Advisory Board Minutes
February 7, 2008

IIn attendance were: Lynn Patton – MCDSS, Tom Buttner – Restorative Justice Volunteer, Jaime Henrichs & Kristen Spiegel-Berg – DA’s Office, Keith Wilk – Goodwill, Brenda Pellowski – Everest Metro Police Department, Chrys Anklam – Marathon County Juvenile Facility, Dan Kohn – Greater Wausau Christian Services, Carrie Vergin – MCRJP, David Cha – MCRJP, Paula Schultz – MCRJP.

After introductions, the minutes of the November 1, 2007 meeting were reviewed.

Carrie Vergin then updated everyone on the Office of Justice Assistance funding and the year end statistics. Lynn Patton added that there is no additional long term funding available through OJA, so we will need to seek out funding to keep our Hmong Facilitator on board. Other notes of interest included:
- The standards of practice binders are now complete and are available for use by staff and volunteers.
- Carrie is to attend a Charter School Conference with New Horizon’s teacher, Shannon Young. They will be giving a presentation on how restorative practices can be used in a school setting. The staff of MCRJP have been working together with the students of New Horizon’s this school year. Statistics have been gathered for comparison. Last year there were 14 police calls and between four and eight referrals to MCDSS. This year there has only been one police call.
- MCRJP was noted in the United Way Life Study as being a program assisting in the decrease of juvenile referrals.
- The Victim Assistance Trust received a grant from the United Way for $5,000. A big thank-you to the United Way!!

Discussion:
• Lynn Patton shared that she recently nominated Jim Schroeter of MCDSS for his participation in the Restitution Project and Victim Assistance Trust. He was to be presented with an award on February 20, 2007.
• Discussion took place concerning any sexual assault referrals. It was suggested that these be reviewed by the DA’s office and/or MCDSS before acceptance of these referrals.
• We then began discussions on what everyone would like to see happen with the board and the programming in the future. Tom Buttner brought up the idea of having the board change to a working board. He would like to see additional members brought in so that we see things from many different perspectives, not just agency perspectives. We were asked to think about others that might want to get involved. We agreed to spend most of our next meeting discussing these ideas.

Next meeting set for May 8, 2008 @ noon. We will meet in the community room of Goodwill in Weston.