MO' BETTER JOBS Action committee

MO' BETTER JOBS a Chewelah Horizons Action Committee
11 February 2008, 3:30 p.m. School District Office meeting room

Present: Barry Thomason (Convener), Tracy Rice, Sharon Ludwig, Myles Alexander (minutes).

Agenda item 1
We agreed on an initial set of conduct expectations for our meetings:
● one person speaks at a time
● everybody has an opportunity to speak
● when speaking we stay on topic
● we are open to new ideas and look beyond our personal agendas

Agenda item 2
Meeting minutes must be prepared and posted to the Horizons Chewelah blog. Myles volunteered to prepare meeting minutes and forward them to Tracy. Tracy will post the meeting minutes to the blog.
Barry explained other activities in his life are accelerating and asked that the group elect another leader. In hopes of greater attendance action was postponed until our next meeting.

Agenda items 3 and 4
Leslie Jones left a message with her regrets. She was called to Olympia this afternoon.
Marcus Morgan was not in the office today.
We discussed the need to make the most of their presentations. Our next meeting will be scheduled so they can both be present. The Chewelah Chamber of Commerce and other Horizons folks will be invited. Myles will coordinate the next meeting date with the presenters and Barry.

Next Meeting
Date TBA. Preferred days are Tuesday and Thursday. The Horizons people will begin at 3:30 p.m. to be followed at 4:00 by the presenters.

Additionally from Myles -
In January we were encouraged to read Michael H. Shuman's books Going Local and Small-Mart. Shuman champions community corporations. The Green Bay Packers are a community corporation. The organization Home Town Advantage website has a six page bulletin How to Launch a Community-Owned Store at http://www.bigboxtoolkit.com/images/pdf/community_store_howto.pdf. It describes how isolated Western rural towns fill retail niches abandoned by chains and old New England towns fend off destructive retail with community corporation stores. Community corporations can be used to develop any business type and could be a tool for job creation in Chewelah.