The Growth and Land Use Committee held it second meeting on Wednesday Nov 17. The meeting consisted of the members discussing various issues that have come up during the past month and others that are ongoing.

The first topic of conversation was to try and form a “Southside Coalition” consisting of representatives of the 5 Southside neighborhoods. This coalition would be an organization that would keep all of the Southside neighborhood associations abreast of items that may affect them. We decided to propose to the membership a motion to allow us to pursue creation of this coalition and to have represent ivies from the ENA be apart of it.

The second item we discussed was the potential closure of the Fairhaven Library due to city budget shortfalls. We want to propose to the membership that the ENA support continued operations of the Library.

We then moved into discussing the various land/development issues that have popped up in recent days and months. The main two topics were the recent sale of the Chuckanut Ridge property to Greenbrair Northwest and the continuing condo-ization of Fairhaven. From these discussions we determined that more information needs to be collected so that an informed position of the ENA can be created. To accomplish this we split the committee into two groups to gather information for those two topics. One group will investigate the Chuckanut Ridge development and the other to investigate the future Fairhaven construction projects and the affect it will have on traffic and parking. We encourage anyone interested to please help with the information gathering. It was suggested that we may need to have the resources to pay for copies of documents and other informational items during the information gathering stage and beyond. So we are also going to propose to the membership that the Growth and Land Use committee be allotted $200.00 to pay for future costs that may come up.

Near the end of the meeting, we figured out that the updating of the Neighborhood Plan would not be able to be worked on during this meeting and subsequent meetings that involve discussions of growth issues. We decided to propose to the membership that we split the Growth and Land Use Committee into the original 2 committees (Growth and Land Use & Neighborhood Plan Update). We felt that having a group that meets just to discuss updating the neighborhood plan would produce quicker results so that we can present a new version to the membership for approval. Splitting the committee will also give the Growth side more meeting time to focus on those issues.

If the separation of the committee is approved, the Neighborhood Plan Update meeting will be at 7:00 pm on Wednesday December 8. The meeting will be held at 224 Bayside Pl. The next Growth and Land Use meeting will be at 7:00 pm on Tuesday Dec. 14 at 108 Briza Ct. For the next meeting we are trying to get someone from the planning department to attend and educate us on the Planning and Implementation process of developments. We encourage participation from anyone that wants to help.

Included is a list of the 4 proposals we will be submitting to the membership on the December 2^nd meeting.

1. Approve the participation of the ENA in the formation of a Southside Coalition to coordinate with other Southside neighborhoods to respond to important issues of common concern. The President or the President’s designee will be the contact person The contact person may change depending on the issue or project –ex. If it’s a social event held with the other neighborhood groups we may have the membership committee organized it – if it concerns Fairhaven issues someone from the Growth and Land Use committee would be the contact.

2. Support the continued operation of the Fairhaven Library as center for education and learning and as a community center for the Southside neighborhoods.

3. Request the ENA to budget $200.00 for use by the Growth and Land Use Committee for printing and other miscellaneous costs related to the activities of the Committee.

4. Request ENA approval to divide the Growth and Land Use Committee into the Original 2 committees that were established at the beginning of the ENA. These committees are the Growth and Land Use Committee and the Neighborhood Plan Update Committee.