Time and Attendance

Meeting start and finish: 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Members Present (alphabetical order): Don Bailey (City of

McCall), Scotty Davenport (Cascade Chamber), Karla Miller (member at large), Ken Minshall (City of Donnelly), David Papiez (member at large), Rob Terry (City of Cascade), Bill Willey (unincorporated Valley County), Willem Braak (non-voting/UI Extension).
Members absent:  David Carey (McCall Area Chamber)
Non-members present Larry Laxson (Valley County’s Parks & Recreation Manager), Paul Johnson (business representative, Donnelly).
Presiding: David Papiez

Decisions and notable points

Sub Committee Updates

VCED Structure Formalization:

David Papiez: the group’s (David, Don Bailey and Bill Willey) intent is to have a proposal on becoming a 501(c)4 organization available at the September meeting.

Energy team

Scotty Davenport: reported on an effort to do a soil temperature inventory done in Cascade along the potential corridor along highway 55 from upper bridge to the airport. The study would employ at a low-cost method using temperature probing. The $3,500 will need funding from property owners in the corridor. The study will then funnel into a grant application to finalize a feasibility study for infrastructure that would allow geothermal energy use by property owners in the corridor and start discussions with investors to create such a public infrastructure.

Scotty also reported on the demonstration projects at Y-camp at Horsethief reservoir  and Tim O’Leary’s efforts to work with the Y in creating educational projects to support them.

Business Plan Competition

Karla Miller: reported that the county and all three cities (McCall, Donnelly and Cascade) had committed financial support for the business plan contest. These public funds will be strictly allocated to organizing and promoting the contest, and will not be part of the prize money (prize monies for a business plan can be potentially construed as an “investment” in a private company, which Idaho constitution prohibits counties and cities to do) . The city of McCall and Cascade suggested that any invoices up to the committed amount be submitted for payment through the cities. The meeting suggested to also use the funds from county and Donnelly in that manner. In this manner any savings or in-kind donations from services in promotion and organization would automatically translate into savings to the sponsoring communities.

Karla also reported that a first donation of $2,000 for prize monies was committed by the (McCall community organization for) Better Neighborhoods.

Strategic Plan

The council reviewed the strategic plan (link to final draft) and suggested the following changes:

Introduction (Valley County’s Economy): change “Tamarack boom” into “last real estate boom (2005-2008)”; some spelling suggestions; add “proprietor income” to the “wage per job” metric, since proprietor income reflects entrepreneurship and business ownership. The same changes apply to the attachment (more in-depth economic analysis).

Council role: no material changes (a spelling suggestion)

Vision and focus: a focus on diversity in addition to added value; the council was unanimous that an aggressive reliance on business recruitment was challenging but that the term “unrealistic” was too negative and discouraged efforts for compatible business recruitment.

Strategy 1: Sector Development:

• Larry Laxson and Wim Braak will re-word some of the goals on recreation development
• Karla Miller will join Bill Willey as council members driving the action item “Reviving the Grange”
• Maybe the web/coding sector could adopt a regional recreation website as a digital collaboration challenge

Strategy 2: Local Entrepreneurship

• Business Acceleration through educational and mentoring support – Paul Johnson will also be a primary council member on this action item

Strategy 3: Asset Development

• Promoting vibrant communities: Don Bailey and David Papiez as primary council members
• Watershed management: Karla Miller and David Papiez will function as primary council members
• Other projects not yet translated into objectives:  add
• Support Community Capacity enhancement projects like The McCall College initiative, or communication enterprises like a local radio station (Karla reported on the initiative of Long Valley Community Radio – link to flyer).

Round Table

Donnelly Chamber and/or Business representation

The Donnelly chamber was recently revived and the council had asked Paul Johnson, chamber member and one of the new owners of the Long Valley Motel in Donnelly, to discuss representation in the council with the Donnelly chamber. Paul’s feedback was that the chamber board, at this point in time, did not see a use or benefit in participating. Paul expressed willingness to represent the business community in Donnelly to the best of his ability until the chamber would decide otherwise, or until a formal representation would be nominated. Wim suggested that the council adopt this suggestion and make Paul Johnson interim representative of the Donnelly business community until the chamber would formally nominate a member. The council adopted this suggestion.