Meeting, Saturday 11 Jan 2020, 10:30am

Monthly Meetings & Notes
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Remember that our first meeting of 2020 is this Saturday, 11 Jan, from 10:30-11:30ish in the Morris Public Library Community Room. See folks there!

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Syd’s post meeting email sent out to the entire email list

Friends,

Thanks to everyone who attended today’s meeting, sent in thoughts via the form, or otherwise thought about the climate today. You are doing great work!

We had, once again, a productive meeting that leaves me feeling hopeful for all the learning we are going to be doing in 2020! Woo!

Here are my main thoughts for this email:

1. Short meeting Recap in paragraph form

2. Meeting Recap via meeting notes

3. Discourse site (VERY IMPORTANT READ THIS PART)

4. Feb Meeting RSVP

1. Short meeting Recap in paragraph form

Today we talked about two main things (1) the discourse site Nic & Susan set up and (2) our plan and ideas for the February meeting. There we also a chunk of announcements that you can check out in the meeting notes.

Our plan for the February meeting is to invite local waste experts to speak on a “panel” of sorts and inform us how the local waste system works. Once this meeting is over we want to be able to create a snapshot type of document that outlines how our local waste system works and where we are at on certain topics (composting, for instance). This document will be for us as a group. It will allow us to assess what is happening now so that we can be a part of informed decisions and project planning in the future.

We are going to continue planning for the Feb meeting on our discourse site, so please make sure you read section 3 of this email!

2. Meeting Recap via meeting notes

These are also posted on our new discourse site! Hooray! If anybody who was at the meeting has any notes/changes please let me know and I will add them!

1.11.20 Notes - Google Docs

3. Discourse site (VERY IMPORTANT READ THIS PART)

Susan & Nic volunteered their own time to put together this site so that we are able to do online planning & discussion in a space that is not Facebook, I am very grateful for them!

Here is the site: https://westcentralmnclimate.network/

Basically, it is a discussion board site that is organized into categories and topics. Our current categories are things like “Letters to the Editor”, “News, events, & meetings”, and “Resources”. Topics within those categories are things like “New Year Resolutions (Josh 7th Jan 2020)”, “Meeting, Saturday 11 Jan 2020, 10:30am”, and “Composting resources”.

This site is where we will be planning further for our Feb 1st meeting, it is where I will post meeting notes & reminders, it is a place for further discussion after our once a month meeting has ended.

I deeply, strongly encourage you to sign up for this site. Simply click on the link above and in the top right corner set up an account. The site is very friendly and will walk you through basics. There are also lots of resources online on how to use it. If you have any questions about it reach out to Nic McPhee, Susan Gilbert, or I. I have cc’d Nic & Susan so their emails are easier to find above.

4. Feb Meeting RSVP

Here is the link to RSVP to the Feb meeting. As always, even if you aren’t going to attend I encourage you to fill it out because we value your input and ideas SO MUCH!

https://forms.gle/xpjAz5N4f6KF5ysG6

That’s most of it.

As always if you have thoughts, ideas, connections, questions, snacks to share, or anything else I encourage you to reach out to me! This group is growing and evolving because of the work of those who show up to meetings, those who put input into the RSVP forms, and those who reach out with little tidbits of info. We as a group have a WEALTH of goodness, lets use it!

Thanks a million and one & Happy Weekend,

Syd
:snake: :snake: :snake:

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January Meeting Notes

1/1/20, 10:00AM - 12:06PM
Morris Public Library Community Room
Attendees: Sydney Bauer, Nancy Carpenter, Lori Kurpiers, Nic McPhee, Susan Gilbert, Matt Sheets, Ashley Denton, Rob Denton, Boone Denton, (Wallace Denton), Teresa Boyd

Agenda

Introductions (Name, pronouns, what do you do, where are you at on issues)

  • Where are people at:
    • Want to get connected to local people & local government about local climate issues
    • Want to find better communication on these issues and help foster/create that communication
    • Want to find hope through action & thinking about climate change
    • Busy because of elections & farm work, but motivated & passionate
      Announcements
  • County Commissioner Meeting- Tuesday, Jan 21st 9AM @ Courthouse
  • City Council Meeting- Tuesday, Jan 14th 5:15PM @ Senior Citizen Center
  • LTEs online, but a lil dodgy
  • Anyone interested in green roof systems? There’s a Minnesota Green Roofs Council. (Heather Waye)
  • Community connection on Jan 30th at 8:30AM, is anyone interested in doing this?
  • Farm crisis meeting Jan 30th from 10AM-12:30PM in Greenwald MN (Matt Sheets)
  • Slow news App Susan was talking about: Tortoise
  • We are Water exhibit in August
    • We could correlate our August meeting with water?!
  • Discourse site with Susan & Nic - https://westcentralmnclimate.network
    • We encourage everyone to sign up for this, even if (especially if) you aren’t at the meetings because it will be an online way to communicate and share resources about the meetings & activities, but also about other resources and information!
    • It is fairly easy to sign up for, just go to the link above and create an account in the top right. Feel free to message Susan, Nic, or Syd with any questions about this! It is very exciting!
    • We are thankful to have some tech smarts in our group to allow us to host online discussion that ISN’T on Facebook. Hooray!
      Planning for Feb 1st Meeting
    • March meeting is an “in between” meeting, where we do not host conversation on a topic, but conversation about our Feb meeting and what our next steps should be.

Today’s Meeting: Planning for February 1st Meeting “Waste in Stevens County”

  • What do we want to take out of this meeting? What are some topic ideas?

    • Yard waste, e-waste, hazardous waste, waste you need a trailer to haul away, etc.
    • Where does our recycling go?
    • Where does our garbage go?
    • What are current waste issues?
    • What is the city-wide composting potential?
      • Where are we at with this?
      • Is anyone working on composting? We are all vaguely aware of it but don’t know specifics. We all know about the Pope/Douglas thing that might (?) be happening, but we know ZERO specifics about it.
      • Where do we get composting resources? We (households, businesses, hospital) are stuck without any resources to move forward in their desire to compost.
        A future task we could take on is to gather folks interested in composting to bring them together as a “team” of sorts.
        1. Create list of entities who wants to compost but cannot start a whole waste system on our own
        2. Figuring out specifics (pick up, fee, goals, general steps)
        3. This could be a tangible project plan that we could move on
    • What could we change in our system to make it more efficient?
    • Waste projects that have happened around town
      • MAPS composting, Museum composting, other ideas?
    • We want to know where we are at. We want to have a baseline snapshot of what is going on so that we can (1) simply know what is happening with our waste and (2) make informed future decisions.
      • Garbage
      • Recycling
      • Compost
      • Policy & Political Structure

  • What should the structure be?

    • Tone- should be inquisitive, not critical, getting information from those we invite, not suggesting to them what next steps we want to happen.
    • We invite local waste folks to come and share their brain power with us so that we can make a snapshot resource on waste systems in Stevens County & West Central MN.
      • Can we record this meeting?

  • Who should we invite (presenters & attendees)

    • Presenters/Panel/Brain Power

      • Bob Kopitzke
      • Ron Staples
      • Troy Engebretson
      • Nathan Reinbold
      • Gail Boe
      • Doyle Sperr
      • Rebecca Young (but she is on maternity leave so we shouldn’t bug her)
      • Any other Pope/Grant/Douglas County people?

    • Audience/Listeners/Question Askers

      • City Council
      • Blaine Hill
      • County Commissioners
      • Katie Erdman
      • Sue (I don’t know her last name) from Common Cup
      • Your neighbors! Someone you know!
      • Syd’s friend from Elbow Lake who is involved in climate stuff over there and came to the climate strike!
      • Dave from PCS (Matt Sheets)

  • Other ways to advertise attendance

    • Friday Facts
    • Newspaper
    • Radio (Jan 30th, 8:30AM)
    • Emails
    • Posters

  • Panel Planning

    • We are going to draft up an invitation to send to our brain power panel together on the westcentralmnclimate.network site.
      • We should be intentional about telling them what this is- a way for us to gather information so that we can have one snapshot of waste in stevens county/West Central MN.
      • We want to come up with questions so that they will have time to obtain the answers/information we want for our resource packet.
    • Important Dates
      • Now: start drafting & planning invites to panelists
      • Jan 17th: Email out invites to panelists
      • Week of Jan 20th: Follow up with our panelists with phone calls
        • We will delegate out people to do these phone calls
      • Jan 27th: Date we will ask panelists to RSVP by, solidifying our panel
      • Jan 30th: KMRS Community Connection @ 8:30AM (people can volunteer to do this)

  • Our next meeting should be about taking the information we obtained and figuring out what specifically to do with it.

    • Assembling the snapshot for our group, but also for our community.
    • We should (on our own, not as a part of the Feb meeting) come up with a list of weird little things to recycle and where to bring them as an informational document.
      • Batteries
      • Light bulbs
      • Electronics
      • Plastic bags
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