Monday, June 29, 2009

Captains leaving community

After nearly six years of service in the Fergus Falls community, Salvation Army co-captains Mike and Cindy Parker are moving this month to Mankato, where they will continue to work as captains for the Salvation Army.

The move to Mankato is exciting for the couple as they’re heading into a service which supports three times the amount of people they’re currently used to. The Mankato Salvation Army also runs a supportive home for those looking to get back on their feet after experiencing tough times.

Captain Jeff and Dawn Russell of Lansing, Mich. will be taking over the Fergus Falls Salvation Army as co-captains when the Parkers relocate. The public is invited to meet the new co-captains at 1 p.m. on July 5 at the Salvation Army in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.

Lakes Country Service Cooperative would like to wish the best of luck to the Parker family with their relocation and new opportunities in Mankato!

Permanent Family Resource Center in Fergus Falls has new interim director

Ann Rotto, a licensed clinical social worker, has been named interim director of the Permanent Family Resource Center in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Ann has served as a clinical consultant with the agency for eight years.

The center's founder and executive director Maryjane Westra has resigned and will be moving to Zimbabwe. She and her husband Don have accepted positions as global ministers for the Common Board of Global Missions.

Lakes Country Service Cooperative looks forward to working with Ann Rotto.
Congratulations to Don and Maryjane Westra on their new adventure in life!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Lakes Area Community Center in Battle Lake Celebrating Grand Opening!

As Lakes Area Community Center in Battle Lake passes their one year mark, they're celebrating by having a Grand Opening of the Community Center building the third weekend in June with four days of events.

Please join them for one or more of their planned activities beginning on June 25 and running through June 28, 2009. Listing of all activities and times can be found on the LACC website.

Congratulations on one year of success!

Lakes Area Community Center
112 W. Main Street
Battle Lake, MN 56515
(218) 862-5222
lacc@arvig.net
www.lakesareacc.org

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Nonprofits May Find Grant Opportunities in the New Stimulus Plan

The National Council of Nonprofits has begun publishing a series of Special Reports to help nonprofit organizations better understand the elements of the newly enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and to quickly prepare for their critical role in our nation's economic recovery. The Alliance has developed a checklist to help you quickly identify areas of potential funding contained in the Act, both in broad stokes and in a more detailed programmatic list.

General areas of funding with potential opportunities include:
  • Arts
  • Education
  • Youth services
  • Environment
  • Energy
  • Housing and community development
  • Health and human services
  • Volunteer and national service
  • Nonprofit assistance
  • Technology access
  • Workforce development


More specifically, the new law provides funds for:

  • Arts organization assistance
  • Child Care and Development Block Grants
  • Community Development Block Grants
  • Community Development Financial Institutions
  • Community Service Employment for Older Americans
  • Community Services Block Grants
  • Economic development assistance
  • Emergency food and shelter
  • Emergency food assistance
  • Energy assistance focused on weatherization and energy efficiency and conservation
  • Environment and conservation through Public Lands Corps, Youth Conservation Corps, Student Conservation Association and other programs serving young adults
  • Head Start and Early Head Start
  • Health centers
  • Health prevention and wellness
  • Health technology
  • HOME investment grants
  • Homeless prevention and rapid re-housing
  • Housing foreclosure assistance and redevelopment
  • Job training, employment and reemployment services
  • Native American Housing Block Grants
  • Nonprofit capacity building
  • School-based and youth programs, including Title I, special education and education for homeless children and youth
  • Senior meals
  • Service learning through National Service Trust
  • Technology access for broadband services in undeserved areas
  • Volunteer service through Americorps and VISTA


To read more about these specific funding streams, refer to the National Council's Special #1 at this site: http://www.councilofnonprofits.org/files/Special%20Report%201%20-%20Overview%20(Feb%2023%20FINAL).pdf

This report includes:

  • Provisions of Potential Interest: detail on specific grants in program areas in the Act that could be of interest to a wide range of nonprofits. Each summary describes the nature of the program and shows the amounts appropriated;
  • Appendix: summarizes the major appropriations and tax cuts in the 407-page Act.

Pawlenty's Unallotment Plan to Balance the Budget

Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced today (June 17, 2009) he plans to cut about $236 million from health and human services programs and another $300 million of aid to city and county governments as part of his unilateral "unallotment" in an effort to balance the state's budget for the new biennium. Pawlenty's cuts equal nearly $736 million. The reductions would begin July 1 and end July 2011. These cuts mark the largest ever for the State of Minnesota.

Reductions:

  • K-12: $1.77 billion in payment deferrals and adjustments

  • Aid to cities, counties and townships: $300 million

  • Health and human services: $236 million

  • Higher education: $100 million

  • Reducing refunds and other payments: $67 million

  • State agencies: $33 million

Additional revenues through administrative actions: $169 million

Local Government Energy Assurance Guidelines

A soft-cover full-color edition of the PTI publication Local Government Energy Assurance Guidelines is now available. The publication helps city and county officials to address energy assurance and security concerns for mission-critical government facilities.

"Protecting and enhancing the resiliency of the energy sector from natural and human-caused disasters requires local governments to be vigilant and aware of the interdependencies of the system," said PTI executive director Alan Shark. "This guide provides a valuable resource for local governments as they examine and enhance their energy assurance efforts."

Local Government Energy Assurance Guidelines underscores the importance of preparing an energy assurance plan and offers a model tool to help officials assess their readiness in case of an energy emergency in their community by:
  • Identifying national and local government experts who can help with energy assurance planning needs;
  • Building organizational relationships and responsibilities within local government, the private sector and the region;
  • Discovering actions that can ease the impacts of short-term energy disruptions;
  • Defining long-term strategies and options for dealing with sustained disruptions or outages;
  • Providing a tool that can be used to prepare an energy assurance plan;
  • Improving all-hazards emergency preparedness through regional collaboration; and
  • Learning about innovative and traditional financing mechanisms for energy assurance needs.

"Local governments are on the front lines of virtually all energy emergencies, and local governments are going to be faced with an ever increasing number of energy-related emergencies in the coming years," said Alice Lippert of the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). "The resources and energy assurance assessment tool provided in this document will help local officials in preparing for energy-related disruptions to their facilities and systems."

The DOE Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE) funded PTI’s production of this publication. The OE is the primary DOE office responsible for energy emergency planning and response in the United States. Its mission is to lead national efforts to modernize the electric grid, enhance security and reliability of the energy infrastructure and facilitate recovery from disruptions to the energy supply.

Go to http://www.amazon.com/Local-Government-Energy-Assurance-Guidelines/dp/1439236941 to order the hard-copy version from Amazon.
To download the 4.3 MB PDF from PTI at no charge, go to http://www.pti.org/docs-sust/LocalGovernmentEnergyAssuranceGuidelines.pdf

Information home site: http://www.pti.org/index.php/ptiee1/more/410/

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Leadership Skills Training

Lakes Country Service Cooperative is pleased to offer Leadership Skills Training...a series of workshops for human resource generalists, supervisors, managers, team leaders, administrators and support staff.

April 9, 2009
Your Conflict Type

July 23, 2009
Employment Law

August 20, 2009
Volunteer Board Members & Areas of Liability for Non-Profits

September 10, 2009
Legal Concerns - Open Dialog

September 24, 2009
Ethical Decision Making

October 15, 2009
Public Participation

November 12, 2009
Building Relationships with Decision Makers

December 3, 2009
Committees That Work

Thanks to a grant from the Otto Bremer Foundation, registration fees for members with Human Resource duties will be waived.

For session overviews, workshop times, registration fees and to register, go to http://www.lcsc.org or contact Pam Ness at pamness@lcsc.org (218-739-3273, ext 115) for more information.


Monday, June 8, 2009

The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs RFP

The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) is inviting proposals for the fall 2009 semester for three of it’s Community Based research programs: Neighborhood Planning for Community Revitalization (NPCR), Community Assistantship Program (CAP) and Communiversity (CMV).

Students are paid by the programs for the assistantships, making them a good potential source of funding for your students.

CURA Community Based Research Programs provide applied research assistance to community-based groups located outside of the Twin Cities area, neighborhood groups within the metro area, and other nonprofit agencies and groups. This research is administered by three separate programs: the Community Assistantship Program, which works with groups in greater Minnesota; Neighborhood Planning for Community Revitalization, which works with neighborhood organizations in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and first-ring suburbs; and Communiversity, which works with nonprofit organizations, particularly those serving communities of color.

These community research projects typically place students in part-time research assistantships for one semester or over the summer. Students are selected by and report to the community organization. Organizations define and direct their research projects.

The goals of these programs are to:
1) enhance the capacity of community-based groups in Minnesota to meet their goals by giving them an opportunity to accomplish relevant applied research;
2) provide students and faculty with useful community-based applied research and learning opportunities.

Applications should come directly from community organizations.
The deadline for project proposals is June 30th, 2009.
Approved projects will run from August 31st, 2009 to January 13th, 2010.

Please follow the link below to find out more or to apply on-line or contact Jeff Corn, CURA Community Program Coordinator at (612) 625-0744

http://www.cura.umn.edu/Programs/ApplicationProcess.php

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

United States Environmental Protection Agency: MyEnvironment

The MyEnvironment search application is designed to provide a cross-section of environmental information based on the user’s location.

The desired location is keyed in from the EPA Home Page (www.epa.gov) under the section called MyEnvironment.

The next page to appear contains the results of the search for that geography, e.g., Baltimore, MD. You can use a variety of locational search terms, such as zipcode, street address, county name, waterbody name, National Park name – or any placename that you might see on a roadmap.

The top part of the page contains a map with the EPA regulated facilities for that area (and air and water monitoring stations will be added soon) and the bottom part includes the following set of information (pertinent to that specific geography, or to the county or state – depending on the lowest level of aggregation for which those data are available):

MyAir
UV index – This reports the predicted UV light intensity for today
Air Quality Index for the US (AQI)
Radon level maps
Today’s Ozone Forecast
Today’s Particulate Matter Forecast
Another Ozone Map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

MyHealth
EPA Cancer Risk for Air Toxics Estimates by County
Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Infant Mortality Rates by County
HRSA Low Birth Weight Babies Rates by County

MyLand
Superfund Information links
Brownfields Information links
Cleanups in my Community – takes you to an application that shows a map of cleanup activities in your neighborhood – like Superfund, RCRA and other.

MyWater
US Geological Survey Streamflow Levels data for stream gauges
Water conditions for local waterbodies based on EPA Water Quality and Impaired Stream data
EPA Local Drinking Water Provider information and Community Water System information from Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS)
Monitoring Stations by Pollutant – The ability to identify monitoring stations in your neighborhood by the pollutants they measure – is coming soon.
New/expiring facility permits in my area – this feature reports new and expiring permits (from EPA’s Permit Compliance System database) given to facilities that emit pollutants to water in your neighborhood.

Watershed – This feature shows you your watershed and connects you to the EPA Surf Your Watershed Web site which provides a variety of links to citizen-based groups at work in your watershed, water quality data, and more.

MyEcological Conditions – this area displays reports that describe the state of ecological indicators in your area. Additionally, up in the right-hand corner of the map (above the map’s legend) we offer a refined search capability. In the refined search box you can select by pollutant which will yield a map with only those facilities emitting that pollutant plus a federated search of materials pertinent to that pollutant, including:
EPA Library Collection Search for mostly scientific documents and PDFs;
EPA Substance Registry System Search for lots of pollutant-specific information including factsheets about health impacts;
National Institute of Standards and Technology chemical breakdowns;
EPA Web Site Search for any web pages pertaining to that pollutant;
EPA Frequently Asked Questions Search for any FAQs pertaining to that pollutant; and
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Chemical Factsheets (if available).

Select by industry which will yield a map with only the facilities in that industry (e.g., manufacturing) and as above – below the fold will show search results with web pages, factsheets and references particular to that industry as a search term.

Select a New Place will let you key in a new location into the search box and result in a wholesale refresh of the map and below containers for information about air, water, land, etc. pertinent to that newly specified geography.

Finally, there is a MyCollaboration area in the bottom right-hand corner of the search results page (this is not available from any refined search results page – but instead only from a geographic search). MyCollaboration include three means for communicating either to EPA or the web community:

1. Email is available to send comments back to the EPA developers of this Web site and we can field a wide range of questions that you may have – such as requests for additional resources, comments about the MyEnvironment application or any other comments.

2. Comment Form is available to report back to your community your environmental concerns about your neighborhood. We will collect your comment and report it back out on the website for anyone else who navigates back to that community location. With this feature we were hoping to allow an exchange of concerns about particular neighborhoods. Eventually we will add a blog to this Web site so that this can turn into a dialogue where EPA can highlight and bring resources to the environmental concerns for a particular geography that are most on people’s minds.

3. Finally, since this application puts a strong focus on the regulated facilities that may operate in your community, we include a link to the official channel where the public can Report Violations.

This is a great source for general knowledge, as well as gathering information for reports and grant proposals.

http://www.epa.gov/myenvironment/

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Governor Tim Pawlenty

***Remarks as prepared for delivery.

Governor Tim Pawlenty
June 2, 2009
Governor’s Reception Room
State Capitol
Saint Paul, Minnesota

Good afternoon. Thanks for coming to the announcement that, in light of the Brett Favre situation and its unsettling impact on the people of Minnesota, I am signing an executive order requiring Saint Paul native Joe Mauer, in addition to catching for the Twins, to also play quarterback for the Vikings.

These are tough times, Joe, and everybody has to dig deep.
Of course, I actually have a different announcement for you. Today, I’m announcing I will not seek a third term as Governor.

At these types of announcements, the speaker often says something like "last but not least, I would like to thank the following people."

Instead, I would like to express my gratitude not last, but right up front – starting with acknowledging and thanking God for the great State of Minnesota, its kind and generous people and for the opportunity to serve this special, jaw-droppingly amazing state.

I would also like to thank the love of my life, the mother of our two daughters and the person who has carried more of the load than you could ever imagine, the fabulous First Lady of Minnesota, Mary Pawlenty.

My daughters Anna and Mara have grown-up with all the challenges that come with your Dad being Governor. They have been very patient and exhibited great grace through it all. I love them so much, and I am very proud of both of them.

My other family members, incredibly loyal and fantastic staff and cabinet members, steadfast supporters, Lieutenant Governor Molnau, friends and so many others who have carried so much of the load – deserve and have my utmost respect and appreciation.

I also want to thank legislators and public servants all across Minnesota. While sometimes we may have had our differences, I have great respect and appreciation for good people who are willing to enter the difficult arena of public service. I am thankful for all of them.

But the real secret to Minnesota’s success is its people, and I am so very grateful for them. As Governor, I’ve been constantly inspired by the courage and ingenuity of Minnesotans. It has been – and it will continue to be – a great joy and opportunity to make the most of their amazing spirit, even in these tough times.

I’ve seen so many examples of the goodness of Minnesotans all over this great state. But one of my most memorable is witnessing packed high school gymnasiums in Greater Minnesota every time our soldiers head out or come home. Young and old, rich and poor, family member or not, the people of the town show up, and they stand up for things that matter. They value service, courage, honor and country.

Serving this incredible state has been the great honor of my life. I’m profoundly grateful for the opportunity to serve the wonderful people of Minnesota.

My administration has made a major, positive difference for Minnesota. We developed and deployed the best support programs for members of the military, their families and veterans in the country. We led the nation in developing a cleaner, more secure and more Americanized energy future. We led the nation in education reform and results, have been nation-leading in redesigning and improving health care and much more.

And importantly, we kept Minnesota competitive by imposing some much-needed discipline on government by keeping a lid on taxes and spending. We even succeeded in achieving the long-standing goal of moving Minnesota out of the top ten mostly highly-taxed states.

I still have lots of energy and ideas. But, being Governor should not be a permanent position for someone. When it comes to how long someone should stay in an elected position, a little less is better than too much.

It’s a lesson I learned spending time in places like the Croatian Hall in South Saint Paul, where there is inevitably less joy and more trouble in too much pizza or too much beer.

We don’t have term limits in Minnesota, but we do have good judgment and common sense. We are a government of laws and ideas, not personalities.

Time marches on, and now it’s time to give someone else a chance. I’m announcing my decision now so candidates interested in running for this office will have ample time to make their plans and make their case to the people of Minnesota.

Be assured, though, that I will make the most of the 19 months I have left in the office Minnesotans have entrusted to me. I will continue to spend every day doing what’s right for them. Minnesota will get my very best until I’m done. There is much important and difficult work remaining, and I will tackle it aggressively and finish strong.

The Scriptures say "there is a time for every purpose". For me, the purpose of the next 19 months will be to do the very best I can for Minnesota.

Thank you and God bless you all.