[C-U Smokefree] recap from tonight's meeting

[Scott P Hays]

We had a good meeting this evening regarding our initial council contact approach and strategy, so I thought I'd provide a quick recap for all:

Kathy, Kerisa and Mary agreed to pull together the relevant information for our packet.  This will be 5 pages, including:

Brief cover letter
Statement of who we are, our mission, our supporters and our endorsers
Fact sheet on the other places with smokefree ordinances and laws (based on data from ANR or ASH)
Fact sheet on the impacts of second-hand smoke
Fact sheet on the benefits of smoke-free public places for businesses and the community (from our fact sheet #2.  

We decided to focus on contacting 6 Champaign council members (of the 9) and 6 Urbana council members (of the 7).  For now these are all to be considered "yellow lights", that is, their support status is unknown.  The ones not on the list, we determined to be likely "red lights."

Champaign:

McIntosh (Dist. 3) (Tom)
Green (Dist. 4) (Mary) (Tom)
Pirok (Dist. 5)  (Tom)
Bruno (at large)
Ennen (at large)
Roselas (at large) (Kathy G or Mary)

In Champaign, the 5 district members (top three above, plus "red lights" Pyrtle and LaDue are up for re-election in Spring 2005.

Urbana
Patt (Tom)
Wyman
Hayes
Chynoweth
Huth
Otto

One goal is to have at least one member of the team (the lead member) from their district, or from their city if at large.

Tom will take 2 of the four listed above; Kathy G, a Champaign resident, will take her district member and possibly a few at large

Scott will go along on visits to any 4 members on the list.

We want to visit members in teams of 2 or 3 at most at this point, and our goal is not necessarily persuasion; merely to canvas their current position on the issue, to inquire as to what they might like to see to persuade them (if they are opposed), and to deliver our information packet for review at their leisure.

All members receiving this email should think about how they can and will contribute to this effort and who they would be interested in contacting.  I will circulate a more formal sign-up sheet for this soon.  This effort begins immediately after our next regular meeting, May 4.  We'll be doing mock council visits during that meeting.  So we need volunteers!

Another strategy is to contact our newest volunteers who signed onto our supporter's list (24 in all) and find out about their ability and connections. Scott, Kathy G, and Carol will be doing that over the next few days.

BTW, our Individual Supporters now number over 500!  We're halfway there!

I think that's about it for now.  

Thanks,

Scott