Coalition Elects New Officers, Outlines Coming Months

The Coalition of Gresham Neighborhood Associations held its annual Election of Officers on Wednesday, January 9, 2008. The newly elected Board shared detailed plans for the coming year, and outlined the next few months scheduled presentations.

The Coalition meets monthly on the second Wednesday at 7:00PM in the Springwater Trail Room, Gresham City Hall, 1333 NW Eastman Parkway, Gresham, OR 97030.

The Coalition of Gresham Neighborhood Associations was formed to provide structure and support for the leadership of Gresham's neighborhood associations, enabling more effective cooperation among neighborhood associations in order to achieve desired outcomes. Goals of the Coalition include providing a public forum for the review and evaluation of issues and problems, providing education and information on specific areas such as land use, and providing a unified voice for the neighborhood associations.

Meetings are open to the public.

Meeting summary

The following Officers were elected at Wednesday's Coalition meeting (Jan 9, 2008):

President
Carol Rulla
Vice President
John Bildsoe
Secretary/Treasurer
Anita Daily

The Coalition made the following plans:

We will try to limit presentations to every other month so that we have more time to discuss neighborhood issues and reports. We will limit total presentation time (including Q&A) to 30 min., and we need to all keep on topic & on schedule.

We will have those presentations be on topics that affect us as leaders. Any presentations that are more appropriate for NAs as a whole should be done at NA meetings or other general meetings the city might hold; we don't need a preview at Coalition meetings.

We will have the presenter provide advance material, which I will e-mail out one week before the meeting along with the agenda & minutes. We want to come prepared for the presentation so that we can use our time more effectively.

For the most part, we won't have trainings during meetings but will take part in the quarterly trainings that Laura & Linda provide. Our preference was for those meetings to be on Saturday mornings, rather than in the evenings.

We will evaluate whether we want to change our meeting date after the new Council Citizen Advisory Committees (CCACs) are all up and running so that we know whether we have a conflict with any of them.

Coming months:

February 2008
Budget Presentation by Nikki Peterson
Information for us to participate in this year's budget process.
(Link to Gresham's budget, which includes The Budget in Brief (in left menu))
A hardcopy of The Budget in Brief is available at the front desk of City Hall.
March 2008
Neighborhood Matching Grant Mini-Training by Linda Kidby
Types of projects that qualify for a grant, pointers on filling out the application & examples of previous successful applications.
April 2008
No presentation