Poweshiek CARES annual meeting: March 12, 2013

On Tuesday, March 12, Poweshiek CARES held its first annual meeting. Twenty-four members of the organization attended. Joyce Otto presided.

Joyce began the meeting by reviewing the origins of Poweshiek CARES: Six neighbors, concerned citizens, assembled to watch an inspector as he collected information about a proposed new hog factory, and were alarmed to discover how little the interests and concerns of local residents were taken into account. The first public meeting, on May 7, 2012, launched us into a round of meetings with officials, all of whom essentially pushed us away, saying that “the law protects the corporations.” In those early days, we received guidance and support from Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and from Peter Thorne of the Environmental Health Sciences Research Center at the University of Iowa.

Joyce then reviewed the main agenda for the meeting:

1. Electing the board of directors. (Since Poweshiek CARES is now formally a corporation, we have to elect board members regularly, and we plan to hold these elections once a year, on the second Tuesday in March.
2. A look back on what we've accomplished in our first ten months of existence, reflecting on what has been effective and what we could do better in the future.
3. A report on the state of our treasury, followed by a discussion of what our priorities should be for using the money that we've raised so far.
4. A discussion of ways to reach out to organizations that can help us to achieve our goal of protecting our health, our quality of life, and our environment from the adverse effects of industrial farming: local churches, businesses, and non-profit organizations; environmental groups; organizations of concerned citizens in other Iowa counties and regions; governmental bodies such as the Department of Natural Resources and the Iowa legislature.
5. News about recent proposals to build yet more hog factories in Poweshiek County, and about a new program from the University of Iowa that will help us to oppose such proposals more effectively.

Joyce then led us through the elections. Directors will normally serve three-year terms, but in this initial election we chose directors for terms of different lengths, so that in the future we will elect only two or three directors each year, ensuring continuity.

Joyce Otto, Valerie Vetter, and John Stone were unanimously elected to terms enting on the date of the 2016 annual meeting. Donna Winburn and Jean Perri were unanimously elected to terms ending on the date of the 2015 annual meeting. Donna nominated Randy Lidtka for one of the remaining positions, but he declined, pleading inexperience. Joyce nominated Agnes Mikel, who agreed to serve. LaForest Sherman and Agnes were then unanimously elected to terms ending on the date of the 2014 annual meeting.

Valerie Vetter then led the meeting in recalling our accomplishments over the past year:

• We attended many meetings of the Poweshiek County Board of Supervisors, presented clear and informative accounts of what the hog factories were doing to us and to our community, and expressing our concerns about the expansion of CAFOs in the county. Many of our members wrote effective letters of protest, appealing to the supervisors to reject proposals for new confinements.
• We helped to persuade the Board of Supervisors to go with us to the state Environmental Protection Commission, and to bring a lawsuit (which is scheduled to be heard in August 2013) against the EPC when the commissioners failed to act on our objections.
• We constructed a float for the 2012 Independence Day parade in Grinnell and distributed more than eight hundred flyers explaining the dangers of hog factories during that parade. We also took the float to several other events, including an important meeting of the Board of Supervisors in Montezuma.
• We published a detailed factsheet about hog factories in the PennySaver, reaching some thirteen thousand readers, and distributed thousands more copies on paper and electronically.
• We established a mailing list with more than two hundred recipients, a Facebook page, and a Web site.
• We wrote twenty-five or so letters to newspapers on various aspects of the topic of hog factories, their role in agriculture, and their consequences to communities.
• We have conducted a survey of the membership to determine how strongly we feel about various issues and to set priorities.
• We sent informative letters to residents of the areas in which new hog factories have been proposed, explaining how they can oppose new confinments and urging them to attend meetings of the Board of Supervisors.
• In October 2012, we sponsored a well-attended Candidates' Forum on the issue of hog factories.
• We attended legislative forums organized b