It is good that you believe in your tribe. I also believe in our tribe.
I am hopeful that we create a path of opportunities for our people in
education, employment, and a happy, healthy life. I am sorry that you
do not see the changes in the last two years.
For there are many:
-$10
million in funding committed to the development of a youth community
activities center. We will begin construction by the end of this year.
-$10
million has been committed to the much awaited and long overdue Elders
Care Facility. Construction will begin construction by this summer.
-Increased
activities for our youth. This was made possible with the creation of a
youth activities program and the hiring of two activities coordinators.
-increased
communication with the membership through our tribal newspaper, and
membership meetings. In the last 20 months (a year and a half) we have
had three membership meetings. This is a dramatic increase since we
only had one or two meetings between 2002 and 2006 (four years)!.
-Adherence
to our own policies and procedures. In other words, we have begun to
follow our policies and procedures. If you ever get the opportunity, I
suggest you request the minutes to our council meetings. Look at the
last two years and look at the any amount or years before 2006 and you
will see a lot of waivers prior to 2006. These waivers, which are
deviations from our own rules, were only done for certain people and
not all members were afforded these extra benefits. An example of this
is our CAP program (CAP max available funds per year is $1000). Some
members were allowed to max out this program multiple times while a
majority were only allowed to fully max it out once. In some cases not
even at all because the funding had run out.
Why? Because 15%
of those who accessed CAP were allowed to max it out multiple times
compared to those who accessed once or not at all. This was allowed
because of their close personal relationship with certain council
members. Now is this fair? Absolutely not!
-In the past two
years we have seen an increase in accessibility to council. I hope you
notice, a commitment on the part of council to show up everyday with
our sleeves rolled up and ready to work.
I invite you to walk through our halls and see who is there any given day.
-The creation of a Financial counseling program which will assist the membership in succeeding in financial planning and growth.
-The establishment of our own language program. This program is offered to our youth, our elders, and everyone in between.
There are so many more things to list.
I welcome an opportunity to discuss them further with you.
A lot of what has been done was made possible by the many sacrifices of so people who have come before us.
I/we recognize that no one person can do it alone. We must work together to move forward.
We all have a common goal of serving the membership as best we can.
Feel free to email me at davidb@puyalluptribe.com
