11/14/07 Col. Part. Mtg.

Present:
Karen Snyder PHSKC
Erin MacDougall PHSKC
Sylvia Kantor WSU KC extension
Patrick Green Solid Ground
Caren Adams PH-SKC
Jim Krieger PHSKC
Tyra Sorendsen MITHUN
Martha Aitken WSU KC extension
Val Allan City of SeaTac/Highline School Dist.
Denise Sharify NH
Angelina Allen-Mpyisi City of Federal Way
Cascade Bicycle
Michelle Bates Benetua
Laura Streichert
Allen Cheadel
Kassandra Verburnghen Austin Foundation
Julie
Patricia Lichiello (facilitator)
Maggie Anderson WSU KC Extension

Goals:
1. Discuss and decide on the co-conveners' recommendation to uncouple the
establishment of the Leadership Council with the Site Selection process.
2. Review options for voting on Leadership Council members and decide which to use.
3. Establish a volunteer committee that will assist with the application and voting process
(committee members would not be applying to serve on the Leadership Council).

Agenda

Time Topic
1:30 Ice breaker activity (Sylvia)

1:45 Introductions (Erin)

1:55 Review Agenda and Meeting Goals (Patricia)

Review decision making process for the Collaborative (Patricia)

2:05 Presentation, discussion, and decision regarding uncoupling the site selection process from
the Leadership Council (Patricia, Erin, and Allen)
Possible outcomes: Decision to uncouple or decision to stay with LC making site selection
decision.
2:55 Break

3:10 Presentation, discussion, and decision regarding how Collaborative Partners will vote for
Leadership Council members (Erin)
Possible outcomes: one of the presented voting options will be selected.

3:50 Discussion of what to do if we do not receive enough Leadership Council applications

(Patricia)

4:10 Review of decisions made (Patricia)

4:20 Information on TAP team visit and next steps in light of the above (Sylvia)

4:30 End

Patricia Lichiello is the deputy director of the Health Marketing Research Center
in the University of Washington School of Public Health & Community Medicine
and is auxiliary faculty in the Department of Health Services. She has lots of
experience facilitating forums, task forces, committees, advisory boards, and the
like—and actually enjoys it!

Patricia Lichiello (PL):

1) Brainstorming and discussion (all ideas welcome, expected, encouraged)
2) Everyone who wants to talk should get the opportunity
3) (pertaining to agenda goals) What we want to achieve are making our two
decisions; uncoupling site selection from leadership, voting on voting procedures.

Burning thoughts? Questions? Agenda additions?

None at this time…

PL:
Decision making processes re-cap:

Discussion, Vote (majority rules and minority opinions recorded)

*One organization, one vote
*Offering the opportunity to sit with other members of your organization.

EM:
--Leadership council uncoupling—
Until recently, we proposed that the next step for our Collaborative would be to establish
the Leadership Council (LC) and that the LC would make the site selections. After our
initial conversations about populating the Leadership Council, it is evident that
uncoupling the Leadership Council from the site selection decision would address two
chief concerns:
 1. Almost all Collaborative Partner members have some degree of perceived or
actual conflicts of interest (e.g., they work in specific geographic communities
and/or have interest in certain types of implementation strategies).
2. It is difficult to follow the current plan of creating a Leadership Council because
willingness to participate on the LC is tempered by whether one or another
community is selected.
Therefore, we are suggesting a different approach. We are proposing to form a separate
site selection committee that will review applications from each site (eight potential focus
communities) and make the site selection. This committee will also work with all eight
communities to help ensure that they successfully prepare their application and form a
community group to participate in the Collaborative. This process to oversee and
facilitate selecting the two focus communities would start in November 2007. The work
would likely include two to three meetings to establish site selection criteria, develop the
Request for Applications (RFA), review applications, make a decision, and present the
findings and final decision to the Collaborative Partners. Selection will be based on
criteria such as demonstrated commitment of the communities, ability to do the work
effectively, and alignment of the work with KCFFI objectives (e.g. policy and systems
change; capacity to have an impact; serving diverse populations; and focus on systems vs.
programs).

Advantages of uncoupling the Site Selection process from establishing the Leadership
Council include:
• The Site Selection Committee would be temporary with the sole function of
selecting two focus communities, and would not make any longer-term decisions
about change actions, membership, or resources
• Participation on the Site Selection Committee by Collaborative Partners from the
eight geographic areas, community based organizations, and members of the
Assessment Team would provide a holistic assessment of applications based on
agreed upon criteria.
• The Leadership Council can form sooner and begin planning for the regional and
county wide policy assessment and youth engagement, without waiting for the
two sites to be selected. Seats on the LC for members from the two focus
communities will be reserved.

Forming the Site Selection Committee

The Site Selection Committee will comprise up to 16 volunteer members including the
following:
• Eight members: One member from each of the eight potential focus communities:
1) Beacon Hill/SE Seattle, 2) Central/Downtown Seattle, 3) Delridge (West
Seattle), 4) White Center, 5) Federal Way, 6) Kent, 7) Seatac, and 8) Tukwila.
These members may be municipal staff from the local government,
representatives from community based organizations, or residents.
• Two members: Youth perspective.
• Three members: Sector representation – members from other sectors/areas of
expertise (e.g. farming, food, nutrition, built environment, etc.) not from a specific
geographic area.
 • Three members: Assessment Team participants from UW, WSU KCE, and
PHSKC.

Uncoupling (brainstorm)
Pros: Cons:
Schedule
Equal balance and share of voting for each Potential conflict of interest
geographic location (geographic balance) Not enough volunteers
Less time commitment for volunteers who
really want to play.

Collaborative members interested in being on the Site Selection Committee should email
Erin MacDougall (erin.macdougall@kingcounty.gov) by (date TBD at meeting 11/14/07).
The co-conveners will make the final decision to achieve the balance as outlined above.

Site Selection Committee Responsibilities

The Site Selection Committee will work from November 2007 through February 2008.
Activities of the Site Selection Committee will include:
• Finalize the Request for Application (RFA) that will be sent to representatives of
the eight potential communities of focus
• Develop selection criteria
• Provide some technical assistance to those communities during the application
process including making presentations to the communities, helping to identify
community leaders, and responding to emerging issues
• Review the communities’ applications and determine the two focus communities
• Two to three meetings

Proposed RFA Process to Select Focus Communities

The RFA will help the Site Selection Committee identify the following for each
community:
• Evidence of fit with KCFFI goals - statement of problem they want to address
• Proposed potential change activities and policies
• Evidence of community commitment - including leadership, resources, and
relationships

The Site Selection Committee will rank the applications based on predetermined criteria
and choose one site in Seattle and one in South King County.

Proposed RFA Questions (these are examples – the actual questions will be finalized by
the Site Selection Committee, when formed).

Community Context
 • Briefly describe your community (including the geographic area(s),
demographics, and socio-political boundaries) – one paragraph.
• If applicable, describe the specific geographic area within your community where
you will focus your efforts. Describe the rationale for focusing on this area, based
on data or information obtained from local assessments and from past experiences
in related community initiatives.

Building on Existing Assets and Overcoming Barriers

• What are the biggest barriers your community faces in promoting improved
nutrition and physical activity (e.g. environmental, cultural, leadership, financial,
etc.)?
• Please describe your community’s assets with regard to local and sustainable
food. (e.g. local food production and distribution system, relationship between the
community and local and regional farmers, farmers’ markets, and
community/school gardens).
• Please describe your community’s assets with regard to physical activity and
active recreation.
• Describe any community-wide efforts (for any age group) to promote healthy
eating and/or active living over the last 3-5 years. Please include any grants
received to fund these efforts.
• Explain how the proposal would expand or compliment existing assets and efforts
to promote healthy eating and/or active living in your community.
• Describe a lesson learned in your efforts to promote policies for healthy eating
and active living in your community and how they might be applied to your
participation as a Food and Fitness Initiative community.

Alignment with the Kellogg Foundation Food and Fitness Initiative

• Please describe for us your community’s capacity to participate in KCFFI by
providing a few examples of past accomplishments and providing evidence of
participant and community support for another initiative in your community that
required partnership, collaborative and public/non-profit/for-profit engagement to
be successful (it is not necessary that the example is related to food or fitness).
• Please provide an example of the positive impact of a community effort to
promote healthy eating and/or active living policies in your community (both
concrete and anecdotal examples may be included).

Partnerships and Leadership

• Describe collaborative efforts on public health issues that demonstrate innovative
and successful partnerships with representation from various levels of
government, the private for-profit sector, the non-profit sector,
community/neighborhood groups, and citizens.
• How will you ensure community member, including youth, involvement in your
work, especially among those in target areas or populations? Please provide
examples of how community members including youth have been engaged in
 addressing public health issues in your community in the past. What barriers were
encountered and how were they overcome?
• Describe the leadership in your community for nutrition and physical activity.
• Please provide evidence of support for your community’s involvement in KCFFI
among key community leaders (government, business, or non-profit sector) and
community members.Sustainability & Sharing Lessons Learned
• Thinking ahead 10 years, please describe the lasting benefits you envision for
your community as a result of participating in KCFFI. Who will be better off and
how? What changes in people, places, or institutions do you expect to occur?
• Sustainability is a goal of this project. If possible, include at least two examples of
other nutrition, physical activity, or chronic disease prevention policies AND
programs that your community has been successful in piloting and sustaining.
• If your community was chosen, how could other local communities learn from
your experience? How will you share results and benefits with local
communities?

This document attempted to lay out potential assessment areas. (Chronic diseases,
access/affordability of healthy food, access to safe places to play)

AC:
Struggling to make a high stakes decision is our problem. Our solution is to create
a transparent selection process (ie leadership council).
The sooner we can get to community organizing the better.

Michelle B: For neighborhoods within Seattle, who are we reaching out to?
-Maggie has been contacting neighborhood service centers and asking to share.
(Rainier Valley, Delridge, Central/Downtown.)
-Maggie will bring maps to next meeting

Jim K: If we don’t get enough volunteers for LC, what spots will open up and who will fill
them?
-All but one has committed to having a member and we are fairly confident that
all spots will be filled
-co-conveners will make the final decision of who will be accepted on the LC.

Jim K: What about conflict of interest? Will some members be asked to sit out of voting if
it is potentially biased?
-We hope to have counterweights for each vote.

Because collaborative partners are voting today is it fair and all?

Kasandra: What does a representative of a community consist of? Government?

-We’ve asked other collaborative partners to apply to be a partner later, however
some representatives are here today.
-We haven’t dug deep into a deep definition of “representing a community” CP’s
should represent the Initiative.
 -Community representatives (like govt. entity) aren’t necessarily voting members,
but will apply for CP status and work with other CP’s in their community (non
govt.).

Comments/questions on voting and decision making transparency:

Jim: Every person here (one person/one organization) gets a vote.

-Majority. All agreed that everyone gets a vote.

Laura: If we want transparency, we need to think about how a community FITS, not
which community do we like better

Karen Snyder: Comment on criteria for selection—Is the site selection committee going
to determine this criteria?
-Yes
-The application will need some work from the site committee

Michelle: Aren’t paths still being crossed?

VL: There is an urgency to uncouple the two so that we can get the site selection on track.

Jim: Our intention is at the committee level not having the committees be one and the
same. We don’t want geographic baggage-and the LC will balance that out. Scheduling
and recognizing geographic fairness.

Caren: Advantage of decoupling is that a site selection committee is better for the
community if they can’t afford the hours for the LC they can still vote in site selection.

Jim: These 8 areas were chosen because of the opportunity to make huge change through
smaller resources and increasing the likelihood of impact. No combining of areas
because combining could lead to deluding.

Sylvia: Potential to combine if neighborhood met criteria?

Kassandra: “conflict of interest” isn’t all bad. Can we be accepting of those? As an

organization we want to be involved because it serves communities we’re invested in.
Lets create guidelines. There’s no way around it.

-Erin: Go back to bylaws draft and you’ll see the seats for the LC. One Seattle
location, one south king county municipality.

Jim K: While some work is done at community level, much will be done at a county and
policy level and we need people from all levels and areas. We need to be careful to not
say that all work is going to happen in community level when there are so many pieces to
this puzzle (a collective responsibility).
 -Erin: There will still be plenty of work for organizations on the fence to
participate. The goal is to be considerate and give this group (partial leadership
council) to get to know one another. Let’s remember that when we look out into
the US, all the other urban centers are within one city government. What we’re
trying to do is new and challenging. This isn’t easy and we don’t have examples.
But we’re doing great!

Sylvia: Is there/should there be a relationship between site selection committee and

leadership council and the collaborative?

1) selection committee has the authority to make the site selection

Voting that leadership council is uncoupled from the site selection committee:

YES: 10 (unanimous)
NO:
MAYBE:
ABSTAIN:

Kassandra: How will we decide which box to check to apply for the leadership council?

Laura: There’s no crystal ball to know who will apply? If we get three youth who all
want to participate, how do we select two?

VL: There may be more discussion on who will represent each geographic area—more
criteria discussion.

Youth members may share a chair (suggestion).

Voting on who will serve on committee AND how the committee will be selected
(we’ll do our best to follow the guidelines already listed out

YES: 10 (unanimous)
NO:
MAYBE:
ABSTAIN:

Potential ways to vote on the leadership council:

1) Majority voting
2) Ranked voting
3) Concept of a slate (voting in)

Jim: How many organizations are eligible to vote?

-between 40-50 will vote on the top 8
Karen: We need to have an election committee. If only two submit applications by
deadline and looking to understand why more applications have not been submitted.

Kassandra: Jim’s comment cleared it up for me that there is still so much work to do on a
systemic level. We need to keep that in mind.

Michell: 18 month commitment seems like a long time?

-decisions to make a community action plan around food policy need to happen.
-The time commitment is solid (realistically one year to 14 months) March 2009.

VL: Suggests that we re-cap what it means to be apart of the LC

Laura: Let’s talk about the many roles an organization can play.

Jim Krieger: There are a fixed # of slots with 2-3 candidates for each slot. We’ll be lucky
if we get one person for slot. The job is to plug one or two in each spot to be voted on.
-Look with a diversity lens and define what that slate would work for.

Valerie: how do we ensure balance and diversity?

Jim Krieger: Thinking about diversity and a slate idea.

VL: vote…

Potential ways to vote on the leadership council:

4) Majority voting
Votes: 0
5) Ranked voting
Votes: 5
6) Concept of a slate (voting in)
Votes: 4

Denise: Diversity needs to be discussed. We must include cultural diversity within this
process. We would trust a slate process if the criteria were more clear. Let’s restate what
diversity is.

Karen Snyder: Let’s talk about nominations. We need to do some recruitment.

Erin: We haven’t come to what we prioritize as far as diversity.

Sylvia: culture/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, age, sector of

expertise, organization type, geography (restated to emphasize what is involved in the
leadership process)
Kassandra: Remember Linda Jo? Let’s talk about native Americans, Hispanic groups,
and the real representatives of chronic disease. Let’s get people on the council that
haven’t attended a meeting. What can we do? What should we do differently?

Karen: Start with a small group? We’ll start with 8 and then add communities. What if
we perpetuate a Seattle focused group lacking diversity?
-Allen: Let’s fix it up afterward and address any glaring omissions. How can we
recruit…forgetting voting.

Julie: We talked about 8 slots and thought it would already be diverse and flooded with
applications

Denise & Caren volunteered to help with targeted recruitment of applications for
the Leadership Council.

Erin: Part of our recruitment needs to emphasize the big picture and understanding policy.

Patrick: These meetings can be boring. Now that decisions have been made, we’ve made
it through the hard stuff. This is great. Let’s welcome people back to the process now
that we have the junk out of the way.

Jim: I am more into the slate voting. Let’s get back to the work and quit monkeying
around. We need targeted outreach! Let’s analyze, fill the boxes (diversity criteria) and
get moving

Sylvia: Need for shared vision and values. We haven’t focused on this yet.

RECAP:

PL: We’ve decided that we need a site selection committee & we need a leadership
council (understood). How will we get the leadership council jumpstarted? We need to
do some targeted outreach. We are seeking out a diverse leadership council.

Decision: Site selection committee has the complete authority to decide without the
leadership council to decide.
(Note: Sylvia has reservations about a volunteer committee making such high
stakes decisions).

More discussion of a slate… Two people for this, two for this, and what this may turn
into is an adhoc slate.

Perhaps a combined rank/slate. By default it is a slate, but we will vote on a ranked

method-----do we agree?

The group agreed that the voting process to fill seats on the Leadership Council will
be by ranked voting.
“Each Collaborative Partner organization votes on 8 Leadership Council applicants in
order of 1 to 8 with 1 being the most preferred and 8 the least. Points are assigned
accordingly to the rank. The eight applicants with the greatest number of points are
elected to LC.”

We need to share the idea of the matrix to make sure that we have all of the diversity and
experience slots filled.

By January 15th we need to have a leadership council set.

Recruitment and ranked vote will occur by January 15t (or as the co-conveners see is
manageable).