NEWS
June Meeting Minutes
Monday, June 28th, 2010 – Bob Martin
Meeting started with a discussion of how to best approach candidates and Congresspersons at Town Halls and Listening Sessions. See below for that discussion. We went on to discuss the State Organization. Outside of our State Director, Al Ose of Wisconsin Rapids , we ARE the State organization. Al is also a regional director for Wis and Ia. The discussion was about the roles we have and firming up those roles to address things better, especially if we decide to act as THE State of Wis group, which is what we decided. To that we defined a few roles to begin the formation process. We will continue to develop this structure over the next few months and it may change to varying degree. Hopefully we will bring in volunteers from other parts of the State to fill current and/or additional roles and form a board of directors from a larger group. Please remember these are all volunteers. Each of them does far more than what we have listed here and we need your help to make it happen.
1. Bob Martin will step down as a District Director and become the Deputy State Director and begin to try to help push into other areas of the State. He will continue to act as he has in many of the local roles and relationships that have been developed. He will also be on the list of speakers available to do presentations and meetings.
2. Eric Nelson will officially be the District Director for WI-3 and our Media Representative and Coordinator. His focus will be on getting us into other areas of the District, especially LaCrosse, and directing communications with Dist 3 Representatives and candidates for office. Eric is also on the list of speakers.
3. Darren Kirby will take over as District Director for WI-7 and will assist us in getting the word out to the media for meetings, presentations and where we will be at throughout the State with press releases and adds when appropriate and funded. His focus will be on getting us into other areas of Dist- 7 like Wausau and Superior and engaging the Congressional Reps and candidates for office. Darren will be available as a speaker. He is also the Bloomer Community Coordinator.
4. Jerry Nielsen is our Congressional and Campaign Coordinator, our representative for the Chippewa Valley FairTax Freedom Riders and basically our utility man. He is responsible for a variety of activities which include but are not limited to coordinating the National FairTax Freedom Ride, local poker runs, helping in both districts to engage our Congresspersons and keep us up to date on Facebook and Twitter. He is one of our speakers. Jerry has been one of our most active and vocal volunteers.
5. Crystal Olson is our Secretary and will be doing the meeting minutes so we can keep everyone posted on what we are doing. She will also schedule our meetings and set up the sites we will be at. Crystal is also helping to maintain our supporters list and newsletter and is a Community Coordinator.
6. Brad Hovey is our treasurer and will be responsible for all donations received and purchases necessary to support the groups activities such as educational literature, DVD's, logo wear and procuring booth space at fairs and events. He will keep an accurate accounting that we will make available to any supporter on request. He is an Eau Claire Community Coordinator.
7. Carrie Malicki is our Fundraising and Social Networking Coordinator. We don't ask for a lot of money but every little bit helps and Carrie is determined to help us with that. She has been keeping our Facebook page maintained and updated and will be helping us get set up on LinkedIn and helping to utilize Twitter. She will be developing programs to help supporters take full advantage of electronic media to spread the FairTax message. Carrie will be available as a speaker and is the Community Coordinator for the Village of Lake Hallie.
8. Russ Hartsough is our Speakers Coordinator and will be setting up talks with community groups and coordinating the speakers for those meetings and events. He is also one of the speakers available and one of the Eau Claire Community Coordinators.
9. Matt Nelson is our Member/Supporters service coordinator and will be helping maintain our database and supporters kits for distribution.
10. Dr. Tom Brenneman is a District 3 Coordinator and a speaker.
11. C.J. Cordell is a District 7 Coordinator and a speaker.
We need help with all of these positions and we are looking for people to Coordinate and edit our newsletter, act as a Union Liaison and additional Congressional/candidate Coordinators. We can also use a few people to help with data entry, event attendants to assist at booths with literature and product and Community Coordinators or Representatives (see below).
This is a list of our Community Coordinators (CC) in the Chippewa Valley . We will be adding more to make sure we all have someone to go to with questions and to coordinate local events. If you are able to fill this role in your community please contact us immediately and let us know. There are some multiple listings in our list. Let us know if you can relieve that CC of one of their communities. Being a CC involves a very minimal commitment of time and helps immensely in showing the public that we have broad support even in the smallest communities. If all you do is point a local resident in the right direction or get them contact info for the right person you would be helping us a lot. Again, we are all volunteers and we all have precious little time. Every bit of help makes it easier to accomplish our goal. We will continue to ask until that goal- passage of the FairTax - is realized.
Eau Claire Community Coordinators includes many of the volunteers above as well as - Dick Carlson, Nate Moquin
Elk Mound - Brad Schuch
Chippewa Falls - Andy Robarge,
Chetek - Dave Schultz
Fall Creek/ Augusta - Crystal Olson
Osseo - Butch Poast
Wausau - Tommy Hobbins
Fairchild - Fairchild
New Auburn , Bruce, Ladysmith - CJ Cordell
Cadott - Jerry Nielsen
Bloomer - Darren Kirby
We have decided to have monthly meetings at this point. We will hold them on the first Tuesday of the month. The first Tuesday meeting will be on July 6th at the Northern Wisconsin State Fairgrounds .They will rotate through the Chippewa Valley at varying sites. We began with just 2 or 3 a year, moved to every other month but now need to move to monthly as we have too much to accomplish each meeting. We are also adding a Talking Points segment to our meetings to present a specific aspect on the FairTax for the public to learn more and supporters to be able to defend criticisms better. If you have someplace in your community you would like us to hold a meeting at please let us know and we will put that site on our list. Just about any venue is acceptable, from Town Halls, churches and public libraries to restaurants, coffee shops and bars.
Volunteers Needed
The Northern Wisconsin State Fair is up next on our official schedule and runs from July 7th - 11th. The Barron County Fair follows from July 14-18th. We need more volunteers for both, so if you can help man a booth for a couple hours we could use you. You will always be paired up with someone familiar with the FairTax. We will get you a free pass for the Fair and you will learn more than you think about the FairTax. You'll also be surprised at how fun it is and how fast the time flies. Give it a shot. It helps to have local residents involved. We inevitably sign up more supporters when local residents are involved and their friends see them active. Brad Hovey will be putting together the booth, Eric Nelson will have balloons available to go along with all of our materials and our sign up/petitions. We also hope to project the power point as a point of interest to get fair patrons to stop and talk. Any other ideas are welcome.
Other County Fairs we would like to get to but need lots of volunteers from those areas:
Pepin or St Croix - July 22-25 , Eau Claire or Jackson July 28 - Aug 1, Wisconsin Valley Fair (Marathon) or Dunn Aug 4 - 8 , Pierce or Rusk Aug 12-15 , Marshfield Central Wisconsin State Fair ( Marshfield ) Sept 1 - 6. If you have any other to suggest drop us an e-mail at ask@chippewavalleyfairtax.org .
The discussion on Town Halls and Listening Sessions dealt with how best to get our message across and to whom the message is actually being addressed. We all agreed that the Congressperson or Candidate is our secondary target. Our focus should be on educating the people that show up to the Town Hall meeting or whatever it is. Our questions should first and foremost introduce the FairTax to the public and then present a question to the Candidate/Congressperson. It was agreed that we will have a measured approach to this in the future whenever we have the opportunity to attend, especially in numbers. Eric Nelson is going to work on a series of questions and follow ups that we will use to get the direct message to the Candidate/Congressperson and even more so the education of the public in attendance. It will basically become a defacto community presentation. If we can get the public to respond to us all the better, since the Candidate/Congressperson will see this reaction. We will also try to have additional information available to hand out to members of the public if they are interested. When these events are scheduled or discovered, let us know immediately so we can alert all supporters. For those able to make it to the session, let us know with an e-mail response. We will e-mail the questions and responses to you. They will be numbered and as your name comes up, read the introduction and ask the first question or give your response to their previous answer and the next question. They usually give 2 minutes, sometimes more. If you are familiar enough try to use the whole time to do more educating. If your not comfortable doing that, just read the response and question. Always wear your FairTax gear if you have any. |
