In Attendance

Don Piper, Sasha Kamper, Brent Millis, Cindy Smith, Hollie Smith, Francis Boggus, Dave Busiek, Isaac Lafleur, Mike McCarthy

Items Discussed

2023 National Night Out “Lessons Learned”

Public Affairs meeting with BNA Board

November Quarterly Meeting

Recap

NNO “Lessons Learned”

We did not meet in August to discuss NNO so we reviewed in our September meeting. Notes below:

• 2023 budget for NNO was $2500. Exact amount spent was not available for the meeting but we know we were under budget.
• We wish to keep NNO at the Beaver and Franklin location. Brent offered to reach out to the city at the beginning of next year to see what details are available regarding the intersection of Beaver and 41^st .
• Although we did not close Beaver Avenue for the event, we purchased hand stop signs and had volunteers on both sides of the street to stop Beaver traffic when attendees wished to cross the street. This worked very well and we plan to use again. Police saw what we were doing and appeared to have no issue.
• Promote the event as early as possible. Have flyers/posters available for weekly Beaverdale Farmers Market.
• We briefly discussed activities for thoughts on adding anything. In the past we have had pony rides and a bounce house. We agreed the insurance costs for these and amount of volunteers needed to manage is not worth it. Price Chopper grocery store mentioned they may add a dunk tank next year so we should visit with them early next year.

PA meeting with BNA Board

Mike McCarthy, Josh Nelson and Don Piper attended part of BNA’s Board meeting on September 5^th. We had two requests (1. Have a Board member join PA.  2. Board members be more available for events Public Affairs runs.) Vice President of the Board Dave Busiek attended our meeting to discuss this further. No board member has expressed interest but Dave is willing to sit in on a few of our monthly meetings as time permits. Our goal is to increase communication with the board. Suggestion is to send these minutes to the board’s email address so all board members receive versus just publishing on beaverdale.org.

A request to review/rewrite Public Affairs bylaws (found @ https://www.beaverdale.org/about-bna/bna-bylaws/) was submitted to the board before we attended the September board meeting. The current PA bylaws were last edited in 2017 and do not match what PA is doing today.

We discussed if Public Affairs is the best name for this group. When a person expresses interest in volunteering with Public Affairs it’s confusing what we really do.  

November Quarterly Meeting

Currently BNA has the date of Tue November 7^th for our last 2023 Quarterly meeting. That is also an election day so we need to move. We discussed the other open dates for November and Don will work with the NW Center to get the date changed.

For speakers we have the following to check on:

• Invite Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald to discuss voting changes – (Dave Busiek indicated he could contact)
• Have an update on Holiday Happenings in Beaverdale
• Business Spotlight – new restaurant across from Donut Hut (4941 Douglas). Don will reach out.

 UPDATE

After our meeting, Don stopped at NW Community Center and had the date changed to Nov 6^th. Related we reached out to Lower Beaverdale Neighborhood Association as they have indicated they planned to have a Mayoral forum that we could assist with. Jeremy Geerdes (LBNA) provided the following details:

 the LBNA will be hosting forums for mayoral candidates on Oct 16, school board candidates (District 1 and At-Large) on Oct 23, and city council candidates (Ward 1 and At-Large) on Nov 6. You can find more information here: https://lowerbeaver.org/index.php/2023/09/22/lbna-announces-dates-for-mayoral-school-board-and-city-council-candidate-forums/

Due to this we will need to move our Quarterly Meeting date again since LBNA is having a Ward 1 candidate forum on the same day. It will probably need to move to early December

Next meeting is October 18^th at 5:30 PM. Restaurant TBD.