Our leadership team met at Noon on 7/17/17 to discuss the results and responses from the second community meeting. Here are the notes from that meeting.
Denham Strong Leadership Team Meeting Notes
7/17/17; 12:00 to 1:00 pm
Big Mike’s Bar and Grill
- The Denham Strong Leadership team met for their regularly scheduled meeting on Monday July 17, 2017. During the meeting outcomes from the second community meeting on July 13, 2017 were discussed as well as some next-steps for moving forward.
- General Thoughts on the July 13 Community Meeting
- No general complains, mixed feelings on the trolley (is it a bus, electronic car, etc.). Hop-on, hop-off as opposed to a scheduled route is preferred.
- The Shop Local campaign, everyone loved – but it was about marketing. They don’t know who is open, etc. They can’t buy local because they’re not LIVING local, in their own homes.
- Triangle Business District was hard to explain. Talked about rezoning the area from residential to business.
- The telephone poles are looking shabby on Florida Blvd.
- When people were told about the Trolley, people initially had low opinions of it, until it was explained in greater detail. Once you explained that the public transportation didn’t involve bus stops, people were more receptive to the idea.
- The Trolley wasn’t despised, necessarily, but was just the least popular.
- People wanted to focus on getting back into their homes, as opposed to economic development of the city.
- Flood repairs are things that need to happen, and need to happen quickly – and therefore have higher priority.
- Long-term projects focus on building resilience against disasters – such as the economy.
- We need people to be a champion for these various projects
- People primarily came from the city as opposed to the outside.
- The meetings are fine – parking is manageable (parking behind the building helps), the venue was overall good, in a centralized location.
- There were some people who were business owners, who didn’t’ care about housing or cultural projects, strictly economics only.
Suggestions/Discussion on how to group projects moving forward
- You could probably compile the Mighty Mom’s and Farmer’s Market groups into one, and have then work together in tandem.
- This way you could combine the three projects while not necessarily losing any of them, as they complement one another.
- It may be too much within one project, but it would allow for a larger group to tackle larger projects instead of individualized smaller projects.
- We have a list of interested individuals from the Denham Springs community meeting.
- If anyone has an interest in championing these projects write your name next to the section that you are interested in.
- Would Thursday afternoon be a good time for people to come together for a 3-4 hour meeting? Or on Saturday? Or perhaps divide it into two different days?
- For the next meeting, we’ll be doing it at Denham Springs Junior High.
- Any projects we want to trim away, or clump together?
- Some of the subgroups could be placed within a larger group.
- We need to pin down champions who are interested in leading the charge on a lot of these projects. Each project needs a lead role to manage volunteers.
Discussion of the third and final community meeting on August 13, 2017
- Would like to hold the meeting at the Junior High School again. The project presentation will be more focused on results and less on gaining input, which has been the focus of the last two meetings.
- The meeting is on a Saturday. There was general discussion about what the timing of the meeting should be – it was decided to hold the meeting from 9 to 12 with a presentation at 10.
- We can use Facebook Live to stream it
