March 7th Meeting: Processing & thinking post Waste Meeting

Monthly Meetings & Notes
1

Thanks to everyone who attended today’s meeting! It was exciting to see so many new faces!

Attendees: Alycia Enberg, Ashley Denton, Boone Denton, Amelia Nelson, Judy Oldenburg, Judy Bluth, Susan Gilbert, Annelise Tatham, Josie Rehbein, Nic McPhee, Lori Kurpiers, Ferolyn Angel, Margaret Kuchenreuther

Meeting Notes

  • Announcements
  • Post Waste Meeting Thoughts
    • Waste Meeting Notes (@Margaret_K here they are :slight_smile: )
    • Categorize & sort survey info (@Susan_Gilbert is on it)
    • Discussion on recycling at SCMC and how there is no large dumpster for recycling at large institutions in town. They simply have a million little bins. We should think on this as a team. How is there still not a solution? There are lots of big places in town that need to recycle.
    • Reducing waste is the first step
    • We should ask the paper to do a series of stories on the “Waste in Stevens County” issue. Highlight the problem, the costs, the way it works, and then what work is being done.
      • Paper could also do a story on Morris Model goals and who is on board. This could go along with the Waste stories, showcasing why the goals are important.
      • Contact Katie Erdman
    • We should invite Nathan to come speak with us about how the Pope/Douglas project is going. We should figure out the timeline in the Legislature so that we can support the project (contact legislators, do some community education, outreach)
    • We are still craving a place to find concise information on how to recycle properly.
      • We could work with Troy Engebretson to come up with a FAQ on recycling and then put it on the City website!
      • Should I crush my cans? Can I recycle pizza boxes? Do I need to take the cap off of the bottle first?
      • We will email Troy Engebretson once we have a solidified list of questions. Add to the list of questions here!
    • Where are the institutions at in the Morris Model Strategic Plan approving?
    • Could we work with kids in the school to do recycling/composting work? How can we engage in this way?
  • Thank You letter writing
    • We broke off into teams and wrote thank you letters to Bill Kleindl, Troy Engebretson, Ron Staples, Neil Weise, Blaine Hill, Sandeep Kotala, and Robert from the Senior Center.

I TOTALLY forgot to bring this up at the meeting. Josie sent me an email asking if we would like to be a part of the annual movie event that the Office of Sustainability puts on. Here are some snippits from the email she sent me:

With the movie showing, we hoped to engage the wider Morris community in discussions about changing climate in MN, the actions being taken in Morris, and the ways that people could become more involved.

This spring, we are working to host another free showing of a documentary! The event will be on April 11th at 2 pm. This year we have picked Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story, a film by Larkin Mcfee and Barbara Coffin produced by the Bell Museum of Natural History.

We would like to reach out to you at the West Central Climate Network, to see if you would be interested in partnering with us for this event. Partnering with us can look many different ways, and we would like it to fit what works best for you. It can be as simple as assisting in advertising, or (if you’d like to have further input on the event) attending planning meetings, hosting an activity or display the day of. Any other ideas of participation are welcome as well!

I think it would be super great to be a part of this! Let me know your thoughts in the comments and I will forward them on to Josie!

TO DOs

  • Email Nathan
    • Find out Pope Douglas Timeline
    • Depending on timeline, find a date for him to visit!
  • Contact Stevens County Times to do a story or writeup on Waste in Stevens County
    • Katie Erdman
  • Troy Engebretson FAQ about Recycling
    • Gathering of questions & ideas
    • Put together document/text for city website
    • include reasons WHY the preferences are the way they are
    • We will be the gatherers and sharers of content!
1 Like
2

Nathan would be able to meet in Morris on March 21st! I think we could just do our regular meeting time 10:30AM at the Public Library!

Tagging folks so people can respond to this poll & I can get back to Nathan quickly
@Nic_McPhee @Susan_Gilbert @lorik @amelian @Margaret_K @Nec @rd_denton @rjohnson @CKA @EdB @Brenna @nomuzz @teresab @bormanann @Heather

Thoughts?

  • I can be there, great meeting time!
  • I can’t be there, but still a good meeting time
  • Not a good meeting time (please offer suggestions in comments)

0 voters

3

Now our spring break plans have been dashed by a pesky virus we can attend!

1 Like
4

Hey folks, I work all day so I don’t have much time to send out info about this meeting but basically the library isn’t allowing groups in the meeting room currently so we will have to do some thinking about how we want to go about this.
Let me know if you have thoughts!

5

We will NOT be having the meeting this Saturday at the Library. (1) There is a pandemic, (2) the Library is closed, (3) we should not ask friends to travel for us.

If you have thoughts about how we could do this meeting sometime later on, perhaps online, let me know! I also heard somewhere that the MN Legislature is pushing things back this year so the timeline might not be as intense.