Pittsfield Drug and Alcohol Meeting Minutes
7 pm at the Pittsfield Youth Workshop
April 12, 2010

In attendance: Zach Powers, Rick Frost, Dan Ward, Lori Grattage, Paula Driscoll, Officer John Webber, Sarah Sadowski, Andi Riel

Meeting called to order at 7 pm.

The goal of tonight’s meeting was community forum preparation.

I. Housekeeping: In light of the transition to summer and the schedules of a few of the group members, PDAC voted to trial a 6:30 pm meeting time.

II. Confirmation of Community Center space- the forums will be held in the lower meeting hall space and the childcare will be in the auditorium on the 3rd floor. Sarah has submitted a request to the Community Center Board of Directors to pay a nonprofit amount (or lower if appropriate) for space rental. The Community Center Board and Mini expressed appreciation for the recent PDAC donation.

III. Getting the word out- Sarah passed out the postcard flyers. These were mailed home to families of students 6th grade and up. Volunteers will distribute flyers as follows:

a. Town Hall- Zach
b. Library- Andi
c. School- Paula
d. Scott Ward Realty- Dan
e. Post Office- Zach
f. General Community- Officer Webber

IV. Donations- There is $70 in ten dollar Toy Box gift certificates from the Capital Region Forums to give away. Dan has checked into the Ipod and letters of request to both Walmart and Sam’s Club are being submitted. Officer Webber will look into the PD providing the food and helping with set-up. Meghan Dale was able to provide set-up help during the last forums. The group estimates that we will need $100 worth of food from Subway per forum. Officer Webber will also appeal for donations from Circle Auto, Blueberry Express and Maxfield’s.

V. Seating Logistics- The idea of using door prize tickets to organize seating was discussed. The consensus was to ask people to break up into small groups as sectors and then ask individuals to move if the groups are unbalanced.

VI. Getting the word out:
a. 4H Club
b. Elks
c. Online (FB, PDAC website)
d. Media- SV Sun, Concord Monitor, posters around town next week

VII. Getting information out beforehand: There was a discussion about how much information to get out to the community beforehand. Officer Webber shared Bow’s write up and PDAC discussed using a similar format to adapt the Overview. The idea of doing themed press releases was discussed- Sarah will follow up with Ross Morse.

Flyers that pose questions from the YRBS are an eye catching method.

The goals of the forum were discussed- not only information dissemination, but as Officer Webber said, how each of the groups represented will take it back to their day to day activities. Dan stressed the importance of a PSA-style announcement about how to get involved with the coalition- an “elevator speech”. Rick mentioned that a brief background on the strategic planning framework (SPF) or ACPIE (The 5 steps of effective community change: Assessment, Capacity, Planning, Implementation and Evaluation) may help folks understand the challenges of social change, Rick and Dan offered to take a stab at “boiling it down”. Zach brought up the importance of highlighting what has been done since the last forums to bolster community confidence.

VIII. Online- The group briefly spoke about the need to have an online policy for Facebook. Sarah will ask Clayton how to get a counter on the website so we can see pre and post forum traffic. The recent arrest of a local parent for providing alcohol to minors had some wondering how detailed to get- the general consensus was no names- “not publishing arrests but education that the laws are enforced” as Andi put it. The group agreed that the tone should be kept positive.

IX. Building Capacity- Sarah mentioned three upcoming trainings that may be helpful for our work: Governor’s Conference on Volunteering, May 11th Dartmouth Symposium, May 14th (free!) and a PDAC tailored training through the Learning Collaborative/Center for Excellence, although Sarah cautioned that the trainings are pretty intensive and may be better left until after the forum.

The meeting was adjourned at 8 pm.

The next PDAC meeting will be Monday, April 26th at 6:30 pm.

Respectfully submitted,
Sarah Sadowski