May 8, 2013

Habitat for Humanity of Rutland County Steering Committee Meeting - May 8, 2013


Attendance: Rob Geiszler, Sandie Loseby, Paul Brown, Dave Pearson, Chris Heintz, Louise Duda, Julia Quimby-Cohen, Melissa Hayden, Yvonne Brunot, Sandy Gagnon, Brennan Duffy


Brennan Duffy from the Rutland Redevelopment Authority gave a presentation regarding what Rutland City is doing regarding vacant and blighted properties. The city is in the 2nd phase of a 3 phase plan to address this issue. The needs assessment completed in phase 1 determined, among other things, that there is a large inventory of multi-family homes in the city which are not selling well. Step 2 includes establishing a revitalization plan targeting a particularly needy section of NW Rutland and includes moving towards single family occupancy of properties.  The RRA is partnering with other organizations on revitalization and community building and invite our group to consider how we might be involved.  Neighborworks intends to survey residents in the targeted area and help with a neighborhood clean-up on June 1st. Our group is welcome and encouraged to participate.   


We reviewed our Application for Affiliation to date.

We identified the sections still needing completion and divided the tasks we believed were not being covered by those absent at this meeting.

We established a goal to have all sections to Rob in 2 weeks and Rob will post the results in week 3, which is 1 week before our next meeting.


All members of the steering committee should review the document in its entirety before the next meeting so that it can be finalized at the June meeting and submitted to HFHI.


Paul Brown reported that he has been working with Grace Church to find an office space for our affiliate. He showed us 2 spaces offered to us (for free) and we selected the one that we felt best met our needs. Paul will follow up with Grace Church about occupancy.  


The next meeting is scheduled for June 12th at 7pm at Grace Church in Rutland.


Respectfully submitted,


Sandy Gagnon