Veterans Advisory Commission - Regular Meeting

Hereby call this meeting to order. Would everyone please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance? Pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, everybody. Would you please call the roll? Sure.

Okay. Mr. Mikkelsen is absent. Ms. Sedensky? Here. Mr. Steficoul? Here. Mr. Hughes is absent. Mr. Burgess?

Here. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. And we have two of our three new student municipal representatives with us. Would you two mind introducing yourselves to the commission?

Hi. I'm Emily Lisko. Hello. I'm Curiocephical.

So they'll be with us for the majority of the year to learn how the local government works and see how we quasi function as a quasi commission. By all means, if you two feel that you have anything that you wanna add or contribute to any of the conversations that we're having here, we are more than open to hearing your input and hearing what you guys would like to see us do as well. Alright. Next order of business, approval of minutes from the August 5 Veterans Advisory Commission meeting. Did everybody get a chance to take a gander at those? Yes. Any changes? No. Okay. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes?

I motion to approve it.

I second.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Minutes are approved. Alright.

Obviously, we have no citizen comments here tonight. So those of you who you didn't make it last month, did you? No. We actually had a decent turnout. We have five roughly five people out in the audience. Yes. Yeah. It was nice.

Man, I see they're back.

Yes. They're here in spirit. Yes. One of the nice things that we had there was a young man inviting us to potentially be involved with some artwork up in Akron and some interest there in bringing more veteran experience into public art, which was quite neat. All right. So unfinished business. We have the Veterans Resource Fair coming up in October. I'm working with the city communications department. They have us on their roster. They're going to do a nice trifold brochure for us or something along those lines, that we'll be able to hand out there.

Valerie has assured me that that will not be an issue to to have that in time for us for October. So we are trucking along there. Do you

have a date in October?

And it is a Friday, Saturday. I will not be able to make it for the Friday, so hopefully, can count on some of these retired guys, Bill

Yeah, of course.

To be there for that. What is that? The October is the veteran resource fair at MAPS, and I'll get you exact hours for that. I did finally get in touch with the SAM center to discuss that. But by the time she and I spoke, I had already talked with Bob Beasley, he was more than excited about the idea of partnering with us on that.

So we're gonna share a table with the American Legion Post, and we're going to kind of work together. They're going to help introduce us to the veterans of the community a bit, too, since they've already got a lot of name recognition and standing within the community. So I think that'll be beneficial for us to be partnered with them on that one. So we'll be sharing their table. Then we've got the Military Career Fair on November 20. Would distinguished mister Spate like to talk to that a little bit?

Outstanding. So last year, we had two military career fairs here in conjunction with Veterans Advisory Commission over at Central Park Community Hall. Those dates coincide with when the high school offers the ASVAB, which is the military entrance exam. The first one, we had a lot of success. I felt like we had a very good turnout of students that attended the military career fair.

All the recruiters from every branch of service, including the Coast Guard, was there for that one. So we would like to lean forward with doing that again this year. We did decide that since we had success with one and not so much the other, that let's just stick to one military career fair, so we would like to put forth, all of our efforts towards the fall military career fair. We felt like it was fairly well advertised at the high school. We would like to see the city of Green get a little more involved as far as reaching out to the residents.

So once we get the literature drafted up on the school side, we'll share it with the city and see if we can get that out there, at least on social media and possibly, something on the Veterans Advisory Commission page on the website. You know, the idea behind it is not just for high school students. Everybody thinks high school students enlist, you know, join the military. That's not the case. Myself, I didn't join until months after high school.

So I think there's a lot of people out there where, maybe they have a son or daughter sitting at home that's just looking for some guidance, or they themselves are just trying to get out and find something new. But to have all recruiters in one location is sort of rare, let alone in a nice, intimate environment like Central Park Community Hall. So the one thing I would ask of the advisory commission is if you guys could be present like we were last time or you guys were last time, just to act as, I guess, a liaison between civilians to recruiters, sit them down, talk about personal experiences. Of course, recruiters make everything sound all amazing and nice, but to have somebody who says, Yeah, you know what? That job actually means you're

washing dishes.

Know, whatever it may be. I think there's a lot of benefit in that as well.

I know Mike and Carl and I made it to the spring one last year, and it seemed like the conversations with the youth and their parents were very well received.

Awesome. So we already have Central Park Community Hall reserved. The recruiters will be notified, and, yeah, as long as you guys are okay with it, we would

like to partner up again. What time were you thinking for that?

I think we started at I think it was four to eight is what we did last year. We'd like to keep it the same. Four seems like a good time for those that, you know, are waiting around after school to get there. Oh, I don't know if I mentioned it, but we did it last year, we'll do the same. So after they take the ASVAB, we'll release the scores there, which, is a good thing. So the kids are excited to get their scores, and then we say, Take your scores and go shopping. So, they literally walk around and have the ability to also have the professionals interpret their ASVAB scores.

Yeah. Perfect. I like that sounds good. Let's see. Do we have any other unfinished business that got left off the agenda?

Yeah, let's talk about, September 12. It is not only youth night at Green Stadium during the football game, but it's also a Salute to Troops night. So, Mr. Spate and I met with, Mr. Musi and others over at Green High School a couple weeks ago, and we put together a real tentative outline of what would occur during the evening. This will be finalized over the next week or so, but we're thinking the Veterans Advisory Commission members would be part of the actual coin toss before the game. So, you'd be on the field. There would be PA announcements read about the Veterans Advisory Commission, who you are, so on and so forth, and you take part in the coin toss, meet and greet the captains of each team. I think Green is playing North Canton that night. Yes, sir.

And then, at halftime, prior to the North Canton band taking the field, there'd be a short presentation that would take place at midfield. Details on that, Mr. Spate might have more details than I do right now, but it'd be a very short presentation. We want to direct everybody's attention to the field, perform the ceremony, whatever that might be, and then quickly get off the field, so the North Canton band could take the field.

So, for that ceremony, we're not exactly sure what we're going to do. Our goal is to do a flag folding demonstration, which I think everybody in here has seen before. Do that center field and present it to a green alumni veteran. So we're working with the school district right now to find the right person to honor, and that's our goal. So we have about a five minute window, I think.

Yeah, they've extended, halftime much like they do for Homecoming game, they've extended halftime another five minutes.

So, we're trying to figure out what we can exactly do in that timeframe to properly honor one specific veteran and then also have a moment where we ask all first responders and veterans to stand up and be recognized.

One,

the Ohio Army National Guard has agreed to bringing in some, like, touch a truck, some Humvees. The athletic department has agreed to letting those Humvees inside the gates, which will be cool. So, some good exposure for our local recruiters here in the city of Greene. And then also, we were going to ask the Veterans Advisory Commission to possibly run the check table, which would be a great time to capture information, out any information that you may have. And all first responders and veterans would will enter through the West Gate, which is on the far side from here.

They'll come in that way. Hopefully, you guys don't mind, you know, collecting that information at a table, and then we'll have ROTC cadets escort them to the sidelines where they'll be able to stand on the sidelines if they want to, you know, be down there with the team while they practice. Before the game then, they'll be escorted up to their seats. The game will start, and then, like Mr. Elkins said, we'll do the halftime presentation.

Are the ROTC kids folding?

I believe so. Yes, that would be the plan.

And are you going to give us an outline of that, an e mail to kind of back that up so of what we said?

Yes. Yes, once we solidify it, that would yeah, we'll definitely communicate that with you. And then before the coin toss, if whatever Veterans Advisory Commission members are there, are able to go out and do the coin toss, North Canton athletic department has been asked to provide at least four veterans so they can accompany their captains out to the field for the coin toss as well, which we thought was a nice way to include them in our ceremony.

I like that. Yeah. I think that's good to bring the other team into that too.

And also, our color guard will actually have North Canton cadets on it as well. So we have a crosstown program. We have, I think, three or four North Canton cadets this year, so it'll be a crosstown color guard.

Perfect. Sounds good. Sounds good. Thank you.

And just in time for the September 12 game, Mr. Seffikol has the tablecloth that would be used by the Green Veterans Advisory Commission. I I want to thank Nicole on helping get that put together for us. Thank you, Nicole.

Thank you.

You. That should be ready by, the September 12. Also, Our Town newsletter, which will come out, I think, late September, early October, it will have the QR code in there that folks can scan and then just sign up on, the city's website, you know, to get information, from the Veterans Advisory Commission. And one last item, oh, also on the Veterans Advisory Commission webpage is currently the Nominate a Veteran for Veterans Day. So, that will be mentioned in the newsletter as well. So, yeah, direct people to the Veterans Advisory Commission webpage to nominate a veteran to be recognized during the Veterans Day ceremony.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

And congratulations, this commission is one year old today. Don't know if you were aware of that. I was going through said my

it was today. Nice. Very cool. Thank you for that. All right.

There's no other unfinished business. I do have one thing for new business really quick. During my phone call with the SAM Center, I brought up the commission's idea that we try and get a veterans team started with a lot of the city sports leagues, especially with the corps opening up and everything. The SAM Center is actually looking to try and start esports and gaming nights to do camaraderie events with veterans, especially the younger generation like we've all talked about, the need to reach out to. And they were very excited to hear that we were focused more on the physically active side, whereas they're focused on the I don't want say sit down, but the more sit down events with them.

So they have actually expressed a lot of interest in working with our commission to help support the sports teams that we've talked about and then hopefully get some support from us steering people towards them for their gaming events. And they were talking about tabletop games, card games, and video games, kind of doing maybe once a month events with those sorts of things. So I said I figured that'd be something this commission would definitely be interested in talking about more so we can can talk about that at our next planning session.

Okay.

And then one more unfinished. I did talk to somebody at the Chamber of Commerce, so thank you for the insight. So what the commission's plan is we're we want to recognize the businesses in the area that offer a military discount or a veterans discount. So, they're very excited to work with us for that. So we'll probably plan it in our meeting about how we wanna go about it, and then we'll probably need little flyers or something made up so they could post in their window about to recognize the business that they offer the discount. So Perfect.

That's it for me. Perfect. This meeting has moved by rather quickly. Any other new business? All right. Mr. Elkins, I'm assuming that you guys will probably start sometime this month early well, yeah, sometime early this month or late this month or early next month for Veterans Day Planning?

Yes. Okay. Yes. We'll have much more to report at the October meeting for Veterans Perfect.

I appreciate that.

Did we ever get a budget?

That was on city council's to do list, I believe. Did we get

a budget?

Yeah. When yeah. I've already Do

know when the budget meeting is for council?

So council doesn't have a budget meeting. We are the budget people. We make the decision. So I do ours, and then you guys look at it and then ultimately decide. I actually we kinda talked with the mayor's office, and they were more going to look into potentially getting that budget started. All of our budget hearings and things are coming up. Our budgets are due by September 12, and then our hearings are in October. Is it the first week, Mike?

Yeah. October.

Then we'll be having those those meetings. So I know that, Kelly, the mayor's assistant, she was going to put something into the mayor's. And do you know any more about that, Mike?

No. I just know that it's gonna go into the mayor's budget, I believe. Yeah. I will. So we'll

But they'll be putting some money together. But, till the end of the year, any of the smaller things, so, like, you know, you get your pins and stuff, that all came from my budget. I still have a little money left. So if we need something else before the end of the year, we can talk about trying to get that.

I was just thinking if we could finally do the wreath at the Veterans Day. We were thinking last year to do the wreaths Oh. The different wreaths for the different

It was Memorial Day.

I thought we wanted to do it for Veterans Day for the branches.

No. We talked about doing it for Memorial Day because they do the wreath laying at the eternal flame. We talked about trying to do wreaths for each branch at their flag post for Memorial Day. So we thankfully still have plenty of time on that one.

Okay. I thought there was something for Veterans Day.

If you would send me maybe you've already done this and I've lost it, but send me a bullet point maybe of the items that the commission, how they anticipate spending a budget. I know we talked about shirts having shirts for the commission, some, public outreach events, things like that. Okay.

We can certainly put something together for you.

They're planning meeting.

Yeah. Perfect. Anything else? No. Short and sweet, that's how I like it. Do we have a motion to, adjourn the meeting?

Motion to adjourn the meeting.

Do we have a second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Everybody enjoy your Tuesday night. Meeting adjourned.