GVCA Journal for 05/15/05

Ours was a fairly desultory meeting Sunday. I think everyone's tired, which
is why we'll take a break next week.

Here are the highlights:

1) Congratulations Ellen
    Actually, Ellen was off at a League of Women Voters conference, picking
up information on a grassroots movement advocating basic health care for all
citizens, which hopefully she will share with us at our next meeting. But
that means we didn't get to formally congratulate her as we were hoping to
do. Yea, Ellen!

2) Ellen Part II
    Ellen has been our most faithful meeting attendee. Now, she'll still be
going to plenty of meetings, but it will be as a city official. We are
hoping that others will step up to attend meetings. We want to also start
including the lengthy county meetings that are held during work hours.

3) Ellen Part III
    Ellen and her three new councilmates will be sworn in sometime today.
They start right off with a work session tomorrow evening. Richard and Butch
are planning to attend.

4) Design Standards
    The second reading is set for Tuesday, May 24 -- the new council's first
regular meeting. We are hopeful of another unanimous vote, preferably with
more of an endorsement than the last council gave it. We know we've asked
folks to attend a lot of meetings on this, but we're asking again for a good
GVCA turn-out. Please come if you can.

5) New Police Chief
    A community reception for the five finalists for police chief will be
held Thursday, May 19, at 6:30 p.m. at the Aspinall-Wilson building. This is
your chance to meet the finalists. Whether community members will be
afforded an opportunity to provide input on the candidates is another
matter.

6) Farmers' Market
    Don't forget the interest meeting Tuesday (same time as council), 7 p.m.
at Vikki's office, 322 N. Wisconsin. We are still looking for someone to
take charge of the project -- if no one volunteers on Tuesday, there
probably won't be a market this year. There may not be a market anyway:
several aspects of it need to be researched, and those assignments will be
handed out Tuesday. Please attend if you're interested, and be sure to let
others whom you think might be interested know about it.

7) Strategic Planning
    This is the tentative format we settled on yesterday: Richard is going
to find a facilitator (several local names were suggested, along with some
folks he knows from California), and then the GVCA will host a meeting for
its membership to discuss what issues members are interested in. Once some
direction has been eestablished by the membership, we'll host a session open
to the entire community to generate both ideas and interest. This worked
very well for the immigration integration group headed by Mary Burt. We will
probably conduct a mailing prior to the community session.

8) The Rest of It
    While discussing alcohol abuse prevention, I believe we decided that
this is not something we're likely to tackle, although at least one of us
(that would be me) is not yet ready to give up the concept of addressing
that mistaken notion many residents, particularly teenagers and college
students, have of, "There's nothing to do." This led to the thought of a
volunteer coordinator for either the city or the county. Narcissa, familiar
with the school's volunteer bank, reported that it works well if there's a
strong point person, but not very well if it's just a list of names.
    We also discussed requesting the public funding entities of the EDC to
require an annual report, just like any public investment firm offers to its
shareholders: what money has been spent, what has been accomplished, who the
board is. It's a clear consensus among members attending our meetings that
we would like to see the EDC held more accountable for its use of city and
county funds.
    As an offhoot of that, we discussed the idea of a venture capital fund
that would hold a three-prong competition every year, evaluating business
plans and proposals put forward by three groups: graduating seniors (perhaps
both of the college and the high school, since Ben Somrak seems to have
launched his own so-far successful business straight out of high school),
existing businesses and interested outsiders. The winning plans, evaluated
by either SCORE or perhaps the venture capitalists themselves (qualified
business people, anyway), would receive money that would essentially be an
investment and part ownership by the venture capitalists.

As you can see, we're discussing several different directions in which we're
interested in going. We encourage everyone on this list to be thinking of
their areas of community interest, and to bring those to the discussion
table.

Remember, no meeting this next Sunday, but I'll have some sort of update
anyway, if only to remind you of design standards. I'm also having coffee
(tea, in my case) with Jay Helman on Wednesday morning to discuss what, if
anything, the GVCA might do to support the college. We could just end up
talking about the old days when I was the sports reporter and he the
basketball coach, but maybe I'l have something profitable to report.

I would also encourage everyone to go past Jackie DeVore's office at the
north end of the second floor of the county courthouse to read her poster
about community-building. It's got a lot of good advice on it. If I get
ambitious, maybe I'll copy the message down and pass it along.

TL