41st Libertarian Birthday Party
The second meeting of El Paso County Libertarian Party Development Group, held on December 11, 2012 at Jose Muldoon’s from 6:00pm to 9:00pm.
Attendees: 27 – Robert Prichett (Gned), Ingrid Somer, Judy Darcy*, Jim Wilkerson*, Matt Hess* (LPCO), January Brooks*, Mike Palmer, Bob Armstrong, Susan Quilleash-Nelson*, Jenny, Liz Oldach*, Jim Adams*, Mark(*), Joe*, Tracie McCray*, Lance Haverkamp*, Susan Luesner, Chris*, Ellen* (Douglas), Doug Jones* (Douglas), Tammy Beckwith, Dan K, Katie*, Garrett, Paotie*, Garrett’s 2 friends that came in later.
Calendar: Presented by Liz & Judy
Discussion: How often? Day of the week? Time? Location? Parking? WiFi? Separate Checks? Locally owned?
Conclusion: Every 3rd Thursday 7-9pm by show of hands. Locations to be determined at next meeting. Location of next meeting Swirl in Manitou. Consensus: Prefer locally owned businesses.
Action Items: Find other locations – January – 01/17/2013; Send January list of already researched places – Judy – 12/18/2012
LPCO Board Meeting: Presented by Judy & Matt
2012-12-10 LPCO Board meeting notes
Discussion: Registered voter numbers. Jim Frye point of contact for information & ideas. Strategy Session 01/26/2013. LPCO Treasury amounts. Praise DCLPDG & EPCLPDG. Center Right, Center Left. CiviCRM.
Conclusions: We have a good base, let’s get a hold of them.
3 volunteers for Strategy Session – Tammy, Mark, Susan. By motion & second it was decided that winner of ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ would be the delegate. Susan won Rock over 2 scissors. Mark is appointed alternate since Tammy is not registered Libertarian. Susan L suggested we come up with our 3 top issues to send with the delegate.
Group consensus was that the LPCO did not have enough money. DONATE!
Matt explained CiviCRM database.
Action Items: Talk to Travis about CiviCRM and getting us a list of EPCo Libertarians – Matt – 01/10/2013; List of top 3 platform issues – Susan Q – 01/17/2013
Online Presence: Presented by Liz
Discussion: Lots of work being done to get our name out there.
LP.EPCO@gmail.com
719-445-1949 Google Voice
EPCLibertarians on Twitter
LPEPCCO.blogspot.com
Conclusions: Need a contact list. Passed around sheet for e-mail addresses
Action Items: Request contact info via fb – Liz & Judy – 01/10/2013; Type up contact list. – Judy – 12/11/2013
City Council Elections:
Discussion: Need to get contacts for people willing to run for City Council.
Get position questions for City Council candidates.
Conclusions: Discuss at next meeting.
Action Items: Gather information – Mark – 01/17/2013
Leadership/Membership: Presented by Judy
Leadership must be registered party members. We need a Development Group Representative to whose attention all Party business shall be directed. We are not an Affiliate, need to find out allowed activities of Associate Members. Need to establish leadership in order to keep a cohesive group. Rotate MC. Homework: Article VIII. Need Pool of Resources.
Conclusions: Mark will MC the next meeting. Still need a secretary. Tracie resource for treasury & Roberts Rules of Order. Goal & Agenda for next meeting to be decided. Move quick to find City Council people. Go through LPCO to vet & appoint candidates. Contact Matt for information on communications (communicationsdirector@lpco.org)
Action Items: Goal & Agenda – Mark – 01/17/2013
After Meeting Discussion:
Discussion: Post cards
Conclusions: Raise money as a contribution to LPCO. ~ Name, Address, Phone #, Employer, Occupation, Amount on a spreadsheet in an envelope to Mike Spaulding labeled Earmark for EPCLPDG postcards.
Matt will submit a motion on our behalf at board meeting to see if we will be allowed to send out this mailing. We need to put together a cost estimate. Cost of printing, cost of shipping finished product to us (if any) cost of mailing labels, Cost of all graphics – we can use any we want ~Resources on LPCO.
Action Items: Bring up at next meeting as a motion? – 01/17/2013; Raise funds to donate to LPCO – 01/17/2013; Create a cost estimate – 01/17/2013
Summary
The second meeting of the EPCLPDG was a great success! We had 27 people attend, several more than RSVP’d so we ended up standing room only!
We talked about a few of the things that happened at the LPCO Board meeting and how we could use those things to grow the DG.
We decided on a calendar. The EPCLPDG will meet every 3rd Thursday of the month from 7pm to 9pm. The location has not been set for each meeting. We discussed using different locally owned businesses. The January 2013 meeting will be held at Swirl, a Libertarian owned business, in Manitou Springs (Please RSVP so we will make sure to have enough room).
LPCO is having a strategy meeting January 26, 2013. We had 3 volunteers. By motion and second Susan Q. was selected as delegate by a ‘Rock, Paper Scissors’ contest between the 3 volunteers. No one can say we don’t have fun! Mark was selected as the alternate. Susan L. suggested we decide our top 3 issues we wanted to present to the LPCO.
It was suggested that we all donate to the LPCO to get their balance up after an election.
Matt explained the CiviCRM database and its functions. Matt has agreed to contact Travis for us to see how we can access information for El Paso County.
Liz explained all of the hard work she has been putting in to making sure we have an extensive online presence. We now have a gmail account, Facebook, Meetup, Twitter, Blogspot, and Google Voice. Big thank you to Liz for all she has been doing!
We need contacts for people that would be interested in running for City Council. If you are interested, throw your name in as soon as possible. We will have a vote on who to present to LPCO for consideration as a candidate at the next meeting if we have more than one volunteer per district. Since we are a Development Group all of our candidates must go through LPCO for approval. Mark is well informed on the workings of City Council, and may be a good resource if you are looking for information.
We requested contact info for our attendees so that we can get information out more directly without requiring everyone to check all the different sites for information. We will release important updates via e-mail addresses provided. If you were unable to attend please send your contact info to LP.EPCO@gmail.com.
We talked about a need for leadership roles in order to maintain a cohesive group. We decided to rotate the emcee of each meeting for the time being. Everyone was assigned homework: Article VIII of the LPCO Bylaws. We would like to have everyone informed of the purpose & rules of a Development Group. We need a pool of resources. If you have talent, which we know you all do, and can commit to donating some time, even if it’s a small amount of time, we would like to hear from you. All we ask is that if you commit you make sure you can follow through.
After the meeting we had cake & celebrated the Libertarian Birthday Party. We had a wonderful cake that was shared by friends. Many wonderful ideas were shared after the meeting, including mailing out postcards to registered Libertarians, having multiple meetings per month in different areas of town to accommodate the size of our county and making it easier for others to attend, and having a meeting to set the agenda for the monthly meeting.
If you have any input on the next meeting please contact us with any and all ideas.
