Approved January 26, 2021
Present: J. P. Hall (president), Brad Polk (vice president), Brad Marshall (treasurer), Lisa Goodpaster (secretary), Kim Caristi, Gretchen Cheesman (City of Muncie), Kate Leigh, Kristen McCauliff, Megan Orbin, Cathy Purtlebaugh, Dan Ridenour (Mayor, City of Muncie).
President Hall opened the online meeting at 7 p.m.
Brad Marshall reported that he will be meeting with our former treasurer (Rachel Hunt) to formally transfer the checking account. This process was delayed due to COVID. If we want to add additional officers as signatories to the account we will need to document the action in meeting minutes. No action is needed today, but we should discuss this further and revisit it in the near future.
J. P. Hall gave a presentation to the audience, showing the park designs produced by the landscape architecture class at Ball State. This project was made possible through a $500 grant with the Building Better Neighborhoods program at Ball State. This information will be online at www.halteman.org.
Gretchen Cheesman, Community Development Director for the City of Muncie, announced that there are Community Development Block Grant monies available to the city. These are restricted-use funds and can be used only for blight elimination. This would apply to the pool and any other blighted or unsafe structures, such as the pool house and sun deck, where the tanks are stored. This news came as a pleasant surprise to everyone, and will be an enormous benefit to the overall project.
Mayor Ridenour indicated that park employees can be used to install the playground equipment, which would be a cost savings as well.
Cheesman shared with the group that Brian Stephens-Hotopp (city engineer) indicated there would be funds/materials available to install the walking path. This could feasibly be completed in early 2021. She will verify this with him and let us know for certain.
Hall mentioned that we need to set up a fundraising committee, either formally or ad-hoc. Kristen McCauliff expressed interest in organizing this effort. Anyone interested in participating on this committee, please email her at kristenmccauliff@gmail.com.
Mayor Ridenour indicated he would see if he could help get some more concrete figures regarding costs associated with the path, demolition, playground, etc.
Hall discussed the need to pull together a marketing piece so that we could do a mailer with a letter enclosed. We could apply for another $500 grant through Ball State's Building Better Neighborhoods, which could be used for this purpose (printing, mailing). We will need to discuss this in more detail offline and push forward with this effort.
There being no further business to discuss, the meeting was adjourned.
- Respectfully submitted by Lisa Goodpaster, secretary