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Erica Pines called the meeting to order at 6:32PM.

The February General Business Meeting minutes were adopted and accepted.

MEET & GREET

OFFICERS REPORTS

President - Erica Pines

ACAM (Atlanta Crafts and Artist Market) would like to host an Artist market on Saturdays and Sundays in Castleberry. Their would like to utilize the lot behind Swift. The Executive board likes the idea however they suggested that ACAM should consider another location as there have been issues with the parking back there. The suggestion was to consider one of the church parking lots or Cleopas Park.

Erica is working with the bar owners on improving the parking situation. They are looking at outside vendors to help with valet and shuttle services. The bar owners offered the use of parking lot on Peters and Fair for a Green market.

COMMITTEE REPORTS

Land-use - Calvin Lockwood

Pawn shop at the end of the neighborhood. Earwax records are going to move into the shop. They are doing renovations to the building as well as to the back.

Public Safety - Tracy Clark

March 12th we officially have the neighborhood grant. Going to get started on the railroad spur as well as put a plan together to hire police patrol

Code Enforcement - Ed Haefner

Members of CHNA attended court in an effort to get the City of Atlanta to pass legislation to stop the littering of our communities or to issue fines to the offenders.

Process for reporting flyers and postcards:
Park cars on the street
Take a picture of your car with flyers on it. (Time printed)
Take flyers off and place a date on the flyers.
Send pictures and flyers to Ed.
***You need to testify at court on not giving permission for them to be put on your car.

Castleberry Hill is the pioneer neighborhood in these efforts and hope that we can work with the City to assist other neighborhoods who are experiencing similar issues.

If you have code enforcement issues, please email Ed Haefner.

Michael Gibson had a code enforcement officer sit in the neighborhood to investigate noise violations. If you hear anything after 9PM, you can call on the officer to cite the business. You must appear at court to testify against them.

PR/Communication - David Gacsko and Carrie Burns

New chronicle is out, please take one on your way out or check online. In addition, new tri-fold brochures are available. Lindy is the new Chronicle chair. Please touch base with her if you are interested in contributing.

Atlanta Home Show - Thank you to No Mas for contributing furniture to the booth. We had two great days. There were lots of people that were curious about Castleberry Hill and stopped by the booth. Richard had at least 8 people interested in their project. 10 neighborhoods showcased their communities.

Membership

Please sign up and renew your memberships. You can do this online or bring a check to the next meetings.
Membership update:
5 building HOA's joined
12 individuals
21 businesses.

Community Relations - Tamara Pearson

We officially have a kickball team and there are 22 members. Next Sunday is our first practice and we will have our first game next Saturday.

Starting the planning process of Cinco de Mayo. We need volunteers to help with set up, work the event, and take it down. Also need volunteers for the committee.

Happy Hour after the meeting is located at Elliott Street. Corned beef and cabbage and green booze will be available.

Transportation - Heather Alhadeff

Mitchell Street Bridge is blocked off. GDOT employees have not been filing bridge reports properly. New commissioner is pretty aggressive at looking at these things, especially bridge and immediately closed the bridge. The city has not had the measures to implement the closing of the bridge. Project has not started, nor any bids for work were made. Going to be closed for a lot longer. It takes 18 months to complete a bridge like this.

Centennial Olympic Park Dr will become a two-way street from Northside Dr. to Walker St. MLK Drive will also be two ways. Both eastern and western curbs will have on street parking. Western side is already approved. An ordinance has already been written for this and it wiill create 14 parking spaces. On the eastern side, more parking will be available and will be striped. Nelson Street will be two ways, the entire length! They are willing to add additional parking to both sides of Nelson Street. These are great solutions for parking for guest and retail that is coming to the neighborhood.

Heather is working on the City's first comprehensive transportation plan. The City of Atlanta has never had a Comprehensive plan. Planning sessions will be held next week March 22-27 from 10:00AM-8:00PM they are having open public transportation workshops. If you have any input/ideas/complaints/problems please stop by. The city planners are in attendance at this workshop. The sessions will be located at City Hall East.

NEW BUSINESS

Special Guest:

Jay Tribby - Check out the chronicle on Kwanzaa Hall about what Kwanzaa has been doing. Thank Castleberry Hill on all the text messages sent to Jay about the info on what happened this past weekend with District 2 and how the neighborhood can help. It was exciting to see the number of people that wanted to help out District 2! Kwanzaa is asking if you have a service to offer or a financial donation is recommending touching base with AFCM.org.

One of your neighbors is part of the new board being created! Stacia W. is nominated by the Atlanta City Council to be part of the Water and Sewer Review Board.

khall@atlantaga.gov

Citizens Review Board – Sharese Shields

The board was formed last July. They are in the process of hiring an Executive Director. The board is charged with overseeing citizen's complaints on Atlanta Police officers. They plan to start hearing complaints in the next 3-4 months.

The Dawson Company – Northside Plaza Apartments

Tom Rhodes (Architect) and Traycee Verdun (from Dawson Company)

Presented to the NPU back in Fall 07. Have been meeting with them about 3 times already and have a letter of support from them. Back in March, apartment complex with about 250 units on Northside Drive with the east side looking at downtown. Redesigned the project with retail on the bottom, about 9,400 sq footage of retail. Objective was to surround the property with more pedestrian activity. New development plan shows Markham St and Mitchell St to the North, going to put the parking deck in the middle to hide it and have the exterior strictly retail and resident units. Dawson Group is looking at a major drug store on the biggest retail space. Swimming pool is also available. They are going to demolish the apartments that are currently located there across the street and make a 2nd phase of apartments and retail. There will be access from internal parking deck to retail spaces. There will not be an affordable component in this project the units will all be 100% market rate, they were trying to look at a 20% affordable component but it did not work. TAD money is going to neighborhood improvement as well as the infrastructure of the current sewer pipes. Going to increase the size of the storm sewer pipes to stop the flooding in that area.

What is relocation plan of current residents? Lane Company is the property management and will be assisting with relocating those current residents. Each resident will be provided with a relocation package.

Mainly 1 and 2 bedroom units will be available. Their studies have found that mainly single, couples and students will be living at this complex.

Kathy Augustine - Superintendent for Atlanta Public Schools. Principal of Washington High School, Mr. Carter.

Atlanta Public Schools - Dr. Hall arrived in 1999. The goal have excellent schools and to grow the communities and encourage our students to further their education and go to college. Recently received a grant to support the teaching of math and sciences. Data shows that we are improving in language and arts and only steady in math and science. APS received support from GE to help increase this. This is the largest grant ever given to a school system. $22 Million dollars will be used to recruit high quality teachers and retain these teachers.

Where do we stand nationally on a school district? The State has mandated tests for grades 1-8. Georgia High School graduation test is also given as well. Tutor district has agreed to participate on the national exam for national standards, which gives Atlanta students the opportunity to be evaluated according to the national standards. Boston, DC, and Austin are other tutor districts. These are great ways to market our neighborhood and show people that we are a competitive education market, especially since Georgia is ranked 50 out of all the states on education.

No Child Left behind Law - Originated in 2001. All schools across the nation and charter schools have to make adequate yearly progress. Elementary schools made 100% yearly progress in the 06-07 school year. Atlanta is the only school district that can make this claim.

If a child has a quality teacher in front of them for 3 consecutive years, there is a high chance of this student to continue their education after high school.

High school transformation = Project GRAD (Graduation Really Achieves Dreams) these programs focus on literacy and math from K-12. Designed to support low performing schools where there are large areas of no support for children. APS has graduated 731 scholars that have gone through the Project GRAD program and are going to college.

Through High School Transformation (HST) there is a 90% graduation rate. All high schools will be schools of choice for community members. Able to make Carver High School a better school and now have a waiting list for kids wanting to go to this High School. Need to make our children ready for college and work force. Goal is to do this by 2010.

Flyers and information of High School Transformation as well as location of schools within the districts were passed out at the meeting.

How do you envision the way Atlanta City School is being portrayed to avoid the Clayton County situation? Part of the process is to survey parents and have people participate in the design teams. The Atlanta education fund chaired by John Rice, who is focused on community engagement and getting feedback on how the city schools are doing. High school students need to participate in community service projects in order to graduate.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Calvin Lockwood and Carrie Burns - HGTV is looking to film a project where they are looking for someone that is interested in filming the expansion of their loft. Contact them if you are interested.

Old Business:

Neighborhood Announcements:

April 18th - Evolve YouthPride Event to support gay teens.

Heather thanked you Cortland for the flower boxes on Peters Street.

Meeting Adjourned: 7:54 PM