New subject: draft RCAC participation guide for your review and comments

22 Nov 2010

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:
...
  Welcome to the RCAC! This guide is intended to help
you learn about
 your responsibilities and resources as a new member so you can
 participate quickly and fully.  
*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:
...
  The RCAC meets each month to allow CAC leaders to
share information.  
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