[RCAC] draft RCAC participation guide for your review and comments

Please find attached a draft RCAC participation guide, which may serve as a starting point for our retreat in February and help new chairs in the meantime. This guide may also help CACs recruit new chairs by providing a quick introduction to their role in the RCAC. It begins: *The need for a guide.* I realized after our meeting last week that I had not been clear on my need for RCAC-specific training. While the Neighborhood College has been very useful and interesting, it does not address key information that RCAC members need to know. Attending other CAC meetings will help one understand how a meeting is run, appropriate topics, and so forth, but won't reveal when newsletters are due or that you don't need to pay for parking when representing your CAC at a City Council meeting. Is the city website enough? Not at this point. For example, thecity website <http://www.raleighnc.gov/neighbors/content/CommServices/Articles/CitizensAdvisoryCouncil.html> says: When I started representing my CAC on the RCAC in July, I was eager to attend my first meeting. Thank heavens I asked Bill Padgett to carpool, because he told me that the RCAC never meets in August. I would have shown up alone at night in the city parking garage and then had to pay to leave -- not a good start. *What's in this draft.* This draft includes information that would have been useful to me as a new chair and strives to cover some topics that I've heard others ask about. For the most part, I assembled the guide using introductions from the city website and documents, with links are provided for more information. In response to a question at last week's meeting, I also included a suggested attire, using these definitions <http://fashion.about.com/cs/glossary/a/partydefinition.htm>. Wikipedia has a nice section <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dress_code_%28Western%29> on the appropriateness of national dress, but only addresses what men should wear. I included the election dates in the calendar and the city councilors who represent a CAC on the contact list to remind us that our contacts may change. Some new members might not know that they have a councilor for their district plus two at-large councilors. Questions and suggestions are in [ brackets ]. I still have many questions after nearly 18 months as a chair, many years as an active CAC member, and attending half of the Neighborhood College. I may have some things dead wrong; if so, please send me a correction. *Refining and maintaining the guide.* If you'd like to send corrections or additions to the guide, I'd be happy to assemble them and create another draft before our retreat in February. Dwayne, would you please send the existing RCAC training manual that Bill Padget mentioned to the chairs who have joined since it was written three years ago? Or perhaps to all of us, so we can use it to enhance or replace this draft? The guide will need to be maintained to be useful. We should discuss maintenance at the retreat. I'd consider doing that if the group would like me to and if city staff will provide the specific contact information for each CAC and make sure new RCAC members get a copy. *Thanks* to Ana Pardo and Bill Padgett for advice when I first decided to run for chair, to Mark Vander Borgh for being my mentor, to Jonathan Edwards for being a patient and helpful Community Services Specialist, and to all of you for answering questions as they came up. ... Linda Watson Chair, Glenwood CAC