AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION

Transcription

1 AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION Inland Empire Section 2014 BOARD RETREAT Friday, December 13, :00am 1:00pm Moreno Valley City Hall Present: Aaron Pfannenstiel, John Hildebrand, Karen Peterson, Miguel Vazquez, John Terell, Tom Hudson, Matt Burris, Brynn McKiernan, Chris Gray, Leila Namvar, Jennifer Kunz, Matt Straite, Shawnika Johnson, Gus Gonzalez, Julie Rock, Jim Sullivan, Sherri Gomez Absent: Daniel Arvizo, Miguel Gonzalez, Leisa Lukes, Steve Lustro, Lorena Mejia, Richard Zimmer Section Director Aaron Pfannenstiel called the meeting to order and thanked everyone for attending. Selfintroductions followed. Aaron announced that Chris Gray is Director Elect. Membership Survey This will be done again in 2014, and will be refined a bit. Last year s responses were very helpful and will be posted on the website. Board members will be asked to send the survey to their contacts; John H. has a list of all Planning Directors in the Inland Empire. Board Re-Organization The Board agreed to retain the same structure from It is important to be clear about who is doing what task within this structure. Recommendation was to establish more formality as it lends itself to more accountability; run it like a business including job descriptions. Each sub-group should have a mission statement and goals to be accomplished. Aaron stated that Leisa Lukes will no longer serve on the Board. During lunch, the Board separated into the 3 Teams: Membership/Marketing; Events; and Administration. The following are the results of the break-outs. Administration Lorena will serve as an ex-officio Board member who will work on special projects (i.e., the Awards Banquet. Chris will be added to the bank signature card and Jim will remain as Treasurer, along with Aaron. Aaron will contact Rick Zimmer about his interest to continue serving Tom Hudson will join the Marketing/Membership Team Process for adding Board members will remain as is 1 Technology John H reported that Constant Contact is working well and doing what we need it to do. He also stated that he does not have the time to upgrade the website; he recommended that it be refreshed. Options for website redesign are: 1) Send out for outside bids; 2) Create a board role for this function; 3) as a CPP student to work on it; 4) Reach out to the membership. Aaron will ask the State contact who did their redo and if we can contact him/her about doing ours.

2 The Administration Team will bring web bids to the Board in January Aaron asked if anyone knew how to text a donation as is used by the Red Cross ( text XXX to donate $10 to the Red Cross ). We could use this at the Awards Banquet for scholarships. John receives numerous requests to post other organizations events Budget It is not critical if we lose money on events. It is important to have a budget for each event. Sherri will check with Helene on the following budget line items: Program Expenses, Speaker Expense, Event Registration, Ad Programs, Job Description Income. She will also ask Helene to add a job posting line item to the budget. We will also combine Program Expense and Speaker Expense ($1,000) and call it Marketing We may need to find another hosting source (we are currently hosted by RBF) Sherri s monthly fee will decrease to not-to-exceed $500/month and will bill hourly. She was asked to send her contract and addendum to Aaron Budget will be finalized in January Events Chris reported that we will not hold an event in January. All luncheon events will take place on the last Wednesday of each month 2014 Events as follows: February: Best Practices on Small Projects/Urban Designer (Chris?) March CEQA (Coachella Valley) (Chris/Leila) March (Riverside) Partner with the City of Riverside on Riverside Grows (City/Support) April: CEQA Reform (Chris) May: Awards Banquet (Karen) June: SmartCode (with the City of Riverside) (Matt S.) July: Climate Adaptation (Chris) August: SB375/SCAG (Matt S.) September: State Conference in Anaheim- no monthly luncheon October: Historical Symposium (Coachella Valley) (Gus/Leila) November: SB County (Matt/??) Special events will be held throughout the year and are scheduled to be a 4-6 hour format; e.g., Legislative Update with AEP (John T); Planning Commissioners Workshop (Julie), Law/Ethics (every 2 years, alternate between CV and Riverside area; Jim S. and John T), California Specific Laws. Miguel made the suggestion to include a health component to the line-up of special events Awards Banquet All local, State and National awards will align this year In the past, John H. adopted the State categories for our awards Karen will distribute categories to the Board; 3 will be deleted and 6 will be added Membership/Marketing Team. Notes provided by Jennifer Kunz Team Members: Jennifer, Brynn, Tom, Miguel, Daniel, Matt B., Steve L. (?) 2 What is our vision for IES-APA? What do we want to accomplish as a board?

3 Best Planners on Earth Definitive Resource for Planning Get people to care about planning and APA Make people aware of IES-APA Be a go-to board Be an ambassador of planning - raise non-planners awareness of planning and the role they can play in shaping their communities through planning activities Act as connectors and builders Spread planning goodwill Point of light for planning What is our role as the Marketing/Membership team in achieving the above? Brand managers Build a home for planning and planners, that provides planners with understanding, and a fertile ground for ideas Build traditions that people look forward to participating in What value can we provide? What is the point of joining APA? Provide a place to champion new ideas and encourage out of the box thinking Bring people into the profession, who wouldn t otherwise know about planning Offer a place for planners to meet other like-minded people Inspire Advise Place for problem solving and brainstorming Place for all generations to learn from each other Place to become energized about our jobs and communities Place to innovate Organization that can legitimize ideas Place to learn about the IE region Sounds like we re focusing on building a place for planning, one that fosters innovation, creativity, sharing and understanding. Building a Brand that can change and grow as we find our way, but for starters: A Home For Planning. a safe and welcoming environment for sharing, venting, learning, and innovating, while building an extraordinary planning community. How do we start? Coffee with Colleagues An informal and fun social event, held 8-10 times per year, where planners get together over drinks or food, to share ideas, horror-stories, ideas, etc. It will provide an opportunity to learn from each other and talk about planning across generations and experience levels, and give a space to vent and bond over shared experiences. Most of all - FUN. 3

4 Each Coffee with Colleagues will be co-hosted by two people. (This way, if no one shows up, there is still enough people for a good conversation!) The co-hosts choose the location, pick the name (i.e. Tacos with Colleagues Beer with Colleagues Sangria with Colleagues ). Co-hosts also choose a theme/idea/conversation starter/game to center the event. Co-hosts also responsible for posting to the Coffee with Colleagues facebook page during/after the event, with photos, stories, etc. This will get people interested and create a record. Co-hosts also responsible for keeping an eye out to make sure the events have a level of professional decorum - no throwing individuals, clients, bosses under the bus. Needs to remain a safe place to share and bond, not get people in trouble. Some ideas: Photo contests o Miguel s idea for Tacos with Colleagues (to be held at Tito s Tacos): bring an image of the worst public art you can find, and an image of public art you love. Don t label them. At the event everyone puts them in a pile and the group sees if they can guess what was brought as an example of good versus bad. Conversation and learning ensues. o Similar event with photos of terrible mixes of uses, worst connectivity, etc. Dystopia contests o Teams compete to envision the worst community plan o People come with their pick for the worst street in the IE Venting sessions Worst CEQA comment letter received Out-of-the-box ideas that would never go over well at work Horror stories from your first year(s) of being a professional planner (tales of faux pas, mistakes made, fears, misconceptions, etc.) Eggnog with Colleagues - the IES-APA 2014 Holiday Party Opportunity to rehash the year Razzies for Planning Co-hosts should have been collecting stories from the monthly Coffee with Colleagues events to share/expand on at the Holiday Party Young Planners Group There is a need to have events just for young people, but YPG also needs to be a conduit for connecting young planners and students with professionals, so we can all learn together. Having YPG formalized might make younger planners more comfortable with coming to all APA events. Next Steps: All minutes/notes/ideas will be kept in google docs at: 16SjiXnQ/edit?usp=sharing (anyone can view or edit via this link) 4

5 Need two co-hosts for the first Coffee with Colleagues event (Miguel?) to be held in Jan or Feb Miguel and Tom Need a facebook page to be set up by mid-january - Brynn Need a mock up of a flyer/image/intro to the program to be made by mid-january - Jennifer Need to determine whether/when to have a standing monthly t/conf call Jennifer to send out on this in early January Retreat adjourned at 12:55pm. 5