Veterans Advisory Commission - Regular Meeting

Alright. Good evening. I officially call this meeting to order. Please 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.

Alright. Thank you. Roll call, please. Sure. Mister Sonopoli? Here. Mister Suffolkl? Here. Mister Hughes? Here. Mister Burgess?

Here.

And mister Mikkelsen is absent.

Yes. Alright. Did everybody get a chance to look at the minutes from the last meeting?

Yes. Yes.

Motion to approve? I approve. Motion.

I second. Alright. Minutes are approved. Before we go forward, any citizen comments today? Okay.

Some unfinished business from the past couple of meetings. Memorial Day Parade that is fast approaching. With that, I did reach out to the Patriot Warriors to try and get them to follow us in the parade. With it being the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of The US, we would like to make the parade stand out more patriotic than other parades in the past. So if people have ideas, anything like that, please come forward.

Let us know how we can get, different organizations involved that wanna show their, patriotism and if anybody has any sort of, say, like the Patriot Warriors, if we're not able to get them, but somebody knows some bike club that is in support of veterans, please let us know. I would love to have, them follow us.

Mr. Hughes, if I could ask for those that may not know, who are the Patriot Warriors?

So the Patriot Warriors is a bike club that traditionally, if there is a military funeral, military parade, something like that, you'll get 20 to a thousand bikes that'll show up, and they'll pay their respect to the soldiers that are fallen or the member of the military. With the parades and things like that, they love to show their support. So they'll show up with their bikes and their American flags and all the different branch flags on the bikes and just show a lot of representation and patriotism to what our country has done for us. So just a way to get back. But if anybody has any ideas as far as Memorial Day, please speak up.

Let us know, and we will try to work that because before we know it, Memorial Day will be here. We got one more meeting before that. One more meeting there. So

Okay. Veterans friendly businesses, we've

been talking about that over the past few months. I got word that the chair for the chamber has stepped down. So there is they are in work to seat a new chair. With that, we had some decals that were designed for the veterans businesses as far as showing support to the community for the for the different businesses that are here. One of the ones that was put out there, if you can pull it up on your phone, mister Selfco, please.

It's an American flag and it's in the shape of a star. It's red, white, and blue. Very patriotic. That is my vote, and I want your guys' agreement on that or speak otherwise. If you don't like it, then we'll go

back to that. Yeah. Vito wasn't there, but, yeah, we we like that. Yeah.

That was good. So if we're all in favor of that, we'll go ahead and move forward with getting that decal going, and I'll meet with the chamber in the next couple weeks and try to get them to, push out getting the veteran friendly businesses out there, the different benefits that may be available for veterans.

So I guess while we've got a resource here, Valerie, for getting those printed, if we wanted to do window stickers, would that be something easier done through your office or through an outside resource if we wanted to get some stickers printed

for veteran

friendly businesses in the community. Okay.

Great.

Great.

Appreciate

it. The other thing that we need to bring up on that is, kind of an introduction for us. If we're going to go around a lot, I'm happy to do that and do cold calls Absolutely. But say, hey, the chamber is Absolutely. Responsive. If we can get something from them on that Absolutely. I think that works.

Okay.

Ahead of any of that that's happening so that then you know that it kind of warms up that cold call and

people Yes.

Yeah, be included. Yeah, that'd be good. You.

As far as the friendly businesses go, I would like to give a shout out to Kittles. They have opened their doors this evening for us from six to eight. We will be hosting a Greens Veterans Rally Point. This will be a monthly occurrence. It'll be the first Tuesday of every month from six to 8PM.

If you have any neighbors, family, friends, anything like that that are veterans, please let them know. That way we can get this out there and make it an event just so we can have other veterans in the neighborhood get to know each other. With us being the representatives for the city, we can get some ideas to come back to the city with and possibly improve the veteran programs here within the community as well. So I just wanna say thank you to them. And again, we will be doing it tonight from six to 8PM.

If you're willing to come, we'd love to have you. As far as any unfinished business that is not brought up, anybody have anything? Okay. New business. Keith Buckley with MAPS Air Museum Director. If you would like wanna come up and share your business with us, that'd be great.

Well, good evening. My name is Keith Bucklew. I'm a retired United States marine, and I was an aviator in the marines. I recently retired in 2022. I actually live in Hartville, but I work at the I'm the new executive director at the MAPS Air Museum.

I just started about a month ago, but I've been working real close with the Green City officials and local businesses and area to kind of build our relationship with local community considering we're kind of in a unique position, you know, pretty much we're in Summit County fixed on the airport which is also in Stark County. So we're kinda split between two worlds. But, you know, I'm here as a veteran and also to learn more about what Green's doing for veterans, but also to offer up anything that MAPS can do to support local veterans. We're doing a resource hub, which is a monthly meeting where we're kind of coordinating and pulling resources for veterans to, you know, create basically a local one stop shop for veterans for the end of the need service, whether it's a Veterans Service Commission or housing assistance or a food pantry and those things. But we just started that program about three months ago, we're still working through that.

We meet meet monthly with that. We also meet on Zoom for that. But I just wanted to come by and introduce myself. And as a veteran, I'm I'm almost always interested in what's going on in other communities. And as a director over at MAPS, you know, I want you to know that we're a resource for Green to use, whether it's for meeting space or history programs or your local school STEM programs or veterans events.

We host many. And in fact, in November, right before Veterans Day, we're gonna do America two fifty Honoring Veterans event. It'll be that Saturday closest to I think I want to say it's November 8 that have to double check. But we're hosting a very big Veterans event that will include a dinner at night where we're going to put on our local history veterans event where we'll have dinner and a very well put together history program, which is just starting to coordinate now. But with that, if you have any questions for me, be sticking around.

Yeah. Are you going to put the plane back up?

Yes. So the plane, the P-fifty one, is going back up. It's finishing its final paint. It's gonna be quite the endeavor to get it back up, the weather is meant to be good. But I I would assume I think the the best guess I have is is hopefully before Memorial Day. But it's quite a big job to get that down Yeah. Back up safely.

It's a great landmark.

Yeah. And we just got a Harrier, an AVAB Harrier from the Marine Corps. We're getting that put together, the wings off that right now. Uh-huh. But that's actually the airplane I flew in the Marines. I actually flew that airplane That's awesome. 31 times. So it's one of my it's kind of cool to walk out there and see it every day and bring my memories. Awesome question, thank you. And now we're also I know they're doing Freedom Fest at Green, but we're also hosting the Confederate Air Force that week, is the victory tour at Arizona, which is gonna have a b 17 and a b 25.

That'll be there the whole week at Maps, so it'll be able to come in and get tours. And then they're also offering flights on the weekend. So that kind of combines we're working closely with the green and communications team to make sure we're kind of united on that effort. But it should be a really amazing opportunity. Last time those World War II warbirds who were here was a twenty nineteen. So we're hoping to establish relationship where we have them every two years. But it would be a really unique opportunity for the local area, especially for veterans to get out there and see these airplanes. The B-twenty 17, there's only three of those flying in the world anymore. Also, may I any more questions?

Let's meet up after this. We'll exchange information.

Awesome. Yeah, I'll go by car.

I would love to talk with you and see what we can do to work alongside with you and

Yeah. Would love that. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you.

And I'm jealous of well, I don't wanna say jealous. I'm envious because you guys have $44.00 1 there. Because when I was at Pope, I worked that C-one 130 there. Oh, okay.

Yeah. That's awesome. That's Yes. Got all local A lot of the guys that have volunteered at Metz, some of those guys that were air crew on that or flew that airplane. Yeah.

Yeah. I wrote in one.

Yeah. Oh

yeah. No windows. Yeah.

I wrote in

a lot of C-130s. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you. All right. Any other new business?

I know you've, talked about the Memorial Day parade a little bit, but, I want to talk about the ceremony. I'm unable to attend next month, and so we're starting to think about the ceremony. And what we've decided is every year we want a speaker from the community. Last year, we had the Ohio Senator Casey Weinstein come and speak. And so typically, it's a veteran.

I think we have a great person right here that would be a great speaker. Actually, when I spoke with the mayor about this today, he actually also suggested Keith. We just don't know if his schedule's available. But give it some thought of who you guys would like to see as a speaker. If there's somebody influential in the community, touches green in some way, like Casey, Senator Weinstein doesn't live in green, but he serves green, those kind of things.

And once Keith knows if he's available or not, then we can decide if that's the way. But give it some thought, and maybe each year at this time, we, you know, kind of add it to the calendar to think about. Awesome. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you. Speaking of Memorial Day, as I said, we have the flags available. As far as a vehicle, if anybody has connections with any type of military vehicle, let us know, please. If not, I'm willing to open up using my vehicle again. Or if somebody has connections to some sort of a classic vehicle, something like that that we all fit in, just let us know. Do you have anything?

No. Okay.

I'm gonna put a couple of people on the spot. I'm pretty sure there were two people who were sent to talk to us a little bit Does one of them wanna come up? He told me you guys wanted to talk to us about memorial day plans.

To absorb the information that you guys are using.

Okay. So would you guys like talk to us after the meeting about, you know, your involvement in the ceremony and things like that? You should totally put them on the spot and make them come up and

speak. Okay.

Alright. Well, then I guess they're off the hook.

Okay. I guess we'll forgive them. Alright. Carl, welcome.

Thank you. Sorry I'm late.

You are fine. You look like you got a big book there, so it looks like you might have something that you would like to share.

Yeah. I was getting getting ready to share it with the detachment.

We're discussing Memorial Day. We're discussing the friendly the veterans friendly businesses.

Okay.

Kittles this evening from six to eight for the Tonight? Yes. And that will be a monthly event going forward. I have a schedule here if you guys would like to see it. And this is gonna get shared out onto the city as well. Alright. Do you have anything?

No, no, no. I've caught my head.

Anybody else have any official business? Mr. Elkins and I, we're still working forward with the Veteran Hall of Fame induction. So we have a meeting for next week to get some more information on that. So

Yeah. And as a reminder of that application, nomination form is due June 1 down in Columbus. So we'll start working on the narratives. We did get, as Mike, had mentioned, some some good information on our candidate. And with a meeting next week, we hope you get much more and complete the nomination form and submit it.

Yes.

Okay.

Anybody else have anything? All right. Motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Alright. Meeting's closed.