Planning Committee

Meeting Notes
October 11, 2001

Meeting Highlights

NEXT MEETINGS: November 8, 2001 Lower San Antonio Collaborative 7:00pm-9:00pm

DESIONS/AGREEMENTS:

• Meetings are to be held in the evenings.
• A town hall meeting is key to the LSA’s strategy for community engagement.
• The development of a system of accountability is key.

Attending: Fred Blackwell, AECF; Eric Cone, SACDC; Don Davenport, SACDC; Darryl Hamm, National Center for Youth Law; Kara Huynh, Computer Street Academy; Jennie Mollica, Lao Family Community Development, Inc.; Cheryl Pascual, Office of Supervisor Alice Lai-Bitker; Elena Serrano, ESAA; Susanne Takehara, ESAA; Dee ______ EBAYC; Jessica Pitt, USC; Carmen Rojas, USC; Andy Nelson, USC; Ruben Briones, _______; Bart Lubow, AECF;

Announcements

• CALENDAR
  • 10/12/2001 EBAYC Dinner
  • 11/4/2001 Indigenous People’s Day
  • 11/4/2001 Bring Music Back to the Schools
  • 11/15/2001 After School Learning Center Initiative @ 6:30 p.m.
• MURAL UPDATE
  • Don reported to the collaborative that the event was very nice, although more people from the collaborative could have been present. Jennie said that some of the neighbors were happy to have been able to see the creation of the mural and enjoyed seeing it in their neighborhood.
• LSA party rescheduled due to Dia de los Muertos
• Lao Family Job Opening
• School to Community Partnership is hiring a Coordinator for YEP position
  • All job openings should be posted in the Unity Paper

LSA Collaborative Governance

• Kara reported that the group had a difficult time getting through the majority of the work necessary to finish the task at had, but they identified three key areas to work on. The three areas are:
  1. The Collaborative
  2. The Planning Committee
  3. The Working Group
• She then went on to present the proposed structure and function for each of these.
• This information is available in a summary handed out by Kara. The following are some of the concerns which arose from this.

1. Collaborative
   
   1. What would the voting process of the collaborative look like?
   2. What would be the benefits of establishing a 501c3?
      • How would funding work?
      • What are the benefits of becoming a 501c3?
      • Would this complicate the process?
      • Would this shift attention away from residents?
      • The group had thought that other groups had shifted in the direction of becoming a 501 c3, but this was not the case.
      • How could accountability be established without obtaining 501c3 status?
   3. There is a need to examine alternative structures.
   4. The focus of any work to be done from this point forward should be resident empowerment.
      • Board and Governance should be decided and managed by the community.
      • Concrete steps need to be created for resident involvement.
      • A larger, town hall type, meeting needs to be convened with community members before we move any further.
      • Before taking the steps towards community engagement we as a group need to know what we are inviting them into.
      • Could introduce the projects to the community in this town hall format and from there move them into the an understanding of the governance structure.
      • We could also focus on issues in order to engage them.
      • Need to work on 1 to 1 engagement.
      1. How can we incorporate existing groups of organized residents?
      2. How can we make the LSA appealing to residents?
         
2. Planning Committee
   
   1. The role of the planning committee should be to function as a planning committee.
   2. What is the relationship between the collaborative and town hall meetings.
   3. An Ad-Hoc Committee should be created to start work on the town-hall meetings.
      • A town hall meeting could spark resident’s interest and help to identify resident representatives.
      • The first town hall meeting can help to shift the collaborative’s efforts on to the community.
   4. Another alternative would be to speak with OCO and other groups that have existing connections in the community to help us identify a topic or issue to work on.
      • Another group of people that could be engaged are the residents and family members at Garfield.
      • Has follow-up occurred with the community members from the meeting with Luis Cohen in May?
      • Two issues to draw people may be the creation of a youth center or a library.
      • The residents should identify the issues that impact them and that we should work on.
3. Working Groups & Collaborative
   
1. Working groups have shifted towards focusing on resident involvement… there is also a potential for agencies to support each other in this space.
2. SACDC Neighborhood revitalization should be added as an initiative. Should use the initiative to generate resident participation and from that allow them to choose an issue and move their participation.
3. The EBALDC east Lake Project should be added.
4. What is the accountability of non-AECF projects which are involved
   1. Reports and Measurements should be established.
   2. Should focus on resident engagement.
      • Will help to show gaps in service.
5. How would Harbor House fit in?
6. It is beneficial for the various community-based organizations to support each other in these various projects.

Annie E. Casey Foundation Recap

Too many questions remain unanswered and this makes it difficult for the organization to move in any direction. There are a variety of scenarios which are possible. A greater understanding of the LSA’s role in the following areas would help clarify the route the collaborative would like to move in:

1. community engagementaccountabilitythe role of the LSAthe function and form of the LSA
2. the purpose of the town hall meetings.

Meeting Summary

1. Community engagement is key. And the vehicle identified today to accomplish this is the town hall meeting.
   • Should a group be organized to discuss the possibility of a town hall meeting?
     • This might be a bit premature since the role of the collaborative has yet to be defined.
     • The town hall meeting should be scheduled for December 13^th.
   • Should we use the existing community engagement work that has been done?
   • The group should start conducting their meetings in the evening in order to make it more convenient for community members.
     • All meetings should be moved to the evening.
     • The multi-cultural center would be a key site to do this type of information sharing and convening work.
     • Extensive outreach should be done to encourage people’s participation
     • The November meeting should be used to inventory what the different groups in the area are doing to engage community members. Key agency people should be present
     • A list of local neighborhood councils, churches, block groups, etc. should be developed and we should also develop an introduction flyer to the LSA for them to have. The write-up should document the history and development of the LSA.
     • Major outreach should be done for the December meeting and the November meeting should be used for governance.
2. An interest has been expressed in organizing the planning committee as a governing body.
3. There are a variety of unresolved issues regarding accountability