journal six

-Research on briefing paper (online, packets) -Email communication with Watershed coordinator -Worked on organizing briefing paper

Today I attended a meeting for MORPC. Heather thought that it may be helpful for the briefing paper I am writing. The main focus of the meeting was to bring together legislators, local environmental leaders, and utilities leaders, to discuss a new PSA that MORPC is creating in order to try to make homeowners aware of the environmental consequences of their decisions. We watched several PSA's created around the country, and discussed a survey taken of some MORPC members to try to decide what the PSA should focus on. One conclusion was that the area most in need of work was environmentally-conscious behavior on the part of developers, utilities sectors, and legislators. Yet at the same time, many people thought the best way to do this is to show the consequences of daily behavior of homeowners as well, to make the connections between daily activities and more substantial building projects. The idea is that by getting homeowners aware of these effects, homeowners will in turn be more aware of the consequences of the behaviors of developers. Because there were legislators and utilities groups at the meeting as well, it seemed that some people were holding back. And while a lot was discussed, few decisions were made as far as what to focus on in the film. No slogans or mottos were decided upon, and much work remains. Erin, the current leader of MORPC, will be gathering the MORPC subcommitties to discuss the PSA and how people think they should focus it. But it seems so challenging to bring together such a diverse crowd and ask them to agree on a message, as most do not even agree on what groups the message should be directed towards most. It was a highly informational meeting, but did not provide any explicit information for my paper. It was good to see Heather and we arranged to talk later about my paper. I am pleased that I went and saw the politics and inner workings of a meeting. I hope that I can continue to see new facets of FLOW's work and how they accomplish their goals.