WELDON — Groups and organizations were posturing for a position, and getting a little territorial at the Golden Leaf Foundation’s Community Assistance Initiative meetings, Thursday. Since March, the Golden Leaf Foundation has met with community leaders and citizens to build ground rules for distribution of $2 million to programs benefiting Halifax County. A core group of about 50 has solidified in the past three meetings and Facilitator Calvin Allen applauded the group for strong progress in developing the initiative.

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Allen welcomed attendees and reminded them why they were there, what the steps are in developing the initiative and went over the results of the June 4 meeting, to catch everyone up on the process. Those results included the development of preliminary success measure which would be solidified for proposed projects at this meeting.

He asked the group as a whole to give their reaction to the success measure set out by the priority groups for education, economic development, and infrastructure (infrastructure in this case includes public transportation according to consensus). The group as a whole generally agreed with the success measures of each priority group.

Then the meeting broke into priority groups to further discuss their ideas for success measures and to refine them if possible.

Priority group education felt confident about their success measures for potentially funded projects. They believe projects should show impacts in one or several of the following areas: Increase in literacy, decreases in dropouts, decreases in suspensions, more parental involvement, clearer benchmarks, greater alignment of education, economics and technology, improvement in individual growth of students, smaller class sizes, more innovation, higher standards reflecting global readiness and preparation goals and finally, increased recruitment, with retention and quality in teachers.

Also confident of their success measures, priority group infrastructure, held a discussion on the need for public transportation. Joblink Intake Specialist Frince Williams with Turning Point informed group members of a project to develop a county wide transportation system that would provide transportation on an “as needed” basis. The system will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Williams said the project has some funding avenues but needs leveraging funds. “We have some grants, but we need more to make this happen,” she said.

The economic development priority group, listened while Halifax County Economic Development Director Cathy Scott, discussed the possibility of approaching the education priority group

about a strategic partnership on the development of a Comprehensive Labor Study. Scott explained a Comprehensive

Labor Study of the work force in Halifax County is greatly needed. She said the study would quantify the workforce, or indicate what kind and how many employees are available from the area.

Scott and the economic development group joined the education group across the room. She and other economic development members proposed the partnership between the two groups and explained how the study would benefit education.

When asked if the study would help economic development identify problems in the community, Scott responded that it would help economic development groups design programs and target recruitment activities, just for starters.

Roanoke Valley Chamber Ex. Director Allen Purser added, “It’s more like looking at the opportunities, not the problems.” “We need to quantify so we know which industries to go after,” said Executive Vice President and General Manager Charles Guerry of Halifax Electric Membership Corporation.

President/CEO of Halifax Community College, Ervin Griffin offered information on graduate statistics and other studies completed by the Community College System.

Scott and others said the study was still needed and would help the community college and school systems in program development.

Priority group “infrastructure” joined the two groups late in the game, but got the gist of what was going on. Scotland Neck Mayor James Mills asked, “Is this study part of what we are doing now or is it something we’re looking at funding?” Scott informed him it was a project that they were looking at for funding. Mills encouraged the group to remember the objectives. “This project doesn’t seem to address the priorities we agreed on at the beginning.” The groups never came to a conclusion in negotiations, but agreed to share information and talk again.

Next Facilitator Calvin Allen posed the question “Can new people join the meeting next time?” The rules say all meetings are open to the public but a surprising number of attendees, the majority in fact, felt there should be no new people allowed at future meetings. “We’ve worked so hard to bring things to this point,” said one group member. “It would be a shame for someone to come in with a big group and undo what we’ve done.” Others expressed concerns about “backtracking,” saying that if people were concerned with the process they should have attended the previous meetings.

Earl Evans asked, “Is it fair, when we set up the rules saying ‘come in’ from the beginning, to change the rules now and leave people out.” The majority of the group viewed “outsiders” as a threat, regardless of their background and what they might bring to the meeting in experience or wisdom and the fact that they are from Halifax County.

“I have a problem with ‘them’ and ‘us,’” said Evans. “ ‘We’ are working against ‘us’ if ‘we’ say we’re afraid of others coming in. ‘We’ are working against ourselves.” Not to be deterred, even when Golden Leaf’s Pat Cabe informed the group that it had to be an open meeting, the group stayed late to decide that new people joining the group cannot change decisions that were already made, there will be no backtracking to catch them up on everything that’s been going on and unless someone has been to at least three meetings they cannot vote on the steering committee’s structure.

The next meeting of the Community Assistance Initiative group is July 30 at 6 p.m. at Halifax Community College. The meeting is open to the public.