Good morning.

It is a beautiful morning outside.

I don't know how hot it's supposed to get, but it's a great morning outside.

Thank you to our intimate audience today.

I want to welcome everybody to the annual or to the monthly general membership meeting for the Marion County Alliance of Neighborhood Associations.

My name is Kathy Burton, and I am the current president for McCannna.

For those of you who are watching on Channel 16 or channel is it 28?

Is that right, Channel 28?

I want to explain a little bit about what McCannna is about so that you will know and have an opportunity to watch what's going on and get engaged if you'd like to.

McCannna is uh it is the Marion County Alliance of Neighborhood Associations, and we were founded in 1990 as a not-for-profit neighborhood association.

It's a coalition of neighborhood groups and homeowners' groups from across the county to be able to address the issues that are critical in Marion County and also to provide support and communication with each other so that we can share issues, make each other aware of what's going on in our own neighborhoods and kind of get to know each other across the county so that we're not all just sitting in our neighborhoods going, man, is anybody else doing this?

Um we meet on third Saturday of every month, except for December at North United Methodist Church, which is at 38th and Meridian.

Our meetings are from 9 to 11 a.m.

These are open to the public.

Whether you are a member of a homeowners association or neighborhood association, that doesn't matter.

Everyone is welcome to come at those meetings.

We have a speaker or speaker of issues that are of importance to Indianapolis.

We are certainly always looking for um speakers that are going to address issues that are of interest to everyone.

And so if you ever have a suggestion or you have an issue in your neighborhood that you would like to bring to the attention of other neighbors in the county and ask for support, um ask for information and ask for participation in addressing issues.

Um you are absolutely welcome to come to McCannna and share all of that with us.

Um as I said, my name is Kathy Burton.

I'm the current president.

If you need to reach us, you can do so by contacting me by phone at 317-847-9959.

You are also welcome to text me at that number, or you can contact us on Facebook, and we'll try and get some information to you.

We would like to especially thank North United Methodist Church for making their facility available to us.

It is at a good central location that's available on the bus lines, so hopefully everybody has a way to get here.

Um, and we also invite people when they attend our meetings to bring a non-perishable food item with them to contribute to the church's food pantry in support of their community outreach efforts.

Um we also, of course, want to thank Channel 16 that tapes and broadcasts our meetings for us.

Um and as I found out last month, it's um when they broadcast it, it's on channel 16 for about a week, and then they transfer it over to channel 28.

Um if you don't have the proper cable hookup, you can look for us all to look watch it at your computer, but that will also give you a chance to come to watch what's going on, um, hear the information that McCana and its speakers have to share.

And you can kind of do that at your leisure so that we we can try and reach as many people as possible.

Um we are um going to have a couple of speakers with us today.

The first is Lindsay Tremerry, who is with the city, the um Office of Sustainability with the City of Indianapolis, and then Pat Andrews, who is McCannna's land use chair is going to update on a current initiative to change the sign ordinance having to do with digital billboards, and it's a very interesting process.

Before we get started, I would like to give anybody who's here the opportunity to announce any upcoming meetings or events in their neighborhoods that they would like to make people aware of.

Anybody got anything on board?

Clark.

Broadly speaking, as you know, I've been uh uh an active participant in the citizens' water planning uh process for a number of years, and there's an upcoming public meeting and public hearing uh on Citizens' Waters uh proposed application for uh 700 uh million dollar loan from the uh safe drinking water state revolving fund of Indiana.

Uh the proposal is to provide service additional uh water capacity to the city of Lebanon uh in service of the LEAP project in the Lebanon vicinity.

Uh Citizens is proposing to uh supply uh 25 million gallons a day from the Indianapolis water sources, the reservoirs and the surface water, other surface water and groundwater sources to Lebanon.

So to an extent, this is an inner basin transfer issue.

But at any rate, citizens is holding a public meeting and public hearing this coming Wednesday, the 25th, at the Citizens' Offices, which are located at 2150 MLK Jr.

Street Building 1B, 1B.

So they're encouraging citizens to come and hear a presentation related to the company or the trust's proposal, and also to make public comment.

So I think our time.

So I encourage everyone to come and participate.

Since Roman times, innerbacks and transfers have been occurring.

But this is a this is a case where the lead project proposes 10,000 acres of in part high water intensity using operations which are going to draw from basements other than their own, including Indianapolis and Central Indiana, and also possibly the Lafayette area from the Wabash system.

So groundwater issues being what they are in terms of nationwide increasing drawdown on critical aquifers.

And for other non-drinking water purposes, at least arguably.

If we have time at the end of the meeting, Clark, and you're still here, I'd like to kind of circle back to this a little bit and have a brief discussion on how that's going to impact water availability capacity and water rates in Mirin County.

So and then I know that there's also it's the city county council hearing about the funding for the trees is coming up this coming Monday.

Is that correct?

They're meeting on Monday at uh 7 o'clock as their basically in their annual meeting to take public hearing testimony on the budget of whatever of whatever nature.

And I do know that the Indiana Forest Alliance, which has uh been urging uh the council to dedicate funding for land acquisition for the purpose of protecting existing urban woodlands that have not yet been uh eliminated from development uh that there's an opportunity at that meeting to convey to the council uh uh that interest.

I will try.

I got the notice from the from the Forest Alliance, and I'll see if I figure out how to get that up on our Facebook page so people can do that.

Um, I also want to make sure that people are aware that um the urban uh forestry department for the city of Indianapolis um is doing a countywide assessment of their street trees in all across the county, so it's gonna take them a while, um, but they want to kind of inventory their street trees and look at the condition of them.

So, especially if you live in one of the older urban neighborhoods where there's a lot of older street trees, um, if you see crews out marking them and you are concerned about a tree that either should come down or they've marked a tree that you don't feel should come down.

Um you need to be sure and get in touch with them.

They've got they've had crews out all over the county doing that process.