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HomeMy WebLinkAboutBDAC 2_27_25Brookings Disability Awareness Committee Date: 2/27/2025 Brookings City and County Government Center 520 3rd St, Room 241 Brookings, SD 57006 Phone (605) 692-6281 Attendance: Mark Sternhagen, Lynda Venhuizen, Matthew Weiss, Aysia Platte; QUORUM NOT MET. SDSU Student: Absent SDSU Liaison: Keena Melville. HRC Liaison: Absent Library Liaison: Absent Brookings School District Liaison: Absent City Representative: Maureen Simet Guests: None 1. The meeting was called to order at 12:02 PM. Quorum is not met, no voting occurs. 2. Approval of Agenda – not discussed. 3. Approval of minutes – not discussed. 4. Budget Update - $3,000 for this year, $942 carried forward. Maureen send message to Aysia for ASL class. 5. Officer Updates: A. Chair: a. Mark – Will cover during other items. B. Vice Chair– not discussed. C. Recorder– not discussed. D. Publicity coordinator: a. Aysia - A lot of great events this month at the Library, as well as at SDSU. Aysia put this up on the page already. b. Mark – Message on the page regarding spam? Aysia – yes, just deleted it, a very common spam. Did see it after the fact. E. SDSU Liaison: a. Keena – Glad to be here! Keena talk to Lynda more about what I’m supposed to report. Mark – more is better than less. If any events at SDSU that have any real connection with disabilities, something to share with us, and how we can work with SDSU. F. Library Liaison – not discussed. G. School Liaison – not discussed. H. City Representative: a. Maureen - City Clerk put together a great timeline for Mayor’s Awards, May to get updates to the applications to City Clerk, June to get out into press releases. I. HRC Committee Liaison – not discussed. 6. ASL Class Update: A. Aysia – Resounding success, 15-member class, and a lot of people who were hoping there are more classes available. Didn’t work with Christian folks with Wednesday night activities. Yesterday we were talking about where everyone works, nice to know it is in a lot of different sectors. If we can do it again, a desire, and very beneflcial too. Mark – a long road getting here, but worth the effort. Glad we did it. 7. Workplan Item: Mark – proclamation is scheduled for March 25th, plan to be there unless weather or health concerns. Think Ramona was getting representation from Advance. Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month. Strongly feel right now if anything we can do to raise awareness, really need to be doing that right now. See a lot of things out there that trouble me, concerns about disability awareness. Proclamation is at 6:00 on City Council meeting, do the proclamations pretty much right away, us flrst. Getting BATA to go past 6 is a favor to me from them. 8. Events/Publicity Discussion Mark to Lynda – brochures, if you would be interested in spearheading a subcommittee to look at them and see what changes need to be made? Lynda – sure. Anybody else to join me on that mission? BDAC members reach out to Lynda with interest. Maureen – we have a new graphic designer, only since December, but we can have her help, let me know if you want to get connected with her. Aysia – I’d love to get templates from them. Maureen – Canva. Aysia – that’s great! If I could get templates with the high-res logo, can then just plug in stuff. Maureen connect staff to Aysia. Mark – concept to bring a speaker in to talk about disabilities, use the flne arts center at SDSU, have access to that for free if it is available. Jay no longer there, but had discussed with him prior to COVID. At that time had talked about a speaker. Think we should consider a speaker again, last time thought about doing Billy Sutton. He’s very much non -partisan. If you haven’t heard him speak, worth that. Have contacted him for interest and he said he would be. He just asks for reimbursements on expenses like mileage. He can draw people, and that I think is the key. I am very concerned for my fellow disabled right now, with potential cuts to Medicaid. I suggest to form a subcommittee to make an effort to make something happen, sooner rather than later. This fall maybe, Oct? Don’t want to do as an NDEAM thing. It’s about value in general. Also maybe partner with SDSU, School District, and anyone else we can. I’ll put myself as a chair on that subcommittee. BDAC members reach out to Mark with interest. Mark – we had once talked about having a disability event, have wheelchairs. Aysia – simulation. Mark – that would’ve been around that March/April when COVID hit. I think it’s something else we could consider, maybe together (with the speaker). I had Don Jorgensen from Kelo and Sean from Dakota News. Barry Dunn was. I had even BOR Jim Morgan. Don’t know what we could do there? I’d love to see John Thune, not sure if a possibility. Won’t say anything is impossible! If we had something like that, we’d have national coverage. I have a contact in Thune’s office. That’d be something worth exploring as well. Could be under the same subcommittee? Things that have come to my mind recently. But any other idea, please don’t let me be the box that we are stuck in. Mark – I’d love to come up with a Christmas ornament type thing, think that was very well- received. I’m very concerned about it all right now. Any ideas, don’t need to do today, if you come up with things, shoot me an email to talk with me. BDAC members reach out to Mark with ideas. Lynda – want to chime in, very powerful with the Mini-Grants last year, ideas people had. That’s a way to engage more people and their ideas, not just our committee. Mark – I agree. I’d like to see SDSU, multi-cultural, was going to put up $1,000 towards that. I’m willing to contact Barry Dunn’s office if he’d want to put in something. I really think we have to look at some things like that. Mark - Merchandise, maybe you want to make that part of that? Brochures in that same kind of category. Lynda – yeah, we can work on the branding with the merchandise too. Mark – info on listening sessions? Aysia – we can share out recommendations from 2nd phase of listening session and community partners / families part of the session, Lynda synthesized that into a document, did a great job. Can review today or wait for more people? Want to get on the agenda at some point. Lynda – one message that kept coming up, need access to resources, a Go-To list of resources that is very accessible and “visible”. Keena – I have a friend in CA, through her family experience, being able to flnd resources is a struggle and now a passion of hers. Started a database, almost like a Yelp, for resources. Summer camp across the country as example. Now she has a nation-wide database, and up to communities to input data locally. Can we do that, enter in SD resources? Keena send info to group. Keena – makes my wheels go about how I can tie in. I want to do a lot of advocacy to connect with students, about Autism culture and pride, what it means to each person and how to make student experience better. March 22nd we are going to speak, our students, as a panel. That would be something people can come to. On the fiip -side, can I bring my students to the City Council meeting also? Mark – deflnitely open to that, a good flt. Keena email Mark to be on panel. Aysia – at the event Keena and Ann had, someone at Parks & Rec spoke to us. Keena – I have his info. Mark – didn’t mention the Parks & Rec Liaison. If they want to have a liaison, I’m open to that. More is better than less, Parks & Rec is a natural flt. Play is one of the more important things, having access to parks and facilities is very important. My life along the way, deflnitely experienced that. Aysia – Keena says it was Daren. Maureen contact Daren to attend upcoming BDAC meeting. 9. Next meeting is March 27 at 12:00PM, hybrid format. 10. Adjournment Submitted by Matthew Weiss, interim Recorder.