Normal Human Relations Commission
August 16, 2005 5 PM
Normal City Hall

1. Call to Order:
   Chairman Evelyn Young called the meeting to order at 5:03 pm.
    
   • Present: Chairman Young and Commissioners, Bergner, Brown, Chaudhari, and Harshbarger
      
   • Absent: Commissioner McKeeth
      
   • Others Present: Staff: Jennifer Hanna and Jose Garibay
   • Bloomington Human Relations commissioners: Otis Evans, Neil Shah, Tony Jones
      
2. Old Business
   • Giveaways
     1. Otis Evans suggested an acrylic paperweight. He stated that Ernestine currently has an example. Commissioners wanted to know what the budgeted amount for the giveaways are. Staff informed the commissioners that there isn’t a budgeted amount at this time. That is currently being worked out between the cities.
     2. Terry Brown suggested a metal coin. He passed out examples and a cost estimate for the coins as well as the stand or bag that they would be in.
     3. Ramesh suggested a gift book or CD
     4. All commissioners are to give Jennifer their choices for the giveaway with price, pictures etc. She will put them in an excel spreadsheet and email to all the commissioners and compile their votes for the giveaway. The deadline for the information is next Tuesday, August 23, 2005.
   • Committees
     1. Awards – haven’t done anything, Mari was not present.
     2. Program committee – Neil Shah said that he will get an email out to everyone to get together.
     3. Public Relations – Per Otis and Evelyn they will send out letter to churches and other groups in Bloomington/Normal when nominations go out. Otis stated he would like to get information out in mid September. Evelyn said that she is interested in doing TV coverage like the morning show on NBC and information through Insight Communications cable. They were also thinking about having the speaker give interviews prior to the event. Bloomington stated that they will have the bio on the speaker at the Culture Festival.
     4. Contest - Evelyn stated that she has been in contact with Kim Edwards from the City of Chicago Human Relations Commission and she has done a youth essay for the 5 -8 grades. She is sending Evelyn information about essay contests she has done. Evelyn said it would be nice to acknowledge the winners somehow at the event. She has been in contact with banks in the past for prizes and they have been interested in giving savings bonds to winners before. She was also thinking about having the ISU English dept to judge the entries. A suggestion was made to split the groups in to 5 & 6 graders and 7 & 8 graders to even out their abilities.
     5. Decorations – Staff will take over duties until Cathy Ahart returns.
         
3. New business
   • Tickets
     1. Sell Tickets starting on October 1st
     2. Award nominations out by October 1st. The deadline for the nominations is November 30th at 5 PM.
   • Sponsorships
     1. The commissions decided to pay for previous awardees with sponsorships.
     2. Have the awardees’ names in the booklet as well as on 2 slide shows running concurrent.
     3. An idea was to have the sponsors bring their own banners to hang on the walls.
     4. Announce the sponsors during the program.
     5. The top three sponsorship categories were accepted
         
4. Concerns
   • none
      
5. Adjournment
   • Commissioner Evans moved to adjourn the August 16, 2005 meeting of the Normal & Bloomington Human Relations Commission at 6 PM. Commissioner Bergner seconded the motion. The motion passed by a unanimous voice vote.

Respectfully submitted

Jennifer Hanna
Human Resources Generalist

This page last modified 05/14/08.