Natick DTC meeting

Tonight marked the first meeting of 2007 for the Natick Democratic Town Committee, and it was quite active. I humbly think we are off to a great start.

The purpose of the meeting was three-fold: 1) To elect new officers, as is usually done in the first meeting of a calendar year. 2) To welcome new members, particularly folks who were involved in the Patrick/Murray campaign but had never been to a DTC meeting. 3) To discuss plans for the upcoming year.

Elections were fairly straightforward. There are five charter officers, and we elected three of them tonight. The new chair is Karen Schlosberg; Daniel Sohl (aka yours truly) is the new vice-chair, and Maureen Kelley the new Treasurer. (N.B. Karen and I are co-founders of this site.) Recording secretary and corresponding secretary were not elected tonight in the hopes that new members might wish to jump right in.

We also welcomed four new associate members tonight... whom I neglected to write down. I'll edit this once I get their names.

With administrative stuff out of the way, we got on to the truly interesting and important task of deciding where the committee is to go in the coming 12 months. This is, of course, an "off" year, when the public's eye turns temporarily away from elections. So how do we keep interest in the DTC up, and spread the word?

Last year we held three big events that were a big hit, and we'll probably continue them this year. In late June we sponsored a recycling event. For a limited fee ($25 or so) members of the public could recycle old computers, televisions, and appliances; the DTC split the money with the recycling committee and got a big turn-out despite nasty weather.

In May we had a big dinner to honor 20-year members of the committee. Michael Dukakis was the keynote speaker and many other politicos attended. In a similar vein was the annual DTC barbecue.

So a number of ideas were discussed along these lines, as well as others: A community forum on a hot-button topic, or a fundraiser dinner for the DTC scholarship fund, or letter-writing drives.

I think the town committee is off to a great start this year. The discussion tonight was very lively, and I feel like we're actually on the verge of starting something significant after several years of relative inactivity.

I strongly encourage Natick Democrats to attend the next meeting (Wednesday, February 28 at 7:30 in the Town Hall), and let's get the message out there! Everybody else should, of course, look up their own local DTC and get involved. It's how the Patrick campaign was won, and the more people involved in their government, the better off everybody will be.