NA Meeting Notes: Traffic Along Foster, Garden Tour, and More!

This week’s Foster-Powell neighborhood association meeting was jam-packed. The session opened with the board election. Co-chairpersons Erica and Christian, like most of those running for positions, ran unopposed and will therefore keep their positions. One newbie, Ali, was voted into the transportation representative position.

After the elections came updates on neighborhood projects and concerns. An officer talked about the crime in Foster-Powell. He said there had been five car thefts in the past month, and encouraged neighbors to keep valuables out of sight.  Apparently, most car thefts are crimes of opportunity—a perp sees your GPS system and breaks in to steal it. To avoid having your car broken into, remove valuables from sight, preferably before you leave the house. (The officer mentioned that some burglars monitor parking lots, watching for people moving valuables to the trunk, for instance. They then break into the trunk, and immediately find the treasure, having seen it placed.)

This discussion dovetailed neatly into neighbors’ concerns over pedestrian deaths along Foster.  There has been a flurry of such deaths in recent months. The officer explained that the pedestrian most recently killed was drunk. The motorist was clearly not at fault, since the pedestrian walked right into traffic, and was not in a crosswalk. However, many neighbors felt that the speed of traffic along Foster and the lack of clear signage are also to blame for recent deaths. Erica then piped in enthusiastically to highlight a potential opportunity to have the Foster Streetscape funded. The Foster Streetscape is a plan to beautify and improve the pedestrian experience along Foster.

She explained that the “Perfect Storm” may be brewing as far as the Foster Streetscape is concerned. She explained that the mayor is giving out NTIP (I’m not sure what that stands for…) grants later this month. The city budget meeting at the end of the month presents an ideal opportunity to tell our city leaders how we feel about the traffic danger on Foster. With enough “sqeaky wheels” complaining about the unsafe conditions along Foster, Foster-Powell could win the mayor’s grant. This would be a more secure form of funding than the Lents URAC money, since we wouldn’t have to compete with Lents’ projects.

Erica envisions FoPo neighbors showing up in force to the budget meetings, toting emotionally powerful signs about the recent pedestrian deaths. She will be sending out updates via the NA listserv. Those updates, of course, will be posted here as well. In the meantime, passionate FoPo residents are encouraged to email city board members, especially the mayor, to voice their concerns. Additionally, the officer pointed out that residents can often get more traffic enforcement by calling traffic services to complain. (It gets back to the squeaky wheel analogy…)

On a more cheerful note, meeting attendees were updated on the Foster-Powell garden tour, which will be from 10am-2pm on June 19

^th. So far, there are 13 host yards signed up. If you know of a gorgeous yard that deserves some recognition, or if you have other questions, or if you want to volunteer, email FoPoGardens “at” gmail “dot” com. Volunteers are needed to help out the day before and the day of the tour. Lastly, maps of the tour will be available at four locations, including the library.

Speaking of the library, it has just been outfitted with self check-out machines. Personally, I consider our library a jewel of the neighborhood. And I’m not alone. The Holgate library recently won an award for excellence. Part of that excellence is the branch’s robust roster of community classes. An upcoming class will be on beekeeping; that class will be on June 12 from 3:30-4:30.

That’s not all that happened—we also met our area’s DA, we learned that the NA will unveil a new website next month—but those are the highlights.