Public Affairs Committee minutes 4-17-24

In Attendance

Don Piper, Isaac Lafleur, Bill Gray, Sasha Kamper, Brent Millis, Cindy Smith, Kevin Moser

Items Discussed

· Instagram update

· Beaverdale Big Event/Trail Cleanup (May and June)

· Mega SCRUB 5/18/2024 7AM-1PM

· BNA Quarterly Meeting 5/7/24 7-8 PM

· National Night Out 8/6/2024 6-8 PM??

Recap

Instagram Account

Josh Nelson has secured the Facebook login. Hopes are to have account setup in the next few days.

Beaverdale Big Event/Trail Cleanup

Kevin Moser provided an update on Beaverdale Big Event. There are a lot of volunteer opportunities for this event. Details can be found at beaverdalebigevent.com. We plan to have flyers created and distributed to local businesses. Sasha Kamper has a list of businesses we normally distribute to and has sent that list to all Public Affairs members via email.

Mega SCRUB

The City of Des Moines has annual SCRUB (Spring Cleanup to Reduce Urban Blight) dates and we always help with the one at Polk County River Place (2309 Euclid Ave). The date for that SCRUB is May 18th. We partner with other neighborhood associations (Lower Beaver, River Bend, …) to provide volunteers. To help ensure this event runs efficiently, Brent Millis has reached out the Jeremy Geerdes (President Lower Beaver Neighborhood Association). Jeremy indicated he will have a meeting with the city the night before the event. In the past volunteers show up and there is a bit of confusion on duties and drop off locations. Ideally, we’d like to have a city resource at that meeting. Bill Gray expressed his concerns on waiting until the night before the event to finalize plans.

Jeremy Geerdes has sent out a signup link for volunteers (https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080E48AAA72EAAFB6-47946253-river#/). As of 4/24 there are still 6 volunteer slots open. A request was sent to the BNA board to see if the board can help out with volunteering.

BNA 5/7 Quarterly Meeting

We finalized the QM agenda. Don Piper has sent that agenda to Dave Busiek and has requested it be published via BNA mass email.

We also discussed further requests from local government candidates. The BNA board has already stated they agree that candidates should not come to BNA Quarterly Meetings when campaigning. The board passed a policy last year of allowing candidates who ask to have a max of 15 minutes to speak to the board at the end of a board meeting.

We asked that this be defined further. Public Affairs recommendation is to allow Mayor, Ward 1, or At Large council members to speak at QM’s as long as it is not within 3 months of an election date for these positions AND the current members are not running for election again. PA would prefer in those cases to have neighborhood meetings outside of QM’s.

National Night Out

This year’s NNO will be Aug 8th. Brent Millis has reached out to the City of Des Moines to see if this event would be impacted this year with the planned work at the 41st/Beaver intersection. That work will not impact us this year but will in 2025. We will plan to use the same location this year but may need to use another location in Aug 2025.

Snookies and Price Chopper have been contacted and are onboard.

We did not have time at the 4/17 meeting to go over the previous year’s list of participants for NNO. Don Piper asked folks to review the list and see if we need to add/drop any.

The April Public Affairs meeting will be May 15th from 5:30-6:30 PM. Restaurant still TBD.