DIPA Meeting

As was posted over on Solo, the Davenport Income Property Association had its first meeting last night. After a quick invocation, the meeting started off with the 22 or so people in attendance introducing themselves and explaining why they were there. The majority were either landlords or friends of Walter Skovronski, or in many cases, both. Mr. Skovronski made a few comments about how Davenport has enough rental properties to support its own landlord association, and then passed out a list of the 10 reasons for starting the organization, which I've posted here.

After discussing what levels of memberships could be available, and their costs, including a fee to the state landlords association, Casey Jacobi from Mautz Paint spoke about vendor memberships. This would allow businesses like Mautz Paint to provide a group discount to members of DIPA. Mr. Skovronski mentioned a few other local businesses that might be interested in similar deals when the group gets big enough.

Next on the agenda was choosing a temporary Treasurer and Secretary, which people weren't exactly jumping out of their seats to volunteer for. I'm not sure if anyone was finally picked for Treasurer, but I believe Pat Egly was selected as the Temporary Secretary. Following that, more organizational plans were debated, and a Mission Statement was chosen. DIPA hopes to have a website, so a preliminary draft of what might be included on that was passed out.

Finally, the night's discussion topic was started, which was the 4 year term elections. Not everyone spoke on this, but if I had to guess I would say the people there split about 65-35 against the idea. It was clear that many of them were fine with 4 year terms as long as it was their type of Alderman, but not if it was someone they disagreed with. A return to partisan elections was proposed, which I think is one of the least logical ideas I've ever heard for reducing the amount of animosity on the council. Instead of having council members accused of being owned by D1 or QCRPA, we'd KNOW that they're owned by Democrats or Republicans. If you want to be certain that someone's got people in the background pulling strings, I guess that would be a good step. However, back to my play-by-play of the meeting.

Overall I'd say it was a good meeting. There wasn't an excessive amount of hostility towards QCRPA, but it was clear that the people in attendance weren't happy with the way things are being done in that group. Everyone was advised to bring a friend or fellow landlord to the next meeting, with a goal of having a starting membership of at least twenty. The Davenport Income Property Association is off to a slow start, but now that its up and going I could see it becoming a real alternative to the dirty tactics of the QCRPA.