2004-11-04-2020-min (Implementation Committee)

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2020 Vision Implementation Committee November 4, 2004 – Meeting Minutes 7:45 a.m. Selectmen’s Meeting Room Members Present : Fernando Quezada, Ann Redmon, Peter Enrich, Marian Cohen, Tom Harden, Elaine Sterzin Others: Candy McLaughlin, Wendy Rundle, Kerry Evans Minutes: The minutes from the September 9th, 2004, Implementation Committee meeting were approved. nd Report on Convention: Wendy and Candy reported on the October 2 Convention and that they felt it accomplished what the committee hoped it would accomplish. The consensus from the group was that the keynote speaker, Robert Putnam, was great, and that the convention set the task forces moving in the right direction. There were approximately 50 people, including representatives from all the elected boards. The quality of the video apparently is not great. Candy will check with Jesse Steigerwald on whether it has been given to the cable company for broadcast. Fernando inquired about formal thank yous and it was determined that one had been given to Robert Putnam but not yet to Jesse. It was decided that a brief report (one page) should be given to the Boards regarding the convention and update on the task forces. Task Force Progress: A work plan for the Forging Constructive Community Discourse group was distributed and it was decided that this would be given to the other two groups as a model/template. Forging Constructive Community Discourse – So far, this group has had a good turnout, with some consistency of membership. There have been 8-12 people at each meeting, with the whole group totaling approximately 15 people. The group meets once a week. There are different people from the scoping groups and many of them came from the convention. The group has identified a number of areas they want to discuss and will take them one at a time. There was a discussion about how this topic is difficult to focus due to its very nature, but one area the group will focus on will be improving communication. There was also discussion about the group not “doing” anything and who is actually going to “do” what the task forces recommend. It was suggested, that while these task forces won’t actually be implementing the recommendations, it is important to keep up the energy of the “doers” because they might be the ones to take the ideas and run with them. It is also important for people to not think that these ideas are just going to go into another report to the Boards. This brought up the idea that the groups should look at the historical documents pertaining to issues they might be discussing, in order to determine what ideas have already surfaced and begin to figure out why they have not been implemented. Candy mentioned that this has started to happen in the Forging Constructive Community Discourse in regards to the Town’s website. Strengthening Lexington’s Budget Process – Peter Enrich reported that this group has decided to meet monthly, and have their meetings on Saturdays for 3 hours at a time. The group has approximately 13 members and most were present at the first meeting. Due to scheduling conflicts, no members of any boards nor the Appropriations and Capital Expenditures committees were able to attend. While the group has lost some of its more conservative members, there is still variety on the task force with some members being completely new to the Lexington budget process and others with history with the process. The “leaders” of the task force shared many documents with the members before their first meeting. The task force has split into three sub groups to focus on particular issues. The group also identified 8-10 other communities to interview on a variety of topics. The leadership of the group is currently a loose 1