The meeting was held at City Hall's meeting room at 411 West Clay at 5:15pm. Present were Bob Beltrami, Trish Beltrami, Ed Keller, Eric Burch, Mo Taglio, Casey Taglio, George Phelan, Lindy Dunaway, Sage Sangiacomo, Denton Ramsey, Matt Wilson, Justin Capri and for the first time, Val Jackson, Thomas O'Keefe, and Bohdi Idarius. Seth Freedland was there to represent Ukiah Daily Journal.

Additions to Agenda: SPACE fundraiser

Approval of minutes from Nov. 1 meeting: Approved without change.

Yahoo! Details from Sage on our $500,000 grant!
The grant funding is for the entire skate complex. There are no state restrictions as to the build of the park...and we can move straight into the planning phase. It has taken more than 8 years to finish this project and we applied for this Prop 40 grant one year ago this week. The city has some experience at administering grants since it has been awarded a $100k grant previously for the men's softball field. We need $214,286 in matching funds from local monetary donations and in-kind services. We want to take an aggressive approach but we have to have matching funds firmly place to secure the grant monies. We can request progress payments rather than finishing the park before we receive any grant money. Right now we have been enjoying lots of media attention, and we want to keep local interest up.

The scope of the granted project is for the City of Ukiah to construct the skate park with surrounding park area, seating, picnic facilities, restrooms and parking. We have eight years to build the park.

We should go back to the people who have pledged previously and get those donations confirmed and secured.

Sage also reported that the Montanous Family committed $5000 to the Skate Park today. And that Mendocino Releaf voted to donate trees, soil preparation and irrigation infrastructure for all 3 projects awarded grant monies. We need to make sure we have everything in place to accept all donations and keep track and monitor them.

After the contracts are received, a City Council agenda will contain the action to authorize the City Manager to execute these contracts for the State of California.

There was some discussion about whether we should spend time right now planning fundraising or have a retreat later? And maybe the need to redefine task for the committees....design, fundraising, etc. It was decided to set a date for a longer retreat just after the first of the year to allow time for outreach to the community for professional help. Sage can have the initial request for proposal for design services ready for committee approval before the retreat. Sat., Jan 7th, 2006 in the Public Health conference room #1. Starting at 10 am. Bring friends, the more the merrier.

There was also some discussion about needing to get started on the tiles right away. Joy was not able to make the meeting, so Mo will bring info next month. Mo thought there were 3 ideas for tile wall designs... straight tiles or a mural (similar to the Willits Skate Park), and that Rex Eiffert talked to an artist about an alternate mural idea. We will discuss at the retreat whether tile sales fall under fundraising subcommittee for design, to bring to the full committee for a decision.

Ed reminded everyone present that although Carole wasn't able to be at this meeting because of a previous engagement, she is one of the 3 people who have stuck it out and been involved since the very first meeting at the high school.

We need to make known the three ways to donate money: we have an account at the Savings Bank, a fund at the Community Foundation of Mendocino County and we have a trust account with the City of Ukiah.

Val Jackson wanted to know if the meetings were being publicized. Although it has been sent to the Ukiah Daily Journal for the Community Digest monthly meetings, it does seem a little hit and miss as to when it is included.

Thanks to the skaters who came to the meeting tonight!

The Ukiah City Council will be updated at the Wednesday night meeting, that an award letter for the grant was received but the contract has not yet been received.

There was some interest in having the skate park site thermometer updated. We will try to schedule that before the retreat and make it a photo opportunity and invite the Ukiah Daily Journal.

Denton Ramsey (student rep) asked what fundraising activities scheduled for kids to participate with ...so far not many....gift wrapping...video screening....lot more to come......he was told that that was a really good question, and we definitely will plan more at the retreat. Another idea presented was that when it comes time to go face to face requesting funding from businesses or individuals, it would be great to have a skater go with a committee member.

Financial Report: We have Profit & Loss printout for 2001 - Nov, 2005. It was hard to decipher so it might need to be discussed more at the retreat. It was not clear as to exact profits from Pumkinfest. (items for the retreat agenda: reporting formats, coordinating between 3 accts, status of monies to date).

Review Nov. Action Items:

• Pacific Internet bill: is the billing intended? (Ed/Joy) Jim and Ed finally connected, Jim didn't know why we were being charged and has reimbursed our money. Pacific Internet is giving the Skate Park Committee FREE web posting. It was suggested that their generosity should be noted on website.
• Carole will check with Joy for a P&L for this year's Pumpkin Fest and comparisons to prior years. See Financial Report above.
• Jason will look into setting us up with a forum for sharing ideas and planned events, as well as an on-line calendar for scheduling the planning start dates for different events. Jason did get it up and going. Some committee members might need some tutorial. It was suggested that the online address be published to the resource list so more can join in.
• Eric will pursue ideas for skate video screening fundraisers, possibly starting in November. First video screening was a success!! Netting $272. Next video screening is planned for Dec 21st at Wright Stuff Pizza, 6:30 pm. Kids can submit 3-5 min "sponsor me" tapes/cds for viewing that night. Ukiah Daily Journal has donated ad space. And Eric has a contact for printing the fliers.
• Lindy and Jason will compare prices on printing bumper stickers for a proposal to be presented at the next meeting. Jason was unable to attend this meeting so Lindy will be contacting him in the beginning of the week. It was mentioned that we want to include a bumper sticker with every thank you letter.

SPACE fundraiser: There is an opportunity to fundraise by selling refreshments on Sat. Dec 10th at the SPACE Winter Program. Last year the coffee was a disaster, so maybe cider and hot tea would work better. Need volunteers to bake treats and man the booth. Scott Spears, Bob & Trish and Denton thought they could man the booth. Carole, Mo, Val, Lindy and Ed said they would provide baked goods.

Mo reported that the Gift Wrapping fundraising idea is not panning out as well as expected. $33 in 10 hours is not very profitable money making or good use of time. Some of the materials will go back for refund as too much was ordered. Mo and Lindy will brainstorm to try and at least break even before calling it quits.

Next meeting will be January 3, an abbreviated meeting to set the agenda for the retreat on the 7th.

Next Meeting: Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2006, 5:15 - 6:45 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay (1st Tuesday of each month)

The meeting was held at City Hall's meeting room at 411 West Clay at 5:15. Present were Carole Aleshire, Ed Keller, Eric Burch, Lorraine Pittman, Mo Taglio, Lindy Dunaway and for the first time, Jason Edington. Sage Sangiacomo joined us late after another late meeting.

Approval of minutes from October 4 meeting:
  Approved without change.

Financial Report:

  Tuesday, December 6, 2005, 5:15 – 6:45 p.m.
  at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay
  (first Tuesday of each month)

The meeting was held at City Hall's meeting room at 411 W. Clay at 5:15. Present were Ed Keller, Carole Aleshire (Secretary), Sage Sangiacomo, Trish Beltrami, Bob Beltrami (President), Mo Taglio, Lorraine Pittman and Justin Capri (Co-Vice President).

Approval of minutes from Sept. 6 meeting:
  Approved without change.

Financial Report (Mo for Joy):

The meeting was held at City Hall’s meeting room at 411 W. Clay at 5:15 p.m. Present were Carole Aleshire (Secretary), Eric Burch, Sage Sangiacomo, Bob Beltrami (President), Mo Taglio, Trish Beltrami, Lindy Dunaway, Gretchen Anderson and Justin Capri. George Phelan came as we were finishing up, with an important piece of information.

Approval of minutes from June 7 & July 5 meetings:
  Approved without change.

Additions to Agenda:

Financial Report:
  (Joy):  Not present to report

Report on Aug. 16 fundraising planning meeting and subsequent progress:
  Reported from the minutes of that meeting.
  Music:  Gretchen's musician friends are cutting a record and will get back to her.
  Bumper stickers/t-shirts:  Lindy forgot to bring prices, Eric brought a design.

---

Special Fundraising Meeting:
  Tuesday, September 20, 5:15 – 6:15 p.m.
  at the City Hall meeting room at 411W. Clay

Next Regularly Scheduled Meeting:
  Tuesday, October 4, 2005, 5:15 – 6:45 p.m.
  at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay
  (first Tuesday of each month)

Special Fundraising Meeting

FUNDRAISING IDEAS TO NAIL DOWN
(from minutes of 8/2/05 meeting)

Ideas we want to explore further and get some firm dates and activities set up:
• Rummage Sale in Aug/Sept,
• Pumpkin Ball and/or other PumpkinFest activities…. in October
• Texas Holdem or dance on New Years… Lions will have Texas Holdem in maybe Oct., perhaps with us getting ½ the proceeds, to be held at the Todd Grove meeting room. This could provide some valuable experience.

• Other ideas about this year’s PumpkinFest (Oct 15-16.):
o Pumpkin Drop—put things into the pumpkins, people buy as many as they want, but one has something special in it—but how do they know who wins, with the pumpkins shattering all over?
o 4Hrs that do petting zoo and other carnival type games make a lot of money, could be a lot easier than a dance. Halloween, costume dance? Halloween on Monday this year, do the weekend before? Get a service club to deal with the bar, find a DJ willing to be reasonable as a goodwill gesture.
o Can we have an area to do a few things? Jell-O or pumpkin pie eating contest, beanbag toss, pull out suckers from behind a pegboard, ones specially marked get a bigger prize… The skating area is close to the entrance to the kids activities area so nearby would be a really good idea. Sage gave Mo Judy’s number to call, she organizes the kids area, encourages her to call.

Next Regularly Scheduled Meeting:
Tuesday, October 4, 2005, 5:15 – 5:15 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay (first Tuesday of each month)

The meeting was held at City Hall’s meeting room at 411 W. Clay at 5:15 p.m. Present were Seth Freedland from the Ukiah Daily Journal, Lorraine Pittman, Bob Beltrami (President), Lindy Dunaway, George Phelan, Carole Aleshire (Secretary), Joy Beeler (Treasurer), Ed Keller, Dina Polkinghorne, Doug Crane, Sage Sangiacomo and Mo Taglio (from the start of the fundraising discussion).

Approval of minutes from June 7 & July 5 meetings: Approved without change.
Joy brought the video submitted to the 3 Wishes NBC TV show, which we watched. Joy doesn’t think we were selected for the show, as there has been no contact from NBC producers.
Report from Dave, owner of King’s Cup, on his fundraiser idea: Dave was not in attendance, so this issue was tabled.

Financial Report: (Joy): Joy presented the profit & loss statement from April 5 through August 1: We have had income of $1,270.37, expenses of $521, ($259 in video expenses and photos done for 3 Wishes; annual web hosting fee of $240), for profit of $749.37.
The web hosting fee has previously not been charged. Ed will check with Jim Persky to see if that was his intention, as the understanding was that Jim was sponsoring our website. Joy will get Ed the bill for him to discuss with Jim. Bob thinks this is too much to pay--$80 a year is more in line with what’s expected. If we need to move the website, Bob would like to help.

Sage: No word yet from state parks funding.

Review Action Items from July 5:
• Sage will see about work being done by city staff on a display board: Sage’s staff is working on recreating a new sign board to replace one destroyed in the rain at PumpkinFest. They thought there was another but they can’t find it so are starting over on a second one as well.
• Sage will see about putting our announcement in the monthly meetings @ UDJ: This hasn’t happened yet. Joy will make a phone call to see about getting in the Community Calendar as a 1st Tuesday meeting.
• Carole will email out recruitment for a subcommittee to organize the rummage sale: Recruitment went out, there were a couple of people expected for an organizational meeting on Friday, July 22 but nobody showed for the meeting. Lindy is now offering to lead the effort. Perhaps we can get it organized today.
• Sage will talk to Justin and see if he wants to chair a subcommittee for Pumpkinfest: Justin is on vacation right now. Sage will do more touching base to make sure Justin is on board, planning the awards, etc.
• Gretchen will check with Scott on his idea for a fundraiser concert at the fairgrounds: Gretchen was not present to check in on this.

Work on fundraising work plan:
Joy brought and handed out a list of ideas she had collected from various sources, notably from a website called Kaboom. Following is the listing of ideas (and others that came up) and discussion about them:
• We need to get youth involved, which means we need schools involved. As we’ve been speaking for the service clubs, perhaps we should do the same for PTA groups.
Projects kids could get involved in:
o Rake leaves
o Battle of the bands (door cover fees to skate park)
o Donation jars in classrooms
o Skate-a-thon (at Sk8 City?)
o Kiss a pig contest (perhaps Homecoming week?)
o Dog wash
o Golf ball spa—washing golf balls, charge $1 a ball
o Bag for a day: work with markets to have young people be baggers for the day, with tip jars to benefit the skate park
• A dance at the skate park site with BBQ—country western music, maybe with a crane holding up strings of lights draped to corners
• Benefit concert (students performing)
• Pennies for the Skate Park Penny Drive
• Birthday cakes for students: we’d need schools involved by giving us their roster for mailing parents, maybe the PTA would do—we distribute a flyer for the service of providing a birthday cake; get a bakery to donate cakes or give provide at low cost; parents pay us for the service, cake gets delivered to the child at school.
• Handprint wall: We charge parents $20 to do let their child put a handprint on a wall and sign their name; Perhaps we could do this for sidewalks at the skatepark, have kids pay to have handprint in the sidewalk like Groman’s Chinese. Similar to this, we plan
• Truck Touch: We bring in trucks of all kinds: fire trucks, semis, etc. For a dollar charge, little kids get to sit in and climb around the trucks
• Caroling for construction funds
• Jell-O eating contest: maybe at PumpkinFest: Contestants would pay $5 to enter
• Fantasy photo: at car show or PumpkinFest or other good setting for photographs; Triple S could perhaps donate a camera/processing
• Car dealers to donate $5 per car they sell for a some number of months
• Texas Holdum Tournament: (Joy’s favorite)—a poker game about which many people have expressed interest. Mo doesn’t think that would be hard to organize--$100 entry fee/person, give ½ back in cash prizes, could bring in around $5000; sell drinks--get service club to be dealers, they could also perhaps provide liability insurance and/or liquor license ($25/day).

More ideas flowed…
• MacDonalds does spirit week for students, but maybe Carls, Taco Bell, etc. could donate a portion of proceeds for one week to the skate park. Taco Bell is open later than anyone else so a good one to try!
• Golf ball drop!
• Doug: At Safeway, people can sign up to donate a portion of each purchase—e-script is the electronic version. School buys at 5% discount, sells it at full value. Now it’s a scan card.
• From a previous discussion, a formal dance with kids serving: This year we know of no New Year’s Eve event planned. Possible venues: Conference Center: would hold 120 people or Todd Grove room would hold 100. Senior Center might be available. Is the Waldorf charter school doing a black & white ball again?
• Ukiah Lions football used to do a barbecue and dance
• Town hall meeting to raise Friends of the Ukiah Skate Park
• Skip Newell’s barns, music in Potter Valley—now free but could work for a fundraiser—Dina will call a friend she knows who’s involved.
• Joy also brought large donation signup sheets.
• We also need to be soliciting private donations—Joy brought a handout on how to ask for money, called “Practice Makes Perfect.”
• Donation jars in the outlying areas have fallen off, but there are about 10 left really active in the downtown area.
• Tshirts, bumper stickers—“My kid’s an ace skateboarder, but needs a place to skate!” Would provide some exposure along with brochures at farmers market, etc.
• Journal donate ad space monthly, plea for money? Would probably open a can of worms.
• In Saratoga at a college, they have an old widespread oak tree, good for climbing on, but the activity was breaking down the tree. The had to fence it off, now a place to view and take pictures, you can buy a brick for $100, put a poem, a memorial, etc. on it. Now they’ve run out of room for bricks. Same idea as the tile wall or area.
• Continuing on previous discussions about fund-raising tiles built into our skate park: Hoyman Browe will work with us and figure out what a wall or whatever would look like.
Could we have kids design some of the tiles?
• Regarding the portable ramps idea for demonstrations at venues like Farmers Market—Lindy took some designs to Justin, but he kind of poo-poo’d the idea, perhaps not clear on the idea we were acting on, which was that Bob Beeler might be willing to build light-weight ramps if a design were brought to him. Lindy will take them to Bob herself, maybe it can still happen.

All of us would really like to hone in on some of these activities to get some motion going. Pumpkinfest could be a good place to add some of them.
• The Saturday night of PumpkinFest—Pumpkin Ball? Scarecrow Dance? Would need to figure out a venue for the dance. Conference Center is probably already tied up as the haunted house. Would we have food involved? Music? Alcohol? Theme? Decorations? Do we need to do food? Maybe hire a caterer to cover it. Or if it’s at PumpkinFest, people have been eating all day. Casual dress.
• Other ideas about this year’s PumpkinFest (Oct 15-16.):
o Pumpkin Drop—put things into the pumpkins, people buy as many as they want, but one has something special in it—but how do they know who wins, with the pumpkins shattering all over?
o 4Hrs that do petting zoo and other carnival type games make a lot of money, could be a lot easier than a dance. Halloween, costume dance? Halloween on Monday this year, do the weekend before? Get a service club to deal with the bar, find a DJ willing to be reasonable as a goodwill gesture.
o Can we have an area to do a few things? Jell-O or pumpkin pie eating contest, beanbag toss, pull out suckers from behind a pegboard, ones specially marked get a bigger prize… The skating area is close to the entrance to the kids activities area so nearby would be a really good idea. Sage gave Mo Judy’s number to call, she organizes the kids area, encourages her to call.

Ideas we want to explore further and get some firm dates and activities set up:
• Rummage Sale in Aug/Sept,
• Pumpkin Ball and/or other PumpkinFest activities…. in October
• Texas Holdem or dance on New Years… Lions will have Texas Holdem in maybe Oct., perhaps with us getting ½ the proceeds, to be held at the Todd Grove meeting room. This could provide some valuable experience.

Running out of time, we scheduled another meeting for Tuesday, Aug. 16 for just1 hour, 5:15 – 6:15, just for setting a few firm fundraising events. Everyone should bring friends!

Next Meeting:

Special Fundraising Meeting: Tuesday, August 16, 5:15 – 6:15 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411W. Clay

Next Regularly Scheduled Meeting:
Tuesday, September 6, 2005, 5:15 – 6:45 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay (first Tuesday of each month)

The meeting was held at City Hall’s Meeting Room at 411 W. Clay at 5:15 p.m. Present were Carole Aleshire (Secretary) Gretchen Anderson, Sage Sangiacomo, George Phelan, and newcomers Lorraine Pittman from the Redwood Valley Grange and Charles Rice.

In the absence of any other officers, Sage agreed to facilitate the meeting.

Approval of minutes from June 7 meeting: Not enough attendees today had attended the June 7 meeting. Approval of these minutes will be carried over for the August meeting.

Financial Report (Joy): Sage has no news and with Joy not in attendance, this will be carried over for the August meeting.

George came dashing in at this point, on his way to another meeting, but reported that at the July 4 event yesterday, they sold around 300 50/50 raffle tickets, bringing in about $290 +. The winner of the raffle gave her 50% proceeds back to the skate park effort. George couldn’t remember her name: Katie or Kitty, but we will want to send a thank you note. Cheri or Joy will hopefully find her ticket with the money, in the rush tossed back into the bag with the rest of the tickets. Ric Piffero raised about $2000 for the skate park, but accounting needs to be done before we’ll know how much. We are grateful to Ric for the great publicity as well as the generous donation!

Promotion: The UDJ got our article in the community section just before the June meeting, but we’d like to see our monthly meetings in the monthly meeting section. Sage will look into that.

Re the current campaign to do presentations to service clubs, Lorraine will check with RV Grange to see if they want us to do a presentation there.

Review Action Items from June 7:
• Ed will try to connect with Fetzer about next year’s benefit golf tourney: Ed was out of town, not able to attend or report.
• Sage will get estimates for square footage costs for parking lot at site (for possible development of Phase 1 skate elements): Sage does have, will email to everyone
• Everyone should bring fundraising ideas to July 5 meeting: See discussion below.
• Committee members who are contacts for service clubs should contact Lindy: Lindy not in attendance, we know some presentations have been made but not reported clearly yet.

Work on fundraising Work Plan:
Charles’ proposal: have a bronze skateboard sculpture in the area of the park as sculpture seems to be a focus for people to get behind. He has contacted a bronzing artist with the idea, thought she might be here at this meeting. Kate Magruder’s husband (Mac) is another bronzing artist. Another related idea: skateboarders’ damage to the fountain — could be rebuilt by young people, call it the Fountain of Youth, to honor youth and focus on the vitality of youth. “Art is long, bureaucracy is maybe just a little bit longer.”

Lorraine: Are we trying to get young people involved? Yes, they all help with all events. We’re suggesting they serve guests at dinner fundraisers.

Rummage Sale, discussed at June meeting: Nobody has stepped up to organize. Maybe a subcommittee, Carole will head it up and email out a request to see if we can get enough people involved to make it happen. Other ideas: offer service clubs tables, rent out tables to others, get publicity out for donations as well as the date and benefit of the event itself.

Farmers Market skating demos: The idea of lightweight ramps to be constructed by Bob Beeler if a good design is provided has apparently been confused with an idea Carole brought, to consider building some elements like stairs and rails in the site’s parking lot, not to impede construction of the park proper, but could provide some relief for the public areas of town being damaged and draw interest to the site.

Pumpkinfest planning should get underway soon. Sage will talk to Justin and see if he wants to chair that subcommittee, since the competition is included at that event.

Gretchen: Scott’s idea to hold a concert at the fairgrounds to benefit the skatepark: Gretchen will check back with Scott on this.

Assign New Tasks for Work in July:
• Sage will see about work being done by city staff on a display board—may be done already.
• Sage will see about putting our announcement in the monthly meetings @ UDJ.
• Carole will email out recruitment for a subcommittee to organize the rummage sale.
• Sage will talk to Justin and see if he wants to chair a subcommittee for Pumpkinfest.
• Gretchen will check with Scott on his idea for a fundraiser concert at the fairgrounds.

Next Meeting:
Tuesday, August 2, 2005, 5:15 – 6:45 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay (first Tuesday of each month)

Next Agenda:
• Approval of minutes from June 7 & July 5 meetings
• Financial Report
• Review Action Items from July 5:
o Sage will see about work being done by city staff on a display board—may be done already.
o Sage will see about putting our announcement in the monthly meetings @ UDJ.
o Carole will email out recruitment for a subcommittee to organize the rummage sale.
o Sage will talk to Justin and see if he wants to chair a subcommittee for Pumpkinfest.
o Gretchen will check with Scott on his idea for a fundraiser concert at the fairgrounds.
• Work on fundraising work plan
• Assign new tasks for work in August
• Bring your ideas and suggestions regarding the website—Check it out: www.ukiahskatepark.com

The meeting was held at City Hall’s Meeting Room at 411 W. Clay at 5:15 p.m. Present were Bob Beltrami (President), Joy Beeler (Treasurer), Gretchen Anderson, Ed Keller, Sudi Wachspress, Amy Wachspress, Sage Sangiacomo, Monika Kondra, Jim Wattenberger, Vicente Phelan and George Phelan.

As Secretary Carole Aleshire was unable to attend, the meeting was audiotaped for later transcribing. Other voices heard on that tape or directly referenced, who apparently came later, were Kristen Michel, Justin Capri and Matt Wilson (both co-VPs), Lucas Keller and Jone Duggan.

Approval of minutes from May 3 meeting: Approved without change.

Discussion about NBC’s Three Wishes show: The City was approached by this new show, which is looking for deserving individuals and communities, to grant their inspiring, touching, heartfelt wishes. They say “there are no limits to what the show can do or how many lives it can change,” with price no object. Someone at the show apparently heard about Ukiah from the book published about 10 years ago, where Ukiah figured in as a Number One Small Town. They have heard about the high rate of teens’ use of alcohol and drugs and the tragic results that have come about. They are interested in helping the community develop opportunities for teens and have asked for short videos of our stories. Kirsten Michel happened into Joy’s office when she was looking for a videographer. Kirsten was available to help on the spot and immediately got involved. Joy asked for an official executive committee decision on payment for the cost of the video, $250 for dropping everything and getting out and started. Motion for $250 to be paid to Kirsten Michel and Oak5 Productions, for a video to be submitted to Three Wishes. Motion made, seconded and carried. Besides the skate park, videos are also submitted for the repairing the City pool (Sage worked on this one) and for a teen center, that Laura Baynham (nurse at UkiaHi) worked on. In the teen center video, the individuals interviewed apparently also spoke of the need for a skate park. Of particular interest is the need, the struggle, that there are not a lot of things to do in town, problems with alcohol & drugs in town. We’ll need a cover letter to go with the video, which Joy will take care of.

Financial Report (Joy): Since the May meeting there has been income from donation boxes of $214.08, no expenses, and assets are $24,277.43.

From Sage, an update on our grant request: the City applied for a grant to the Prop 40, Clean Water Act, money available for non-urban areas. The City was granted $100,000 in the last round, for the softball complex. This round, the City applied for three grants: for the pool, for Anton Stadium and for the skate park. Grant applications were submitted in November, each $500,000. Previously Sage had told us that the next communication, if they had any interest in the projects, would be to request site visits. They have requested and conducted site visits on all three projects. Last round, the City had submitted grants for four projects, they only did a site visit on one, and were granted the funds for that one. There is no assurance that we’ll get any, but we hope to get at least one of the three this round. If we were to be granted the $500,000 from the state, we would have to come up with matching funds of about $214,000 for total project cost of $714,000. [Amy interjected that the Kreske Foundation (sp?) will sometimes match funds.] The grant application listed how matching funds would be expected to be garnered, by city and county support, service clubs, etc. Other organizations may well like to jump in to help once our fundraising has been kick-started by this type of sizable grant. The prospects are still promising, as we haven’t been told no. The next thing we’ll hear will be a yes or no. They don’t like to be pinned down on timing, but if they do as before we could hear this summer, perhaps August. If we do receive the grant, we will have up to 8 years to expense the funds. Hopefully a “wish” will act as matching funds as well!

Review Action Items from May 3:
• Sage will have the Future Home Of sign updated: Done! The little line of red at the bottom points out how much fundraising still needs to be done!
• Joy will make changes to the brochure and bring back June 7: Done, she brought a few copies for people to review, but her printer died in the midst of doing this. The changes included changing the logo to ours and making a couple of changes to text that had been requested.
• Ed will try to connect with Fetzer about next year’s benefit golf tourney: Didn’t have a chance yet.
• Sage will get estimates for square footage costs for parking lot at site (for possible development of Phase 1 skate elements): Not yet. Discussion here indicates the suggested use of the parking lot during construction of the park and an effort to build portable ramps for traveling events may have been confused. A swimming pool as a temporary element to be used in the final park for little kids was discussed.
• Sage will try to come back June 7 with a report on Leslie St. property: No report to give.
• Sage will audiotape the June 7 meeting in Carole’s absence: Tape is running!
• Everyone should commit to bring 1 new person to June 7 meeting: Thanks to all who did, and welcome to new folks!
• Everyone should bring fundraising ideas to June 7 meeting: A brainstorming session follows.
• Sage will email contact info to George on the May 17 Lions presentation: This presentation was postponed.
• Sage will have a new tri-fold storyboard created for May 17 presentation: Sage was unaware he was to do this.
• George & Joy will do May 17 Redwood Empire Lions presentation: This presentation was postponed.
• Lindy will make phone calls to schedule speaking engagements with other service clubs. Most of the engagements are coming through our members from their regular contacts.
• Committee members who are contacts for service clubs should contact Lindy: Lindy couldn’t be here, but people know to contact her with service club scheduled engagements.

General Discussion and Assign New Tasks for Work in June: Before the meeting officially started, there was discussion about scheduling presentations for the service clubs: George has scheduled Ukiah Rotary for Tues Jul 19 at noon, and South.Ukiah Rotary is to get back to George with dates they have open. Sage has Kiwanis scheduled for Aug. 13 at noon at Ukiah Garden Café. He spoke to Ukiah Lions Club that morning and they wanted to know about the pool issues because of all the articles. Sage will reschedule with them to talk about the skate park, which they do want to hear about. This is the Lions that meets at 6:30 in the morning. Bob is in the noon Lions club and will get back to Joy when he makes arrangements.

Fundraising work plan:
Joy had materials to bring to get the discussion going, but was unprepared because of the work involved in the Three Wishes. It turned into a productive brainstorming session:

• It’s time for a rummage sale at the site, Justin needs to get rid of stuff he’s been saving in his garage. Last time at a skate event, a rummage sale was really impromptu but we made $700 on it. It’s something we could do fairly easily, Perkins is a great spot for it, people will know their money is going for the skate park. We should promote it as a benefit for the skate park. Perhaps we could say no clothes to simplify taking leftovers to donate afterward. Justin would like to do it soon but can’t really get too involved for the next 2 months. We would need tables, get promotion going, volunteers to work it, early in the morning will be important for setup, and we want to present the material in a nice way so people will want to stop and look. Bob is willing on the day of the event, maybe in July. Perhaps soon after the next meeting on July 5th.

• Joy asked Jim to share his suggestion: Jim had heard that Survivor contestant Rupert heard about a skate park being built in Oregon, and flew up there to be the main attraction for a fundraiser, gave autographs, etc., raised about $1.3 million. Maybe somebody at NBC or somewhere could tie us in with a famous person to come here to hand out autographed photos, maybe raise a couple hundred thousand dollars. Could maybe be done with a letter-writing campaign to different celebrities, or perhaps their PR people. How about Bonnie Raitt? How about AFI? Justin says they’re recording their album right now. Maybe if we don’t get our wish, NBC could come through with a celebrity for us instead. We won’t ask for that until later—we’d much rather get our wish!

• Some of Joy’s thoughts:
? a nice dinner/dance (not a lot of opportunities for that around here), a good opportunity to have skaters serve hors d’ oeuvres, invite business people in the community, talk about the skate park while we have them there. Silent auction, drinks at the same time.
? Joy was at an event where balloons were sold for $20 each; if you got a balloon, there was a prize.

Ideas started to flow at a fast clip…
• Dinners would be good for getting names so we can then get out talking to people (friendraising), find out who our friends are by who comes to the events. Pledge forms should be utilized.
• Walk up and down streets, stop people and tell them we need help. Maybe offer a banner in their name, or the tiles at the site. Hoyman Browe has talked with us about tiles, we need to start jelling these ideas.
• Pledge form to sign up for 3 or 5 years, create a mechanism to start collecting money, people could pay monthly, quarterly, once a year.
• Maybe a sample of Hoyman Browe’s tile idea. Rex knew somebody who could design a mural made up of smaller tiles, the size of the tile could be tied to the amount of money donated. What donation gets you what recognition level? Start defining these: platinum, gold, etc. Healdsburg has all their tiles on the same marble, engraved, you can tell by the size of the letters the level of their donation.
• In Willits, individuals still want to have their names on the wall, asking what it takes to do so!
• We want to attract the families who can give larger sums, maybe like dominoes bringing in more and more.
• Back to the dinner idea: Black tie, like a prom for adults, not much opportunity around here. String lights over the plaza, have it under the lights, like under the stars.
• Ed: the board of realtors has committed $25,000 to the cultural center; he talked to the people who organized that, about once that has been met, the possibility of shifting it over to our cause.
• George: look into time periods for pledge periods for Plowshares, Ukiah Community Center, when their pledges run out, we can get people already in the habit of paying money out, get them to continue doing so for our cause. We shouldn’t wait, but should just move forward, we’ve been on the back burner long enough.
• Jone Duggan offering the following idea? To combat the negative impressions of skateboarders, wonder if the newspaper might be interested in doing interviews with skateboarders, highlight them on a regular basis, interview them, tell what their grades are, a little exposé on each person. A PR campaign, once a week with a picture, have them write a story about their life, their family, their pet’s name, their grade point average, what they’re studying, what they want to be when they grow up, make them real to some of the people with money. Skateboarders need recognition for being just people, make them human to the community. It will make everyone aware of the futures looked forward to by these kids. At the dinners proposed, have the skateboarders wear “penguin suits”, many would pay $50 to see that! Put them into a role that is more comfortable to those with money. Jone will be coming back, willing to work with Joy on something like this.
• Jim left at this point, saying he would be in touch with Sage about some other funds from the county’s point of view, will be back to our meetings.
• Sage: Walgreens has been approved for the site on Perkins at Hospital Drive. Sometimes when big corporations come to town they make a big donation to some cause. There has been so much negative publicity for Walgreens, this could go a long way at this to improving the impression of the corporation in town, and their position across the street from the skate park makes it an appropriate association. Joy & Bob asked Sage for contact information.
• It would be a good idea to somehow publicize a list of all our supporters.

Meeting adjourned on time at 6:45.

Next Meeting:
Tuesday, July 5, 2005, 5:15 – 6:45 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay (first Tuesday of each month)

Next Agenda:
• Approval of minutes from June 7 meeting
• Financial Report
• Review Action Items from June 7:
• Ed will try to connect with Fetzer about next year’s benefit golf tourney
• Sage will get estimates for square footage costs for parking lot at site (for possible development of Phase 1 skate elements)
• Everyone should bring fundraising ideas to July 5 meeting
• Committee members who are contacts for service clubs should contact Lindy for scheduling speaking engagements
• Work on fundraising work plan
• Assign New Tasks for Work in July
• Bring your ideas and suggestions regarding the website—Check it out: www.ukiahskatepark.com

The meeting was held at City Hall’s Meeting Room at 411 W. Clay at 5:15 p.m. Present were Joy Beeler (Treasurer), Ed Keller, Gretchen Anderson, Sage Sangiacomo, George Phelan, Lindy Dunaway, Carole Aleshire (Secretary) and Amy Wachspress for the first time.

In President Bob Beltrami’s absence, Joy agreed to facilitate the meeting.

Approval of minutes from April 5 meeting: Approved without change.

Financial Report (Joy): No change since 4/5 report: $24,173.43 currently in our savings account.

Update on grant applications (Sage): Sage has spoken with Dave Smith, our Project Officer contact on the Park Bond Act grant. The supplemental information submitted for our application has been reviewed, and it is recommended that the application is now complete, no need for further information. This is good news and next it will go on its merits for approval. The next step we would hear about would be a site visit if they follow the same pattern as in the past. This could occur sometime in the summer, with the visit to follow a few months later.

Progress Reports on Work Being Done:
Carole will add a section to the minutes called “Action Items” to go on the next agenda to be reviewed at the next meeting. Action Items will be bolded in the body of the minutes and bulleted under the “Next Agenda” section.

The “Future Home of” sign has been moved, but may need the phone numbers changed and needs $25,000 filled in. Sage will have this done.

Report on Home Expo: We had planned to have a booth for the Skate Park Committee at this event but there were not enough people prepared to cover the booth so instead, it was covered by the City of Ukiah at their booth, with the brochure Joy had worked up. Thanks to the City folks for including us!

We reviewed the brochure and found a few items to change, which Joy will do. It had been a rush job and is missing our logo, needs a change about supervision of skating, maybe include major television networks (?). Joy will make the changes and bring back for approval at the June meeting.

Re: April 5 discussion about portable ramps or ½ pipe to be made using bent tubing rather than wood for a structure: Joy spoke with husband Bob of Beeler’s Mufflers, who is willing to make some frames up if he’s given plans to do so. Joy was unable to find any appropriate plans on a quick search of the Internet. Ed suggests perhaps finding plans for wood and adapting them to bent tubing. Lindy offered to do some more research and then take what she finds to Justin and bring back recommendations to the committee. Amy suggests CCS.com as a website to check.

General Discussion and Assign New Tasks for Work in May:
Amy had to leave early but volunteers that her profession is a grantwriter and would like to help with grants needed for the skate park effort. She also has a contact in Berkeley who teaches skateboarding, Sean O’Laughlin at the Golden Bear Recreation Center through UC Berkeley. They do skate camps and train others to teach skateboarding skills. The City could potentially run this kind of camp through the Recreation Department, if it was organized appropriately. Email Amy at jazznkugel@starband.net for contact with Sean, or hook Justin up with him.

It was suggested that Fetzer throws an annual golf tournament to benefit various causes, and we wonder if they might consider benefiting the skate park next year. Ed will try to connect with Fetzer about the golf tournament next year.

Someone asked if there could be complications to our site if the railroad started up again. The response was that it is quite a distance from the main rails and the sidings haven’t been used and may be removed. Our lease protects the site from other development.

Carole brought K.C. Meadows’ editorial about the vandalism of stair rails and stairs by skateboarders modifying Grace Hudson School to make it better for skateboarding. Meadows suggested perhaps those are the features we should start with for the skate park, prompting Carole to suggest this as an alternative, to be built in the parking area of the site, not to impede building once we are able to get started. Perhaps we could pave the parking area first, fence it and develop a platform with stairs and ramps and railings. This would require grading, excavation, base rock, asphalt, could be pretty costly. Sage will get estimates for square footage costs. We could possibly make this Phase 1 and go out to the community to see if anyone wants to specifically fund this phase. This area is in the middle of the route we used to enter the site last August, so we wondered if we could enter the site farther south across the siding to avoid this parking area project. No answer was presented, but we could put the question to Dina for consideration by NCRA. Also, we have talked about annexing some property on Leslie Street to expand the site. Sage will try to come back with a report on this property.

Carole received a bill from C&M Mini Storage with an amount coming due in October. It’s thought it could be a blanket mailing or it could be that we were granted a year of free storage for our ramps and that year will be up. Ed will check with Jack Cox.

Carole will be unable to attend the June 7 meeting, but Sage will tape the meeting for Carole to transcribe for minutes.

There was discussion about how to approach doing a fundraising plan. Should we hire somebody? What could they offer that we don’t already know? Should we do a retreat? Brainstorm fundraising activities to ask service clubs to do for us? Lindy suggests that we need to have a fundraiser or skate event to get kids excited about it at the beginning of summer rather than at the end when they have to go back to school.

As we really need more people committed to attending meetings and helping with planning, Joy suggests that we each commit to bringing a new person to the next meeting. Also we should bring ideas for fundraising and start work on the workplan at the June 7 meeting.

More on fundraising: We need more people involved in order to put on any fundraising events. Ukiah Players Theatre has been happy to help us out, but they are so busy, the way they could best help would most likely be to let us utilize their space for events.

Suggestion: A couple of people call all the service organizations and government agencies to set up appointments for us to do speaking engagements. This would force us to get ready. The Redwood Empire Lions have requested a 10-15 minute presentation at their May 17 meeting, which meets at Zacks at 6:45 a.m. George and Joy will do this engagement. Sage will email George the contact information. They will use the brochure and come up with a short script and use the website, a new tri-fold storyboard which Sage will have his staff do (previous one destroyed in the rain at PumpkinFest), and then answer questions. It was suggested that once George and Joy develop this and do the first one, perhaps one of them could do the next presentation with someone else, then that person could do the next one with someone new, etc. so we don’t each feel like we’re going it alone for the first time. Lindy is willing to make phone calls to schedule these speaking engagements with other service groups. Most of the service groups are represented by members of this committee, so they will serve as contacts for Lindy.

Next Meeting:
Tuesday, June 7, 2005, 5:15 – 6:45 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay (first Tuesday of each month)

Next Agenda:
• Approval of minutes from May 3 meeting
• Financial Report
• Review Action Items from May 3:
• Sage will have the Future Home Of sign updated
• Joy will make changes to the brochure and bring back June 7
• Ed will try to connect with Fetzer about next year’s benefit golf tourney
• Sage will get estimates for square footage costs for parking lot at site (for possible development of Phase 1 skate elements)
• Sage will try to come back June 7 with a report on Leslie St. property
• Sage will tape the June 7 meeting in Carole’s absence
• Everyone should commit to bring 1 new person to June 7 meeting
• Everyone should bring fundraising ideas to June 7 meeting
• Sage will email contact info to George on the May 17 Lions presentation
• Sage will have a new tri-fold storyboard created for May 17 presentation
• George & Joy will do May17 Redwood Empire Lions presentation
• Lindy will make phone calls to schedule speaking engagements with other service clubs.
• Committee members who are contacts for service clubs should contact Lindy
• Start on fundraising work plan
• Assign New Tasks for Work in May
• Bring your ideas and suggestions regarding the website—Check it out: www.ukiahskatepark.com

The meeting was held at City Hall’s Meeting Room at 411 W. Clay at 5:15 p.m. Present were Joy Beeler (Treasurer), Ed Keller, Gretchen Anderson, Mo Taglio, Sage Sangiacomo, Justin Capri (co-Vice President) and George Phelan.

Carole was absent due to illness, and the meeting was taped for later transcribing. In Bob’s absence, Sage agreed to facilitate the meeting.

Approval of minutes from March 1 meeting: Approved pending anyone getting back to Carole with any changes. (No changes received by Carole by April 10, so call them approved.)

Financial Report (Joy): Donation box income of $214.08 has been deposited since the last meeting, bringing the total cash in bank accounts to $24,173.43.

Update on grant applications (Sage): Joy reported that we were denied the grant from the T.R. Eriksen Foundation until we have a more comprehensive plan in place. We still have pending the state park bond grant. Last month the state sent the City a letter confirming that they received the application we sent off in December. Along with that they made a typical request for supplemental information to the grants. The City was specifically asked to provide more detail on the CEQA notice of exemption, on the entire project to flesh out “build a skate park.” They redid that, filed with the county & sent it back. They also asked for a more detailed site plan as to square footage of each component, which are: concrete structure, perimeter park, seating, picnic tables, restrooms and parking. Sage handed out the site plan conceptual they’re sending to the state for our 20,000 sq. ft. park. The square footages are to scale and accurate. Will we have portable toilets? Not yet determined. We might want to build a housing to shield two port-o-let units inside with a sink outside. George brought up the potential problem of the port-o-lets being close to the creek. The grant requested is $500,000, which requires a match of $217,000 not only from the organization but also from local companies and service clubs as well. That brings the total project cost to $714,000, possibly pretty close to reality for something of this size. They give lots of time—usually 8 years to complete the project. The City also submitted $500,000 applications for Anton Stadium and the pool. Sage hasn’t seen an award of less than the requested $500,000 amount so it appears it’s all or nothing. Last year they were awarded only the one for the lowest requested amount of the four applications submitted, so this time they requested the same $500,000 for all three projects. Last year the state only funded one skate park (Willits) but this time the climate could be more favorable. That may have been the first time the state had worked at funding a skate park. We meet all the qualifications for a project, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. The next sign we get could be a request for a site visit. If they do that, they’re looking closely and it’s a good sign. That’s not expected until summertime. This year the state has three times more money available than last. Last year they funded 20% of the requested amounts, but this year they hope to grant 70%.

Consider Proposal to Adopt Case for Support:
Carole had taken the work previously done and made a few changes as suggested at the March 1 meeting by Michael Kisslinger, and put it onto our letterhead to be adopted as our Case for Support document if desired. There was much discussion about it, largely centered on the “new” Mission Statement Carole proposed. Justin came up with a change to two words that worked for everyone who had a problem with one sentence, to make it a more positive statement. A motion was made and seconded to adopt the Case for Support as presented (with the one change) as a living document, meaning we’re open to making changes as needed. Motion passed. {Do we now need to change the letterhead to reflect the new Mission Statement?]

Joy presented a flier she threw together, should have our logo on it but she couldn’t access it in the time she had. Any changes wanted? Joy can put it on better paper, make it black & white or color. The group will review it and bring back any changes requested next meeting. Add a pledge form in some way? “If you will build it we will come!” is a good slogan! Joy will add the ability to make cash donations at the Savings Bank.

Consider Proposal to Have City Fill in Financial Thermometer:
It will be done.

Consider Proposal to Reactivate Subcommittees:
There was a suggestion to have two subcommittees under the fundraising umbrella (which we are all involved in now): grants and local business fundraising. Grants are very time consuming. If we put it out there, we might draw in people who enjoy doing that.

Design subcommittee: Justin and Sage talk at least once a month about design issues. They are talking now about putting their rendering into an electronic format. It would be somewhat like what Justin visualizes, not any kind of final design. They feel it may still be premature to start Phase I with Wormhoudt in case fundraising takes longer than expected. It would be better to wait until we’re able to raise a substantial amount before taking that step. It has been discussed that we need the electronic rendering to go along with the other promotional materials. It appears there is no need for the design subcommittee to meet at this point.

Joy voiced her thoughts on reactivating the subcommittees again, that what we really need to be doing is coming to the table each month, determining what the next most important tasks are, and then from that, people taking on these tasks and coming back to the table the next month with the work done. It would be on more of an ad hoc basis. Everyone seemed to be in agreement.

Do we need a subcommittee for publicity or just somebody doing some publicity like letters to the editor or press release or updates, so that it doesn’t go stale in the community? It was generally agreed that we need someone to take that on but nobody has volunteered.

No motions were made about subcommittees, there was just discussion and general agreement.

Other topics of Discussion:
Gretchen brought up the problem that the website hasn’t been updated in some time, with the last minutes posted back in January, and the current meeting schedule isn’t there. Mo has talked to Marianne who is unable to devote the time needed to it at this point. Mo agreed to look into it and see what would be needed for someone to take this on.
[Interlude: While working on these minutes, Carole, to whom Marianne had long ago given the access codes to the website, checked with her husband Bruce, who is willing to at least bring the website up to date and see if it is something he can commit to keeping up with. If others are interested in taking this on instead, perhaps they should contact Mo. If the need still exists, we’ll put it out for other interested parties.]

Joy mentioned that the Farmers Market is starting up on May 7, with a Saturday Farmers Market downtown all throughout the summer. Perhaps the Skate Park Committee would want to come out and have a booth, have skating demonstrations and youth-oriented activities to draw attention to our cause.

That started a discussion about what we might be able to do for portable ramps or a portable half-pipe. Joy and Justin and George are going to work on this to see what might be possible using bent tubing for structure rather than wood. What was envisioned would work anywhere, on grass or inside a building.

Another event coming up is the weekend of April 23 and 24, a family science fair & building expo at the fairgrounds, 10 – 4 both days. Sage will get a space for us but we’ll need to organize coverage including booth setup and teardown. Brainstorming happened, trying to come up with something to attract attention to our booth and be fun for kids. Play Stations with Tony Hawk games seemed to win out. Joy will check out some avenues for TVs and Play Stations and the games, and some people present volunteered that they have some of the equipment needed. (“Help get your kids away from the TV—help get a skate park built for them!” This came up as a slogan, garnered lots of chuckles. Who knows where it might go in the future?)
As to covering the event, Joy will contact Carole and ask for help organizing the booth coverage. George can help on Saturday and Gretchen also volunteered.
Also suggested for the booth is a raffle for one big item (maybe a skateboard), no need to be present to win, tickets will need name and phone number. We won’t charge to play the games but there will be a 5-minute limit. We’ll have our donation jars and information. Perhaps a curtain on PVC to hang behind to feature the TV games. Joy will have the flier she made up printed up and available to hand out to all passers-by.

Next Meeting:
Tuesday, May 3, 2005, 5:15 – 6:45 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay (first Tuesday of each month)

Next Agenda:
• Approval of minutes from April 5 meeting
• Financial Report
• Progress Reports on Work Being Done
• Assign New Tasks for Work in May
• Bring your ideas and suggestions regarding the website—Check it out: www.ukiahskatepark.com

The meeting was held at City Hall’s Meeting Room at 411 W. Clay at 5:15 p.m. Present were Bob Beltrami (President), Michael Kisslinger, Matt Wilson, Gretchen Anderson, Ed Keller, Lindy Dunaway, Carole Aleshire (Secretary), Sage Sangiacomo, Larry DeKnoblough, Mo Taglio, Orion Walker and George Phelan.

Approval of minutes from Feb. 18 meeting: accepted without change

Financial Report: Joy was not present to make a financial report but emailed information to Carole after the meeting for inclusion here:
“As of Feb 19th we had income of $95.51 and $0 expenses. Our account balance as of March 3rd 2005 is $23,959.35.”

Michael Kisslinger introduced himself as the program director of Catalyst. He is volunteering his time to help us develop a fundraising plan. We may need to hire someone to do this, essentially developing a blueprint with milestones along the way to monitor progress. It will be a major endeavor to develop the plan.

Last time Michael met with our group, he encouraged the group to develop a Case For Support, which we presented at this meeting.

His comments on what we have developed:
• Mission Statement: It says what we want to do it, but not why we want to do it. Why is there a need for a skate park in our community? We may want to take another look at it with this in mind.
Look at it from the view of the donor. Everyone should have the same answers to the questions, so anyone talking to a donor would have the same answers. The Case for Support should state the reason to donate. What would be the answers to questions of “why should I donate?”
We’re trying to raise money to build and maintain a park. There are two types of fundraising efforts, one the initial capital campaign, then the ongoing, all the time asking people for money. What we should come up with is two different plans that mesh well together—a solid donor base with ongoing support, others raising all the money. In answer to how much we need to raise, Sage has some good estimates--$500,000 - $700,000, about $600,000 for actual money to build the park.
Need answers to all the questions that any donor might ask, why we’re doing what we’re doing. We should perhaps develop mission, vision and values statements.
o Mission: why we exist, what is the need, what will it do for the community? (short, emotionally powerful)
o Vision: what we want to do. (from the head)
o Values: from the gut. What do we want the skate park to create? What do we want people to think about when they think of the skate park? Young athletes, productive members of the community. Would we take a large contribution from Budweiser and name it for them?

• Next: hire a professional to get us started. Money is available from tobacco settlement revenues. About $1 million is available every year, split into different pots. Some to capital projects, here most going to the Ukiah Cultural & Recreation Center. Some goes to the Community Foundation of Mendocino County for an endowment. Some goes to prevention people. The application deadline for that was today.
The last pot is technical assistance grants from the tobacco settlement funds, which could potentially fund someone to help us develop a plan. Larry says the City will do the grant with Bob’s assistance. Bob & Larry will work on the grant, getting together this week to go for $5,000-$6,000 to hire a consultant. The grant deadline is April. Michael knows of some people to hire to do this, if we need that information. This person would be the 2nd member on the peer-to-peer team of two (see below, Ladder of Effectiveness).

• Further strategizing:
Who are the people who will help with fundraising? Get them all in the room together. Work on a SWOT analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. Figure out from that process which fundraising vehicles will work best for our group.
o Strengths: Assets from the community, skills, talents, interests in community; different things that make us confident about raising $1 million.
o Weaknesses: A big one is the fear of asking for money. A strategy for those who can’t overcome this fear is to be one to thank the donors. (Repeatedly) The best thank-yous are face-to-face.
o Opportunities: Kaboom’s U-Play, help people build parks. Tony Hawk Foundation helps with skate parks. Maybe not money, but expertise & guidance.
o Threats: the step beyond weakness; the opposition. Who else is raising money in the community for capital campaigns? Plowshares, SPACE, UPT, Ford Street, Cultural Center, UCC, Nuestra Casa, Charter schools. How can we turn some of them into allies? It’s hard, as people tend to think there’s a limit to the pot.

• Handout: Fundraising Ladder of Effectiveness: Lists methods of fundraising techniques. We should pick out the ones that make the most sense for us.
Peer-to-Peer Ask, team of two: friend & information source would be the team of two. Double team them, ask for money, wait for the answer. We should all be able to say, “I gave money for building the skate park, can you do the same?” My money is more valuable than my time or materials I might donate. Michael suggests that every member of the committee make the skate park the largest recipient of our personal donations other than our church.

Personalized approaches are based on knowing the people we want to have donate. The top of the ladder is most effective. What to look for: ABCs; Ability to pay; look at assets rather than income. We should be in a position to convert the assets to money: cars, stock, property. These donations not necessarily for auctions; Benefit: not to us, to donor. Legacy for grandchildren? Skate park for community? Connection: small town, everybody knows everybody. The closer the connection the better. Research: It’s what you know about who you know that counts. How can you get close to those people? Church, work, contacts. Who does the asking?

80/20 Rule: 80% of money will come from 20% of donors Plan, for example, for four donations of $100,000, 20 of $10,000, all the way down.
o Timeline for fundraising: before we can ask for money, we need publicity. (Need to draw some lines on our thermometer at the site, to get the thought in public’s mind that things ARE happening.) PR work is important. Special events a good way—get it out in the papers, more things like PumpinFest. Make sure all skaters look clean and respectable, wearing helmets and pads. Make skaters appear as young athletes rather than hooligans. A hired fundraising person can help with a PR plan.
o Timing of asking people for money? No best time. Some people/businesses do planning at the end of the year, some at the beginning. Four types of donors: Government (CDBG) not likely; Foundations: good source of money but the only ones we can approach are local: Eriksen Foundation; Mountanos Foundation; Fetzer Foundation; George & Ruth Bradford Foundation; Private individuals (this would include the larger local businesses like Ken Fowler Auto and Thurston Auto, rather than putting them into the Corporate category); Corporate America: locally SBC, Pepsico, Budweiser, Home Depot, Walmart, Nike; Be ready to answer if corporations with questionable political affiliations want to donate money. What are the values we want our group to reflect in our community? Learn to talk with a new voice.

Casinos: don’t go to the casino, go to the tribe. This way we’re making a personal connection.
o PR: It’s all Corporate America cares about. The benefit for the corporate sponsors is PR. Are we comfortable with their name associated with us?

• All this is building the case for support or should be part of it. At this point, Michael left for another meeting.

Orion’s thoughts: Big Brother/Sisters in San Francisco, with whom Orion worked, designed an event like a pledge drive but there was no event other than each “ask.” Six to eight people were the top organizers, agreeing to bring in a certain amount of money each, say $5000. They also had counterparts that would oversee teams, each of which would raise $500, next level was a pair that would raise $100, etc. A big thank you event at the end to thank the people working on the campaign.

It’s important for us to make friends at our events who might be better at asking for funds than each of us would.

Gretchen, representing local attorney Scott Spears, shared that Scott is interested in doing a concert at the Fairgrounds. Others asked Justin what ever happened to AFI? They came to Justin, he didn’t need to go to them. Maybe an overture from us at this point would get us on their radar again.

Next Meeting:
Tuesday, April 5, 5:15 – 6:45 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay (first Tuesday of each month)

Next Agenda:
• Approval of minutes from March 1 meeting
• Financial Report
• Further work on Case for Support or ? (awaiting Bob’s input)
• Bring your ideas and suggestions regarding the website—Check it out: www.ukiahskatepark.com

The meeting was held at City Hall’s Meeting Room at 411 W. Clay at noon. Present were Bob Beltrami (President), Carole Aleshire (Secretary), Gretchen Anderson for Scott Spears, Mo Taglio, Ed Keller, Sage Sangiacomo, George Phelan, Doug Crane and Joy Beeler (Treasurer).

Approval of minutes from Feb. 4 meeting: accepted without change

Park Design (Sage): Sage and Justin have been working on how they can get started on the design, at least getting conceptual drawings professionally done to help with funding and PR. They have talked to Zack Wormhoudt about what Phase I development would look like. It would include preliminary design, kickoff meetings, computer design, etc. Zack says the price range would now be $12,000 - $18,000, which we do have on hand.

It is a bit premature for Phase I with a design company for us at this point, but we would like to pursue getting a rendering of the preliminary conceptual drawings put together by Justin and Matt put together for PR and funding requests. Sage and Justin will be working on this, to produce both hard copy and computer renderings so they can be dropped into grant applications or onto our website.

Zack’s overall estimate now would be $25 - $35 per square foot. With concrete costs coming down, $30 could be a good estimate. For a 25,000 square foot park that would be around $750,000 at this point. Management costs from Wormhoudt, if we went with them, would be about 10% of that.

Financial Report (Joy): Since January we have had income of $309.50 with no expenses, and we have a current bank balance of $23,863.84.

Continue work on Case for Support (Bob facilitating):
Bob handed out the work we have put together so far and adding language from the Erikson Foundation grant the Dina developed. We’re trying to put what we have into the outline we’ve selected, but perhaps we’ll stick with the slightly different format we already have, for the March 1 meeting. We reworked some sections of it. Bob will pull it together and we’ll email it out as an addendum to these minutes when available.

In the Achievements section, we decided we should rephrase the achievement of the funds we’ve raised to be “Funds of $24,439 as of Feb. 18, 2005” to include the funds in the account with the Community Foundation of Mendocino County.

The thought is that we’re just about ready to meet with Michael again. Joy will invite him to our March 1 meeting at which we plan to share this product, hopefully with a larger group at our new 5:15 – 6:45 time. Joy will not be able to be at this meeting but will forward her financial presentation to Carole or Bob.

Added Item: Joy had a question about how to deal with several cases of beer left over from a donation for PumpkinFest a couple of years ago. We haven’t sold beer at any event since then, and now the beer is a bit too old to sell. The committee advised Joy to dispose of it as necessary.

Next Meeting:
Tuesday, March 1, 5:15 – 6:45 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay (first Tuesday of each month)

Next Agenda:
• Approval of minutes from Feb. 18 meeting
• Financial Report
• Presentation of Case for Support
• Bring your ideas and suggestions regarding the website—Check it out: www.ukiahskatepark.com

The meeting was held at City Hall’s Meeting Room at 411 W. Clay at noon (actually, moved to another room due to double booking). Present were Bob Beltrami (President), Mo Taglio, Justin Capri, Doug Crane (designated by Ukiah City Council as their rep), Sage Sangiacomo, Joy Beeler (Treasurer), Carole Aleshire (Secretary), Ed Keller and George Phelan.

Approval of minutes from Jan. 21 meeting: accepted without change

Financial Report (Joy): In January we had income of $61.50 from donation boxes, and no expenses. That income added to the previous brings our checking account balance to $23,671.63. Joy will be doing donation box pickups next week. Community Foundation of Mendocino County sent a quarterly statement indicating that we had received $500 from L. C. Wilkins, our first donation to our Fund from the public. Carole has sent a thank you note to CFMC.

We have applied for a T.R. Eriksen grant, with Dina having written up the application. We don’t expect to hear anything on it until mid-March. Sage thanked Dina on the record for her work on the grant.

Sage reported on other grants: no word from the State yet on our grant application for Prop. 40 funds, $500,000 with local match of $200,000, but no word has been received on any of the three the City applied for. The City hasn’t even received an acknowledgement letter yet so they’re probably behind. The Tony Hawk Foundation grant should be a community-based design, less formal than some. Sage thinks we should submit an application, up to $25,000. The normal range is about $10,000 - $20,000. Sage wonders if Dina would want to work on it (Dina wasn’t present at this meeting). Joy thinks the Case for Support should be done first, as material from that should become uniform language for all our grant applications and what we put across to the public. Joy will email Carole a copy of the T.R. Eriksen grant application, which Carole will email to the group with the minutes of this meeting. Language from this application could be very useful for building the Case for Support.

Sage & Justin will get together and report back on the 18th on getting conceptual drawings done using Zack Wormhoudt as a consultant.

Continue work on Case for Support (Bob facilitating): Continuing to build on the brainstorming documented at the Nov. 12 meeting, we modified those results as follows:

Achievements of our effort/group:
• Core of committed volunteers and supporters in the community
• Successful skate events enjoyed by hundreds of skaters
• Location for our park in Ukiah with easy access secured & supported by community
• Support of City & County political leaders
• Tremendous volunteer support: setup and tear down events, ramp maintenance, raffle donations, service club participation, staffing info booths & events
• Funds raised (as of xx/xx/xxxx)
• Creation and regular maintenance of a website

Our Vision of a Completed Park:
• A developed site in downtown Ukiah with a state-of-the-art skate park to satisfy all skater skill levels
• Is well designed
• Promotes healthy recreational activities
• Provides an appropriate and safe place for youth to practice skills and in so doing, legitimize their sport
• Encourages our children’s endeavors to build self-esteem and reinforce community values
• Provides a multi-generational environment for our youth to engage in healthy independent recreation with their peers where goals are set and achieved
• Creates an opportunity for the community to come together for a common goal
• Provides a family environment
Problem Resolution:
• Provides a safe and legal “practice field” for our athletes
• Draws athletes from out of the area to practice and participate in competitions
• Increases opportunities for healthy recreational activities for youth
• Anchors redevelopment of a neglected area of downtown
• Provides a safe environment for skating

We also restated our mission statement, which is on our letterhead: “The mission of the Ukiah Skate Park Association is to provide a well designed skate park that promotes healthy recreational activities for our children and our community.”

Some of this may be duplicative in its wording, but Bob will work on this, mesh it with some of Dina’s language from the grant, and bring it to our next meeting Feb. 18 with the plan to complete it at that meeting for presentation at our first Tuesday evening meeting on March 1.

Next Meeting:
Friday, February 18, 2005, noon to 1:00 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay (every other Friday, until switch to First Tuesday, March 1 at 5:15 p.m.)

Next Agenda:
• Approval of minutes from Feb. 4 meeting
• Financial Report
• Finish work on Case for Support
• Bring your ideas and suggestions regarding the website—Check it out: www.ukiahskatepark.com

The meeting was held at City Hall’s Meeting Room at 411 W. Clay at noon. Present were
Carole Aleshire (Secretary), Joy Beeler (Treasurer), Bob Beltrami (President), Ed Keller, Mo Taglio, Larry Deknoblough and Sage Sangiacomo.

Approval of minutes from Jan. 7 meeting: accepted without change

Financial Report (Joy): No deposits, no expenditures since the Dec. 31 report. Collection boxes: Joy periodically empties the ones in the downtown area; she has 3 in her office to be put in better locations but we want good places so they won’t disappear. Other places call Joy or Justin to pick up and they do so.

Idea to Change Meeting Time Introduced Last Meeting: Carole reported that the proposed change to monthly meetings on each first Tuesday, 5:15 – 6:45 p.m. was emailed to the entire Resource List and positive responses have been received from 11 people, no negative responses received. One person suggested a later start time but after discussion of that was introduced on the group email, 3 people indicated a preference for the earlier start time. Motion to change from every other Friday to 1st Tues 5:15-6:45 made by Carole, seconded by Bob, passed unanimously. With this regular meeting time, we should get into the papers’ calendars of activities. We need somebody to be responsible for getting PSAs to the local media, including the Ukiah High newspaper. The PSAs should include the phone number (which will be changing with the City’s new phone system). Mo will bring the new number to the next meeting for the record and start checking messages again. Mo will draft a PSA & Larry will take care of getting it to the media on a regular basis. Discussion about maybe also time for letters to the editor. Joy and Mo will do, and anyone else could from their own viewpoints, maybe one from Bob as President regarding where we are in the process.

Idea raised to have a retreat: to get going on our Case for Support, etc. We need more than a 55-minute or 1-1/2 hour period to work through this stuff that we haven’t really made it to. Michael wants us to get Case for Support done before we meet with him, so this is the first step.

There was then discussion that at this point with a site and heading into fundraising, we need something conceptually from Justin and Matt or from a company if they can’t do it, so we have something to show the community and to go with grant applications. Matt & Justin have worked out some conceptual ideas, maybe some differing ideas between them; they were to work with a designer but we haven’t heard anything lately. Sage said Zack Wormhoudt had given some ideas about costs of different levels of support they could offer. We need Justin to get back to us with where they are in the process. He would have been at this meeting but for a family trip to Mexico. Sage will call Justin to see where they are and see if they can scope out a next step, and maybe they’ll contact Wormhoudt together and see if Phase One is appropriate at this point.

Back to discussion about a retreat, perhaps better to with the regular meetings, looking forward to March with the Tuesday longer meetings. No consensus that we need a retreat.

Continue work on Case for Support: Reviewed Nov. 12 minutes where we started creation of our Case for Support. We realize we do have a good start. Michael wants this to make sure we’re all on the same page, with a few pages of material for developing documents as needed. Park grants have language that would fit into case for support. Larry will bring that material to pull some snippets, including statistical references, drug & alcohol use, percentages, etc. about at-risk youth. We talked some about how people don’t feel comfortable taking kids to the local parks because of the negative elements taking over. This should definitely figure into our Case for Support.

We agreed to cut down the agenda for the next two Friday meetings to really work on the Case for Support, with Larry bringing his materials and Joy also bringing some material or emailing to Carole if she can’t make the Feb. 4 meeting. We plan to have it done in February in order to start the Tuesday meetings, hopefully with more people involved, with this Case for Support to present as complete at the March 1 meeting.

Next Meeting:
Friday, February 4, 2005, noon to 1:00 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay (every other Friday, until switch to Tuesday, March 1 at 5:15 p.m.)

Next Agenda:

Approval of minutes from Jan. 21meeting

Financial Report

Continue work on Case for Support

Bring your ideas and suggestions regarding the website—Check it out: www.ukiahskatepark.com

The meeting was held at City Hall’s Meeting Room at 411 W. Clay at noon. Present were
Carole Aleshire (Secretary), Bob Beltrami (President), Ed Keller, Larry Deknoblough and Sage Sangiacomo.

Approval of minutes from Oct. 15 & 29, Nov. 12 and Dec. 10 meetings: All approved without change.

Financial Report: As (Treasurer) Joy couldn’t be here for the meeting, she gave information to Sage to present. Sage presented the Balance Sheet as of 1/7/05, showing our total cash and bank accounts at $23,599.34. Profit and Loss Statement for the month of December shows income of $4,161.23, expenses of $469.02 for a profit of $3,692.21. The Profit and Loss Statement for the year of 2004 shows total income of $13,748.44, total expenses of $2,233.01 for a profit of $11,515.43.

Under the category of fundraising, Sage reported that Joy has been approached by the T.R. Eriksen Foundation asking if the Skate Park Association would be interested in applying for a grant from the foundation. Dina has volunteered to take the lead on this. Sage will pass on some of the material used on the state Park Bond Act grant.

When asked when we might hear anything on our Park Bond Act grant application, Sage said that part of the selection process could include them contacting us to come and view the site if they like our project, or to ask for more details, which would be the first we would hear, before we know if we’re granted. It could be a long process.

Attendance being low and time short, we passed on the agenda items “Continue work on Case for Support” and “Brainstorm ‘Fundraising Approaches.’” We went on to the next item:

Brainstorm increasing attendance & participation at meetings, aka group commitment:
We have heard frequently that some interested people can’t leave work in the middle of the day for our Friday noon meetings, and those who can, frequently have other commitments that keep them away. We are considering evening meetings starting around 5:15. The best idea we came up with for those few of us present and for the availability of the same meeting room was the first Tuesday of each month for 1-1/2 hours (5:15 – 6:45), dispensing with the Friday noon meetings. It was noted that this would require more planning ahead for events coming up to be covered in advance. To give us some time to get the word out and get feedback, we decided to tentatively schedule the first evening meeting for March 1, keeping meetings as scheduled on Jan. 21 & Feb 11 at noon, same place. We want to get the word out to those on our resource list with the goal to increase attendance and participation at this crucial time. Any alternative suggestions are encouraged. This will be put in the body of the email including the meeting notes for those who have difficulty opening these documents or not finding time to do so.

Next Meeting:
Friday, January 21, 2005, noon to 1:00 p.m. at the City Hall meeting room at 411 W. Clay (every other Friday, for now)

Next Agenda:

Approval of minutes from Jan. 7 meeting

Financial Report

Continue work on Case for Support

Brainstorm “Fundraising Approaches”

Brainstorm increasing attendance & participation at meetings, aka group commitment

Bring your ideas and suggestions regarding the website—Check it out: www.ukiahskatepark.com