HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes.NXGN.Regular.20200129Next Gen Meeting
January 29, 2020
Present: Stephanie Janigo, Marcus Blue, Leah Fielding, Christine Benedetti, Kimbo Brown-Schirato,
Morris Hogan, Mayor Torre, Nicky Byrne
New member Stephanie introduces herself – from Bellingham, WA and been in Aspen for six years,
owned business Messenger Aspen, ran a nightclub in town called Grotto, ran Messenger one more
winter and now works for a family in Aspen as an assistant, was inspired by working with entrepreneurs
and then saw some lack of support by City and was frustrated by that and was frustrated that where
her business was lost space because Mark Hunt put it up for sale for the City
Leah – We’re resetting our priorities and making sure what we’re focused on is what our demographic
cares about, trying to find more people who are 18-25 and we are conducting a survey right now
Marcus – the idea is for 18 on up, do we have an IG account? (Yes.) That’s the easiest way to hit young
people, maybe we can put questions on IG, do quick polls and to get a little bit of traction if we can
follow everyone there is
Leah – There’s a distribution plan for the survey and that is part of the plan, maybe we can assign
people to do that quarterly, give everyone a turn with social media, we did add to the survey some
things because I didn’t want to assume, but we added a few newer questions that I want to talk about
with the group
Morris - We were concerned about question about top three factors that limits people ability to live in
Aspen long term (that is a ranked question)
Leah – Other ideas that I’d like to add to the survey are a comment box asking for concerns, ideas,
positive experiences, living and working in Aspen or comments for Next Gen
Kimbo – Maybe we just say if it’s not mentioned in anything above, please comment, we decided we
also want to create a culture of kindness in town, and why you love living here
Leah – So it should be question about why they love living here
Christine – Or tell us what their favorite story is in Aspen
Leah – I’ll rework those questions and the question - What do you think Aspen Next Gen should work
on in the coming year? We can sort the themes
Marcus – Maybe we ask “outside of the biggest issues aside from AH, what is your big concern?”
Kimbo – first one was 300-400 and the last one was about 150 respondents
Marcus – maybe in warmer weather we can get people at Tuesday Cruise Day and events like that
Torre – for me there is a science to surveys and when I read through this it seems like a lot of
demographics and how can you be most effective, I heard a little about how it’s going out, what format
will it be in,
Kimbo – we want to keep the base the same so we have consistency over time
Morris – do we want to create a mirrored survey in Spanish
Torre – I was looking at the question, do you have children, maybe that should be up at the beginning,
maybe ask a question about status, single, single with kids, family size,
Morris – I think household income would be good to have and we can reword the household members
Leah – this will help reset what we are doing next year for our priorities
Torre – I don’t know when you’re getting this out but I think you should present to City Council, it’s a
good way to up your profile, tell people how you are getting this survey out, I know you’re doing some
refocusing but it would be good to get some input from you on what’s going on, every other week we
have a meeting where we’re deciding stuff whether it’s housing or land use etc. and Next Gen should
weigh in more, maybe just present to Council in the next two weeks, I’m happy to request you be on
the agenda, that would be a great way to get some exposure and start driving what you can do
Torre – I would do that over scheduling a work session
Christine – maybe do blast with our emails
Leah – email, Next Gen newsletter list, maybe included in City emails, schools, LOCAL, maybe get
article, flyers around town, PSA to newspapers, Yellow Brick, Red Brick, grocery stores, Paradise,
Kimbo – let’s have a subcommittee for the survey and in terms of flyers, every board member
committed to getting 20 or so flyers up, when we ask our friends to do things that helps,
Christine – we need to get out of the box people
Kimbo – we can grab people with an iPad
Marcus – The Drop on Instagram with Aspen Times
Stephanie – I want to know if people vote and if there are barriers to getting involved, if not, why don’t
they vote?
Kimbo – we do have access to voter roles, they are public, because we can ask people why or why not
they vote, it’s an interesting one but I don’t know if people will lie
Nicky – Are you registered to vote? Did you vote in last election? Why not?
Morris – we’ll get cranking next week with a subcommittee
Stephanie – I think finding out how to get people involved is really hard, but we want to reach people
Marcus – It’s not my favorite question to ask if Council represents us
Leah – did you vote in the last election is neutral and how do you receive your news is helpful
Stephanie – if we had some research on how to reach people we can work smarter and harder
Kimbo – how do you learn about issues?
Marcus – Here House has speakers and they would engage something like this, a conversation, they’re
always looking for something to add
Morris – dinner topic ideas and event date, does anyone have any follow-up? We met with Torre and
Skippy and Torre talked about having younger representatives on this committee, maybe we can get
some high school kids, we don’t know anything about that
Leah – maybe a head girl and boy, it seems like they’re already involved and care, that was the idea
Nicky – the head boy and head girl have affiliates to the student council, it’s voted by the school,
student body votes on it, I can spearhead that and figure out, a male and a female
Torre – It’s really about reaching out to that demographic, it’s February, so your seniors are checking
out, don’t go into it with too many expectations, be open to talking to a group of students, just doing
whatever you can to tap into that demographic, it takes until you are a certain age to tell people what
you think, don’t expect a lot
Nicky – I think if we can just get one delegate
Morris – let’s get conversation started
Leah – the survey is going to help a lot with engagement, Genteen podcast
Stephanie – Maybe on Upload with Andrew Wicks, and the Gondola
Morris – newsletter ideas, we can say look out for survey coming in next month
Marcus – Vanguard is a group of young donors who are interested in community, that’s who we want
to connect with
Leah – we also need to connect with Spanish speakers who live and work here
Morris – Kudos to anyone, Alex winning Gold and Mountain Rescue
Kimbo – If the survey is going to span a year then we need to focus on a topic we want to advance with
the Council, if the most powerful thing is our voice maybe we can be the catalyst for change for the
Entrance to Aspen, maybe for the next three months we go on a fact gathering mission