Highlights from our first meeting

We were unanimously in favor of beginning with a panel on the issue of local unemployment. Many people had ideas of possible speakers -- an economist, someone from the chamber of commerce or the small business bureau, someone from a local community that has created jobs successfully. Amanda pointed out the importance of emphasizing job creation without adding to sprawl. And Steve pointed out that 60% of Americans are employed in local businesses which, to me, says that we should have someone address the importance of consumer choice and consumer power.

Generally, people seemed to favor having a "local economy" theme for the first semester where we couple an event dealing with jobs with an event dealing with either foreclosures or education rates and funding. Troy reminded us that Modesto is known, not only for high unemployment, but also for low education levels and that their coexistence is no coincidence.

We also talked about quickly organizing a panel around the photovoltaic option on North McHenry for April 1st; Bill's April first CEP event will have to be cancelled so we have a room booked already (FH101 not 110). Mike and Amanda both said they would work on that (ideally with you).

We each shared other topics we would like to address next year: I think water and air quality are the next priority.

We discussed the optimal meeting day; people made good arguments for Thursday and seemed to prefer that option.

Finally, Bill said he would draft some protocols.