March 2 Meeting Minutes

[Steve Brown]

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 6:00pm at Steve Brown's house, 28 Chatham St

Attendees:

• Steve Brown
• Joan Terranova
• Ken Janke
• Lee Cruz

1. Strong School

• Building is for sale. City of New Haven will hold a walkthrough/open house on March 10 at 3:00 pm.
• ED Group would like to participate in an ad hoc committee to advocate for a community-friendly redevelopment that supports out economy and benefits our neighborhood.
• We will hold a meeting on Saturday, March 13 at 10:00 am at Lee Cruz's house.

Action Item: Steve will invite meeting attendees.

2. Dining Out

• Steve and Lee spoke to four restaurants so far. All wish to participate.
• Tentative schedule has been devised. The first monthly restaurant even will take place on Tuesday, March 23 from 6-8pm at Grand Apizza.

Action Items:

1. Lee Cruz will confirm this date with George at Grand Apizza.
2. Steve will talk to Jenelle's about also participating. Will suggest Jenelle's host the meet-and-greet and breakfast before the Spring Cleanup (date TBD, 8:30-10 am?)

3. Spring Cleanup

• We need to know when this will occur so we can coordinate with Jenelle's, if she wants to participate.

Action Item: Ken has spoken to Joan B-H, who is coordinating with Yale. We will follow the progress of these discussions.

4. City Seed

• CSNA and City Seed need to work together to strengthen and enlarge the FH Farmer's Market
• We'd like to schedule a meeting to talk about possible options

Action Item: Steve will contact Erin at City Seed to try and schedule a lunchtime meeting. Erin has already spoken with Lee Cruz. This should be expressly mentioned. Ken should also attend this meeting.

5. CARE $$

• Process underway to transfer $7500 of CARE money to CSNA. Money will be alloted among the work groups, amounts TBD.
• Possible ideas for using the money:
• • Urban Farm (Dan Butler)
  • Community Supported Market/subsidies for local food bank to partner with FH Farmer's Market
  • "Healthy Dish" promotion at all local restaurants. CSNA would promote
  • Work with GAVA to get healthier food at local stores (C-Town and corner stores)
  • Healthy Food table at Fall Festival

Action Item: Ken is coordinating this for CSNA.

6. Can we get a rep from the business community to attend our monthly meetings?

• Suggest proposing a one-year term.

7. "Manuel and the Lobsterman"

• New children's novel by local author Cat Urbain
• Character Manuel is from Fair Haven and lives in Maine.
• We'd like to get local businesses to sponsor copies of the book to be held at schools, libraries, etc. Books could be obtained at a discount for this purpose.
• Can we have Cat Urbain at the fall festival reading (and selling) her book? Maybe FH Lobster would like to participate somehow.

Action Item: Joan is going to work on this.

NEXT MEETING: TUESDAY, APRIL 6, 2010

[Christel Manning]

I live accross the street from Strong school so obviously I am very concerned about what will happen to it. I plan to attend both related events (walk through on Wed and meeting at Lee's house on Sat).