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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2001-04-20 Transcription April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 1 April 20, 2001 Special Work Session 2:20 PM Council: Lehman, Champion, O'Dormell, Vanderhoef, Wilburn, Pfab, Kanner Dr. Wade TAPES: 01-45 SIDE ONE Dr. Wade/Good afternoon and welcome to the first Iowa City Youth Summit. This even is being sponsored by the University of Iowa College of Education, the Iowa City Community School District and the City of Iowa City. The 65 sixth graders that you see here today all wrote winning essay's about how kids can make a difference in their communities. I would like to especially thank today the Iowa City City Councilors for being here today to listen to and to support these young people's ideas. To often youth are seen as problems in our society, the young people here today believe that youth can be part of the solution, to the many challenges we face, both in our conununity and in the world. The format for our meeting will be the following, five students will take tums and speak briefly about the issues they are concemed about and how kids can help. We will then have about 15 minutes for you the Councilors to respond to the student's ideas in whatever way you wish and then we'll have five more students speak and again about a 15 minute period of time for your response. The first five students that will speak I will just read their names in order and they will introduce themselves when they come up to the podium as well. We're going to have Rachel, then Woodby, Fletcher, Jai and Ryan, so Rachel can start. And kids you just want to come right up here and this moves. Lehman/Before you start on behalf of the Council welcome, we're really pleased your here, I don't know if you folks are aware but at each Council meeting we give outstanding citizenship awards so citizenship is a really high priority with the folks sitting up here too so thank you for being here. Alcohol and Dru~ Abuse Rachel/My name is Rachel and I'm talking about the Drug and Alcohol Drug Abuse. Lots of teenagers these do underage drinking and drunk driving. The way we can help is talk to young kids that we know about alcohol and what it can do to our body, we can be a good role model towards them. We all should have stricter rules about having to show your ID to buy alcohol. One of the people in my group went into a liquor store and they thought she was a freshman and she's only in 6th grade. People we know can talk, can be designated drivers and we can encourage them to volunteer to be a designated driver. We should help to have more options on the weekends for activities for them to do so they don't drink. There are songs on the radio about drugs, we should help to keep them off the radio. April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 2 Pollution & Littering Woodby/My name is Woodby and I'm here to talk about pollution. I think pollution is a major problem in today' s world and we need to realize that. A lot of people just try to get by you know and say it's not our problem but in a couple years if we keep polluting the way we are there won't be a world to live in for us. And there are three major kinds of pollution, air, water, and land, air pollution causes global warming which can also affect our environment and acid rain. Water kills fish that are beautiful and we like to enjoy. It makes our water unsafe to drink and it destroys coral reefs that everyone likes to enjoy. Land pollution gets in the soil and kills plants and makes things just look in general ugly. Some solutions that anyone can do is instead of, unless your doing long transports you should walk or use a bike whenever you can instead of using a car or else use Mass transports. Another thing that' s really easy is recycling and I think all of us should do that and there should be some kind of a law making people do that because there' s a lot of stuff that could be saved that isn't. Anyone can recycle and there's so many things that we can recycle. I think the government should put more money into cutting back pollution and programs that will help that. We should have more laws preventing factories from polluting the way they are, we need to put more money into that and if there weren't pollution lots of plant and other kinds of life would survive that are being killed and the environment would be a lot more beautiful. Health and Elderly Fletcher/Hi my name is Fletcher and I'm representing the group that is worried about Health and Elde~y, and they came up with some pretty good ideas, for instance David is worried that people can't really use computers, elderly and some people just plain can't and there' s a lot of information on the net and other places. So he suggested that we start a program at the school or somewhere that is flee that people can come once in a while and just learn how to use computers. And there was another kid in my group named Brittany and she was worried about hospital loneliness, and loneliness can lead to depression which will lower the strength of germ immune system. So she feels that schools or classes maybe should make cards or something to eat and bring it and just visit the people so they're not lonely. Another kid who is called Kate was worded that prices for medicine that fight AIDS were just too high and that kids should write letters to the people who make AID products and maybe try to lower the prices so people who have AIDS that can't afford it might be able to afford it. And I was against, I was worrying Alzheimer's because Alzheimer's isn't as small as most people think it would be, in fact at it's most serious cases people can almost go into a coma or almost be paralyzed, not able to do something and that is extremely depressing for the family and the person who is suffering from the Alzheimer's and so I should feel that maybe kids should go over to their houses or somewhere else and just work April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 3 with them do homework, read a book with them, a board game and just plain help them think so they can have fun. Pollution and Litterine Jai/My name is Jai and this is topic is on Pollution and Littering. When you throw a small candy wrapper out of your car window while you are waiting for the red street light to change to the green light you probably would think that little wrapper would not cause a problem to anyone. That's what a lot of people have thought and now some parts of this world are polluted ficom a result of being thrown out of car window of trash. Pollution has affected our every day lives and harms animals when they eat or get tangled in garbage. We want to try to use reusable energy sources, imagine if our world was clean and everyday you could wake up to crisp clean air that you would only find at the ocean. We could wake up to this but we would have to try hard to make it come true. There are too many cars in this world, if we didn't have cars we wouldn't have factories and gas that pollutes air, maybe use solar powered cars. We should cut down on smoking, on our way here a lot of saw that the grass and the ground was covered with cigarette butts and we need to start a petition. According to Dan Hinz of Alliant Energy if one family used 100 percent of renewable energy this could reduce the amount of carbon dioxide by 21,000 pounds and that is the same as driving 25,000 miles in one year. We should start a fund raiser and donate the money to environmental groups. Kids could help by picking up litter, we should have stronger laws about polluting and littering. So please try not to use a lot of wasteful things like Styrofoam cups, plates, etc. non reusable or non recyclable products or items and just think before you throw that small candy wrapper out of the car window what you are doing to your environment. Racism and Preiudice Ryan/Hi my name is Ryan and my group did Racism and Prejudice, I'm going to read parts of different people' s essays in my group. The first one is on, well I'm just. On Prom night at local City High two boys went together as a pair, when they got to the school they were told that they could only go into the dance if they acted they were going with girls. After they got inside the dance room they were harassed verbally and physically for coming together at all. And if you saw a teenager or a kid who looked different who was maybe wearing all black and had a different colored hair would you be nice to them or would you be rude, would you like kind of shy away and do you think your better than them? And if you see a disabled person that your better than them in anyway, do you think that they're it's their fault and do you be rude to them? And would you hate God if he were a different color? We do not know what he is but whatever he is we still treat him the same. In the past things that could have made society today is if we wouldn't have had things like the Holocaust, Hitler and the Jews and finally what we think we could do to make things better is to educate kids on this one when they're April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 4 younger and don't judge by what you see and it doesn't matter what your choices are and most of all just be nice to people. Break/Discussion Lehman/At this point your looking for comments from Council. And now please watch the time, I understand that you have to leave by a certain time so when we, this group is known for speaking sometimes longer than the public so when the time comes up that we need to start the next group say so and I will start and of course you can fill in. Obviously I think all of us are impressed with the things you have said. There are things that government can be appropriately involved in and there's things that government really really can't. Government can not make you like me, or make me like you, now we can do things that will prevent you from mistreating me but we can't make you like me. You folks brought up a number of things and I believe, and I'm only speaking for Ernie Lehman but so many of the things that you brought up are family values, these are the kinds of things that you Ieam from your parents, in fact I recall when my kids were in grade school, they taught me more about recycling than I ever cared to know, and we recycle at my house, we have my youngest son who' s 34 years old and we've been recycling for probably 25 years. You folks could do a great deal in helping to teach your parents a lot of these things but a lot of parents were, we grew up in a time when conservation wasn't a concern, where littering perhaps was not as much a concern and we are slower leamers. You folks have learned really really well and I think you can do a lot with your own families and your own parents by bringing that sort of thing to the table at home. Government can do some things, and in Iowa City we have done things to protect the environment, for example we have a sensitive areas ordinance that protects the land when there' s development that takes place. We do have, we have probably one of the most successful mass transit systems, bus systems in the state and we try very hard to get people to ride those buses but as long as it is more convenient or we're too lazy to wait the 5 minute to catch the bus and we drive our cars not a whole lot that we as a city can do about that but we do provide mass transit, we try and we have just completed, or are in the processing of completing a recycle facility at the landfill where you can take your paint cans and hazardous waste that won't have to go in the garbage. We do provide recycling, and we penalize families who don't recycle, we can't make you recycle but we can tell you that if you put out more than two bags of garbage a week you will pay for that extra bag and it's worked really well in Iowa City particularly with the residential areas. I hear a great deal on the health and elderly, we have done things in Iowa City I think for the elderly more so than some communities, we have a very successful Senior Center, the Council has looked very favorably on developments for the elderly, particularly the elderly that are low income to try to help those folks out. But there are some areas and I think this was a tremendous point, elderly people and people who are ill many times are lonely, that's something that families have to do, government is not going to be able to do those sorts of things. But I think it's great that you care. April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 5 Iowa City has done something in the area of Prejudice and Racism that only I believe one or two other cities in the state has done and we have made it illegal to discriminate in this community based on all of the things that other communities do but we've added to that sexual preference so that there are things that we will not tolerate in this town, we can't make you like everybody but we can require that you treat people in a fashion that is appropriate. But I think a lot of it really still lies with you folks and your parents, we can do, we can try to create fragrant abuses but the real sense of values needs to start with you and your parents and if you guys have comments, other Council people. Champion/Well I'd like to just ask everybody out here how many kids out here families recycle? O'Donnell/Wow. Lehman/That' s great. Champion/Now how many of you can walk to school but ask your parents to take you? O'Donnell/Be truthful. Champion/Come on be honest. Well maybe you could honestly try to walk most of the time because even that little trip can make a big difference on how much polluting is going in the air so I'm going to ask all of you to try to walk more even though it's easier to say mom, dad I need a ride, it's late, get up a little bit earlier. And how many of you have elderly grandparents? A lot. So see all these things you talked about you can all have an active part in and teach grandparents how to use that computer, because I tell you my grandkids are a whole lot better at it than I am and you can teach them how to play Nintendo, that will get their fingers going and get their mind working and so there's lots of things you can do, thanks for coming you were all great. O'Donnell/You know I heard things here like tougher laws for underage drinking, pollution, recycling, health for the elderly, hospital loneliness, Alzheimer's Disease, littering, alternative energy sources, smoking, racism, prejudice, disabled. I think one of the most important things I heard was just be nice to people, you know I wished we dealt with people like you on a regular basis unfortunately we don't but with your comments it looks like our future is in good hands. Pfab/I think you all know what Preaching to the Choir means right? You're the people that are doing the right things, now what we are going to keep doing is keep spreading the word and give a good example and I want to congratulate all of you for being as active as you are and for the people who helped make this possible, I'm not sure who they all are but it's very gratifying to see as many of you here April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 6 and as interested as you are and I think I would say Ditto to what Mike said, I think our future is in pretty good shape. Vanderhoef/You ask for some input on what you can do and I'd like to tell you about two or three things that I'm personally very interested in that are connected with what you are talking about and they've been on the table at the state legislature this year. Number one there has been an issue of adding new items to the deposit law for bottles, there' s a push from some folks in the state to get rid of the bottle bill, there were a whole group of over 500,000 people chose to sign a petition this year to fight this, they want to keep it and they want to expand the bottle bill. What we have right now is the beautiful land bottle bill and we will continue to work this next year and this is something that I think you folks could get behind and put together in your schools and let your state legislatures know that you support expanding the bottle bill so your drink and your juice bottles, your water bills, all those kinds of things you'll pay your nickel to pick them up but you will get your nickel back when you recycle them so that's one place that you could do. Another place when your talking about human rights, right now Mayor Lehman mentioned that we have one of the strongest human rights laws in the state, you could lobby the State Human Rights Commission to say that we want it expanded to include all the same things that Iowa City has in their ordinance, there are about three other cities that recognize sexual orientation and sexual identification so that's a spot where you can get involved. Write letters to your legislatures, talk about it with your friends, your family, your teachers, take a position, take action. Another place that you mentioned was about Alliant Energy and saving energy and so forth, this state has a law that says 2 percent of the energy produced must be from alternative energy supplies, I don't know whether you are aware of it or not but we in the State of Iowa have met that 2 percent and there's talk about increasing the percent on it and we are doing that by wind farms, particularly in northwest Iowa and north central Iowa have several wind farms and if you haven't seen one they are just great to see because you will see windmills for miles in a row and they're generating electricity and it's producing something that doesn't take anything after it's built other than a little maintenance. So even nationally they're looking at that so those are three places that I see you can take an active part and continue it for a number of years. Wilbum/One of the things that I think your thinking about today relates to community development, how your city grows and how your city responds to a lot of the issues that you all have dug deep into and like a lot of the suggestions that some of you came up with. One of the things that I think Ernie was referring to was the different roles that we all can play, I'm just curious how many of you have volunteered somewhere, donating food, picking up food, just by a show of hands, so you all, that' s great, you all have in some way shape or form contributed to how our community grows and develops and so I applaud you for that. One of the things that I'm interested and have been working on, I used to work at United Action for Youth, I think you may have visited there today, is looking at how we April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 7 can tap into the energy of young people even more so to get it involved in how our community grows. One particular area that I've been interested in is how we can get some young people involved in some of our City Boards and Commissions, I think our natural one is like our Parks and Recreation Commission. Any skate boarders in here? A few skate boarders okay. There was some skate boarders that were involved in the design and development of the skate board park that's going to be down at Terrill Mill Park across from City Park and so I think looking for ways to tap into your ideas and energies because it's just a different perspective that some of the adults have and I think it can help our community grow and respond to some of those things. I'll stop there so we have time to get some more comments in. Kanner/Thanks Ross. Woodby, Jai and a couple others talked about environmental issues. Who knows when Earth Day is, when is it? Audience/22nd. Karmer/22nd, that's this Sunday April 22, and do you know what year it was the Earth Day, did you study that? When was it? 1970 right, and one of the issues that was talked about with the first Earth Day was that we have to take personal responsibility which I think a lot of us are in this room but we also have to hold government and the corporations accountable and I think a number of you that presented today mentioned that and I think your on the right track because we do actually say what something's that you can and can not recycle, that you have to recycle. We say that you can not put yard waste into the garbage anymore, we have state laws against that and it's up to government I think in many ways to say we want to do more or we want to do less and we want to hold businesses accountable just like individuals so I think we have to, a job of a good citizen is to stay involved like your staying involved and to keep pressing us up here. Call us anytime, write us, keep doing what your doing, it's called lobbying and I think that' s a good thing when a lot of people do that. And the one other thing I wanted to point out, Ryan talked about the Holocaust and how it was I think it's intent was that it was wrong what Hitler was doing with the Jews but not only was it against the Jews but it was against a lot of people also as I'm sure most of you realize and in fact it was almost anyone that was different from Hitler and people who surrounded him, people who were gay, people who were Catholic, and I think that's a lesson, it is abig lesson to learn that we have to, as Ernie is saying we don't have to like each other but we have to learn to work together in a civil manner and I applaud what you folks are doing. Dr. Wade/We'll now hear from 5 more students in this order, Anna is going to start, and then Halley, Dan, Mattie and finally James. April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 8 Pollution Anna/Hi my name is Anna and my group thought that pollution was a very big problem like things in the streets, things just in the yards and on the sidewalks and also things in the creek. For example this morning people picked up 7 bags of trash in Ralston Creek in only one hour so if more people would do that just one hour every Saturday I think a lot could get done. Like things people can do, they can pick up trash, more people could recycle and it would reduce the amount of trash thrown away. They could write letters to Congressman asking them to increase fines for littering on the highway and every where, and also the bottle bill and the windmill, increase the windmill a lot. And another big problem we thought in the pollution was the global warming and there are really easy ways like just going to school, if you could just walk or ride your bike or if it's a long distance and your could go with other people you could carpool and just around town you could ride the buses. Child Labor and Child Abuse Hally/Hi my name is Hally and my group was talking about child labor and child abuse. Child labor is kids who are fomed to work for low wages and when child abuse is when children are beaten usually by their parents. Things kids can help do to help child labor is raise money by bake sales and lock ins and things like that and they can write letters to the company saying they wouldn't buy their stuff. The biggest country that I know of that uses child labor is India and they use around 5 million children for child labor. And the child labor use, one sign of child abuse is violence and things that kids can do to help is kids can tell adults like a teacher or the parent of a friend that is having child abuse. Teen Problems Danny/My name is Danny and we're doing, I'm talking about teens problems like you could make a group like a program like after school or something that like about child labor, child pregnancy, smoking, and just abuse stuffand just from like 3rd up to 12th grade. And just like in teen smoking and drinking like at the store and stuff because there's like fake ID's people have and stuff you could have something that you could just swipe a card and it could tell you if it's not or if it's a fake ID or not. Just I think their talking about DARE like going out it's the last year, but actually I think that would work more if they talked about that more often to the kids and stuff and so that' s what I have to say. Hun~er in Other Countries and in our Community Mattie/Hi my nane is Mattie and my groups essay' s we wrote about hunger in other countries and in our community about how here in the U. S. we can start food drive for international and local causes. I think we could all make a difference if April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 9 we wanted to and tried. In the U. S. over 13 million people are homeless. We need to inform the people on the streets about resources and help such as Goodwill, food banks, etc. If we give the people help then we can help them and get on their feet and accomplish their goals in life. We can fix up the run down houses and rent them out to low or no income families. These are some ideas how kids can help make our community and other communities a better place. Dru~s, Violence and KeeOin2 Dru2 Prevention Pro2ram James/Hi I'm James and I'm here to talk to you about drugs, violence and keeping the drug awareness programs. My essay was about how drugs and violence affect all people and in ways like the Columbine shoorings and other things. More than half of our jails are (can't hear) by people selling drugs, or on drugs or inflicting injury. Things like taking the programs DARE or other programs away is not helping. They make kids not know about it and have to learn the hard way. Kids all over America are being affected, there have been many threats, gun threats, other kind of threats. Without drugs the world would be a much better place, the streets would be safer and a lot more people would not be killed. Children of the programs could help a lot, they could start groups and think of different ways raise money and tell people what drugs really do. Thank you for listening. Lehman/Well I have a few comments and I'm sure the rest of the Council will. Most of the things that you folks have talked to us about today are not things we haven't heard before. But there are things that, talking to your parents and telling your parents what you've told us probably will do more good than writing all the letters that you can think of to the legislatures and whatever because if your parents believe what your saying things will happen. But they have to believe it to put the, to influence City Council's, Boards of Supervisors, State Legislatures and whatever. I really believe that talking to your parents and having those folks start adopting some of the same values that you obviously have is certainly good for not only for your parents but it's good for your families. I doubt very much if there very many people in this room right now who are not wearing an item of clothing that wasn't made by child labor. Now when your parents and you are willing to go into a store and pay more for something because it was made by people who were not children child labor will go away. But right now in this country we almost always go where it's least expensive if somebody can make a pair of shoes cheaper than somebody else, we don't worry about who made the shoes, we worry about what price we have to pay for them because if we paid $10.00 extra for the shoes that's a t-shirt we don't get to buy. But as long as the public buys the merchandise that is made in sweatshops and by child labor that will continue and right now it's true, it's in India, it has been in various countries throughout the world. And it moves, Korea used to be that way, Japan at one time was, then it was Taiwan, Main land China, now it's India and it's probably going to be Indonesia and some other countries as those countries start to develop. They April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 10 employ a large amount of child labor, and because they make it less expensively we tend to buy it so we're all guilty of that and I don't think we do it knowingly, we do it somewhat unwittingly, but we all do it. There was a group at the University, I'm sure you probably heard want the University to ban the purchase of clothing and other items that have the Hawkeye emblem on them that are made in sweatshops and those efforts I think have been certainly had some success. Child abuse is something that government does have to get involved in and I don't think there's any question about that. We have laws that prohibit child abuse and we have methods to enforce that, we have methods of taking care of children that are abused by their parents, and we have methods to punish parents who abuse their children. But I do think again this is, almost all of these things are really matters of family values. Governments I think and churches and other volunteer organizations have in this country traditionally been very much involved in helping those people who are less fortunate. The homeless folks, the folks who need housings, Iowa City has I believe the best per capita housing program in the state of Iowa, no city has the number of assisted housing units per capita as the City of Iowa City, it's a very very high value in this community, we believe that every person should have a warm and dry place to live and we do a very very good job of that. This, some cities in Iowa refuse to become involved in housing issues and a lot of cities won't do that. We choose to become in those issues because we feel that they are a priority. One of our Council members very much involved in helping folks who are hungry and there are a number of organizations in this community that are very active and a lot of your parents and your friends and my friends are involved in those kinds of programs and I think we try very hard and yet there are still people who are homeless and yet there are people who are in fact hungry. I got it, I find it really interesting though, James you spoke about drugs and violence and I'm not proud of this but we have people within this community who are telling this Council that we should not arrest people who have drugs. Somehow that infringes on their rights. This Council has never said that's okay, the law says you can't have drugs and our police department does in fact enforce that law and if we find folks who have drugs we do arrest those people and we do charge those people. But there is a group of folks that include some adults who feel that it's inappropriate to arrest someone because they have marijuana or some other sort of illegal drug. I do not believe that, I think the law says that those sorts of things are very bad for people, they hurt families, they hurt young people, they make gangsters out of older people who are able to sell that and I think it's very important that we enforce those laws so I'm James your comments were so timely because the last three or four weeks or more than that we have had complaints from the public about our own police department enforcing laws that do prohibit possession or use of drugs. Wilburn/I wanted to address something that I think it was Hally, I'm pronouncing your name right about child abuse. Ernie mentioned that there are laws in the books, but before there were laws in the books it has always been that way, it always hasn't been illegal to hit your child to the point where they are getting bruised, April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 11 broken bones, and things like that. Prior to the first child abuse law there was a case I believe it was in New York, it was around the time when Darwin's Theory of Evolution came out and the (can't hear) that kind of thing, but there was a doctor and a group of people concerned about this child that was abused, severely abused and in New York I think it was there was a statute of law about against cruelty to animals and so they kind of blended that if humans are some type of mammal animal. They used that in the court to allow services to be well to take criminal action against the mother but also to get services to this child and so then on and on from that there was pressure lobbying, efforts to get some type of statute against child abuse from happening. In fact anybody, I just thought of another thing whenever I hear this I try and throw it out, anyone ever heard of the rule of thumb, anybody heard that expression? There was an old law "rule of thumb" what that meant was there was period where men were abusing their wives to the point that people were starting to get concerned and so they adopted the "rule of thumb" that meant you could use a switch no thicker than your thumb to hit, that's true it's used to discipline or beat your wife and so the issues that your talking about they come up again and again over time, in fact the alcohol ordinances that we're talking about some people in town say well this problems been here, someone sent a newspaper clipping that maybe 30 years ago but I think through dialogue we determine as how we're going to address these problems, again it's that community development so again keep working at these ideas and whether it's talking to parents but I think you know sending letters to your legislatures can be effective to in fact with the smoking ordinance that' s coming up. Some of you may be aware that there was a large group of youth who went to Des Moines and lobbied them on the hill in Des Moines and I think that woke up some legislatures there, opened their eyes to certain things., the young people would be concerned about some things so as a group collectively you can have quite a bit of power as you get older here. Kanner/One of the great things about our society and our government is we can disagree and I happen to disagree with our Mayor hem and some other folks and that' s good, disagreement is good and we can have civil discourse and talk about those kind of things, one of my concerns is when we talk about child labor and abuse is that certainly there are individual choices that we make and I personally try to buy clothes only from the United States or countries that I know that have good records but also there's again the government getting involved in these issues in subsidizing companies to go where there's cheap labor and they go there because there's a few people that make a lot of money, that' s one of the main reasons and we pass laws like NAFTA, you might have heard of NAFTA which I think encourages these kinds of abuses and they encourage abuses against the enviromnent against children so I think these issues especially this is a prime example is we have to work locally. There's a phrase that is "Think Globally, act locally" and I think this issue is very apt one for that. There is a group as Ernie was saying "Students Against Sweatshop", they're made up of students like you they happen to be at the University that has been successful in pressuring the April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 12 University to have concern where their clothing that they're selling has come from. Here at the City we looked at where some of the clothing that we sell is coming from and we made a decision it was a small thing to say that we're not going to buy clothing from those manufacturers because we're not sure how they're being produced. And you can write to your congress person and say you don't want them to pass laws like NAFTA anymore that allow this kind of abuse and Andy I want to comment, where's Andy, was it Andy that was talking before, did I have your name right. O'Donnell/Danny. Karmer/Danny, I'm sorry, about after school discussion, I think that' s a good idea and then James I wanted to comment on what you had to say about the DARE program and I think that it does some good things but there' s been one study that says it's been effective but even more studies throughout country say this has been a program that' s been in affect for years and years and years and it hasn't been delivering what it's suppose to deliver as far as reducing the amount of people that are taking drugs. There are other programs out there that have been shown to be more effective and I would recommend that you and the schools look into some of those things and I think actually the school system is starting to look into more effective programs and I think the key to those programs is they start talking about why do people feel bad about themselves and feel they have to take drugs, and alcohol and cigarettes? And I think that's the key thing, when people feel good about themselves their not going to abuse those kinds of things and drugs and alcohol and cigarettes I think they're all pretty bad for you. Some people can use them in moderation and most people can't so it's, I think it's up to individuals to try and work on that and to get some good programs in the school. And the final thing I wanted to mention if your concerned about transportation and other options and what the energy use is there's going to be a conference this Friday and Saturday down at the Sheraton Hotel, fight here on the ped mall and your all invited to come, it's the Alternative Transportation Solutions Conference, I'm helping to organize it with some other people around town and there's going to be a lot of speakers and some fun events so hope you can make that on Friday and Saturday and come up here and talk to me afterwards if your interested in some more information. Thanks again. Vanderhoef/I just have a couple of quick things, I hear you young folks talking about values. How many of you people want other people to like you? Okay in the same, yes. In the same vein if you want people to like you would you be willing to turn to your best friend and say Ross I don't like it when you spit gum on the ground. Could you do that? (END OF 01-45 SIDE ONE) April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 13 Vanderhoef/Each one of you is growing up in a family and your family has values but you personally have the choices to set your own core of values whatever is important for you, you are in control of you. So be real clear as you go through life am I doing this because I want people to like me or am I doing this because I believe in it, this is one of my core values. Wilburn/(can't hear). O'Donnell/Do you know how we said earlier how Council Members like to talk? You've all seen this, I just want to thank you for coming and tell you communication is the key, if something is wrong talk to somebody, talk to your parents, talk to your teachers and in Emie's case talk to your grandparents. But communication is the key but I really enjoyed listening to you. Champion/I just thought I'd tell you a short little story. When my dad was 10 years ago, this was still in this century a long time ago, but not 200 years ago, no not this Centmy last Century. VanderhoelY Sounds like a long time ago. Champion/He had a cousin that was his age who lived with his aunt in New York City and remember this was long before the time of good communication that we have now. And they were immigrants into this country, they just came to this country and the aunt was killed by a horse in New York City and this little boy supported himself by making clothes in a factory in New York City, and he slept in a big dorm at night and they feed him three meals a day and so we may look at India and put our noses in the air but it hasn't been that long since we did the very same thing. He did that for three years until my grandmother was able to locate where he was at and bring him to live with her. And so a lot of child labor is because of bad economic times but we're not that far away from it, that doesn't mean I approve of it, I don't consider child labor having you wash up the bathtub after you use it. But I'm telling you we look down on those countries but it wasn't so long ago we did it ourselves and so I'm glad to see us move forward and those countries will move forward too and you can help by letting them know you won't tolerate it. Pfab/Okay I'd like to make just a couple of comments. How many of you have heard the saying "If it's going to be it's up to me"? Any of you heard it before? O'Donnell/I did once. Pfab/If it's going to be done you have to do it yourself. Okay now I think in all sincerity here we are looking at future leaders of wherever you be and we'll say Iowa City. Now to be a leader is not always easy and to be a leader you need help and assistance, now how many of you know the people that are sitting right around April 20, 2001 Special Work Session Page 14 you? All the people around you, okay some of you don't, I'd suggest that you all stand up and shake hands with the people around you. Lehman/Go Irvin, Irvin keep talking. O'Donnell/Irvin you better go, we've got to go leave at 3:15. (All talking) Pfab/Now being a leader is not easy, people will make fun of you and at times your going to see other leaders other people in this group who are in trouble because other people are ganging up on them, they don't like what they're saying because of their belief's and so this is a time where you go out and support those people. So the idea of networking, stay in touch with these people because these are the people you know have basically the same beliefs you do and you can go to them when you need help. And congratulations I think this is just marvelous, I'm so glad that I was able to be part of this and thank you. Dr. Wade/I just wanted to thank again the City Council Members for all being here this aftemoon, a wonderful sunny day we could have all been walking or hiking or something. I also really want to thank the Iowa City School District for supporting this event both at the central office level, the principals, the teachers, everyone has been wonderful. We have students here today from Weber School, from Hoover, Lemme, Lucas, Longfellow, Mann and what did I leave out? Horn. Thank you. And we had one teacher here with us today, Judy Young and so I wanted to thank her. I wanted to also thank the College Students in my social studies classes they helped plan this whole event and they've been supervising the students all day, they've put in a lot of time. And finally I want to especially thank all the sixth graders who are here, for two things for caring so much about your community and being willing to speak your troop, and secondly just from a facilitator standpoint for being so well behaved you guys have been just super today, it's been a really fun day, I look forward to doing this again. Thank you. Lehman/Thank you.