Community Council

“Expenses dues 280 office expense 844 taxes and licenses 50 d&o insurance 796 bank charges 129 training 425 study program materials 13,605 comm convers prog mat. 26,385 indicators prog materials 24,611 outreach prog materials 1,091 fundraising 675 non-investment depreciation 649 total 69,540”

“Accounts receivable 1,020 3,500 equipment 1,890 3,419 less accumulated depreciation 1,034 1,682 total 1,876 5,237”

“Accounts payable and accrued expenses 2,662 4,047”

“The community council is a regional organization that will enable citizens to study, discuss, and develop recommendations to solve problems and improve our regional community. The region in which the council will operate includes part of southeast washington state and a small part of northeast oregon state, with the city of walla walla, washington representing the largest population center. The council will generate a recurring cycle of discussion, research, consensus, advocacy, and measurement of progress toward community improvement. The council has established a program committee that will annually recommend regional issues for study to the board of directors for selection, approval, and the beginning of action.”

“This is the eighth year of community council's community-building-bringing citizens together to learn from one another, identify shared priorities, address common challenges, and advocate for positive change. This year, community council's impact has grown significantly both in terms of programmatic development and community engagement. In 2016 we concluded a community study, sustained and extended current implementation work, launched a new regional visioning project, and continued to develop a set of regional indicators. We greatly expanded our outreach efforts and made our workshops and meetings more inclusive by working with community partners to engage new segments of our population, and by providing spanish translation and interpretation, childcare, and refreshments. Not only did those efforts enable more community members to participate and have their voices heard, expanded engagement also leveraged the strength of our region's diversity. Our programs and outreach expanded exponentially in 2016, but our development work did not. We expect our development work to catch up to our programming in 2017. Community conversations in 2016 community council engaged in a collaborative effort with blue mountain community foundation, sherwood trust, and united way of walla walla county to support a series of community conversations. The community conversations project was designed to engage community members in a dialogue about our region's future and the goal was to identify a set of regional priorities that could guide action. A number of outreach strategies were deployed to hear from as many residents of our region as possible. The collection of community treasures identified shared values and highlighted the region's many strengths. Large community workshops held in walla walla, dayton, waitsburg, and milton-freewater provided opportunities for community members to hear each other's ideas for the future. In addition to working with community organizers to reach a broader audience, we made those meetings more inclusive and accessible by providing refreshments, child care, and simultaneous spanish interpretation. A smaller workshop that specifically sought input from spanish-speaking latino residents was held at the carrie street community center in spanish, and provided a unique opportunity to hear from a part of our community whose voice is often left out of planning efforts. In addition, roundtable discussions, hosted by united way of walla walla county, engaged service clubs, youth centers, and areas businesses in conversations about challenges and possibilities. Finally, visioning documents from regional jurisdictions and organizations brought additional issues and opportunities into the conversation. All told, over 800 ideas were gathered, and in september a number of prioritizing workshops were convened where the list of ideas was winnowed down and community members identified their top goals. The top priorities (access to education, strong and diverse economy, health and wellbeing, care for nature, and safety, in that order) were revealed at a final celebration in december, which was attended by over 250 community members. Community indicators project community council continues to work towards the development of a set of indicators to support on-going efforts and identify new challenges. In january, we hosted a second "data walk" in collaboration with the washington state budget and policy center. This second data walk built upon what we had heard at the first data walk in december 2015: that latinos and young families were not well-represented at the meeting. To make the second data walk more accessible to those groups, we provided spanish versions of all data and analysis, simultaneous spanish interpretation during the meeting, childcare, and refreshments. We also expanded the geographic scope of the data to include the entire region, not just walla walla as was done in 2015. Making the meeting more inclusive and broade”