SJVGreens Minutes
Minutes of St. Joe Valley Greens
November 10, 2003, Kathleen Kaiser, recorder
Call to Order: Vicki Webb called the meeting to order at 7:10 PM at the St. Joseph Valley Public Library, Main Branch.
Members Present: Vicki Webb, Dave Vollrath, Lance Howard, Tom Brown, Kathleen Kaiser.
Guest Speaker: No speaker.
Treasurer Report: No report. No change in treasury.
Unfinished Business
GreenTV
Vicki reported that she has been offered pro bono videos which we can use on the Green TV. We have enough content for months of shows. "Trade Secrets of the FTAA" will is being shown on GreenTV this month. We have one time clearance rights only and cannot share it with other Green groups. Tom and Vicki floated the idea of contacting Green groups and offering our content for their use. No one objected.
Tom reported that Graham Pearson is willing to stream our GreenTV shows on the web for us. Graham offered to start with asynchronous streaming (on demand streaming) but does not know how long he'll be able to it. We may have to limit broadcasts to certain hours of the day and night to preserve server bandwidth.
New Business
Ballot access
Paul Wilson, ICFEL, sent Vicki a note regarding gathering signatures. Paul said 120,000 signatures are needed to guarantee ballot access for Sec'y of State and therefore statewide party ballot access.
Vicki proposed that IGP create downloadable petition forms and encourage petitioners to print a form to sign and return to IGP. We discussed the idea and agreed that it is worth pursuing.
Tom had a lot to say about ballot access in Indiana.
- Tom reported that there is no clear legal start date to begin gathering signatures but that signatures would be challenged by Rep and Dem parties if gathered too far in advance of the petition submission deadline on June 30.
- Tom suggested we begin by recruiting a person in each county to organize the petition drive for their county, to recruit people to circulate petitions.
- The best way to gather signatures is at large publich gatherings (concerts, fairs, etc). Public venues should be safe for petitioning. Private property may be unsafe -- there is a likelihood of being ushered off the property by security or arrested.
- Mailing petitions to people is not always efficient; if completed incorrectly the form must be destroyed, the persons contacted to correct the mistake and another form completed (correctly) and mailed to IGP. Otherwise the faulty petition or its faulty signatures will be thrown out by the County Clerk.
- Only registered voters can sign petitions. If a person wants to sign a petition but is not registered to vote, the petitioner can register the person. But voter registration forms need to be submitted to the County Clerk prior to the related petition forms or the newly registered voters won't appear on the rolls. If the new voter is not on the rolls, the petition signature is invalid.
- Petitioning for Green presidential candidate in 2004 does not mean party access for the Green party for 2006 election. Only the Sec. of State race counts for party ballot access.
- Tom thinks Paul Wilson's estimate of the signatures needed to guarantee ballot access are too high. Tom estimates IGP can gain ballot access with 90,000 or fewer signatures. Some counties had almost 100% signature validation rates in the 2000 Nader drive. The worst counties had 50% validation rates. The total voter registration roll and the historic validation rate in each county will determine the number of signatures required in each county. In high validation counties we can safely set a goal of 2% of registered voters. In other counties the goal must be 4% to 6% of the total registered voters to compensate for low validation rates.
We agreed on several things that need to be done to prepare for the 2004 petition campaign:
- The IGP should send emails to IGP and local email lists requesting people download a petition form, fill it out and mail it to the IGP.
- There should be sample forms and a FAQ to explain how to properly fill out the printable petition forms.
- There should be a single person in each county responsible for organizing the county petition drive; recruiting, training and supervising petitioners; and, turning in petitions to their County Clerk.
- IGP should find out which counties were high yield counties based on the Nader 2000 petition drive. IGP can concentrate energies on those counties.
- We need a civil rights lawyer who'd be willing to defend petitioners should they run into trouble. Members suggested South Bend attornies David Hoffman John Hamilton and Indy lawyer Larry Reuben. The attornies must be familiar with Indiana election laws.
Worker's Rights - Joe Carbone asked Vicki to tell him what the Greens have done regarding worker rights. Tom and Dave V. told us that CARE was founded by Mark Anderlik (now in Montana), a SJVGreen, and labor organizers from St. Joseph County. The St Joe Valley Project and the Living Wage campaign developed out of CARE. SJVGreens members Roger Voelker (now living in the Southwestern U.S.), Dave V. and Tom served on the board of the St. Joe Valley Project. Dave V. is still a board member. Dave reported that Greg Jones, director of St Joe Valley Project and member of the Carpenters Union, wants the Project to do more environmental work.
South Bend Mayoral CSO Advisory Committee
Dave V. received his invitation to join the committee but was unable to attend the first meeting. Dave met with Jack Dillon, lead City staff member of the committee to get up to speed. The committee will meet again Nov. 20th.
CSO notification: Jack Dillon said that the City intends to use the CSO advisory group as the sounding board for the City's proposal for public CSO notification. The public notification plan is due Nov. 20, and the notification plan should be implemented by Feb., 2004.
The CSO committee is concerned with and will discuss the biological health of the river and its safe recreational use in regard to CSO events.
Monitoring of bodies of water in Indiana is mostly done by volunteers (Michiana Watershed, Friends of the St. Joe, etc). South Bend, Mishawaka and Elkhart are pooling resources to model the St Joe River to determine the source of contaminants and to predict the most effective interventions.
Indiana has a pronounced "brain drain." Educated young adults are leaving the state in significantly high numbers. Quality of life issues can be used to address the "brain drain".
Tom and Vicki suggested that the SJVGreens publicize CSO events. Vicki thought it would be good to ask local weather broadcasters to include CSO alerts as part of their weather reporting. Tom suggested that we put CSO alerts on our web site and email all the local media whenever there is a likely CSO event -- that would be any time there is precipitation. First we must find out definitively that there has been a CSO event or is likely to be one. The engineers at the South Bend Wastewater Treatment Plant should have the info on where and when CSO events occur after rainfall or snow melt. We might also call the mayor's office and ask if and where there was a CSO event after rain/snow melt. Tom said we can automatically forward CSO announcments to the media outlets via email. He can put weather person email addresses on our mail server and trigger an automatic email to them whenever there is precipitation to nudge them to report CSO events.
Annual Congress - Vote was held to retain officers for additional year.
Adournment: The meeting adjourned at 9:00 p.m. The next meeting is Monday, December 8, 2003.
St. Joe Valley Greens, South Bend, IN