| Meeting Minutes
General Meeting
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
President Bill Thomasson called the meeting to order at 7:03pm. Forty-eight members were in attendance. He recapped the accomplishments made by the Neigborhood Association thanks to the support of the membership: entry signs to the neighborhood, renovations to the Crystal Spring business district, as well as holiday decorations, the addition of the trolley stop in front of 1st Presbyterian Church, turf at Crystal Spring Elementary, and traffic calming on Avenham Ave. He reminded members that City Council recognizes our neighborhood association as a viable entity. All neighborhood concerns send to the council will be acknowledged when addressed through this group.
Mr. John Saunders, a financial advisor with UBS Financial Services and founder of Trinity Wealth Management Group, spoke to the crowd to address concerns about the economy. He and his partner, Paul Higgins, reported that there is a lot of “good news”(the birth of the US’s first sovereign fund last November meant to promote stability and earn more spending money for the country) that is not being reported by the media and that we are not going to be in a depression like the US struggled through in the 1920s. Mr. Saunders explained that the economic problem could be stemmed back to the early 1990s when there was a great push for everyone to own a home. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loaned to people who could not afford it.
He said that we need a catalyst to start spending so the confidence of the consumer can be restored. He said that this is also cyclical and that in time, everything will improve. His estimate for a rebound is 3 years. We are not in a depression liken to that from the 1920s; this is, he believes, the first media generated recession. News is reported on 24/7, and the media prefers to report on the bad news first. We have far too many regulations (FDIC) in place for the United States to prevent banks from failing and causing depositors to lose all of their money. He believes that more regulation safety nets will be born out of this economic predicament to help the general public in the future.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:15pm.
Submitted by: Stewart Putney
Neighbors In South Roanoke
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