CONNECT Skill Shares are an evolution of the Zoom happy hours we started holding that have served well for information-sharing and problem-sourcing, leading to excellent follow-up and innovation. The Skill Shares, which are specific to just one topic at a time, "stack the room" with experts and encourage all to participate in sharing concerns, inspiration, and resources.
These have evolved with the need to rapidly adjust to the changes COVID-19 has necessitated.
- Getting started on Zoom
- Communicating remotely with your constituents
- New census outreach strategies for when you can't go door to door
- Municipal revenue crisis
- Anti-racism and equitable communities
Municipal Revenue Crisis
Check out the Center for Metropolitan Studies’ new tool to help policy makers to calculate estimated revenue losses due to COVID-19. The tool provides aggregate revenue loss estimates statewide, by DCED service region, and by county under three revenue loss scenarios. Using these loss estimates, the model then estimates how many municipalities face cash insolvency.
If you attended either of CONNECT’s Municipal Revenue Crisis skill shares, you will be somewhat familiar with how this tool came to be. It is the result of many conversations with Dr. George Dougherty, Weiping Xiao (GSPIA 2020), CONNECT, and concerned CONNECTers as soon as the pandemic started. Not knowing what the damages due to COVID-19 would even be, no one knew what assistance they should be asking for. This tool serves to help us get an understanding of where we are right now so that we know how to address it, and so that we can better predict what is to come over the next 2 years. You can read more here (scroll down) and here.
Anti-Racism Series
We asked CONNECTers to "consider how your experience, education, or work has helped you understand the relationship between bureaucracy, policy, geography, and race. We would love to hear your knowledge and questions on things such as the continued effects of redlining, pollution, mobility, access, and anything else that is related to CONNECT's goals with local government. We will defer to the availability of those in our CONNECT network who can offer leadership in this critical topic area" in order to prepare for this skill share series. Thanks to everyone who showed up to our initial planning meeting to brainstorm! Skill share themes proposed are racism in housing, redlining and real estate industry; in policing and the criminal justice system; in public health and social services; and more. Read the full minutes and calls to action here.
While we are still planning this series, it is unofficially kicking off with CONNECT's workshop at the Pitt Diversity Forum entitled "Responding to Root Causes: Shifts Toward a New Public Health & Public Safety Paradigm" on July 30th.
Register here and then sign up for the specific workshops you want to attend.
Read more about the Pitt Diversity Forum.
Find all of CONNECT's meeting minutes on this page.