Centralia Youth Commission Takes Shape

City staff held an organizational meeting for the Centralia Youth Commission on Friday, November 19th in the Council Chambers at City Hall with community leaders and youth proponents present. The purpose of this initial meeting was to develop an objective for the Commission that will not be duplicative of other services already in the community and to help identify membership for the Commission. The dialogue focused on the following issues: 1) being proactive rather than reactive; 2) providing resource and support to existing agencies and organizations; 3) developing community-wide activities from a large pool of organizations and resources to help both parent and youth; 4) providing best practice models of activities and programs through City staff support that are shown to be effective in other communities; and, finally providing an accessible networking document so that all “point of contact” inquiries about youth programming can be provided from many organizations. Those in attendance were Jessica Palazzolo, Annie Holtkamp, Yvette Glasgow, April Hardy and JoAnn Glenn of the Community Resource Center, Kay Zibby of United Methodist Children’s Home, Councilman Marva Bledsoe, Linda Dabney of the Pregnancy Care Center, Reverand Hubert Bankhead and Alec Chandler of Second Baptist Church, Tron Young of the Centralia Junior High School, Alex McElroy, Allison Austin and Mayor Ault from the City. The Centralia City Council voted to approve the formation of the Youth Commission on the September 13th City Council Meeting. Official appointments to the Youth Commission will come before the City Council in December.