Meeting Minutes
October 30, 2017

Attendees

Staff and Guests

Welcome

Mayor Alicia Almazan welcomed everyone to Wilder. They have finally moved into their new City Hall. It was given to them by Canyon County. The building used to be occupied by the Canyon County Paramedics. The Canyon County Paramedics have moved into their new Fire Department.

Wilder has grown quite a bit in the last couple of years. She said the Hop’s farms have taken over. This past year 1,200 new acres of Hops has been planted. Pretty soon you won’t be able to see Wilder because they will be surrounded by Hops poles.

Mill 95, their new Hops pelletizing plant is up and running. Their tasting room is not to open till sometime in 2018.

She has been working on pedestrian crossings on Hwy. 95. They are working on a traffic signal on highway 95 as they have had lots of accidents. They had been working on re-routing beet trucks so they could reduce the traffic in town.

The Wilder City Council has approved a 4th full-time police officer that will work in Greenleaf as well.

Alicia said that COMPASS has awarded grant to put in curbs and gutters on B and C avenues. They have had lots of issues with drainage on these two streets.

In September, the City of Wilder hosted the Governor’s day at the Capital. It was an amazing event. One of the outcomes was she met with Cory Phelps of Idaho Housing and Finance. They are going to establish a meeting with local farmers to talk about affordable housing needs for City residents.

Open Discussion

FAFSA

Bill pointed to a draft proclamation for this upcoming February’s proclamation for FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). The group had approached him recently to see if the Partnership wanted to support this effort again this year. There was some questions regarding the timing of the proclamation and whether there was enough time for people to research and complete the FAFSA application before it was due. Bill indicated he would be meeting with them in the near future and would have more concrete information during the November meeting of the Partnership.

Quarterly SAUSA Report

Bill pointed to the quarterly SAUSA report. He indicated that the page after the report was his report on costs avoided to the State as a result of the SAUSA Project. This last State fiscal year, the program saved a little over $3.1 million. He indicated that it looked like the savings numbers were going to peak around that figure.

Bob asked how Bill came up with the number “costs avoided to the State”? Bill said, this was his attempt to find a relatively reliable figure. The last couple of years, the State have not publicized the annual average cost of incarceration and he has been unsuccessful at getting a figure for the fiscal year from IDOC. This is meant to just be an estimate given sentences under the SAUSA Program. It does not include other costs to State such as Probation and Parole costs that the State would incur if these people were involved in the State system.

Tom said, this month there was a big bust that involved gangs in the Valley. He talked with Brian Taylor and found out that five of those involved with the bust were going to prosecuted under the SAUSA Program. This saves all of us. One of the hidden costs that aren’t mentioned much is how much we put out as tax payers for public defense.

Canyon County Jail

John mentioned there has been a lot of press regarding this issue lately. Bob asked if there is a timeframe for a bond on the facility. Tom said they are only allowed to do bonds in May or November. He was thinking they may be shooting for May.

Public Defense

Tom said both Ada and Canyon County have been involved with this issue. The State was sued over the lack of public defenders. As a result, they have formed a Public Defense Commission. They are supposed to be promulgating rules under which all Public Defenders are to work. Some of the first rules that they have tried to impose would have cost Canyon County double their current staff. The counties have pushed back on this.

Brad asked how fast this commission is moving. Tom said they tried to impose some of these rules this last summer. However they got too much push back so those rules were stopped. He is not sure when their timing would be. They asked for comments the previous week. Their County Attorney put forward the opinion that they don’t have the authority to force these rules on counties. So let’s start from that and work together to come up with solutions.

One of the goals they thought was going to be a result of this commission was funding so they could actually pay for public defenders. This is a big issue. Canyon County actually has about the same number of people that need a public defender as Ada County has.

AmeriCorps Vista – Opioid Programming

Bill introduced Kayla Blades and April Durrant who have come to talk about AmeriCorps Vista and Opioid Programming they have in place. Garret said that he and Kayla had a nice meeting recently and this is one of the best kept secrets in the valley, what is available through AmeriCorps. He continued that many of our jurisdictions have had Vista volunteers over the years. But when talking about our Opioid crisis in the nation and how we could take advantage of our partnership and doing something around this. Garret said Kayla had a wonderful idea that he thinks we could be excited about.

April thanked Garret for the introduction and indicated Kayla has been with them for a little over a year. She indicated the Corp. for National and Community Service (CNCS) is the Federal agency that administers the AmeriCorps programs. They have 11 Senior Core programs around the State and about 21 Vista projects with a few more in the hopper.

April said they are tasked by the Administration and their Agency with helping combat the Opioid epidemic in any way that they can. They are reaching out far and wide to find opportunities to help communities/organizations bring Vista members in. They (Vista members) are doing the indirect service. They are building data bases, doing outreach and awareness, doing grant writing and fund raising. They are doing the back office stuff that builds capacity for organizations. They don’t tutor kids or do any of the hands on work.

Vista members do a year of service and they receive a small living allowance to allow them to serve in a full-time manner. It is an amazing opportunity for individuals and it changed her life. She worked as a Vista leader and eventually as a Vista supervisor building up after school programming in her community.

Kayla said the CNCS is tasked with Opioid programming and so far have dedicated about $10.5 million in 150 communities in 45 States across the country for people to work on education, prevention and recovery. In Idaho, they have two programs that have some Opioid component. One is in Boise, the Northwest Real Estate Capital Corporation. This is a 501 company that owns and manages a portfolio of properties to further the goal of providing affordable housing for everyone.

They work with their residents, providing Opioid education, prevention and recovery materials as part of their resident educational programming. They know that substance abuse is a barrier to getting full-time housing.

The other program is in Pocatello, Idaho at Big Mama’s. This is a transitional housing center. They just started and will have 5 Vista volunteers working on volunteering, development assistance, grant writing and opioid prevention and recovery activities.

Kayla said, right now they want to expand their reach in the Treasure Valley with opioid education. She wanted to see what jurisdictions are doing right now around Opioid education and how Vista could be helpful. Some examples could be a community needs assessment, grant writing, educational information in schools; Vista members could help you be that conduit.

Kayla said their application is in two phases, one is called a concept paper. It is only about 2-4 pages and provides information on the organization and what they want to do and how many Vista volunteers are needed to provide the function.

Garret said, maybe as a combined unit, the Partnership could have 2-3 Vista volunteers. For example the Vista volunteer could help with education or setting up drug recovery programs. Making sure we are consistent throughout our communities. Making sure we have drop-off places and advertising pointing people to those. They could do marketing or help us write grants for what-ever we want to do as a valley to address the Opioid issue through education, prevention and recovery efforts.

Garret said, what the exact program or process that takes place would yet to be determined. But we all know the problem. He talks to his Fire Chief and 46% of the overdose calls they went on in 2016 were related to Opioids. That is a pretty high percentage. He added that a certain percentage of those were kids getting into mom and dad’s pills.

The other thing that was being discussed at the Partnership a while back with the Attorney General’s office was trying to put accountability into the prescription side of the equation. We have people that go to several different locations and get prescriptions. He knows a person that is in recovery that was going from doctor to doctor to doctor getting prescriptions for pain medications.

Tom said he has had conversations with both Garret and Bob regarding the Crisis Center we are trying to get with Southwest District Health. Those crisis centers provide an opportunity for a 24 hour stay for someone in crisis. Then you got to hook them up with programs to keep them out of crisis. This could be of help to this process.

Kayla said that would be good. She could help with grant writing, education around the crisis center, working with police departments on how you know to incarcerate someone or send them to the crisis center and doing appropriate referrals. She could help make connections with service providers for afterward on how they do a seamless transition into a recovery center if that is what is needed.

Garret said, there could be many effective things we could do.

Tammy asked what the local match is. Kayla said the financial match is miniscule. The only thing sponsors are responsible for is paying mileage reimbursements. Also, you have to provide them with a place to set up and have a computer in one of our city halls. Garret said they have had several Vista volunteers and has one currently. Kayla said the City of Boise has a couple Vista volunteers working on transitional housing.

Chad indicated he would be behind the Partnership undertaking this task to see if we could help the system with Vista volunteers.

Bob said he was wondering how arduous the grant application would be considering we would want to do this valley wide.

Kayla said they could what they call an intermediary project. It is one project but people would be stationed in different places throughout the valley. You would have one application with the assignments and their locations in the valley delineated out.

Garret said he thought it was important and that we could form a small sub-committee to work with Bill. He felt the application is not that complicated.

Tammy said that before we do this there is a group of coalitions that come together, hers included, and that are doing some strategies on the Opioid issue. You will want to do it in collaboration with them. She said she would have Kendal with her coalition reach out to Bill and maybe with this collaboration we can come up with some specific activities to put in a grant application.

Kayla said she would be providing aid and support with the application all along the way.

Kid’s First Cast

Bill mentioned this next presenter that was kind of an add-on just this last week. When he heard the name from Garret, he couldn’t wait to have this group come to speak to us. He introduced Howard Davis.

Howard said Kids First Cast got started many years ago. He had a sno-cone machine that he ran and one day a gal come into his store and bought a bag of ice. She handed him a $20 and said give the rest to Howard’s Kids. At the time he didn’t have an organization. A couple months later another person came in and bought a sno-cone and gave him a $50 and said give the rest to Howard’s Kids. Through talking with this gal, she asked him if he ever thought creating a nonprofit organization for kids. He had thought about it quite often as he had been doing kids events for 15-20 years.

Kid’s First Cast was born on November 30, 2011. He rounded up a few of his friends that were involved with fishing and met in this lady’s office. They worked out their name, mission statement, bylaws that evening.

In an effort to come up with funding for the organization, they came up with what they call “Cabin-Fever Reliever”. They are on their sixth year doing this event. They hold it at Karcher Mall and have lots of fun activities. They have activities such as casting, boat simulators and even fishing games. The Mall has been very generous and lets them bring in vendors and utilize empty spaces that they have.

They have events throughout the valley and have events specifically designed for disabled veterans and other types of citizens.

They had a kid’s sturgeon fishing derby at a pond in Parma. There were kids that participated and they all caught sturgeon from 1’ all the way to a 5 ½’. He said this is only sturgeon fishing derby for kids in the whole U.S.

He introduced Mark Lutzke the Chair of their board of directors.

Tom said they sell Ads in this flier for the Cabin Fever Reliever. Tammy said speaking for the Partnership; you can count all of us in.

Brad moved and Garret seconded to approve the minutes and financial statement. Motion carried. Meeting Adjourned