WELL NEWSLETTER – June 19, 2006

Monday, July 10 – Speaker Event: “Elders Speak”
6:30 - 8:30pm Little Lake Grange Hall – 291 School St. Come listen to stories addressing traditional values and agricultural practices here in the Little Lake Valley. This event will be co-sponsored by the Willits Grange.

Saturday, July 22 – Special Meeting: “The Future of WELL”
All day – exact times to be announced – Willits Community Center This all day meeting will culminate in the adoption of WELL’s Membership and Governance structures and the Strategic Plan. Subcommittees have been working hard on drafts, which will be widely available by mid-June. Please come to this meeting to give your feedback, work on incorporating changes, and, to VOTE on accepting these documents. This is the culmination of months of work and visioning.

Two of the draft documents to be discussed and, hopefully, adopted are ready for your review. I have attached a PDF version of the Governance Document and the Membership document. If you are unable to open this document, let me know and I can arrange to get you one in a different way. The Strategic Plan should come to you early next week after the committee finishes the final revisions.

Please – print out these documents, read them carefully, take notes. There are also copies available in the office for anyone who is interested. You may give your feedback prior to the meeting by contacting WELL (contact information is at the bottom of the newsletter) or, you may come to the meeting and give your input directly. However, it is critical that you take the time to absorb the voluminous amount of information in these documents – PRIOR to the meeting.

Saturday, July 22 – PARTY
6-10 pm, at the Bradford home – 284 Redwood Ave. Join us to celebrate this day’s hard work and all of WELL’s progress. More details to come.

Our schedule is intentionally light this summer. We suspect that people will busy with travel plans, gardening and general warm weather frolicking. The events we have planned should be FUN, as well as informative. It is also our sincere hope that folks will take time to carefully read the documents that our three hard working committees – Strategic Planning, Membership and Governance – will be distributing soon. Broad, carefully considered input is welcome and vital in this process. We hope that by the end of the summer we will have a lot of these details agreed upon and in place, allowing us to turn our attention to further projects – large and small alike.

WELL News

On June 12 there was an exciting WELL meeting where projects were discussed. There was a lot of energy and some new faces! Thanks to everyone who participated in this evening.
     “At our June 12 meeting, when WELL projects were discussed, it was suggested that there should be a coordinator/liaison person to keep track of all the information from food projects and give it out to interested people. I would be happy to serve that function. Since I missed a lot of what was said, I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has ideas what that function would include. Thanks! Mary Zellachild 459-3963; maryzel@saber.net “

WELL Website Be sure to visit the WELL website: www.willitseconomiclocalization.org. Suzie Gruber recently took the reins from Brian Corzilius and is diligently keeping the site updated. Many thanks again, to Brian, for getting this going and keeping it alive. And newer thanks to Suzie for her dedication to this ongoing task.

You can now access many presentations and much information from the Regional Localization Networking Conference – RLNC – with more coming each week.

WELL in the world Brian Weller is often away from home these days, spreading the word about WELL and helping other communities to localize themselves. He has presentations coming up in Carbondale, Colorado and Bainbridge Island, Washington. He is only recently returned from Kinsale, Ireland. This is a quote from the article written after his presentation: “Brian’s talk and seminar gave valuable insights into the process that one community has followed to prepare for the coming energy crises. Engaging, charismatic and at times hilarious, Brian did not shirk from the difficulties that they have encountered along the way, but also gave us useful tools for working in groups, facilitating meetings, and much more. The process in Willits stands as an inspiration to us all as what a community can achieve in a very short space of time.” You can read the entire article here: http://transitionculture.org/?p=331

Get Involved
WELL officially endorsed the precautionary principle, so this is good news, please lend your support: The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors will hear and vote on whether to adopt a Precautionary Principle Policy for the County. The hearing presents an opportunity to voice your support for Mendocino County's first environmental policy - and one that states the value of public input, transparency, full-cost accounting, and guidance towards an alternative with the least potential impact on human health and the environment.

The final draft is available here: www.MendoPrecaution.org/2006-04MendocinoPrecautionary.pdf

When: Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Time: 1:30 PM
Location: Supervisors Chambers, 501 Low Gap Rd., Ukiah, CA

What You Can Do:
1. Please consider attending the Board of Supervisors hearing on this issue. If you can attend the hearing on June 27th, plan on speaking in support of the Precautionary Principle. You will be be provided 2-3 minutes or you can simply state your support for the Precautionary Principle.
2. If you cannot attend the hearing, please consider faxing or emailing a letter of support to the Board of Supervisors, Cc:ing your district Supervisor. Board of Supervisors Fax: (707) 463-4245 Email: bos@co.mendocino.ca.us
3. Endorse the Precautionary Principle in Mendocino County decision-making! Go to www.mendoprecaution.org For more information: See MendoPrecaution.org or contact: info@EnvironmentalCommons.org, (707) 884-5002.

“An Inconvenient Truth” There have been a lot of good reviews of Al Gore’s film, which relates to topics that concern WELL. This film will be showing in Willits, at the Noyo Theater, hopefully in July, according to their manager. To learn more about the film, go the website: http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Job Opportunity You may have seen the following add running in the last few editions of the Willits News. If you’d like to apply, call today as hires are being made presently.

REDI – Renewable Energy Development Institute
Introducing 250 Willits homes to HELP, a new Energy Efficiency Program that will provide hands-on, direct assistance to all income levels.

HELP is hiring: Data Coordinator Set-up Excel; Enter and process Survey and Audit data; Produce summaries. $12/hr 12 hours/wk flexible M-Saturday 9AM-4PM June 19 – Oct 27
Household Surveyors Door-to-door; Assist interested households with survey questions. $10/hr 6-18 hours/wk; flexible; M-Thurs 6-9PM; Sat 9AM-4PM July 1 – Aug 12. Training provided.
Energy Auditors Conduct household Energy Audits. 10/hr 12-18 hours/wk; flexible; M-Sat 9AM-9PM; July 10 – Sept 15. Training provided.
Contact George at REDI – 459.1256

Thanks Many thanks are due, and are hereby offered to Marc Grail, Suzie Gruber and Liam UiCearbhail for their generous and timely help in the WELL office. They have undertaken the thankless and often frustrating task of working the kinks out of our internal network and with our internet connections. Their technical expertise and unflagging devotion has been invaluable.

Office Note: If you would like to be taken off this mailing list, please let me know and I will gladly oblige.

Happy Solstice!

spring@redinet.org
Spring Senerchia, Office Manager
Willits Economic Localization - WELL
Renewable Energy Development Institute - REDI
75 N. Main St. PMB 234
Willits, CA 95490
707.459.1256