One of the many beautiful sidewalks in our Neartown neighborhood.

NEARTOWN ASSOCIATION (NTA) MEETING Cherryhurst Community Center, Tuesday February 25, 2003 Minutes

NTA Treasurer (and Past-Pres.), Ed Gonzales, called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. President Raju Adwaney was unable to attend at the last minute.

Announcements: Ed announced that there would be a going-away party March 5th for the supervisor of Cherryhurst Park. He also introduced the new supervisor, Waylon. An Easter egg hunt is scheduled at Cherryhurst Park on April 19th at 10:00 a.m.

A meeting is scheduled at Cherryhurst Park for March 13th at 7:00 p.m. for all Neartown civic group leaders to discuss submissions for the City's Super Neighborhood Action Plan (SNAP). Specific requests should be sent to Raju Adwaney on or before March 13. Neartown V.P. Jack Rose announced that he had met with the chief-of-staff in District D councilmember Ada Edwards' office, and they have offered to assist Neartown with the SNAP requests. John Kellett requested Stop signs at Yoakum and Harold.

Neartown Association is 40 years old this year. Ed Gonzales noted that Neartown has a long history of neighborhood advocacy. Past Neartown presidents who have gone on to become City councilmembers include George Greanias, Vince Ryan and Annise Parker.

NTA-Midtown Freeway Spur Task Force: Mike Mark (Task Force, Co-Chairman, texdogdoc@aol.com) reported that negotiations were continuing to decouple the spur from the rest of the Hwy 59 project. The current recommendation is to wait until 2006 to work on the spur. He noted that the City of Houston has a traffic mitigation plan to handle the impact on Neartown streets due to freeway construction and closures, but there is a shortage of money to implement the plan.

Parking issues: Several residents living near the recently opened Hugo's restaurant reported problems with parking. Ed recommended that neighbors organize a task force to decide how the neighborhood wanted to address this in terms of working with the restaurant owners, permit parking, etc.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:25. NTA Secretary, Dana Padgett