March Meeting (6 March 2021 @ 10:30AM)

Our next meeting will be held on Saturday, March 6th at 10:30AM

We will be trying Zoom for the first time! The zoom info is included in the Google Calendar event and right below:

Join Zoom Meeting
Launch Meeting - Zoom

Meeting ID: 981 0856 7652
Passcode: 3iBK5R

Check out the first official QOTW (Question of the Week) post! We created this topic to encourage some casual conversation on this site. We want folks to engage, but in ways that are very low commitment. Think of this as replacing the time you might spend in Willies/Common Cup/Library chatting with a neighbor you bumped into.

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Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Lets chat about how we take our engaging ideas and turn them into engaging actions!

Meeting Notes
In attendance: @nomuzz @Chris_Watkins @Susan_Gilbert @Nic_McPhee @syd

Started off by reminding ourselves of the purpose of the group:

To promote individual and group action toward a resilient, equitable and sustainable community through modelling behavioural change, conversation and education.

This is helpful to remember because although our steps might not be GIANT and DEEPLY ACTIONABLE, we are still coming together as a group to converse and learn with one another! Beautiful. This will also make it easier for us to re-instate in person meetings once it is safe to do so.

We then talked about some of our actionable items discussed in December’s meeting and how we might take some action on them:

  • Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign
    • We had initially discussed that one of our action items could be to engage more people in this work. Sierra Club is losing $$$ and so this particular campaign lost funding. So we can no longer do this.
    • HOWEVER, OTPCO is still increasing their rates while also increasing the $$ given to shareholders (something @Susan_Gilbert shared at this meeting), so there is still lots to talk about and lots to comment on. I check out the Otter Tail Power Company requests rate review in Minnesota - Press Release 2nd Nov 2020 section of the Energy/Grid Resources topic to learn more about what they have been up to.
    • At somepoint I will share more about where you can comment on the rate increase if you do not want OTPCO to charge you more to give $$ to rich people.
  • Continue Amplifying City Resilience Work
    • Once @Chris_Watkins is able to upload the videos from the first two Morris Model Resilience meetings we will make sure that information is available here.
    • We think it would be a good idea to write LTEs to the newspaper about these and what we learned at them and why it is important to attend them.
  • Feeding off of past Waste work
    • The city applied to get $$ for a composting drop site here in Morris (from the MPCA), they also have applied to get a Green Corp member to start doing work engaging with the community about composting. Folks can apply to be a Green Corp member once the applications open up in the spring. This person would come to Morris in the fall to start work. We could absolutely be a resource to them, and work alongside them to get composting info out into the community.

Overall in terms of actionable items, there are no big projects, but there are ways we can engage deeper within the community about the exciting things that are going on!
If you want to write an LTE please do and feel free to mention the WCMNCN as a resource to learn more information!

Other exciting things:

The next WCMNCN meeting will be at 10:30AM on Saturday, April 10th. We hope to see you (via Zoom) and have conversation with you then!

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