Veterans Advisory Commission - Regular Meeting

Alright. I hereby call this meeting to order. Would everyone please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance? I 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.

Would you please call the roll? Sure.

Okay, we have Mr. Mikkelsen. Here. Mr. Sinopoli. Here. Mr. Suffolkl. Here. Mr. Hughes. Here. And Mr. Virgis. Here. Okay.

Thank you very much. First order of business, I'll turn things over to Nicole for the swearing in of our board members.

Yeah. Yeah. Just

Put your right hand up. Okay. Alright. I, Michael Hughes

I, Michael Hughes.

Do solemnly swear

Do solemnly swear.

That I will support the constitution of The United States Of America

That I will support constitution of The United States Of America.

The constitution of the state of Ohio.

The constitution of the state of Ohio.

The charter of the city of Green.

The charter of the city of Green.

And all the laws.

And all laws.

Statutes.

Statutes. Ordinances. Ordinances.

And resolutions.

And res say it again.

Resolutions.

Resolutions. Enacted there under. Enacted there under.

And that I will.

And that I will. Honestly. Honestly. Impartially. Impartially.

And faithfully.

And faithfully.

Perform the duties.

Perform the duties.

Of the commission to which I have been appointed.

To the commission at which I've appointed

to the best of my ability

to the best of my ability

and understanding

and understanding help me God. So help me God.

Congratulations.

Never again either, maybe.

Raise your right hand. Repeat after me.

Repeat after you. Okay.

I, Carl Mikkelsen

I, Carl Mikkelsen.

Do solemnly swear

Do solemnly swear

that I will support the constitution

That I will support the constitution

The United States Of America

of The United States Of America

the constitution of the state of Ohio

the

charter of the city of Green

the charter of the city of Green

and all the laws

and all the laws statutes statutes ordinances ordinances

and resolutions

and resolutions

acted thereunder

enacted thereunder

and that I will honestly

and I will honestly

partially

and

faithfully

and faithfully

perform the duties perform the duties commission

the commission

to which I have been appointed

which I have been appointed

the best of my ability

to my best of my ability

and understanding So help me God.

So help me God. Congratulations.

Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you. Alright. Awesome.

Does this one work?

That one works.

Or do you have to trade back at that?

Well, could try this one again.

He's never happy, is he?

Wanna come on? Raise your right hand and repeat after me.

Okay.

I veto Sinopoli

I veto Sinopoli

do solemnly swear

do solemnly swear

that I will support the constitution of The United States Of America

that I will support constitution of The United States Of America.

The constitution of the state of Ohio.

The constitution of state of Ohio.

The charter of the city of Green.

The charter of the city of Green.

And all the laws.

And all the laws.

Statutes.

Effective.

Ordinances

Ordinances. And resolutions

And resolutions.

Enacted there under.

And that are acting.

And that I will honestly

And I will honestly

Impartially.

Impartially.

And faithfully.

And faithfully.

Perform the duties of the commission

Perform the duties of the commission

To which I have been appointed

To which I have been appointed

To the best of my ability

To the best of my ability.

And understanding

And understanding.

Help me God.

So help me God.

Alright. Congratulations. Thank you. You wanna just sign right there?

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Carl and Mike, just wanna say glad you guys are sticking on. And, DeVito, welcome aboard.

Thank you.

We're, an interesting bunch.

Yeah.

All right. Next order of business, the election of a new chair. Do we have any nominations for the position of chair?

Yes. I nominate Mike Hughes as chairman. Do we

have a second? Second. All right. All those in favor?

Aye. All

those opposed? Motion passes. Mr. Hughes is our new chair. Enjoy.

You don't want to finish the meeting?

No. It got passed to me at the start of my first meeting. Oh, okay.

Alright. Thank you. Moving on. Election of the Vice Chair. Is there anybody that is interested in position of Vice Chair? Say aye. Aye. Anybody second that? I second. Everybody in favor say aye. Aye. Anybody that disapproves? Congratulations. Going over the notes from the last meeting. Anybody have any questions? Everybody approve of the notes?

Yes, they

were fine. Yep. I agree. Good. All right. Everybody if you agree, say aye. Aye. All right. Second? I second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. We're good.

Old business. Any old business that we want to discuss today? A couple of things that were brought up.

I was just going to answer. Go ahead.

Oh, the meeting time? I know you looked at me with that blank stare.

I wasn't sure what you were getting at.

Yes, it was brought up, discussions whether or not you guys still wanted to keep the 05:30 meeting start time or move it up to 05:00. I don't know how that works with all of your schedules, just because initially, when we met, five p. M. Was what we were going to do. So I know that, a few commission members couldn't make the five p. M. Meeting, but thought we'd throw it out there again for discussion as we start the New Year.

05:30. Traffic is not so bad. Everybody gets it too.

Of course, we're retired, so yes.

The only concern I'd have is whether or not I'd if I get back to my part time driving job on Tuesday after recovery, surgery, etcetera, whether I'd be back in time for a 05:00. But we can only play that by year when it happens. So if the majority say 05:00, it's 05:00.

I thought we said 05:30.

I can make five or 05:30 work.

Five or 05:30 works for me too.

I like 05:30. 05:30.

Can I just interject, though? I think part of this is because our city staff who's here, whether they're taking minutes or sitting in on the meeting, they're typically staying from the end of a workday. And just in their interest of time, I just want to throw that out there. Ultimately, this is your commission. You guys pick the time. But that is something to consider because they're all

All right, Mr. President, 05:30 is okay.

Oh, yes.

But that's better than five.

Well, no, think five is better for them.

You're better for them because they're working, right? Correct.

Yes. So they're staying after their workday

Okay.

Just to try to get them home a little earlier. Right. Well

Or we could delay the start until later, so there isn't enough time for them to go home and have dinner and come back.

I don't think they want to come

back up here. Thank you,

Bob. Think that's going be Hey, listen,

if you want to go back to five, that's fine. If that makes it easier for you people that are still working.

But as Mr. Spade had said, this is your commission. It really is, you know, what works for your schedule so that you all could be here at the same time.

Do we want to try five and see how it works? And if we run into conflict with it, we move it back to 05:30. Is everybody good with that?

That's good.

Works for me?

Yeah. Yeah. Next month, do 05:00?

Yeah. We'll do 05:00 next month. Okay. Going back to some of the old business.

Mike, can we rely on the clerk over here to make a change on the website?

Yes, absolutely.

To show 05:00 for next

month? Yes.

Sure. If not

Of course.

Further into the future?

Yes.

Okay.

As long as it's working out, we will make that change for 05:00 and keep it. And then if you guys decide to go backwards, then we'll go back to

the Okay. Alright.

And if I can just make one comment too when it comes to, like, the meeting times. We like to try to keep them similar. This is the only board that meets at, like, 05:30. So we have counsel who meets at five. We have some other boards and commissions that meet at five, or they meet at, like, six. So, like, the 05:30, I think, is confusing to people in general. You know what I mean? So we try we we often try to kinda keep them similar times. So, you know, if it doesn't work out, it's not an issue. Obviously, we are happy to like they said, it's your board. You guys decide how you wanna do it. But we will make that change for 05:00, and if it doesn't work out, shift it to 05:30 or whatever you need

to But five five

right now doesn't seem to be a conflict with anybody else?

No. And, I mean, it it it's good for, like, the the room. It's good for timing in the sense of staff and everything.

But k.

Obviously, if you guys can't make it, you're the important people. You need to be here. So

k. Okay. Alright. Let's stick with 5PM and see how that works. Going back to old business, next month, I'm going to try to see if we can get the video conference scheduled with Ryan Hunt as was discussed. He's the founder of Mountain Up, Panda Commando. He does recruiting for veterans, both the veteran and their spouses. He has a plethora of resources. He was, part of the Tunk Mountain division, deployed multiple times. Just an all around outstanding guy, and he really wants to be able to help us grow our, the commission that we have here.

So I will try and get him scheduled to come in to do the teleconference next month. And as mister Elkins said, we'll try and do something early. I'll reach out to you during the week, and we'll see about getting that set up.

Yeah. We can do a just a test run, from this room to find out if, any issues. Mister, oh my gosh. I can't remember Chuck's name. Mr. Yes. He'll be working with us on that to make it happen as well.

Okay. Perfect. Yeah. He lives in Chicago for those that didn't know. So I'm trying to get here to be a little bit of a journey. Any new business that we want to discuss?

Well, back to old business. What did we do anything with the retailers and the discounts? Did we go any further with that? What Christine was talking about, about having a tag logo on the retail businesses in green.

Veteran friendly tags? Yes. Veteran friendly notification? That

has been discussed, and we actually that was part of the new business I was going to bring up. Over the next month, if we can reach out to businesses, I will continue to reach out to the Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Spitz offered to help as well, trying to get involved, the community businesses. So what we're trying to do, if you haven't heard, is we are trying to set up local res or businesses here in the city of Green that are veteran friendly, whether they offer a discount of some sort, whether they make donations to some sort of veteran program, something like that, to be able to recognize them and give them a decal.

I've been communicating with chamber of commerce trying to get this rolling. It's been very well received from the chamber. Now it's gonna be up to us and the chamber trying to make this push out to the community and out to the business within the city to make this happen. Sure. So over the next month, that's kind of where I would like to put some of our focus because we're going to be rolling into Memorial Day in the coming months, so we'll have to shift focus into that as well.

But, for this month, if we can all just come up with plans, brainstorm, come up with different ideas on how to get the businesses, what we would like to see for the business, have those conversations. And I know that there's multiple businesses that want to support it. There have been a couple of businesses that have stressed having a veteran's, like, luncheon or an outing where the veterans and community come together, hang out, get to talk to people, because as veterans, we know what resources we need. Right. So if we can push that out to the community and let them know, they would be willing to help us achieve that.

So that's kind of the goal with this whole.

Right. But I guess I was going with the Chamber of Commerce. Do we need to do anything additional with them, or are we kind of on a road that's going somewhere?

So we are on a path with them to work. They meet I believe they meet Friday at, AlphaGone, and they will have their lunch in. If we want to try and get to that, if one of us is able to attend that meeting, they're more than welcome to have us, and I can talk to that again? Alpha Gone. I think it's Alpha Gone. Mhmm. Down off Arlington over in Interstate Parkway.

Okay. Twelve? Is that noon or

get to time. Okay. I'll send it out in a chat.

Yeah. Because I'll I'll go if it

Yeah.

If that works out that way.

So Mike Wine is the president of the Chamber of Commerce. He's a veteran. He was recognized. Yes. Okay. So he, 100%, is on board with it too. So

This is that restaurant that's back in behind where the old city used to be?

Correct. Yeah. Correct.

I've probably seen it.

I just never heard of

the name.

Yeah. It's a pretty popular place here in the city. Okay.

Any other new business? You had mentioned Memorial Day? Yes. Something I wanted to bring up, we had talked about, and I believe we had kind of planned in our budget for this year was doing artificial wreaths for each branch of service and trying to get do a placement of those during the Memorial Day ceremony. Is that something that we still wanted to move forward with? And if so, the American Legion Post here locally through with, Bob Beasley has been a huge supporter of the commission. Do we wanna work with him to try and get a veteran from each branch, maybe through the American Legion, that could participate in that? Absolutely. Okay. I can work with Bob on that.

And is anybody looking into the service branch wreaths, or do we need somebody to spearhead that? Say that again. We talked about doing those service branch wreaths.

Yes. I I got that part. I just Yeah.

The last part with

Has anybody is anybody taking that on, or do we need somebody to spearhead that still?

I guess we need somebody here.

Yes. Yes.

Has Allegiant done anything similar to that in the past that they could give us a contact?

I can talk with Bob. I guess kind of my thought was if we could get even just veterans from the community that represent each service branch to participate in can I mean, replace

we've got to have the where's the wreath coming from? It's not going to materialize out of nowhere.

No, that's what we're talking about is somebody needs to spearhead buying, you know, finding those so that we can have

I'm asking, has the Legion done anything similar to that in the past that they can give us a leg up on who to contact to actually get the wreath?

I don't know about that. I know we've looked online when we talked about it previously and there were a ton of options out there that had some nice looking wreaths. Actually, we're finding a I think we're looking at Etsy, we'd found a lot on there. Yeah.

Just pulled up Etsy. There's Munch.

Yeah. You might be able to get support with that for our maps as well. Yeah. So that's another option. Yeah.

Do you want me to continue looking into the recent bring some options in for people to for the commission to look at and sign on? Please. I'll try and have something for next meeting. That way we can get an order in early.

Any other new business?

Well, since we're on Memorial Day, just a reminder to the commission to think of veterans within the community that we can honor at the upcoming Memorial Day ceremony. And then another, reminder is the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame nominations for those, potential Hall of Famers, if you will, is June 1. That is the deadline. So let's think about, those individuals or one individual, however we want to do it. And then we've got to submit an application online with the state of Ohio. The deadline, again, is Monday, June 1 for nominations.

Is there a way that we could go through the city as far as trying to find a veteran in the community to refer for that?

Go ahead, Mr. Spade. I know you have a thought.

I think the referrals would probably come from you guys for the Okay. Most We do have a good suggestion of somebody that I'd like to discuss offline possibly, that I think would definitely be a good candidate for it.

Okay. Sounds good. All right.

Can I chime in about new business here?

Yes, sir.

So just as a reminder, the state of the city is Thursday, January 29. Doors open at six and that is at Green High School in the auditorium. Good opportunity to come in and hear what the mayor has on the agenda for the year and a recap from last year. Also, the city of Green, offers the green leadership or green leadership initiative, which is a really cool program here in the City Of Green where it's local community members or business members. They apply for the class, and it does cost a fee.

But it is, I think, four weeks four different sessions spread out, and there's a project. And it's just a really good way to get involved in the community. More information about that is listed on the City of Green website, but definitely something to look into if you're just looking for another way to get involved.

Okay. Thank you.

All right. Yeah. I think the Ohio Hall of Fame, we need to focus on that with the deadline being the June 1. We're coming up against the wall on that, so we need to really start working on that and look at selecting a nominee and building the package and getting that sent down and getting it reviewed. And so, we'll talk off.

And if you guys know anybody too, please let us know and get their information and go that route. Any other new business? Anything last minute? Welcome, Board. Thank you. All right. Motion to adjourn.

So moved. Second.

All in favor, say aye. Aye.