Mac Arthur Heights Neighborhood Association Meeting

Oct 12, 2010 at the home of Gary Van Calster, 1958 Knotty Pine Drive

Gary opened the meeting and asked everyone to introduce themselves. Present were Gary Van Calster, Debbie Vickman, Barb Armbruster, Harold Nelson, James Andersen, Julie O’Connell, Brian Danzinger, Mayor Schmidt and Katelyn Stafford from the Community Police department.

Lou Ann Weix, who is running for State Assembly, stopped by our meeting to tell us about herself. She believes that her background as a nurse in varying capacities will help her address the many issues of our healthcare system. She stressed that she is just a normal person, not a politician, who wants to help solve problems related to healthcare in our state. Lou Ann is visiting the other neighborhood associations also.

Julie read the minutes of the last meeting and the treasurer’s report. Our association received a $1,000 grant from the city of Green Bay for raising more than $250 in ads for the spring newsletter.

Brian, our alderman, was asked about the Hy 41 Project and if there was an update. He wrote an article for the newsletter about this and gave us a summary. There will be physical borders on Hazelwood to prevent drivers from turning it into a 4-lane road. The county is considering lowering the speed limit to 25 but no decision has been made yet. Speeding on Hazelwood has become an issue. Brian and a few other people actually did their own study on a Friday. They spent one hour counting the number of vehicles and the speed of each vehicle. The results showed that in 60 minutes, 105 vehicles were speeding over the speed limit by 10 mph or more. Brian is recommending more police presence in that area. Things will only get worse when traffic from the Mason St ramp closings are rerouted into our neighborhood. Because Hazelwood is Brown County’s responsibility, the county will be making decisions about changes or improvements. Brian said that he will know more after a state meeting in November. Harold Nelson added that police presence might be enough to prevent speeding on Hazelwood. He suggested that they could do their paper work while parked somewhere along that route.

The members present at this meeting have made the decision to use Brian Danzinger’s donation of $500 for a summer event for our neighborhood association to be held at Beaver Dam Park. Preliminary plans are to have some kind of event during the day, and then around 6 PM we will bring in a band or two for an evening of music and open it up to the other west side neighborhood associations which are Fireman’s Park, Colburn Park, and John Muir Park. We would appreciate ideas from our neighborhood members. We discussed combining the Ice Cream Social with this event, maybe bringing in vendors such as Captain’s Walk Winery or Titletown Brewery, and having it be our fundraiser by selling soda and water. These are tentative ideas and nothing has been decided yet. To have an event of this size, we will need to have volunteers to work in different capacities. Please contact Gary Van Calster if you have any ideas or concerns. Right now we are looking at the calendar for next summer to come up with a date that doesn’t conflict with city park games or other activities that might be going on.

The Beaver Dam cleanup is scheduled for Nov 13^th, at 8:30 AM. Gary asked if we should try to get the Mac Arthur School kids involved. Brian suggested that we contact the grade school and also Southwest High School to inform the students about the cleanup. The Southwest students may be able to convert their time spent on the cleanup into community service hours needed to graduate.

Mayor Schmidt explained to us what a mini-grant was and how we could use it. There is money set aside every year for our neighborhood associations to use for any type of project that would help the neighborhood. This could be a beautification project such as planting flowers, cleaning up a neighbor’s yard, maintaining shrubs or plants around the neighborhood sign or in a center island of a street, matching a donation for a fundraiser or project, signage for bike trails, anything that would help our neighborhood.

Oct 23 is Make a Difference Day. Brian suggested that we pick a member of our neighborhood that needs assistance with raking leaves or other yard work and help them out. He suggested that pictures be taken of the event so we can put it in our next newsletter.

We need volunteers to help with the delivery of the fall newsletter . We are planning on stuffing the sleeves with the newsletter and The City of Green Bay Neighborhood Guide on Oct 20^th at the home of Gary Van Calster, 1958 Knotty Pine Drive. Please call Gary if you can help out with either of these events. We have about 800 homes in our neighborhood so this is a rather large undertaking.

We did not set a date for the next meeting.