Citizens’ Voices Minutes

January 10, 2007

 

Attending: Mike Lagerquist, Dave Boyce, Ardie Thompson, Malda Farnham, John Brady, Tony Filipovitch, April Johnson.

 

We now have a little complexity in our Chair status. Tony was elected as Chair until the middle of May at which time Tom Hagen will become Chair. Tom teaches an 8:00 am class at the University and can not attend the meetings until the end of May.

 

Tony reported that the $5000 grant is in place for the three activities, the forum, civility training and community stories.

 

We discussed the difficulty of getting opposing speakers on some topics.

Perhaps it is not necessary to have disagreement but rather a different point of view. Perhaps the title of a forum might be "The role of railroads in the future" rather than anything specific of DM&E, or it might be a more informative study of financing of DM&E.

 

StoryCorps also received considerable discussion. Tim will coordinate this sub group of CV to work with Dave Engen. The other members involved are Mike & April. Was there someone else? Tim has already talked to Jim Gullickson.

Some of the other people to involve in the project are Beth Christianson, Jim Nickerson, Mary Dooley and the Lincoln Center for new immigrants.  It is important to capture the memories and we can adjust the format later.  In particular it is necessary to hear from people whose voices haven't been heard.  The University library may be a place to store the stories.

 

The big hurdle for the Civility project is "How to get people not engaged in community issues to do so with civility?" Most people do not become engaged until they feel threatened. Then they do battle not work to clarify or persuade.

 

Next meeting is Wednesday, January 24, 7:30 am at the Coffee Hag.