The meeting started with a brief announcement from Julie Banks, Community Development Director at the YMCA of the Inland Northwest, who said that the Y is hosting a Summer Meals Program in Corbin Park. The meal program will serve breakfast and lunch to any child 18 years old or younger from Monday, June 22 to Friday, August 14. Julie asked that the neighborhood help raise awareness about the program so that no child goes hungry.

Councilwoman Candace Mumm reported on issues under discussion by the City Council. A new parking ordinance is being proposed that will require fewer parking spaces for small businesses; a public hearing on the matter will be held at the City Council meeting on Monday, June 22.

Councilwoman Mumm also noted that a decency clause regarding adult entertainment might also spill over into the area of adult coffee shops. North Hill Neighborhood Council is almost finished with their neighborhood plan, and they intend to revitalize Garland Street as well as preserve the bluff. A southern portion of Northwest Neighborhood will become the Audubon/Downriver Neighborhood. Letters to the editor regarding Monroe Street revitalization are still encouraged.

Shanna Cejka, the neighborhood parent liaison to Spokane Public Montessori at Havermale, and Olga Lucia Herrera, a grant applicant and Montessori parent, announced that they were successful in soliciting Spokefest funding for a Bicycle Laboratory. The lab would be housed at the school; older students would learn to repair bikes and teach bike safety. The school would like to hold bike-related events in conjunction with Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council.

Amy Dutton reported on proposed Greening Grant locations for autumn plantings in the neighborhood. The traffic triangles at Northwest Boulevard and Monroe Street are potential locations. For residential areas, planting strips must be at least four feet wide. All locations must either have direct access to water and/or a volunteer neighbor or business to commit to watering duties.

The majority of neighborhood council members voted to forego the July neighborhood council meeting. The next EGNC meeting will therefore be on Wednesday, August 12 as part of the Summer Potluck in Corbin Park. The entire neighborhood is welcome to attend the potluck for food and socializing.

Bri Musser has plants for the traffic circle at the intersection of Montgomery and Madison. Others volunteered to help. Jackie Caro from the Office of Neighborhood Services reported on the other traffic circle, which was recently planted by Trinity Catholic School. The traffic island at N Maple is scheduled to have sidewalks installed this year, and another Ponderosa Pine will be planted there as well.

The Emerson-Garfield Farmers’ Market opened last week, and sales showed a 50% improvement over last year’s opening event. It is encouraging to see EBT clients making use of the incentive programs like Fresh Bucks. Broken Whistle, the band that will be performing at this year’s Concert in the Park, played the opening market. Future market activities and events include a water conservation demo on June 12, a garden pest information session on June 19, and a hydroponic gardening demo on June 26. Starting Friday, July 10, the Kids Eating Right Nutrition and Education for Life (KERNEL) program will have a different kid-friendly activity each week and will reward participants with tokens to use at the market. Several sponsors have stepped forward, but some are still needed!

Friends of Emerson Park will meet at the park on Saturday, June 13, at 6:30pm.

Laura Schlangen reported on the Corbin Senior Activity Center. Their Madhatter’s Tea Party had 100 attendees. The 6th Annual Golf Scramble had more sponsors and players than ever. Corbin’s Boutique, a secondhand store, is requesting donations, which can be dropped off at the time of the Emerson-Garfield meeting. The Munch and Mingle Auction will take place on Saturday, September 19, and tickets will be sold at the end of June. An upcoming bus trip to Las Vegas, Zion and the Grand Canyon will cost only $838.

A large portion of the meeting involved discussing how Photo Red revenue is allocated. Up to now, Photo Red funding — which comes entirely from fines paid by drivers who run red lights — has been available exclusively for traffic-calming projects such at the traffic circles on W Montgomery. Recently, however, changes have been proposed that would increase the available annual funds for each district to $150,000 (up from $100,000) and use surplus revenue (including anticipated future revenue) as seed money to attract matching grants for more ambitious projects.

The EGNC conducted a vote on the issue; the consensus was to uphold Councilman Jon Snyder’s proposal, summarized as follows by Paul Kropp in a recent PeTT Committee e-mail:

… leveraging unallocated photo-red revenue to make local matching funds available in a significant amount to use for grant applications to secure engineering and construction funding of larger scale community street or trail projects.

Additional details on this issue as well as the vote tally of the neighborhood council will be available in the meeting minutes (once approved) and a forthcoming blog post from Emerson-Garfield’s PeTT representative.

As a final order of business, Barb Biles reported on Land Use Committee topics, including the six-month moratorium on the building of cell-phone towers in residential zones while the zoning issue is analyzed.