Month: November 2020

Great Meeting with the Main Street Board

Posted on by Marc Seelinger

An update from our meeting on Monday:

We ended up just meeting with the Main Street Board. The Environmental Sustainability Board requested that we postpone our meeting with them, but we did have a very productive conversation with the Main Street Board. They gave a presentation on several of the initiatives they have been working on this year, including the Keep the Lights On campaign, the utility box wrap art, and Trains on Main.

We also talked about the Façade Enhancement Grant program (which provides grants from the City to restore/upgrade building facades in the downtown district). Council discussed the possibility of making changes to this program in the future to ensure that the criteria for the program align with downtown’s current needs. For my own part, I suggested that grant applications that seek funding for things like wall art (on the side of a building) or more permanent façade improvements (such as upfitting or repairing a brick façade) would be a better use of funds versus grants for more temporary improvements (for things like building canopies, etc.).

The dog park initiative was also a key discussion point, and we encouraged the Main Street Board to continue collaborating with the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board on that project.

We also had a good conversation around public art and a general desire to see more of it. Given the expense involved with these sorts of projects, the Main Street Board indicated that they would look into the availability of non-public funds (grants, etc.) for public art projects.

All around a good conversation. I think check-ins like this with the advisory boards are a good way to keep everyone rowing in the same direction, so I look forward to doing more of these in the future.

Council to Meet with Main Street and Environmental Sustainability Boards

Posted on by Marc Seelinger

The next City Council workshop is Monday, 11/16 at 4pm. We will be meeting at the new CityWorks building (not TechWorks). You can find a copy of the agenda here: http://ow.ly/T2Ue30rjYa9

We will be meeting with both the Main Street Advisory Board and the Environmental Sustainabilty Board to review their work plans for the upcoming year. This will provide the full Council an opportunity to check in with these boards and ensure that we are all aligned on goals and strategies for 2021.

In other news, our police department successfully completed its CALEA certification on Friday. This makes them only one of 17 agencies in the state (among agencies with less than 74 employees) to obtain this national certification. The certification process involves a rigorous review of the police department’s policies and procedures against a set of national standards and is a demonstration of their professionalism and dedication to our community. So, this is a significant accomplishment for our police department and Chief Hawkins and his team.

Updates to Development Process Adopted, More to Come

Posted on by Marc Seelinger

An update from our meeting on Monday:

-The changes to the Land Development code promoting greater public participation in the development process were adopted. So, as new projects start to come through, you should start to see the new signs with all the information about the development (maps, contact information, website, etc.) on the project site. We also moved the neighborhood meetings to occur earlier in the development process so that feedback from the community can be incorporated into the project plans before changes become prohibitively expensive.

-We also approved the contracts for the Rocky Branch Park Trail enhancement and the Abbey Creek Greenway. We had some discussion around what the preferred route for the greenway should be – but the project team will be looking at a couple different options to see what makes the most sense, balancing considerations around cost, utility access, and proximity to the creek and other natural features.

-There was also some discussion around the Christmas Parade. At present, Belmont is the only municipality in Gaston County (outside maybe Lowell) that is proceeding with its parade this Winter. So, we had a discussion with representatives from the Montcross Chamber (which is organizing the parade on behalf of the City) to get an idea of what the parade might look like this year. They confirmed that they have had strong interest from groups looking to participate in the parade, and that they are developing plans to ensure that spectators can view the parade in a socially-distant manner. A lot of what can or cannot happen will depend on the specifics of the Governor’s latest executive order (which is due to expire next week). So, the Chamber and the City will be keeping a close eye on that and adapting appropriately.

-As a follow-up to a discussion we had at our last workshop, Council decided to accelerate the process by which we would amend the the Land Development Code to restrict the use of stand-alone apartment buildings downtown. We had initially planned on doing some public outreach on this. However, given the consistent feedback we have received on this topic since last year’s election, we were comfortable pushing forward on this change as it is very clearly something that most of our residents would like to see happen. Based on our discussion, we are looking at a late January/early February timeframe for a vote on this change.