Keep Gallup Clean and Beautiful Board

KEEP GALLUP CLEAN & BEAUTIFUL BOARD (KGCB) Minutes Google Meet, February 16, 2021 4-5:15pm Mission statement: “To inspire and educate people to take action every day to improve and beautify Gallup” Quorum Members Present by GoogleMeet: Alice Perez, Kara Smith, Greg Kirk, Elizabeth Barriga; Guests: Jeff Kiely, Ray Bradford, Millie Dunning, Gerald Ohara, Adrian Marrufo, Jon DeYoung, Bill Bright Members Absent: Cory Lebeck Agenda Item 2) Approval of January 19, 2021 Meeting Minutes: Motion was made by Kara, Seconded by Alice and Greg to approve. Agenda Item 3) KGCB Strategic Planning Meeting Our Guest Speaker was Mr. Jeff Kiely - a Semi-Retired, Organizational Consultant — with 45 years of experience in Community and Organization Planning, Grants, & Related Disciplines. x Jeff Asks the audience - “What are the Best KGCB Results in the past 2-3 years of working together? To Share Our Concepts or Vision for the Future for KGCB – What are Great outcomes for our efforts? Alice is interested in getting the community involved. Taking care of the town as a whole community. She would like to sponsor Community Garden Boxes to invite participation and encourage family members and friends to practice gardening. Kara says she would like to see a visible reduction of litter in Gallup. To empower the community to reduce trash. She would like to see more colorful messaging campaigns to reinforce this message, to grow awareness in our community in service to others. To also enhance funding, and lift up our vision. Ray would like to get the kids involved in schools, and educate children about littering using educational programs. To eventually lead by example, enabling a change in behavior with their parents. To beautify Gallup and promote a positive message of pride in our community. Gerald says Gallup citizens and businessmen do not have a lot of appreciation of volunteers, and recommends incentives and recognition awards. Greg emphatically encourages competitions with volunteer groups, in the past, have been historically and successfully motivated. Jeff asks if anyone recalls YCC’s successful trash competition pickup events? To find out more – reach out to Mr. Karl Lohmann. x What are KGCB Achievements of Community Service as a Cleaner Community? Elizabeth mentions that KGCB has created the KGCB Certification Report to become an official KAB Affiliate, and Mayor Bonaguidi received a COG – KAB certification plaque during October 2020. During April 2019, KGCB hosted a citywide clean-up effort cleaning up trash all around town within all four City Council Districts, and had 100 volunteers participate. We have also successfully been awarded for the last 4 years - NMTD Clean & Beautiful (NMCB) grant funding for litter cleanups, beautification murals, recycling bin and more. The current FY21 NMCB grant funding was awarded $31K. Alice replied – Temporary town segments areas have been cleaned up by Youth Volunteer groups. Elizabeth mentions and commends the COG Parks Department, which dedicates a staff member to clean up Gallup daily. Greg says that one person cleaning up all of Gallup is a daunting task, and recommends hiring a crew of people to clean-up, and collaborate with City employee positions and other departments if needed. He asks KGCB to invite the Police, County, and State Police to our KGCB future meetings. Alice suggests cost saving by using non-violent, incarcerated criminals that are summoned to do community service to reduce their sentence. This issue is - McKinley County does not have enough supervisors to watch the detainees. It was suggested to apply for grant funding to pay for supervisor’s wages. How do other cities do this? x What are KGCB Shortfalls? Per current NMDH Covid guidelines, the NMTD is not allowed to formally do group litter clean-up events until it is labeled in the Yellow or Green. Kara says business relationships can be cultivated to grow clean-up partnerships. She mentions a promotional barrier - the need for better communication. How to get Involved? Organizational Capacity, and to grow our impact, and have a community marketing effort. Alice – the businesses should be involved self-improvement. Get businesses resources. She has coordinated with Catholic Charities to provide homeless with food. They had to stop this because most homeless people would litter the food containers. For COG programs like NCI, find ways to utilize costs in other areas, which could save money. Jeff talked about – Sanjay Choudhrie of Care 66, he had an effective program of paying 4-5 volunteers to help people move, clean-up yards, and do general manual labor jobs. Bill mentions to contact the staff of the company who currently runs the old Lexington Hotel about this idea. He asks Jeff if the Environmental Surcharge fund could be used to fund clean-up programs - could become a reality? Alice asks about funding to do this. Ray, who has picked up his local neighborhood trash for years, mentions that transients are huge issue with trash. Can we reduce or eliminate the problem? Which would make a tremendous difference. Greg asks to get NCI involved with Community Service, and asks Jeff to invite him to future NCI meeting invitations. x Grant Managing – Are There Any Improvement Priorities? Bill would like to work to break the cycle of 3-4 annual trash clean-up events. Which is great for a short period of time, but the problem quickly reappears. Instead he recommends - move toward regular city clean-ups, and keep it up in a cyclical fashion. Alice mentions that Adrian does a great job with solid waste in Gallup, and she would like to see a free drop-off bin on the side of the road. To hopefully, help with illegal dumping in town. She recognizes someone, or an entity would have to pay for this. Jeff acknowledges at the hilly sides of the COG Golf Course are a major dumping ground. He and his grand-daughter clean-up there regularly. Gerald says to strategize a plan for wind gust issues. Litter can be accidental, and let us be mindful of our reality and mitigate these issues. Greg – asks to strategize with a Pledge, a yearly contract to Keep Your Area Clean. Bill asks KGCB to work with the Chamber of Commerce. It behooves us to get businesses to collaborate and assign them to clean-up their properties. Alice asked Adrian about over-flowing trash business containers. Can the COG intervene if this happens? Adrian responded by saying we can recommend an increase to the business if no action occurs then report to the COG Code Enforcement to follow up and possibly issue a citation to the business owner. Only after several additional complaints are reported to the city and no business response, can the SW Director pursue charges for additional pickups, or increase container size, or have a business pile up the trash and the Solid Waste (SW) Department can pick it up and issue a business fee charge to their account. Most commercial SW problems occur with Gallup businesses having out of state 3rd party contracts managing their waste services. Bill sees this as an opportunity to update COG Codes to help fix these kind of scenarios. Jeff concludes his presentation stating: that this was a rich conversation, and he “Loves Being Part of a Family”. If anyone has any new ideas please contact Elizabeth to email these to him. Agenda Item 4) Choose FY21 NMCB Clean-Up Signage & T-Shirt designs you prefer: Elizabeth emailed Board Members and KGCB meeting attendees, asking them which sample KGCB T-Shirt designs and colors they liked best. Thank you for those who have submitted their vote, and for other members - please submit your Sign and T-Shirt choices to Elizabeth - so we can order these favorite designs as soon as possible. Agenda Item 5) Ideas for KGCB Facebook page - “Facebook@kgcb505” – Cory asks - please contribute to the page by emailing her, or it can be access by all board members. Fast Track - FY21 NMCB Grant Reallocation – please submit to Elizabeth new supply quotes, to be approved by the NMTD, which to be related to one of these 5 subject areas below: 1) End Littering 2) Improve Recycling 3) Beautify Communities 4) Empower Youth 5) Increase Program Capacity Due by the end of February 2021. Action Items: Meeting adjourned at 5:15pm. Please attend our next KGCB meeting - Tuesday, March 16th @ 4-5pm. Date Approved: __April 6 , 2021___ ________________________________________________ Cory Lebeck, KGCB Vice-Chairperson Elizabeth Barriga ATTEST: ______________________________________ Elizabeth Barriga, Environmental Program Coordinator