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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-02-26-2020-min Town of Lexington Lexington 20/20 Vision Committee Minutes of Meeting of February 26, 2016 Parker Room, Town Office Building, 1625 Massachusetts Avenue - 7:45 a.m. Members Present: Joe Pato, Margaret Coppe, Andrew Dixon, Carroll Ann Bottino,Bhumip Khasnabish, Ginna Johnson, Fernando Quezada Members Absent: Peter Enrich, Alan Wrigley, Dan Krupka, Peter Lee Visitors: Susie Lee-Snell, Marian Cohen, Elaine Ashton The meeting was called to order shortly after 7:45 a.m. . Minutes. The minutes of the 20/20 Vision Committee meeting of January 15, 2016 were approved with minor changes Town-wide survey. Regarding the renewal of the town-wide survey, Joe Pato commented that the Town has submitted a grant application to the Community Endowment of Lexington for $10,000. If granted, said funds would enable the survey project to get started, even though the longer term effort may need to be delayed by one semester in order to coincide with available money. It was mentioned that the renewed survey would help to produce updated and timely information on community interests and priorities. On the topic of the working group on social diversity Fernando Quezada mentioned Issues of Social Diversity: that one of the action items was to reach out to Ginna Johnson to explore how any empirical data generated by this working group can serve to inform the community dialogue on the current Planning Board articles. Ginna provided a handout with updated information on the articles and proceeded to explain how the various provisions might affect housing affordability and other factors associated with social diversity. She discussed the various components of the articles associated with measures to preserve neighborhoods and enable a greater diversity of housing types. Bhumip Khasnabish provided an update on the working group on e-government/e- Future of e-government: governance. He mentioned that he and Fernando Quezada had met with Emily Smith from the Cary Memorial Library who has agreed to be part of the working group. Margaret Coppe also agreed to participate in the e-gov working group. Subcommittee on Asian Communities . Susie Lee-Snell spoke on behalf of the Subcommittee on Asian Communities. She said that they are looking at 12 towns and cities (4 in NJ and 8 in CA) with Asian populations similar to Lexington. A survey format was created for community leaders. She mentioned that the challenge is to find groups similar to CAAL within those towns who can respond to the survey. The text of her presentation is attached to the present minutes. Meeting adjourned: 9:00 a.m. Next meeting: Friday, March 25, 2016 at 7:45 am in the Parker Room Update on Subcommittee on Asian Communities presented by Susie Lee-Snell We plan to survey 8 communities in CA (Cupertino, Los Altos, Saratoga, Dublin, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Diamond Bar and San Marino) and 4 in NJ (South Brunswick, Plainsboro and West Windsor). The West Windsor-Plainsboro schools made the front page of the New York Times in part because of tensions between Asian and non-Asian parents. At present, 65% of the students in the system are of Asian origin. In Lexington, it’s 35%. Completed review of the survey questions and transformed into statements suitable for surveys. We have individual surveys for the following: - Mayor - City manager - Head of the school board - Superintendent - Head(s) of PTAs and PTOs - Leaders of Asian community organizations Using the statements developed by the SAC, Marian Cohen and her students built instruments using SurveyMonkey, one for each category of civic leader Members of the Subcommittee then reviewed the instruments and provided feedback that was incorporated into the instruments The modified surveys were given to Joe Pato, Carl Valente, Jessie Steigerwald, Mary Czajkowski, Carol Pilarski, PTA/O leaders and leaders of Lexington’s Asian community organizations for their testing and feedback The suggestions from the above have now been incorporated into the instruments and we are ready for them to be used Lists of contacts in each target community have been compiled and formatted for use in a mailing to about 65 people in the 12 communities. We’re having trouble finding organizations similar to CAAL, IAL and KOLex in these communities. It’s possible that they don’t exist and we will have to find ways to tap into the networks, which surely do exist. Bin Zhou has been investigating these networks. He has learned there are education-focused Asian community groups such as the “Asian American Parent Association” (AAPA) in Cupertino, and several Chinese schools in the area that we could leverage. Another community group covering several towns in the bay area is Silicon Valley Chinese Association (SVAC). This group seems to largely consist of young and middle-aged professionals who often communicate with one another through social network utilities such as instant mobile messaging, and a dedicated website. The particular group is quite politically active and has strongly promoted civic participations and actions by local Chinese Americans. Two SVAC members have volunteered to take the survey and/or send it to other known civic leaders in the area. A letter inviting the 65 civic leaders to participate in the survey has been written, signed by Joe, Carl, Jessie and Mary. Thanks to help from Cathy Severance in Carl’s office, the letters went out on Thursday, February 25. The letter invites the recipient to signal his or her willingness to participate by responding via email to the 20/20 Vision Committee email address. Upon receipt of the email, Dan will send out the links to the surveys. If we don’t get prompt responses, we will follow up via email and/or phone calls. Next steps: - Ensure that a large percentage of invitees accept. This may take some time. - Wait for the responses to arrive - Develop a list of analyses that we would like Marian’s students to perform - Draft outline of report while we wait for the data to roll in