the land. The city did initially say the development would not be for the hardest to house. GACA has reached out to other community associations that have supportive housing in their communities. They indicated that supportive housing was well integrated into their communities. The responses were more negative concerning subsidized housing, such as Ottawa Community Housing, in their respective communities (vs supported housing), however. We will advise GACA membership with the 289 Carling meeting details when we have them and will post the information on the GACA website. There was a discussion about involving other board members in updating the GACA website, or perhaps working to further develop/populate the GACA Facebook account.
7. Lower Residential Speed Limit Pilot Project
GACA is interested in being part of the province of Ontario’s speed limit pilot. It looks as if this pilot project could be limited to school zone areas, however. We do not have any school zones within GACA but we do have school buses picking up children. We will look into the criteria, to see if we could qualify. Michael Reid from David Chernushenko’s office said that it was too early to tell if the Glebe Annex could be included in any pilot zones: “We recently got a bit more information about Bill-65, specifically how gateway signage will be integrated within the City. The short answer is: we’re going to have to wait a bit longer.” We will check with the Glebe Community Association to understand how they were able to participate in the pilot project for residential speeds, and how it is going. The intent is to have Glebe Annex considered for this pilot zone project.
8. GACA Home/Bldg Owners Info Project
Given the high rental rate among Glebe Annex housing, we began researching contact info for property owners in the Glebe Annex, in order to allow GACA to reach out to owners who do not live in the community, but who may be interested in some of the issues. For instance, we can reach out to some of these owners about the City of Ottawa’s Zoning Review.
9. Membership (alignment to Oct – Oct membership)
We discussed that aligning the GACA membership date with our Annual General Meeting would help us promote both together. We are under the umbrella of the Glebe Community Association (GCA) and our membership dues align with theirs as we give a portion of our membership fees ($2.00 for each $10.00 membership). We will check with the GCA to see if it is feasible that we have a different membership date from them. Being associated with the GCA provides us with the use of a meeting room (this room) for our board meetings at the Glebe Community Centre, they also provide us with support and resources.
10. FCA Membership Renewal
We currently owe our 2018 membership dues to FCA -the fee is $30.00 and will prepare a cheque for the next meeting in order for two GACA board members to be able to sign it.
11. NCC Information Session on Pathways
The NCC is reviewing all of its public pathways. We will follow-up on the NCC’s website, as the NCC said they would have a “round-two” opportunity for community feedback at some time in the next few months.
12. Glebe Park Proposal
The Glebe Community Association (GCA) included GACA in a proposal to receive funds from the TD Park People Grants. If the GCA gets the TD funds and our park is renewed this year, we could have one big social event to celebrate. It would depend on how much money we would receive, but if we used some GACA funds in addition to the grant money, we could have one bigger event and celebrate the new park with a party at the same time, possibly having someone to coordinate some music and other activities, as we did for the successful 2014 party in the park. There was unanimous support for this idea. We will look at our GACA funds to see what could be available for social events.
13. Community Clean up
GACA’s spring cleanup will be on Saturday, April 28th at 10:30 a.m., with a rain date of the following Saturday, May 5th. The spring cleanup information will be put on the GACA website, and we will post posters throughout the community.
14. Upcoming Session: Monitoring Zoning Regulations
The initial March meeting was delayed until April, but GACA plans to attend the upcoming April 3rd information on infill zoning in urban communities.
15. R4 Zoning Review
GACA Representation, We will continue to follow the discussion and participate where able.
16. Security Update
We received an email from a GACA member about two cars that had been broken into and received damage. These occurred at Cambridge and Clemow during the night. An email from GACA will go out explaining that this has occurred and reminding residents to not leave valuables in their vehicles. We will follow-up with our community police officer, Constable Stephanie Lemieux.
17. Ottawa Community Environmental Projects Grant Program
The deadline was extended to April 3. Previous grants awarded were to rather advanced projects. A community garden was suggested, but this grant program did not cover this area as it is a current project funded by the City of Ottawa. Projects need to be outside currently City funded areas. It was suggested that we consider applying for something in the future, and to look at other possible funding sources. One possibility was an empty plot of land on Bell Street South, west side, before Carling. It would be a great area for a community garden or perhaps another park space. It is part of the parcel of land owned by Canada Lands Company slated for future development at 291 Carling.
The meeting adjourned at 8:40 p.m.