Committee Minutes

Attending:
Rick Duquette, City of Grand Forks
Pete Haga, City of Grand Forks
Kristine Mattis
Melanie Parvey-Biby, City of Grand Forks
Rebecca Romsdahl (chair)
Jason Schaefer
Bret Weber


Discussion points:
þ Try to narrow the focus of the subcommittee goals because trying to understand all related policies that apply to local, state, and federal government will be overwhelming.

o We laid out a general guideline for approaching policy issues:
1. "top-down" i.e., creating policy and having other subcommittees find ways to implement it
2. "bottom-up" i.e., having other subcommittees feed us ideas of what we might make into policy
3. "lay-of-the-land" i.e., looking at what is happening at the state and federal level and seeing how Grand Forks fits in to that

þ Suggestion to increase overlap with other subcommittees to build a list of what are their policy/grant interests and needs; perhaps some of us sit-in on their meetings and/or have someone from each of the other groups sit-in on Policy & Grants meetings

þ We discussed trying to make the university more involved with what is going on with the city and vise-versa - trying to make this all more collaborative


Action items:
þ All members will review the two guides below and submit a list of 6 practices they believe would be most relevant and feasible for GF to begin working toward. Please submit your list to the group via email by Tuesday, Dec. 18. Thanks.

o Cool Cities Best Practices Guide:
http://coolcities.us/resources/bestPracticeGuides/USM_BestPractices06.pdf

o US Mayors Conference Best Practices Guide- January 2007:
http://www.usmayors.org/uscm/best_practices/EandEBP07.pdf

þ Melanie will email a request to the other subcommittees that they develop a short list of ideas they would like us to help get policy or grant information about
þ Pete will contact Governor Hoeven’s office to get updates on state efforts toward climate change policy
þ Rebecca will monitor federal legislative efforts toward climate change policies