Human Rights Commission - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress.

Alright. We're gonna call this meeting to order at 06:02PM on 08/06/2025. First order of business so we're not gonna do a roll call, but who's not present? I left my computer upstairs. Okay. So all commissioners are present. Okay. All all commissioners are present except for three?

We have vacancies.

We have vacancies.

One that's not present is Jim

Okay. So Jim Magnesky. And then I'll let the reflect the the record reflect, reflect, excuse me, that Will Cratt is online. So I'll take a motion to approve the minutes of 07/02/2025 made by council member Goggin. Is there a second second by commissioner McDowell? Yes. Commissioner McDowell. And we'll go by voice vote. All in favor of approving the minutes, start by saying aye. Aye.

Any opposed? Any abstentions? Alright. Seeing none, we will open, line item twenty five zero zero nine, discussion on purpose of commission and goals for the community. Deputy city planner, we're gonna turn it over to you.

So thank you for last month for working with Jenna on going through the exercise on what kind of activities and actions you would like this body to take on over the next year or two. And so that has been compiled into a list that was attached to the item and that I put in front of you. And then what I also did then was put that into sort of this larger matrix. And, Will, Crown, I just emailed this to you. So you should be getting it shortly to show what I have given everybody else.

For us to sort of discuss then what and typically with process like this, when you set sort of your goals, the next step is to really step or or lay out what the actions are to achieve that goal. And so I kinda put out this matrix to what's the steps that we as an organization feel need to be undertaken to meet the goals that were established. And then we can talk about what the NRC's role would be and what the neighborhood association's role would be in those actions. The first thing that I'd like to do, though, is, you know, looking at this document with all the, with all the, actions or goals that you guys would like to do to make sure that this we got these right. Jenna put these together based off the note cards.

So the first step would be is, did we get these right? Is this is this what you guys remember being heard as being said? And if there's anything else that we wanna add to it or not at this time. So that would be the first kind of discussion to have is does this look right on what was discussed last month? And if there's this would be my opinion would be the opportunity too to maybe add anything if that something's been mulling in your head or not, or at least to have the discussion on whether to add it or not.

And if not, we can move on to the next step.

Captured everything I said, Tim.

I'm sorry. What was that, Will?

I think it captured everything I had written down.

Cool. Okay. So we'll move on from that then. Thank you, Will. The next step then is this this sort of, matrix that I put together and having a discussion on actions that we feel would be needed to achieve this.

And so some of that would be looking towards the individuals who who had come up with some of these, goals and objectives to get a better understanding, at least from my perspective since I wasn't here last month, on, you know, how you feel like it would be best for us to achieve that or not. And the rest of us then can help weigh in on what would be needed to achieve that in some way. And then from there, the next step would be to really start figuring out who's going to take on those responsibilities and what this body's role would be and what the neighborhood association's role would be and things of that nature. And so that's something that we can have a larger discussion on, and, Mara, that's maybe where I would also get your opinion on, or if it's just you feel like it would be best to take the time to individually kind of fill out how you think this is and then have a discussion, whatever you feel would be best for this group.

Yeah. And I'll defer to the group. I think last week when we had the time to kinda take our a little minute and write our notes and then come back together seem to work. But if folks are open to just having a conversation, I'm okay with that too.

I mean, if, yeah, if you wanna take five to ten minutes or or more and just you don't have to fill out everything. If you feel like I really not quite sure how to do one of these items, but I do with these others, that's at least helpful for you to fill out the ones you feel would be best, and then we can have a larger discussion as a group. Okay. And then the the ultimate goal at the end of this would need to put together this larger sort of matrix thing for us as a little action plan that we can have that we can refer to, and then, you know, really acting as a guide, referring back to this little action plan over the next year or two.

Yeah. Council member Goggin?

Do you want us to for instance, do you want us to talk about maybe something on this this list that's on the matrix that that we maybe wrote to get

started? Like

Yeah. So so for instance, getting more members involved with the neighborhood association. Right? That's the first one that's on this list. And so then the discussion would be is talking about the steps that we or the steps that we feel would be needed to achieve that. So for measurable steps too as well. It's like what what's realistic goals that we know, like like, we know we can reach and achieve in some way. So it's a sort of like, I can't think of the right term. That Smart goals? Well, no.

It's more like, it's it's I'm sure Will can help me out with this. It's it's another word for, like, achievable goals. Like, a lot of times when people set goals, it's these, hey. Let's just get more people, and nobody actually set some sort of metric. Like, let's focus on in a year, we have 10% more membership. You know? And there's there's a measurable goal. That's what it is. We gotta establish measurable actions that we can actually show we're meeting. Mhmm. Know, You they're not just some lofty goal of get more people. It's going to be by this time next year, we're gonna have x amount of people. And how do we do that? You know what I mean? Measurable steps, measurable actions.

So, like, one of the measures measurable steps would be develop a list of active and inactive neighborhood associations.

Yeah. Because that would be something that can be achieved. You know, you can have that in front of you and completed. Yeah. Steps like that if you feel like that's a necessary step. Does that make sense? Council Mergaugen?

Yeah. I think that that's probably one of the most important things is to figure out which neighborhood associations are active and then to try to build them up first. And then maybe they can spread out and move on from there. But I think the neighborhood groups that I'm involved in are I think the best word would be languishing. You know, it's there's more sometimes council members and county board members there than there are neighbors.

And so I am a neighbor in that neighborhood. You know what I'm you know what I mean? Right. So I'm I struggle how to get more humans to come to these meetings because everybody's got stuff to do.

Yeah. I mean, one of the actions for that is maybe an understanding of why people are not coming to meetings. And I think we all have and maybe that's different for all the neighborhoods. Maybe it's the same for all the neighborhoods, but maybe getting a better understanding of why that's occurring can help maybe also address then what's needed to change that.

Commissioner McDowell.

So I feel like, between the all leaders meetings that I used to go to and and now this for the last two years and and our neighborhood association meetings, we've been talking about this for a long time, and Washburn is probably one of the better attended in historically, but we're hurting as well. But we did a mailing this year, and I think my wife and the gang sent out, like, 600 to the neighbors, and a guy came to the national night out because of the mailing. So at least one person came, and he seems like the type of guy that's gonna keep coming. Well, one one person has probably just increased our membership by 10%. You know?

And so there are things that I don't know if they necessarily work, but they you can do things to try to improve membership. But I on another sidelight, I see Jim mentioned last month about movie night and world music night, and I don't he's not here to expound on it, but those kind of activities where you get the whole neighborhood to come, you know, if you can get 30 or 40 people, 50 to show up, we had a 100 plus at the national night out last night. You know, you can maybe you pick up one or two more people or three more. And so

I agree. I also wonder sorry. Go ahead, commissioner Stan. No. You go, and then I'll go.

Thank you. I I've been kind of reflecting on this a little bit and so in the years that I've been in my neighborhood association, I've kind of noticed when I first joined, it actually was a pretty active group and then it kind of trailed off. But every once in a while, we'll have a meeting, and people will come out of the woodwork and show up. And we will have, you know, 30 or 40 people to a meeting. And usually, it's, like, four of us.

And, you know, for for better or for worse, it's usually when something is being proposed that people are not happy about, like

or

the the time that we had when when we had kind of, like, sustained action was when we were trying to keep the South Branch Library open, and, obviously, we kinda failed to do that. And but that was kind of like so I think, like, having something that like, having something or goal that people are working towards and try to keep it positive because I think some of the things some of the times when people kinda come out of the woodwork for something, it's maybe you know, it's because people are concerned or they want more information or something like that. But, you know, a lot of times it is kind of like, well, I don't want that in my neighborhood because something's being proposed that might come into the neighborhood. And I don't think that's always positive when it's this this kind when it's kind of like a knee jerk kind of thing. It's like, well, what I don't care what it is.

I don't want it. But I think if positive ways to engage that so I know that people are getting the emails, they're getting the announcements, they're seeing the agenda, otherwise how else would they know that we were having a meeting, that they might want to show up. And a lot of people showed up to the meeting when we talked about what would become of the space, the old library space. A lot of people showed up to that meeting. So I think

if there's a way to

kind of harness that sort of, like, working towards something because I think if it's just sort of an event, maybe people wouldn't necessarily take time out just to come to a meeting or come to, know, there's going to be cookies or something like that. Some small incentive may not be enough to kind of overcome whatever, you know, just their life busyness to make time to come out for something. We do have park cleanup days, which are not officially meetings. But a lot of people show up to help clean up our park. And we have pretty good turnout for those kinds of events.

So if it's like coming together to achieve some kind of goal, that seems to resonate a little bit more, at least with our neighborhood.

One thing I think of is in here, and, like, some neighborhoods are doing better than others, do all neighborhood associations have some sort of communication plan? Like, how are we communicating the information to our neighbors? Is it only word-of-mouth? Is it via email? I know something I saw recently in the Lower North is these yard signs with the QR codes, but I think I only seen, like, two of them in the entire neighborhood, which I think is probably not enough. Go ahead, councilman.

That's because they there's a very small number of people that go to Lower Northside, but you have to pay for the sign to get it for your yard. So we haven't I shouldn't say we so much because, again, I don't want to appear that I'm running anything there. But I think it's been a matter of getting the word out about the neighborhood watch that they're trying to establish.

Okay. And then I think Will has his hand up. Will? Commissioner

Yeah. Thanks. No. It's perfectly fine. I I prefer informal.

I agree with commissioner Stanton. I think I think that comment really nailed it. I don't do neighborhood associations have to be strictly governed? So one of the things I wrote down and, Tim, I don't know if you want us to do this during the meeting or talk about it or send this afterwards, but, you know, I don't I I think it would be good to get away from formal neighborhood meetings and have them be informal gatherings where you can also talk about, you know, some of these things. I mean, to commissioner Stanton's point, sometimes there are things going going on that you have to gather around and talk about.

But I think by having more formal meetings with an agenda with you know, like like she said, you know, often goes towards nimbyism or negativity. Just just have it be about getting together and not so much you know? I mean, look at how many people voluntarily come to this meeting. Right? It's pretty low because it's no offensive boring meeting.

So I think if we looked at making the the and it turns into work. So I think if we look at making all of the effort that the volunteers are putting in into something that the people are going to enjoy, I think we'd have a lot more success. And then last thing I would say too is everything costs money. I mean, even if you have a potluck, you know, somebody's gotta bring the plates and napkins and all that kind of stuff. So I I really think and know when we're talking about the capital improvement plan, a little bit could go a long ways in doing some of this stuff.

And, again, maybe it doesn't have to even necessarily go directly out to neighborhood associations because I know there's parts of the city that don't have formal ones. But maybe we could look at somehow working with, say, the parks department or something like that to just facilitate a little bit of funds going to some of these neighborhood block parties or whatever it is that ends up getting planned.

Commissioner Geary.

Thank you, madam chair mister chair. I'm so used to the county board. We had a woman chair. So, usually, you gotta have some reason they wanna show up for the meeting other than, you know, talk. Like, we award two scholarships a year to students at Logan High School, so we we have to run a fundraiser once a year.

So a few months ago, we put on the agenda the lady at Logan that's from student services came to speak about scholarships, how they're awarded, what criteria they set, etcetera, etcetera. And we had a lot of people showed up because they're interested because their kids were in high school. They were juniors and thinking about it, and she was talking about on claim scholarships. They had a lot of them. Maybe you got 10 of them set aside for Western Technical College, five for electricians, and five for plumbers, but only two of them are being used.

The other money sits there, accumulates interest, but it was something that interest the people. The the neighborhood resource officer shows up. Well, safety of the neighborhood sometimes depend on what's going on in your neighborhood is a concern, and they kinda give us the update, and people are happy to hear that. So you gotta have some structure to the meeting and something on an agenda. So I I think you wanna enlarge your email list. Even though they don't come, they might come once a month because there's something they want. Their kids go into Logan. They wanna figure out if they can get some scholarships, they show up. But at least they're getting informed and and, you know, you get opportunities, things will come along, and you have a speaker. Tim comes there with the planning department.

He says, try to enlarge the attendance because we're gonna go through your group and do this, this, and this. Well, those meetings get better attended because people got a reason to go there. You know what I mean? Other than sit around and, you know, you gotta have a little bit of structure and and some kind of an agenda to, to get them there. But the scholarship wouldn't surprise me because I a lot of people were interested in that, and and we didn't see that coming. But they found out about it because they all they all got an email telling them she was gonna be there explaining everything. So

it's at it.

Yeah. Commissioner McDowell.

I I feel like some of our more successful meetings in the last seven or eight years have been about things being built in our neighborhood.

You know,

just having on the 4th And Jackson thing that you were at. Now three sixty is doing that thing on Ferry Street where our gardens were. And, of course, that was somewhat controversial, a lot of lot of anger. But there was a little bit of compromise, and people came in droves for a while. Well, now we're down to our basic fifteen, twenty people.

But I think if we have the a speaker every month, it it helps. We and we try to do that. We try to have somebody come to speak either from we had a a gal from the arts board. You know, Jackie came and talked about artwork on certain things throughout the neighborhood. I mean, it's just you know, there's a lot of things you can come up with, but it's usually helpful to have a speaker and

Okay. Councilmember Gaga?

I actually like what council or commissioner Will Kraat said about being informal. And I think there can be a compromise between the informal some months, maybe, and then more structured other months. But I think that it really like, people will come if you're doing something to engage the family. Do you know what I mean? Parents will come if you bring their kids.

And if you give your kids something to do, you can talk to the parents. So I like the idea of the kind of some unstructured, fun type things, and working towards something instead of working against something is, I mean, a really good idea, I think, as well. I just I just don't know how to get there. So I just wanna say I really appreciate those thoughts, but someone needs to help me get there.

They're right.

And that might be the part where city staff and the NRC can help with that part of it. Right? Maybe helping with resource and what other communities do. There was a somebody said act an Acto here has resources for neighborhood streets, and they may have other other areas might have, like, how to activate streets, and then they might have other resources too. Other organizations might have others resources too on how to get to that point with what you're talking about.

And so the way I kinda see this is the overall goal being getting more members involved, neighborhood association, the measurable objectives then would be what we'd wanna focus on, but I've kinda heard one being having the mayor had a good one with having these neighborhood associations be familiar with the communication plan. Like, how are they getting to their neighborhood residents or property owners or stakeholders, and, you know, can there be a more effective plan to get outreach out to them about what's going on? As as a commercial McDonald said, you know, one gentleman never knew any of that was going on and got his flyer, then he came. You know? So new people moving in might not be aware that that's going on.

I do think having more events is going to help more people, but then I also see, like, that's a lot of these other visions and goals that you have listed here, like having more events, having block parties, neighborhood campaign, things like that. And so those might actually get shifted under this item of how to get more people involved. And those become more objectives, and how do we get to those rather than them being overall visions or goal you know, their overall goals or objectives that are under our goal. These would be objectives that are under the goal of getting more people involved. So that's just something to think about as well.

But I do see a lot of those being mostly the neighborhood association's role in trying to get more people to come, like reaching out, organizing those parties, and things of that nature. And what the city could do with most is help develop tools to allow you to communicate with your neighborhoods, how what are other neighborhoods associations doing with that to communicate, And then I don't and then the resource part of it, like funding, like money monetary funding, the part. And that's where you're gonna have to talk with your council member and your elected officials to figure out if that's a possibility, what's available for that. I don't know if that helps. But

It does because when I look at it and, you know, I'm glad you said what you said because I do think a lot of these kinda blend underneath this one. So when we talk about ways of getting more members involved with the neighborhood association, but then also maybe the develop initiative innovative, excuse me, ways to develop community relationships and community building. And, like, between those two or even revitalize a neighborhood connection, so I must like, those three could have been three categories, and then all the other ones fall underneath one of those three things. Right? Because I I wouldn't say that they're the same because if I wanna revitalize my neighborhood, I does I don't necessarily need to be a part of a neighborhood association to be able to do that, which is why I wouldn't put those two together.

But then also developing community relationships. Being a part of a neighborhood association could be one of those ways of doing it, but there's also other ways that we can do it, such as engaging neighbors and doing something. If it's a cleanup or if it's some sort of activity to build the neighborhood in some way. So I I do appreciate what you're saying there because I think those three kinda are the overarching themes, and then everything else can fall into place.

Yeah.

Great.

So not quite sure where to take the discussion from there though.

I think so we say, like, getting more members involved within the neighborhood association. Right now, we talked about developing a list of active and inactive neighborhood associations. We talked about the communication plan. We talked about developing kinda like an informal meeting process, so to speak, or informal, formal with the suggestions of having a speaker or, you know, some of those things. Sorry. I can't remember everything everybody said, but I'll try.

Try to try have stuff for kids. Meetings cost money, having funding to help with neighborhood block parties.

No. I mean, like, to like, in this particular conversation because I've heard different things, and I like the idea of, like, setting informal formal meetings, bringing a speaker in once a month. I don't know if that's wrong. I think that does fall under how to get more people involved in terms of actionable steps.

One thing that would be an interesting discussion is the definition of inactive versus active. What would you consider an inactive neighborhood association?

Dun dun dun. Because Council member Goggins.

I mean, if I was to say it, I would say there's only one that is would be 100% defined as inactive. And that would be the Spring Brook Clayton Johnson one because nobody meets. No one's talking about anything. There's no contact person to get a hold of. Now you have a various levels of other neighborhood associations that rarely meet.

There's probably one or two people that are actually involved in some way, but there is a contact person to get a hold of that they are in charge of the list serve, they're in charge of the email list that they have, they will send stuff out to their people they may not meet, but there's at least a contact person. So there's at least some level of activity there, but, you know, it's not there's nobody meeting. And then you have it kinda goes up from there of activity where you have, you know, groups like Washburn, who probably are up there at the top along with maybe Logan North Side where they probably have the more people meeting and regularly Bluffside. And Bluffside too. Yeah.

Bluffside's a good one, and maybe even Weigand, Hogan, or Holy Trinity would be the other two that are kinda close close to those groups where they have a higher level of attendance and they meet most of the year. So I I it just depends. Right? I think

Commissioner Stead?

I made a list of, like, like, ways we might assess this is, like, you know, because, like, we have a contact person who's, like, been trying not to be the contact person for years and, like, does not want to be in charge of our neighborhood association, like, has been wanting to have an election and but, like, no one has volunteered to take that role.

Yeah.

And So we're kind of like according to our sort of like the bylaws that we adopted, like we're sort we're not following them currently because we don't have, those roles. People are not in the roles that they're supposed to be in. I would say, one, is there a contact person? Two, do they actually have an elected leadership as defined by what they said that they were wanting to do, you know, with the different

By their bylaws.

Like, by their bylaws, with the officers. Like, are there people filling those roles? How often do they meet? How many people usually attend? Do they have a communication mechanism set up? Do they have a website or social media? How often do new people come to meetings? So just some ideas. And then for the website thing, is I'm looking on the Citi website right now, and I don't see I don't see like an obvious place where people could like if someone was just curious, like, oh, just moved to La Crosse. I wonder how I can get involved.

And I don't really see like an obvious, like, find your neighborhood association, here's how to contact them, that sort of thing. So maybe that's something that the city could help facilitate is to have, like, kind of a either a space on the website to, like, host updates, when they meet, who to contact, how to get a hold of people, you know, or maybe even they could even post their meeting minutes and that sort of thing.

So we do have a website for every neighborhood association on the Planning Department page.

Yeah, it's not obvious from

That is true. I won't argue with you on that. And we did try very hard to keep it updated with contact info and their meetings, and we also kept their agendas and minutes on there. It was I mean, it's fallen, I think, on both sides because Mhmm. There really isn't anybody I mean, Jenna's tried very hard to keep at least a list of who the contacts are for the neighborhood associations. Mhmm. But, yes, it's been hard to update the pages and keep them updated on our end, but also I think it's because on the other end there's just there's also

So keeping them updated could be part of like, maybe I think with this maybe the role that the city could play would be to, you know, have a more obvious portal into that information from the main like, when you go to the main website, they would say, like, your community or something. And then you could kind of go down and find out which what neighborhood association you have. And then if there was, like, just some basic training on, like, how whoever that contact person is, and if they need to appoint someone to be their sort of, like, website maintainer, maintainer that that then they they would just get some, like, basic training on how to keep that updated. But I don't think that should be the city's job necessarily to to to do the updating, but just to provide provide whatever whatever kind kind of of training training they they need. Need.

Yeah. The non if they're not a Citi employee, they won't

have the ability to update our website on page.

No. But that was we had it set up to where we pretty it's pretty easy to maintain. It's just we all of a sudden, we weren't getting agendas or minutes. And then all of a sudden, realized, oh, there's three new officers that we weren't aware of. And so I it was and then for a while, we didn't have anybody to update it. It's just, I think, on both sides,

it

kinda fell apart. And then then then the neighborhood wouldn't meet for a year, and then all of a sudden they would, and then they had new people. And it was just Yeah.

Yeah. It

was both sides. Yeah. That's something, though, that I think that we can do. Right.

And I mean it I mean, like, I understand, like, if the city can't up like, do the actual, like, up like, the someone needs to within the city needs to do the actual updating, but it could be, like, sort of, like, web form that someone could fill out, you know, that could that could that provide the information that would then flow through.

Or or just email Jenna. Jenna's a neighborhood person. Okay. And that was and again, Jenna had Jenna had started going around to all the neighborhood associations and was trying to put together this presentation of four neighborhoods on how you could go and look at meetings, how you could find our the pages and and give that information for the neighborhood groups, and then and then a lot of the neighborhood stopped meeting, and it was it just didn't she had a lot of like, a lot of it all prepared, and then it just didn't materialize that way. And so that was part of it too. So but that is definitely something I think we can resurrect. Like, was raring to go with it. She probably still has it all ready to go. Yeah.

I do agree with the difficulty to be able to find that. And so if we could we're we're planning to do an update on the website anyway. So hearing that is very helpful because there is a a way for us to be able to do, like, maybe a community tab or and then in that, they're able to find their neighborhood or something like that or maybe a resident tab and what are things that residents usually need in that. The other thing I think about and and, Tim, I think we gotta check on this, but I wonder if it's possible to put based on the council member's district when you go to the council member page, if it's possible to put what neighborhood associations would be within that district.

Yes. We can do that. Okay. On the council member page. Is that what you're saying?

Yes.

Okay.

I do know on our GIS website, you can click on a property, and it'll tell you what it's at what neighborhood it's in and what council member if it's in one. I thought on each individual neighborhood page too, we have a map of the boundary, and it does show the boundaries of the council districts. And I think actually on that page, we tell who the council members are. That probably needs to be updated. I'm not sure it's been updated since this last election. So yes. But, yes, absolutely, we can do all that. Again, like you said, it might just it's buried in our planning department pages, and it might just need to be more prominent on the main page somewhere.

And then your criteria for commissioners then of what makes a active neighborhood association. I am curious to hear other folks thought like, do you agree? I mean, I'm gonna say I agree. And I can't recall. Did you mention emails? Because I know there are some associations that only email right now, and so they would technically still be active.

Oh, you're talking to me? Some neighborhoods have emails. They even have, like, g like, Jenna at whatever, you know, g mail. So a lot of them have all of them have emails, I believe.

Okay.

Some actually have social media pages. A few have their own websites that we then link to or had. I think Washburn's one. They might be the only one, really. Page. Yeah. The social media. So some have both. Some have one or the other. We do have emails. Yep. So and generally, Jenna is aware of who is the main contact person for each one. Okay. Except for Springbrook, Clayton Johnson, which haven't met in years.

So then based off that criteria that commissioner Stanton has set forth, then the only neighborhood association that would not be active is still the Spring Brooklyn, or is there others?

I would say well, again, one of our criteria was, are they electing leadership by their bylaws? I mean, that would take

a close we'd have to take

a closer look at a lot of them. And do we do we do we get to that level of scrutiny? I don't know. Attendance and how often they meet? You know, again again, all that's based off of their bylaws. I don't know. We haven't established, though, like, what the attendance is. So there's is it how many people do you consider active? Is it two people, or is it 10 people, or is it one person? You obviously more than one, and I think we'd be active.

I think by looking at all her things, though, on some level, majority of all of the remaining neighborhood associations have some level of compliance with the things you mentioned. It's just we haven't set a metric for attendance. We haven't set a metric for often how often you should meet. We haven't set a metric for, you know, whether you should have a social media or website or you need both or maybe just one or the other, you know, and how they communicate, you know, with their own people. We haven't set those metrics to say which what makes you active or not within those categories.

So I'm a go to commissioner McDowell first, and then I'll ask my question. Go ahead, commissioner McDowell.

We we kinda talked with because we did our national night out with the Downtown Neighborhood Association and Polk Hamilton. And most of the work was done by the Washburn people because the actual building was in our neighborhood. But people did help from the other neighborhoods. But one of the discussions was there just aren't that many members. And so Polk Hamilton has been slowly but surely coming to our meetings.

And that's worked, sort of, but it's often just the same two or three people. And they're probably getting burnt out, but they're they're the types that really like to be involved. But I think I'm I got I don't know if the one of the answers is to maybe combine neighborhoods. I I'm not a 100% sure that how popular that is, but it's it might answer some of the problems.

So my question would be in regards to some of those things like the in attendance policy policy, etcetera. Is that for the city to regulate, or is that just the neighborhood association themselves?

It should be the neighborhood association. Okay.

Because then I think of, like, the idea I mean, naturally, there have been neighborhood associations that have just been combining anyway for lack of attendance. I mean, Logan North and Lower North Depot has combined meetings for years at one point, and then they went back to doing separate meetings. And now I feel like they they kinda shouldn't be right.

So if you remember, and I think I had mentioned this to you in our other meeting, Mara, it was and maybe some of you aren't aware of this, it's like, I wanna say, like, ten years ago, maybe, we had established this recognized neighborhood association policy where, you know, you have your own bylaws, your own neighbor association, you know, you should be running yourself and governing yourselves on, you know, meeting whatever requirements are in there, blah blah blah. But if you wanted us to maintain a website for you, if you wanted the city to, like, allocate, have neighborhood funding in our budgets for printing of mailings and and mailings and printings and things like that, and then there were some other things as well. Then you had to meet these following criteria, and it was have regular meetings, have bylaws established, have an attendance, and then you'd be eligible for the resources. You do you have to have an action plan as a as a neighborhood association in place. And if you did those things, like, we would help you do that.

We would then have you be eligible for this funding, and you'd be help you know, we would be able to come and provide any other resources we have. Now I think it's just sort of again, it was really hard for a law and neighborhood associations to meet those requirements to be considered. Oh, and also it was a requirement too then to have a seat in this board to do that. You could you could then if you were in good standing, then you could be eligible to be on this commission. And it just was really hard for neighborhood associations to do that because their members are their membership was falling, you know, things like and it was just really hard.

And and so we used to do that, but I don't think that's really a good practice to do anymore. I think we can we should find something else, somewhat different policy if we wanted to do that to do that. And then what incentive is that for the neighborhood associations? I don't I don't know what that is for. You know, they we have to recognize the struggles they're having and and help them with that, I think, if we can. I don't know.

Commissioner Geary?

Thank you, mister mayor. Well, one thing we got to remember is we have different neighborhoods. The college area has got tons of rental. Downtown is different than La Crosse. The North Side Of La Crosse, That floodplain might be a big issue up there. You know, we have different issues in different areas. And as we develop a plan, I think most groups have the same problem. The same people have to do the work. Because of lack of numbers, whatever they come up with, we keep dumping it on the same people to tell them, you gotta do more and more. So I I hope we don't come up with a ton of ideas.

I we've gotta come up with some that are manageable, doable. I remember when the Logan North Side started, I just go to the meetings. They got bogged down on the bylaws for at least three or four years. They couldn't get through the bylaws. Got through that, and everybody have all these ideas. None of them ever got done, but they had all these great ideas. One day, and I don't know if you know this woman, but she was surely based off the meeting. She said, pick out something and do it well. Pick out one thing. So we did. We got the scholarships going. We do that annually. We got the spring cleanup going. We do it every year up there. It's real popular.

People are always asking me, when's the next one? Well, it only comes around once a year. But pick up things you can do well, but don't overwhelm the organization because they don't have a lot of people to start with. And once you start doing things well, maybe you'll slowly build up the membership. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, you gotta have some flexibility because different issues arise during the year that you don't foresee. But after that, then you don't see those people anymore because you're dealt with that issue. But don't overwhelm the groups because usually the same people have to do the work. You know what I mean? I think most organizations would probably concur with that, wouldn't they? So that's something I'd suggest. Thank you.

In the interest of time, and it's up to you, I think I have we have some direction on what we've talked about, and then Amer's comments on sort of maybe reorganizing these goals a little bit. And then I can bring it back next month for a little bit more massaging, and I can work on this with Jenna. We can, again, listen to the comments on the video and come back a little bit more with this sort of rearranged and a little bit more direction. Does that make sense?

Commissioner commissioner council member Goggins. Why are the bylaws for a volunteer group so cumbersome? I mean, I've I've been to in Lower Northside Depot, and they're I mean, it's, like, four pages. And Logan Northsides are I mean, it they're it's just I mean, people are just like, what? You know? I wanna go to a meeting. I wanna learn what's going on in my neighborhood. I wanna go home.

I think the bylaws were originally intended to give some legitimacy to your organization as an organization. Like, if you wanted to be taken seriously, then you wanted to show that, hey. We do agendas. We have minutes. We have elected officers. We actually are sort of an organized organized organization, so to speak. Right? And it gives you some sort of document to refer to if there's some debate on whether you're handling something incorrectly or not. Right? And also too, it sort of also establishes who has the ability to vote on items as a neighborhood if you come to some debate where you need to have a vote on something.

And so it sort and it also establishes your boundary is recognized boundary. So it kinda gives you some sort of legitimacy to that. Again, though, they're your bylaws, and and there is written if you wanna change them, the process for changing them. So if again, that has nothing to do with us as a city. If you guys wanna change them, there's a process built in there to do that. So if you feel like you wanna remove something or add something or whatever it is, entirely up to your organization.

Thank you.

I'm also wondering as you kinda re reformat this, if there is an update that, like, you or Jenna could provide in terms of where are our neighborhood associations at. So it's almost like we need an assessment of neighborhood associations so that we can kinda figure out what work we're guiding. And then I think there's the other piece as a neighborhood revitalization commission when we talk about, well, what is it that this commission can do to help neighborhoods? Right? It might be the start is, again, like, that assessment of neighborhood associations, who's actually in existence, what work is already being done, and then us coming alongside and saying, like, here's some ideas that we have to revitalize our neighborhoods and what that could look like.

I'm curious if this particular commission hosted a movie night on various neighborhoods, or I wouldn't I guess that might be a lot of work. I'll take that back.

The department that's good at that is the parks department. They actually have a projector and everything they do in parks. So, I mean, it doesn't mean that we couldn't work with them to start to try to organize stuff like that.

And that's what I was more so thinking, but then I was thinking, like and not necessarily do it in every neighborhood, but maybe just do it on different parts of the town, and then invite those various neighborhood associations to be a part of that as a way to rejuvenate and then have them kinda the neighborhood associations talk about the fact that we have a neighborhood association, and we wanna do things like this, and we wanna, like, bring our community together. And this is one way of us doing that.

Absolutely.

So one question I have, and we can totally do that, was in an effort to get that information from neighborhood associations, I think it'd be good to say, can you tell us these numbers over the past year, year year and half, two years, or just year for now?

I would just do the year. Okay. And maybe even check, like, if they have an email list, how many people are on their email list. Right? Because if you're only emailing, like, two or three people, then we need to figure out, you know, how can we assist you with better getting more emails from your neighborhoods and things like that. Okay.

Yeah. We can work on that. Absolutely.

K.

We'll we'll probably try to have this kinda done too by the time that we have our next meeting with you to talk about the agenda, and and so we'll try to shoot for that date.

So And okay. Last thing. I have a lot of ideas as you can tell. I'm just an idea guy. And looking at the update to the website, I'm curious of what other folks' thoughts would be too is if people if we did have a form from the city that went to, let's say, Jenna of folks who kinda said whether or not they would be interested in being a part of a neighborhood association or learning about their neighborhood a little bit more.

I know you can give the contact information to whoever that neighborhood representative would be, but maybe that's another way because maybe they don't feel comfortable just straight up contacting whoever that neighborhood association person is. But if we have their contact in the city to either pass off or to make that first contact and then do a handoff, that might be easier. Then the last thing I'm gonna say is well, it's a question but a comment. That neighborhood app, who controls that? Neighborhood. The Nextdoor is it Nextdoor?

Nextdoor is sort of like a public app, I think.

Yeah. It's a private company.

That's a private company. Dang. Never mind. Because people utilize that, and it somehow has our neighborhoods divided up in that app somehow. Somebody had

to establish that. But They're that

same way. Right? No. No. Because I think it's it doesn't directly correspond to the neighborhood associations.

Because Lower North Depot is in there as the Lower North.

Yeah. Because I don't think like, I don't like, I'm in there as just, like, Park Street, and that's not a near association.

But but we have social media. Like, we have planning department actually started their own pages. So, like, we'd be willing to do promote and do things on our social Jenna is one of our people on our social media group in our department, so she can help advertise and post and put things on there as well. And then also to our own communications coordinator, we have social media that way too. And so we can utilize that for our neighborhood groups. I don't know why we wouldn't help promote anything through that either.

Alright. Council member?

Would it be helpful to let, like, local realtors know about neighborhood associations? So, like, say, I am moving into La Crosse, and I buy a house on at 1409 Wood Street, La Crosse, Wisconsin. And they would say, well, here's just a little information for you. This is your councilman person. This is your and this is where your neighborhood association when and where your neighborhood association meets. I mean, realtors get a lot of information.

They do. But they do. I sure. I guess my own thought would be is I guess I would wanna have an understanding of what their perception of neighborhood associations are. I know a lot of people may confuse that with homeowners associations, and then and then and then who knows whether there's a negative connotation with that.

I know too I'm still also battling for the perception of historic preservation and buildings that are historically listed on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing in the realtor world. Some feel it is because they don't quite understand what that means while others understand that. And so that's why I would just be certain that, you know, there isn't there isn't some that we would have the education of what that's about and why they're a good thing.

One way to do that though, and we've been talking about this in my office, is we talked about doing, like, welcome cards from the city. And then I think if there was a way to do, like, a QR code or mention, like, here's how you find your council member. Here's how you find, like, your neighborhood association or all those different things that would kinda bring that to the forefront, some of that information that you're talking about. So that actually would be I'm gonna put that on my my thing. Yeah.

Yeah. You know? Any other thoughts or feedback? Well, it sounds like you have a lot to do.

Right. I got it's two of us doing it. We'll get we'll work on it. Okay. Some good stuff, though, today. Thank you.

Alright. Moving on to our next agenda item, twenty five zero one four three, update on the zoning subdivision code project.

So I just what I add there's a couple documents that have been added to that list of stuff that's there. The more recent things is we updated our document that consult that is essentially an ongoing list of all of our public engagement opportunities, like how many times you've been promoted through social media, how many times you've had news interviews, and all the other meetings and things that we go to as well. So that's kind of an update just to show the ongoing community outreach that we are doing as part of this project, and that's the zoning promotions document. What we've doing what we've done over the past month is have individuals we're still kind of wrapping up our first phase of in public input and education, and so we have done one on one stakeholder sessions with area developers and and architects and civil engineers, largely the ones that have gone through our design review processes as well as having to, in some way, go through our zoning process as well to get their feedback, their experiences on using our code, and and and things that they feel we should be doing. And we also met with the board of zoning appeals, and we also met with sort of our area housing organizations like Habitat, and stuff like that.

So that is a summary of all of their comments. I think I'm gonna take that document, and I need to reconsolidate it in a different way, but that's the information that we had gotten from those meetings. Largely, and and mister Will Kratt was commissioner Kratt was part of that with us with his role with ISG. But largely, I think what we heard a lot was processes. Like, is there a way to simplify the process of being able to get a building permit?

And and the way I've interpreted that to mean a lot is, you know, there's been especially over the last few years, many developments have had to go through, like, five four, five, six processes is just to be able to get through it to get their project done. And if we have the ability to reduce that down to one or two, that's gonna be tremendously helpful for a lot of these developers. And one of those is, I think, our the utilization of our special zoning districts. There's less opportunities where they have to do that because what they wanna do either falls with an existing zoning district or it's just a onetime zoning change. That's gonna be tremendously helpful so they don't have to go through a two step zoning process to the council twice over two two different months.

They don't have to also then go to BOSA for some request, or they don't have to ask for a special exception for something else. And and it could be as simple as just a zoning change or not at all. That's gonna be tremendously helpful, I think, in reducing number of processes for them. And then that was largely what I feel like we had discussed or that we'd heard from them was a lot of the processes. But there was many other things too, I think, that helped. We just wrapped up. We had a conversation with the builder association. We were talking about missing middle with them today. We had a stakeholder session with Neighbor North across building association this

morning.

We talked to I feel like there's another one that we have coming up. I think that was it. So we're kinda wrapping up sort of that part of it. The next step then is we're having a joint. We're looking to have the council the council has a planning session quarterly, and they're they're having one in September, but we're asking to have that changed to different like, a week later than they've already scheduled it because our consultants wanna have a joint workshop with the council and the city planning commission on their recommendations and stuff that they're proposing to change.

So they're gonna be coming out with a large list of these are this is the directions we wanna go and what we're trying to do, and they're gonna be soliciting a lot of feedback from the council and planning commission that they then will then take and then reform you know, consolidate that into another document that we then will take back to all the neighborhoods and all the people we've talked to already for another second go around of information. So those joint meetings that we had come to before, we're gonna be looking starting in October to have another schedule of those meetings so we can come back, Jenna and I at least, if not the consultants, to to start having another conversation about this is what we're looking to do and get more feedback on that as well as then reengage everybody we've already talked to in our stakeholder groups and everything else. So we're really gonna be looking to start this next push of community engagement starting starting in early October. So generally, reach now to those neighborhood groups again to set up another one of those joint meetings that we had done in the past.

And then again, moving into having again, having this all wrapped up by summer of next year. So that's kind of where we're at with that. So again and then that meeting will be a public meeting, so you're welcome to sit out here if you wanna be a part of it and listen in to that workshop. It's public meeting. Or, you know, again, we'll be at the neighborhood associations to talk about that information as well.

Any questions or comments? Alright. Seeing none. Thank you. Moving to our last agenda item, neighborhood updates, concerns, and celebrations. Anything anyone got going on, heard about? How was the national night out? I was able to go to a couple. Commissioner McDowell?

So ours was Washburn and downtown neighborhood and Polk Hamilton combined, and I'm gonna say we probably had over a 100 Nice. People. The police and the fire department were there. We had ice cream, the hot dogs from the, that the police provided, and, some cake and some chips. You know? So we had not necessarily the healthiest food in the world, but everybody enjoyed it. And I I we had a band as well. So it felt like a party for two hours. It was pretty fun. So

Yeah. Nice. I went to I was traveling with the assistant chief of police. We went to, I think, was an HOA on the South Side, and then I'm not sure which neighborhood. 16th And Jackson or 16th in Mississippi? What would that be? This would have been wild. Okay. No. I didn't make it to that. I went to 16th in Mississippi. I know. Right? That's

why don't remember.

Commissioner Geary?

Well, on the North Side on Monday, Trinity Luther Church that we used to meet there up till the start of this year. Now we went went to the new fire station, but they have their annual block party. At least eight or 900 people will be there. The fire department will be there. Kids, they usually give away about 300 pairs of sneakers to kids.

Banned food is five to 07:30. I think it'll be the first time I've missed it about seven years ago. I got two county board meetings at the same time, so I'm not gonna make this. This Monday, five to 07:30, and a lot of people from different organizations will have tables set up under tents, you know, and the free meals and the free ice cream from the sweet shop and all that locale stuff will be there, and Boys of Growth Club will be there. I think we had 29, 30 that we again, it's a credit to Trinity Church.

A lot of those church organizations in your neighborhood do a lot of good things. So just making people aware if they wanna show up there Monday night, it's what any anyone's welcome, and they usually get a huge turnout. So I know the police and fire will be there with the burn thing, you know, the fire department with the stove on fire and all that stuff. And so a lot of activities of inflatable house and stuff for kids at games and that Voyager train thing, and they got a lot of things going on that night.

Awesome. That sounds fun. Any others? Alright. Seeing none, thank you all. This meeting is adjourned.

Recording stopped.