President’s Report to the 1000 Friends of Connecticut Board

November 15, 2007

Changing Public Policy

To Support Smarter Growth

State and Local Policy

Legislation

A bond package was passed that included funding for a number of smart growth policies including the Regional Incentive Grants, Geospatial Imaging Systems, and grants to municipalities to upgrade their plans of Conservation and Development.

There is a $30 million Fix it First program for roads that are not part of the interstate highway system, an additional $45 million for a Fix it First bridge program, a small allotment for urban mass transit, funds for brownfields, and money for walking trails and bikeways. A complete review will be included in the Report Card currently in draft form and due for release before the 2008 session.

The Responsible Growth Task Force has begun meeting. Appointments include Leo Canty, Bill Cibes, Maureen Hart, Joe McGee, Natalie Ketcham, Ryan Bingham and me as well as the agency heads, including CHFA, CDA, DECD, CEP, DOT, CCT, DoAg, etc. The schedule is tight, and we will be challenged to eek substantitave recommendations out of this group by its reporting deadline.

Zoning

1000 Friends, CT-LISC, CT Main Street Center, and Mark Pellegrini from the Town of Manchester and the CT Chapter of the APA convened a second stake-holder meeting to discuss barriers to mixed use mixed income development, including zoning. A follow-up planning meeting is scheduled for November 16^th. Bob and Heidi met with Rick Porth of the Hartford Foundation to discuss a possible grant for this work. He encouraged us to submit a letter of intent to the foundation. We are now waiting to see if the foundation will entertain a full proposal. The Responsible Growth Task Force will discuss land use laws and regulations at its next meeting. Heidi recommended Robert Orr be invited to present on the smart code. Dwight Merriam and Steve Soler were short-listed to meet with the Task Force.

Wiggin and Dana’s pro bono committee approved a request for Anika Singh, a newer staff attorney, to research model processes for the adoption of state regulations municipalities may adopt and the adoption of smart codes in other states for us. She is also researching programs that link brownfield and Greenfield investment.

Older Industrial Cities

We recruited from the list of people who’d attended any of the three Older Industrial Cities events in the summer participants in a facilitated planning event in September. It was the first official meeting of the ad hoc Advisory Board. The group was charged with helping to integrate the messages in Developing Connecticut’s Economic Future and the recommendations of the Older Industrial Cities report into a comprehensive set of strategies and messages to guide our work in 2008 and beyond. The recommendations fed the substance of the draft work plan before the Board of Trustees in November.

Steve and Heidi met with Senator Toni Harp in New Haven to talk about urban issues in the context of the Governor’s Responsible Growth initiatives and the Brownfield Task Force’s revitalization recommendations. She agreed to help organize an educational meeting for legislative leaders and urban legislators about the findings in the report and relevant policy recommendations for revitalizing our cities.

Strengthening the Smart Growth Constituency

Communications/Education/Outreach/

Partnerships

Through the late summer and into the fall, we continued an extensive communications and outreach campaign. The recent highlights of the campaign were the conference, recruiting a coordinator for the outreach and education initiative and continuing to cultivate media exposure.

In addition, Heidi presented to the East Hamton Rotary. She was a panelist on a climate change and sustainability panel at the Peabody Museum in New Haven. She presented an introduction to smart growth hosted by the Democratic Town Committee in Simsbury. Heidi was a guest on community TV in both Simsbury and Wallingford to discuss smart growth issues in these towns where development, land use, transportation and taxes were hot issues in the municipal elections. Tom Monahan invited Heidi onto the show to preview the conference. 1000 Friends co-sponsored a transportation press conference with the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, the Citizens Transportation Lobby, the CT Fund for the Environment and others. 1000 Friends was quoted in articles in the Norwich Bulletin, CT Post, Meriden Record Journal, New Haven Register, and both the Yale daily and weekly papers. Heidi met with one of the staff at CPTV to discuss partnering on a smart growth documentary.

Heidi and Leo began sorting through our video footage for the television show.

We’ve done relatively well at keeping the Webpage current, though it was particularly challenging with all the new developments in rapid sucession with the conference. We have begun to monitor Webpage use. Our visitors don’t spend much time on the site, and seldom visit more than the initial page. In 2 months, our site was visited 1,720 times. We had 1,109 unique visitors and they look at an average of two pages per visit. The conference successfully drove people to our site. (We had 138 visits the day before the conference alone.) Visits to our site spiked just after the direct mail appeal and spike when we send the monthly E-news as well. We will be working to beef-up both the look and the content so that people who visit the site find it a more appealing resource and spend more time. Interestingly, on Saturdays and Sundays, people look at twice as many pages and spend 3 times as long on the site as they do Monday through Friday.

We continue to build both the mail the Email outreach list.

We held our first annual smart growth conference on November 14^th. We planned for 275 people, had room for 300, had 340 registrations and 319 people attended. Most of the people who registered were new to our organization. There were 14 workshops, two speakers and a state government plenary. Workshop presentations and more are available on our Website. Conference evaluations were generally very positive. We had a number of sponsors and the conference broke even. Lauren O’Connell, who worked for 1000 Friends from June to November coordinating the conference did a wonderful job! Thank you, Lauren. Thank you too, to all our sponsors, co-sponsoring organizations, presenters, and volunteers!!

Fundraising

Individuals

The Maura Casey event at the Hartford Golf Club was a successful friendraiser. We had good turn out, Maura was entertaining and informative. Eunice and Heidi are following up. Thank you, Maura and Eunice!

We mailed the fall direct appeal in early October. And we conducted an abbreviated phone follow up. The list’s phone numbers continue to plague us.

Jonas Maciunas and Heidi are following up on the appeal to the architecture community. 1000 Friends will be honored by the Architecture Foundation at its spring awards event.

Administration

Staffing

We have no interns this semester. Lauren will be on staff until the 21^st of November when she moved to Vermont to teach skiing.

Our attempts to recruit a fundraising consultant to conduct the corporate campaign have been unsuccessful.

We have posted a position to conduct the canvass and coordinate next year’s conference.

We’re in final negotiations with a consultant to conduct education and outreach to targeted groups and organizations in strategic areas. Heidi and the consultant are developing contract measurement outcomes and, if all goes well, she will begin work in early December.

Respectfully submitted,

Heidi Green, President

November 15, 2007