September 12, 2011 - Meeting Notes

Achieving Community Values (ACV) met at the Historic Y on Monday September 12, 2011 from 11:30 AM until 1 PM. Attendance included Anita Fonte, Bob Hungate, Ron Spark, Kathy Wilson, Melissa Miller, Michelle Crow and Donald Ijams.

Ron Spark and Bob Hungate updated ACV on recent activities of Imagine Greater Tucson including information about a portion of the Friday September 9 IGT Board meeting. A strategic plan for IGT is being discussed, work groups are proceeding and relations with outside groups were considered. No definitive actions by the IGT Board were reported.

ACV has been working on a statement of internal values that help describe what ACV is about and how it will operate. The group adopted the following as its statement of values, subject to further consideration:

• Truthfulness (of effort and intent)
• Transparency (of our processes of analysis and information)
• Collaborative willingness (to partner and share information with those who share ACV values)
• Inclusiveness of democratic (small "d") community values as gathered from diverse and reliable regional sources
• Respect for value differences as long as those differences to do not include prejudices of race, ethnicity, age, disability or gender

The major portion of the meeting was spent on discussing approaches to involving others in the ACV work and in forming interest/value area groups for specific action.

Don reviewed his “template” for moving forward: Each interest/values area would develop a current status summary including selected metrics and trends, review relevant community values, study/involve current key players, identify congruences and gaps – where status/trends and values converge or diverge, review promising strategies, consider public perceptions and develop action items.

Anita proposed a broad community networking event as a means of explaining ACV's purpose and inviting participation. She noted the willingness of Pima Community College Downtown to provide facilities and possibly partnership for such an event. A new group, Community 360, is also interested in coordinating with ACV. After a general presentation, break out groups centered around interest/ value areas would be formed to explore ACV's approach/goals and to establish momentum. Ron pointed out that this approach should be tabled until it is clearer what the steps following such an event would be and how attendees will be persuaded that continuing with the effort is worthwhile.

Conversation turned to what ACV is and what it is not. Here are some phrases that seem to say what ACV does or is:

• Asking What Comes Next, i.e. community-based action – Are we achieving community values?
• Insuring continuity of community effort for "aligning community decisions and actions with community values"
• Assessing redundancies of community effort
• Helping organizations [and businesses] achieve their potential by doing the following:

1. Understanding and incorporating community values gathered through diverse community-based research (Livable Tucson, Imagine Greater Tucson, other sources)
2. Identifying metrics to measure progress toward implementation of those values that match the organization/business' mission and values
3. Assisting organizations and businesses to focus their efforts on community-based values
4. Increasing the community's support for the organization/business

ACV should establish a policy of promoting its ACV brand (similar to the Good Houskeeping Seal or Ben's Bells) to those organizations and businesses which demonstrate progress of the above four points. Maybe we can identify a few potential first recipients of this award.

Action items:

• Don will begin to shape the K-12 draft package to possibly share with the Metropolitan Education Commission, as a potential ACV partner
• Melissa will do the same in the smart energy area for the Metropolitan Energy Commission
• We need to craft a document with brief ACV description, tag line, contact info and logo as promotion for ACV moves forward. Michelle seems to have skills to search for a logo if we can be clear about who/what we are.
• Maybe Kathy can dig up more infomation about the Community Indicators project being considered by United Way and CFSA.
• Meeting participants were asked to make a list of items describing what ACV is and what ACV is not, for discussion at the next meeting.

Next meeting: 10/3, 11:30 Historic Y Board room.