January Meeting

Tonight's meeting was well attended.  The topics presented were:

• State activities.  There will be no primary in Washington, we use a caucus system.  The dates are: 3 March for the County Caucus at the WaHi Commons; and the County Convention on 21 April.  The State and National Conventions are later in the year.  You need not be a registered Republican to attend; you are merely required to sign an affidavit that you will not attend any other caucuses.  Dan will provide his "Caucuses For Dummies" next month.
• A hand out from the Family Policy Institute of Washington concerning bills to watch during the 2012 session of the State Legislature was passed around.
• The elections this year were discussed extensively.  The biggest points of interest are getting out the vote and distributing voter information.  This means knocking on doors, handing out pamphlets, making phone calls, and so on.  This will ramp up as we get closer to the elections.  If you are interested, please consider volunteering.  Please send a message through our contact page, specifying "Get Out The Vote", and your message will be passed to the right person.
• Getting training on how to handle this campaign season, individually, and as a group, from the National Tea Party was also discussed.  Some people were interested, but we need to survey the entire group.  The cost will be around $25 per person, and will likely last all day.  We hope to conduct the training in Walla Walla, but we may share with the Tri-Cities group, depending on how things fall out.  Please sign up by going to our contact page, and sending a message titled "National Tea Party Training".  If enough people sign up, we'll have it.
• The upcoming tax votes were discussed.  There are several: a levy for schools in the county (the school district has a site for that here); a 0.2% sales tax increase for roads in the city; and of course, Governor Gregoire's proposed sales tax.  The primary concern is that tax increases in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression is not supportive of economic growth.  All of these taxes seem small, but they add up, especially to people who are cutting their budgets to make ends meet.
• Finally, the new web site was presented to the group, and several people signed up to post information and links to resources.  We still need some moderators, and help with this blog would be great as well.