I would like to welcome everybody to the monthly membership meeting for the Marion County Alliance of Neighborhood Associations.

And if you have not been with us before, or if you're watching on Channel 16th for the first time, I'm going to tell you a little bit about what McCana is.

We are an independent 501 C3 neighborhood-based organization.

We were founded in 1990.

Our purpose is to provide connections for neighborhoods throughout Marion County so that we can talk with each other about the issues that are important to neighborhoods in Marion County and also to help provide support for each other when we have issues in our neighborhoods where you need to talk to somebody who may have been through that before or who has who is willing to help support your neighborhood from across the county.

We meet once a month at North United Methodist Church on the third Saturday of every month, except we do not meet in December.

That meeting is from 9 to 11 a.m.

And the public is welcome to attend that meeting, whether you are members of McCana or not.

However, if your neighborhood organization would like to join McCannab, the dues are $20 annually.

And at our membership meetings, we have a speaker or speakers this morning.

We have two different speech sets of speakers with us to talk about the issues that are important to neighborhoods in Marion County.

We always welcome suggestions and input from the public about speakers that they would like to hear from.

And we also want to take this time to thank both United and North United Methodist Church that provides us with such a convenient meeting space and tell it and suggest to anybody that comes if you want to help support their community outreach efforts that you bring a non-perishable food item to contribute to their food pantry.

We also want to thank Channel 16 for taking and airing our meetings throughout the month so that people who are not able to attend the meetings in person are still able to connect with McCannna, connect with each other and participate in what's going on in the neighborhoods of Marion County.

Since the budget season for the city of Indianapolis is upon us, we want to be sure to encourage people to support Channel 16 and express that support to your counselors so that we can make sure that they continue to provide opportunities for public engagement through the information and meetings that they air on their channel.

If you would like to reach McCana, you can reach us through our Facebook page.

You can contact me at Kathy Burton, or excuse me, at 84317-847-9959.

I had to think about what my own phone number was.

Or contact me by email at CB7801 at AOL.com.

In just a couple minutes, we're going to have an opportunity for you to make announcements if there are upcoming events that you would like to make people aware of, whether though they are special events in your neighborhood or regular meetings that you would like for people to be aware of.

This morning we will have we have, as I said, two sets of speakers with us.

First are from Purdue University, Marlowe David and Renee Thomas are with us to talk about what Purdue's footprint is going to be in downtown Indianapolis, both physical and educationally, since the separation between of IUPUI between Purdue University and Indiana, Indiana University.

I think there's going to be some exciting opportunities for learning in Indianapolis through that change.

And then our second set of speakers, and with all due respect to the people from Purdue, these are the main speakers, will be people from business and neighborhood services.

As you may know, last month, Bob Osley, who is the president of the City County Council, was with us, and there were a lot of questions and comments that came up about business and neighborhood services and code enforcement and issues that are in long-time issues that may be existing in people's neighborhoods that have not been resolved or conversations about how can we make that system work better.

So when they get ready to come up, keep in mind, like I said, that speaker program is going to be kind of twofold.

One is if you have a specific neighborhood or issue in your neighborhood that you'd like to get updated on.

But the other one is I think most people in the neighborhoods of Marion County are fairly familiar with how the system is supposed to work, but there's been some extensive frustration about whether the system is actually working.

So we want to have that conversation and start instead of just coming and griping about it, start finding out what neighborhoods can do to try and engage in making that system work better for the city of Indianapolis.

So with that, I would like to ask if there are any upcoming meetings or events that anybody would like to announce in their in their township.

And I will kind of kick it off.

My home township is Franklin Township, and we want to make people aware that we have two regular meetings from the Franklin Township Civically in Franklin Township.

One is the second Monday of every month at 6.30.

That is our board meeting.

Those meetings are open to the public.

And the other meeting is the third Wednesday of every month at 6.30.

That is our land use committee meeting.

And again, that those meetings are both open to the public and they take place at our Civic League Community Building at 8822 Southeastern Avenue.

Is there anything else that anybody would like to announce?

I did forget at our last meeting we discussed an effort from that was being spearheaded by the Indiana Hoosier Forest Alliance concerning asking the city of Indianapolis to and the mayor of Indianapolis to earmark $6 million in their upcoming budget to purchase remnant existing woodlands throughout Murray County to try and preserve some of our canopy as we begin to build out more and more of the county.

There's a lot of discussion about what's considered hard infrastructure, the streets, the curbs, the sidewalks, those things all need attention, but we also need to be mindful that we are being respectful of our green space in order for our city to be continue to be livable in all neighborhoods.

And so there is will be another attempt at the city county council meeting.

I'm so sorry I don't have the date in front of me.

But it's wherever that first city county council meeting is in September for there to be kind of a march on the City County Council building.

People are going to start gathering at the Hoosier Forest Alliance building at 615 North Alabama, which for those people who've been around for a long time is the English Foundation building.

You can get that information off of the Indiana Forest Alliance's website, and I will try and get it posted to our Facebook page as well.

With that, if there are no other announcements, I am going to invite our first set of speakers to come on up.

We have with us Marlowe David and Renee Thomas, who are from the Purdue University, and they are going to talk with us a little bit about what the plans are for Purdue University and how they're going to establish themselves as a separate entity from Indiana University.

Thank you.

You do and there's a mic here.

Okay.

And while they're getting settled in, I did forget to mention that our next meeting is on September, but Canada's next meeting is on September the 21st at 9 a.m.

and we will announce who the speaker is.

So with that, Margot, if you would like to take the floor.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Dr.

Marlowe David.

I'm a professor at Purdue West Lafayette.

I have to make that distinction now.