About District 4

Fourth District, Calaveras County, CA

Altaville | Angels Camp | Douglas Flat | Murphys | Vallecito

Regional Thoughts

I like to think of District 4 as the heart of our region. In my mind's eye, the intersection of Highways 4 and 49 is the crossroads of the Mother Lode and the hard rock mines of Calaveras Gold (I enjoyed reading Ronald Limbaugh and Willard Fuller's excellent book). While we live in an area dominated by common geographical, cultural and economic characteristics, we don't have a tradition of regional cooperation. To many, "across the river" carries a negative connotation regardless of which river is being referred to. I understand the sentiment -- Hillsboro, a town nine miles from Marion where I lived, was another world away.

Learning to think positively about a region takes time. First of all, the boundaries of a region a bit like those of a family, everyone agrees on the immediate members but views start to vary as we get closer to the edge. Do you know and count your second cousins? How about former in-laws? I'm going to share my views on how one group of grassroot leaders are working to think and work regionally.

Thursday I attended the March meeting of the Central Sierra Resource Conservation and Development Council over in Sonora. The CSRC&D, as I'll call it, is a grassroots organization chartered by the US Secretary of Agriculture to promote rural communities and groups. When I first started representing the City at CSRC&D meetings, the area was defined as the Counties of Alpine, Amador, Calaveras and Tuolumne. At my first meeting, a majority of the other representatives voted to abolish the Council. They were unset because the Federal Farm Bill required area councils to be incorporated as not-for-profit organizations (the existing council was a joint-powers agency). I disagreed with that decision and as the action only dissolved the joint-powers agency, there was an opportunity to rally the minority to incorporate and become the successor Council.

We were able to get the support of groups from each county and submitted our application to USDA through the Natural Resource Conservation Service. Not only did we get a new charter from US Secretary of Agriculture, but we were asked to include northern Mono County in the area. Today, all the Counties are represented on the Council and there are dozens of grassroots organizations in the membership.

Thursday's meeting was both a training and business session. The training was for new Council representatives and focused on their roles as directors of the non-for-profit corporation. The business meeting addressed the usual administrative items, i.e., budgets, minutes, and review of existing projects. One highlight was launch of the community forums which drive the CSRC&D's strategy plan. The Calaveras community forum will be November 20, 2008 from 5:15pm to 6:30pm in Angels Camp.

Another highlight was the discussion of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that I created for the Calaveras Beef Stick Project. The MOU covers how the CSRC&D will work with CalaverasGrown and Calaveras Beef Producers to obtain grant money to test market a locally produced beef snack product. And while, the Producers have decided to skip the current funding cycle, the MOU can serve as a template for other cooperative agreements. I am contributing my business development experience in drafting the MOU template. One key aspect of the MOU is creating a mechanism for sharing and reproducing the business development model within the region.

I am convinced that we must add-value locally in order create greater economic vitality in our communities. In many cases, we must pull together to have a critical mass large enough to attract talent and capital and to establish a suitable business level. As Ben Franklin remarked over 200 years ago, "if we don't hang together, we'll hang separately."

As always, please use the "Write Lee" link to share your thoughts.