Brad called the meeting to order. 10 neighbors were present.

Donnie motioned to approve the minutes from the last meeting. The minutes were approved. The treasurer’s report was not available at the time of the meeting.

Thank you to our gracious hosts that held the summer traveling social. The food was great and the company even better. Thank you to Jamie and Kelly Mathy for hosting.

Ken provided an update on the neighborhood signs committee. Ken brought two design ideas to the meeting and neighbors gave their input and would like to see a couple of facts from each house and to make the sign more of a narrative instead of looking like a form. He is going to contact Fast Signs and Prairie Signs in Bloomington to see if they could do a mockup of the design and get pricing and bring to the next meeting.

A Day in Dimmitt’s Grove was held 4 years ago, and it is time to start planning for the next one that should be next year. This is a big event that takes place every 5 years to educate people on the neighborhood. It usually includes home and garden tours, vendors, a car show and other activities. A chairperson is still needed for this event.

The DGNA Flea markets only had 6 sales this year. It was competing with other events.

Neighbors feel like city Public Service and Engineering representatives are being insensitive to historic preservation. They feel that the Historic Preservation Commission should have been involved in the Grove Street construction and that the city is damaging historic characteristics of the city. Neighbors are encouraged to write letters and take pictures to send to city officials.

Donnie has Welcome packets for people new to the neighborhood. Newsletters have been distributed to all block captains and should have been received by all neighbors. Thank you to all that helped with the distribution and to Lacey for creating the newsletter.

The next meeting will be September 7 at 7 pm. The location is TBD.

Calling all kids… Join police officers from the Bloomington Police Department for some ice cream fun!

The Bloomington Police Department is hosting our annual Ice Cream with a Cop event at Carl’s Ice Cream, 601 W. Locust, Bloomington, on Thursday, August 3, 2017, 4pm-6pm.

Officers from our department will be at the event to meet, talk, and eat some ice cream with adults and children.

BPD feels building strong relationships with our community is key to keeping communities safe as well.  

Special thanks to our partnership with Carl’s Ice Cream who is providing FREE ice cream to kids 12 and under during the event.

June:

DGNA Flea Market on June 3

Old House Tour on west side is June 10

Garden Walk is June 24

Summer Traveling Social hosted by Jamie and Kelly Mathy is June 24

Brad called the meeting to order. 13 neighbors were present

Minutes were approved from the last meeting. The treasurers report was not available at the time of the meeting.

There were 1,100 Welcome signs distributed around Bloomington\Normal. Dawn will present the $375 check to Western Avenue Community Center at their next board meeting on May 18th.

Pam and Sarah will be scraping and painting the kiosk and bench at Maria Litta park. They will also update the kiosk information.

Ken presented a mock-up of the sign content. Melanie Shellito will be helping with the design. By the next meeting, Ken plans to have prices and proposal to present to the neighbors.

A few dates to keep in mind:

DGNA Flea Market on June 3

Old House Tour on west side is June 10

Garden Walk is June 24

Summer Traveling Social hosted by Jamie and Kelly Mathy is June 24

 

At the police chiefs meeting, the replacement for Sara Mayer was announced. Elias Mendiola will be the new public affairs liaison. There was a presentation from the mental health crisis team. They claim that 1 in 5 people will mental health care in their lifetime.

Block captains appreciate the monthly crime rates that Donnie has been emailing.

Lacey will be creating a newsletter for Dimmit’s Grove to be distributed this summer. Sponsors will be listed on the newsletter once the cost has been set.

Jamie Would like to invite Barry Riley and the principal of Sheraton to one of the next meetings.

606 Front St sold to a California developer. They will convert it back to single family and the timeline is 90 days.

The website committee was decided. Jamie, Dawn, Lacey and Sarah are going to work on the website. The cost is $10 per month.

The next meeting will be at Maria Litta Park on July 6.

Public Works Department

115 E. Washington St.,

PO BOX 3157 Bloomington, IL 61702-3157

Phone: 309-434-2225
http://www.cityblm.org Fax: 309-434-2201

400 blocks of East Olive and East Grove Sewer Project to Begin Next Week
April 5, 2017
Dear Dimmitt’s Grove Neighbors:
Allow us to share a moment of your time to inform/update the neighborhood about the City of Bloomington’s upcoming sewer project.
The City will install new sewer in the 400 block of East Olive Street and the 400 block of East Grove Street (the blocks between McLean and Gridley streets). Our contractor, Bloomington-based Stark Excavating, was awarded a contract for $255,000 through competitive bidding. Today, Stark was given a the “Notice to Proceed” with work. The company has 120 days to complete the work. Stark will begin some investigative digging next week, April 10th. The purpose of this is to identify the location of existing utilities. The street will be open to traffic for this work. Around April 24th Stark will begin construction in earnest. They most likely will begin with the Grove Street work.
Safety: As with any project, our first concern is safety. Please avoid the construction by using other roads and sidewalks, and please help us keep an eye on our young people, as they may be tempted to play in the work zone.
Traffic plan: At various times during construction, traffic will be limited and prohibited on these blocks. We will try to maintain driveway access for residents of these blocks for virtually the entire time. Alley access should remain at all times. We also will only close one street to through traffic at a time. Once construction begins on a block, the contractor will restore full traffic access to that block within a month. The street itself should be cleaned to a reasonable degree by the end of each workday.
General inconvenience: We will apologize in advance, because projects like this create dust, debris, and inconvenience even under the best circumstances. We are committed to minimizing inconvenience.
To stay informed: You are welcome to contact us with questions and concerns. Also, if you would like to receive e-mail updates about the project, please send an e-mail with the subject line “olive-grove sewer project” to sarney@cityblm.org.
Sincerely,
Steve Arney, project inspector

Luke Thoele, project engineer 309/434-2419 309/434-2437 sarney@cityblm.org lthoele@cityblm.org

3/2/17 DGNA Meeting Minutes

Brad called the meeting to order. 25 Neighbors were present.

The previous month’s minutes have been posted and were approved. DGNA currently has $5,064.38.

The DGNA subcommittees each provided a status on their goal. Karen Schmidt offered that her class of 16 students could work with each section chair starting late August or early September.

Jamie reported that his group is going to strengthen ties with Sheridan.

Ken has been working with a company called Engraphics out of St. Louis on signs for the neighborhood. Prices for the signs range from $1,200 to $5,000 sign. Ken will be looking into local suppliers for signs with a lower price tag. Sarah reported that she hopes to redesign the DGNA website. Her hope is that it will have more personality like the Founder’s Grove. She would like the website to be more interactive. She has been looking into different hosting sites such as WIX. These range in cost from $10-$15 per month. She would also like to create a website committee to maintain the site, so that it does not fall on one person. The next meeting with the subgroup will come up with a plan for the website such as website etiquette, number of advertisers, cost to advertise.

Donnie reported that Bloomington Police Department now uses Lexus Nexus instead of Raids online. He has been creating monthly reports of crime data. He has been using the dates, times, and type of crime for the past 30 days. He plans to send this information out to the block captains. There are also plans to have a block captain meeting in the spring.

Jamie and Kelly Mathy will be hosting the spring social in Mid-April. Other hosts are welcome. Date will be announced at a later time.

June flea market will be held on June 3. It will run from 9 am to 3 pm. Email Terri if you are interested in being on the map.

There was a hit a hit and run on the 700 block of E Taylor. From the bumper left behind, it was a red vehicle. If you have any information on this incident, please contact Bloomington Police Department.

An updated newsletter should be distributed before the next meeting. Donnie will update the Kiosk at Maria Litta Park.

At the Bloomington Police Chief’s meeting, the chief is reporting the lowest crime rate in a generation and is the lowest in any other community in IL.

The next meeting will be at 601 E Jackson on May 4th.

Brad called the meeting to order. 26 Neighbors were present.

The previous month’s minutes have been posted and were approved. DGNA currently has $4,623.48.

DGNA was pleased to host Diana Hauman from Ward 8 and Carlo Robustelli on behalf of Tari Renner to hear about the upcoming mayoral election.

Diana Hauman has lived in Bloomington-Normal for 21 years and is the current alderman for Ward 8. Before retirement, she worked in Human Resources in employee training and development. She is running for mayor because she is disappointed in some things that she has seen. She wants to prioritize the action items of the Bring It On Bloomington plan. She thinks that initiative starts on projects but then dies out. Her plan is to follow through. She also believes downtown is a diamond. She envisions Downtown Bloomington as place not just for college students on the weekend. She would like to see a family friendly park, a dog park, or a square that can be flooded in the winter for ice-skating. She believes in repairing the relationship between Bloomington and the Town of Normal by opening the communication between the two. She believes that downtown is missing senior housing, but not a West Minster Village. She also wants to work with the owners of Front N Center to see what can be done together instead of having developers tell the town what it wants.

Tari Renner was not available for the DGNA meeting because he was driving his son to graduate school in North Carolina, but Carlo Robustelli spoke on his behalf. Carlo is supporting the current mayor for re-election because Carlo believes in the mayor’s term he has improved the city infrastructure and made the city more accessible by improving communication. Carlo believes the city staff is more responsive since Tari has been in office. Before Tari, there were 50 vacancies on committees and boards and Tari is committed to diversity. Bring It On Bloomington nationally recognized for the amount of people (over 6,000) that it engaged. Carlo imagines that with another term as mayor he will have time to implement the plan. Carlo also thinks that Tari was a partner to Green Top Grocery to get it going. Carlo will be hosting a Meet & Greet with Mayor Renner on February 7th at 7:00 pm at his home at 401 E Grove. He also wanted to remind residents that the primary election will be held on February 28th.

DGNA will be celebrating it’s 30-year anniversary in June and July of this year.

The DGNA subgroups each presented a report of their recent activity. Ken Kashian for goal 5 reported that his group has been working on signage for neighborhood walking tours. Signs would be short and to the point and would be similar to a traffic sign in the park (brown and white) color scheme. He has priced out a couple of options one for printed or vinyl signs which range between $25 and $30 or bronze signs that are $100 and upwards in cost. Neighbors would like to see the DGNA website or the DGNA logo added to the sign. He also proposed the creation of a website committee.

Donnie Johnson for goal 3 or safety and engagement reported that they have reached out to all block captains and wants to renew communications with those block captains and discuss what a block captain’s job is. They would also like to have meetings with those captains periodically. A newsletter should be coming out in the Spring and the Fall to all neighbors. Donnie has taken over block captain chair from Pam Eaton.

Dawn Peters, with goal 2 increasing home ownership, has been working with Barry Reilly from District 87. He is willing to attend a DGNA meeting and discuss how we can promote Sheridan as the neighborhood school.

Carlo, fundraising, presented his idea for a brick oven pizza party. He would make the pizzas and there would be a table for donations. The oven is $200 to rent and also $150 for supplies. Neighbors hoped that this would align with the neighborhood flea market and the steam punk festival.

The Winter Traveling social does not have a date yet, but neighbors believe Jamie Mathy was willing to host.

The DGNA Flea market will be the first weekend of June. The date is set for June 3 and is from 9 am until 3 pm.

Gary Justis will be taking over all 3 seasons for the DGNA Adopt-A-Pot.

Pam Eaton would like Dimmitt’s Grove to be the first adopter of the “Welcome Signs” that are sweeping across the country. The signs are written in three languages and the goal is to let people know that they are welcome no matter where they are from. She has ordered 100 signs and will be taking names of people interested. The signs are $10 and the proceeds will be split between DGNA and Western Ave. Community Center.

Brad Williams presented the Safety report. There were a lot of people at the police chief’s meeting discussing the police substation on West Jefferson.

The next meeting will be at 512 E Taylor.