Tuscarawas County Anti-Drug Coalition Meeting
- Zoom
- Friday, May 7, 2021
Present:
- Robert Bray, WBTC Radio
- Dick Gooding, Citizen Member
- Bill Harding, Citizen Member
- Bill Houglan, Citizen Member
- Gail Houglan, Citizen Member
- Chris Lane, Business Member
- Peggy Leslie, RSVP Harcatus Director
- Connie Limbacher, ADC Secretary
- Kristin Macaulay, Community Mental Health
- Michaela Madison, Newsymom
- Kerry Metzger, ADC Chairman
- Jeff Neidig, Mediwise Pharmacy
- Autumn Poland Tusc Co Health Dept
- Cheryl Ramos, Citizen Member
- Miles Riley, Community Mental Health
- Jodi Salvo, OhioGuidestone
- Diana Smith, OhioGuidestone
- Veronica Spidell, ADAMHS Board
- Brock West, TCC Youth-to-Youth, Tusc Youth Advisory Board
- Vicki Yates, Ex Dir Senior Center
Meeting Summary:
Kerry Metzger called the Virtual meeting to order at 10:01 AM on Friday, April 2, 2021, with 20 members present. Bill Harding made a motion to accept the April 2021 minutes. Vicki Yates seconded and the vote was unanimous.
Committee Reports:
Executive Committee: Kerry reported that on April 27th, he was appointed to a vacant County Commissioner seat. This will not interfere with his role as ADC Chair, but might minimize his ability to attend trainings and learning opportunities. Kerry reported on the April Steering Committee meeting—Four major topics. 1. Website—updates have been made to website, with the exception of the blog. Michaela will work with Josh Aul to work out details to place blog on website 2. Stipend for the Coalition Secretarial position—Discussion was opened for possibly providing a stipend for the Secretarial position. It would be for the position and not for an individual, which means that if the coalition wants to do this, we will need to make by-law change and subsequently hold a vote by the coalition members. The committee is doing further research on this proposal. 3. Reeves Foundation Grant—Jodi wrote submitted a grant proposal to the Reeves foundation to purchase technology that would allow for virtual member participation at meetings. The application did not receive award. We will continue to look into other available grant/donor opportunities. Chris Lane suggested applying for United Way COVID funding for this capital expenditure. 4. AD-HOC Committees—The committee discussed forming two different AD-HOC Committees A. For the purpose of coalition financial sustainability—Kerry does have one member so far—Chris Abbuhl—one of the county commissioners, but still looking for two more persons to serve on this committee; and B. Drug use and misuse during and after pregnancy—both Autumn Poland & Michaela Madison volunteered to be on this committee. He is still looking for a third person, if there is no one else from coalition interested in serving on this committee, he will look outside of coalition. Let either Kerry or Jodi know if interested.
Fiscal Agent Annual Report—ADC By-Laws indicate that the fiscal agent is to report on the financial condition of our DFC Grant bi-annually (April/October). DFC financials revealed Report revealed that by the end of March (6 months) we are at $62,372.70 and have a balance of $62,627.30, which means we spent slightly less than 50% of our $125,000.00 DFC grant. We are right on target with our numbers. Kerry expressed appreciation for how well Jodi has done keeping our expenses right about 50%. Jodi added that this grant allows a 25% variance without having to do a budget revision. Therefore, even though these line items are a little “wacky” just because of the pandemic, we were able to use for example mileage for advertising etc. Dick asked if we have extra money left, could we consider using DFC funds for the items we did not receive from the Reeves Grant. That was thought to be a possibly if the funds do not come from anywhere else.
Youth: National Drugs & Alcohol Facts Week (NDAFW). Brock West reported that they are finishing up the school year. They have one more meeting with the students with the BONSAI program, Phoebe and Brock did a podcast, and Kayli and Brock did an interview with the radio stations and students will meet with County Commissioners this month to request a proclamation around National Prevention Week. Connie asked if we could get some kind of report on how the BONSAI Program worked. Brock will look into. Strasburg is working on a video shoot today, with $500.00 received from Anita Davis’, “Zach Davis Memorial Fund” for the the Youth to Youth program. The video is about what young people wished their parents would speak to them about. Students are creating sound bites encouraging parents to have conversations around certain topics, i.e. mental health and substance use. When it is completed, it is something that we will want to recognize was from the support of the Zach Davis Memorial Fund and we will share via social media and ask schools to share. This effort is to encourage parents to get more comfortable having conversation with their kids around difficult issues.
Alcohol Committee: Veronica updated us on the PWHLTM campaign—a a press release went out on April 14th which launched effort. A Chamber e-blast went out (Tuscarawas County Chamber and Twin City Chmaber). Signs went out throughout the county. Shared 50 signs with five area schools as well as a banner to those schools and one to the Commissioner’s Office. Youth to Youth completed Public Service Announcements and those were shared with radio stations. In addition, we have been doing social media posts around the campaign. The campaign will run through the end of May/early June—through graduation season and parties. Connie commended Veronica and the committee for such a great job in getting everything together and out there. Jodi did a shout out to Michaela who got Good Morning Cleveland engaged on this. It was early in the morning, but they called for an interview and they had some neat coverage on the campaign. Will try to send out the clip so all can see.
Marijuana Committee: Kerry reported that the committee met on April 26th. They discussed County-Wide school assemblies on Marijuana Education. Jodi attended the April 16th Superintendents meeting (virtually) to present the idea of holding a countywide middle school and high school assembly at the PAC (holds 1,000). She gave them info on the work of the ADC and the marijuana committee. With only a few in attendance, they did suggest that October might be a good month. Ty Sells from Youth to Youth International did provide available dates and Dean Bielski looked into availability of the PAC. Looks like October 5th will be our target date. The cost for two presentations, mileage, and hotel will be around $3,350. Looking at businesses to sponsor. Sheriff Orvis Campbell is willing to put funds toward this, as well. Chris Lane suggested maybe livestreaming to those who weren’t able to attend personally. This will be looked into. Jeff Neidig suggested recording the live and presenting to the other grades and buildings. Marijuana Committee Brochure. The committee was provided a brochure from SAMHSA and the ADC Alcohol Committee brochure. Mary Marshall is looking them over and recommendations need to be directed to her by May 10th. After that date, information received will be sent to Josh Aul with NexLevel Designs to create a draft brochure that the committee can review at the May 24th meeting. Would like to include the ADC position paper in the brochure. May is Marijuana Mental Health Awareness Month programming. Members were encouraged to send email to Senator Brown and Portman on Safe Banking Act, if not already sent. Senator Brown is the Chairman of Banking Committee in the Senate, so it is important that his constituents weigh in on this issue. Information received has been that this is not a priority issue for him at this time, which allows us to provide him additional information on this issue. Expansion of the number of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries. The Ohio’s State Medical Marijuana program has approved 73 additional dispensaries; this would be in addition to the 52 that are currently in operation around the state. Since Tuscarawas County does not have a dispensary, we should be prepared for communities in the county to be contacted regarding placing one here. Information and education is needed for council members and township trustees on the concerns and negative impacts this could have on our youth, families and communities. Uhrichsville is a priority since it has been designated as a hot spot. Diana will be speaking to Uhrichsville council on May 6 and will try to get this on the May 20th agenda. Discussed having representation from Claymont City Schools to accompany Jody/Diana. Talking points will be developed for these meetings. Chris suggested we check to see who has an ordinance in place that still stands or if they need to update to make them a non-target. Cheryl Ramos noted that New Philadelphia has an ordinance to ban marijuana dispensaries, however a couple years ago the law director wanted to eliminate it due to family members seeking a dispensary license. It was denied. Mayor Day had said he would veto such legislation at the time.
Media Committee: Michaela reported we had 2 alcohol related press releases go out. Shout out to Veronica that the process that they have worked out has worked seamlessly with her sending the press releases to Michaela and then Michaela getting them out. The one at the beginning of April went out regarding the alcohol training and then the PWHLTM press release with Kerry being our celebrity with that one (Photo shoot) went out on April 14th. This month, I just sent one to Jodi regarding the menthol ban using some of the national data and trying to get some local data possibly from the Health Department and a quote from them, as well. Putting something together today regarding the National Prevention Week so that we can get something out next week on it. I made a note of the May Marijuana Mental Health Awareness Month would be nice to highlight with a press release even at the end of next week with it being the whole month. For June & July we have more general topics—APPORTIS, Bonzai, the Twin City handprint project.
Prescription Drug Committee Jeff reported National Drug Take-Back Day. April 24th was a success. We served 3 locations—Cleveland Clinic Union Hospital, Trinity Twin City Hospital (both run by the Sheriff’s Dept) and Cleveland Clinic Mercy (High St. NP- OSHP). We had 362# total with an increase of 100# from last year from both of the Sheriff’s pick-ups. Mercy received 7#. A significant increase came from Trinit, and Union ran out of materials and had to be supplied more. I hope that when festivals come back we can do some local take backs again. Nationally CADCA reported that there were 4,425 law participation, 5,060 collection sites that were registered. Total weight of collected items was just short of 420 Tons nationwide. Pharmacy RX bags—primarily used in pharmacies when they dispense medications in March/April and September/October to announce and promote Drug Take Back events. We are still working on a design for that. Josh Aul was working on that for the committee to approve and use the funds from SPFRX for that to make these bags available during these times. Autumn inquired about if we have ever done any work with Hospice or Funeral Homes in their discarding of medications that after a death. There is an awareness but not sure, if all go the step further and tell the families, etc. This is something for the committee to look into.
Tobacco Committee: Catch My Breath status report–Autumn reported that they have been very busy doing presentations to the entire Claymont Middle School. It is an Anti-Vaping Anti-Tobacco program. That is being delivered to 450 students. We are doing 18 presentations a week, for four weeks with one more week to go. It has been good, a real eye opener. Jodi expressed that in addition to educating the students, it is imperative that we need to educate parents on this issue. There is a lot of peer pressure around this and still a lot of work to be done, as well. Autumn mentioned on how she is seeing the misconception even among teachers and other adults that there is just water in these vapes. There is a lot of information and education that really needs to be done. POSTERS–We were able to distribute the Anti-Vaping posters that we put the QR code on so that kids can confidentially go and scan that code and have the resources right readily available without repercussions. Louise Worsham also distributed some at the mall for us. We still need to get them out into the community. Apportis Contract—The Health Department has signed the contract and Ohio GuideStone Legal has it to sign. This is to get things paid and the program rolling. New Phila Schools is also considering the program, as well.
Faith-Based Committee: There was no report today.
Legislative Updates: Federal Safe Banking Act passed in the House of Representatives. It is still sitting in the Senate. What this act does is it opens up for marijuana industry to do their financing through banks. Most of this money goes to “Big Tobacco” which is really buying into the marijuana industry. They have hundreds of millions of dollars that they are lobbying with. It is an uphill battle to try to stop these things. If you have an opportunity, go to CADCA website, they have a letter you can send especially to our senators at this point and ask them to not pass this. We will see what becomes of this. The more voices they hear, the more chances they will take note.
Old Business: None
New Business: Discussed needing volunteers to help with parades as these start up again. Memorial Day Parade—Canal Dover is May 29th. Diana will be sending out a link on that. The youth staff are working on designing a parade float. Cy Young Parade is in Newcomerstown June 26th—4:30pm.
Kerry thanked the coalition for the work it is doing. Peggy Leslie made a motion to adjourn and all voted yes at 11:15 AM.
Next Board Meeting will be a virtual meeting on Friday, June 4th from 10:00-11:30 am. The same Zoom code will be used.
