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Regular City Council Meeting Monday, March 21,2011 Page 14 c. Consider a Resolution Supporting Efforts to Establish a Yellow Ribbon Community Mayor Roe welcomed City of Maplewood Mayor Rossbach; and by consensus, Item 12.c was moved forward at this time to facilitate Mayor Rossbach's atten- dance at the meeting. At the request of Mayor Roe, City Manager Malinen briefly reviewed the RCA dated March 21, 2011 related to the process in supporting efforts to establish a Yellow Ribbon Community. Councilmember Pust, attending meetings of the group in Councilmember John- son's absence as Liaison to the RCLLG, shared that group's position on the Yel- low Ribbon Community initiative by advising that many communities were inter- ested in this great program. However, the RCLLG sought to pull regional efforts together, as the program had been found to be very volunteer intensive, and in or- der to do justice to the efforts of the program, the RCLLG wanted to coordinate as many neighboring communities as possible to make the program work: in other words to "walk the walk, not just talk the talk." Councilmember Pust expressed her interest in hearing the comments of Mayor Rossbach and his perspective. Mayor Rossbach, City of Maplewood Mayor Rossbach advised that the Maplewood City Council had passed a resolu- tion of support at approximately three months; then had found out the amount of work involved, specifically in administering and organizing multiple efforts to meet the needs of military families, and getting people involved in future activi- ties. While immediately receiving a list of twenty to twenty-five (20-25) interest- ed citizens for various hands-on projects, Mayor Rossbach noted that actual key administrative people to coordinate the volunteers was not easy to obtain. Mayor Rossbach noted that the Mayor or City Councilmembers could not and should not administer the program, as it was meant to be a citizen-run organization, not a city function; and noted the challenges found in Maplewood in getting those critical administrative efforts together. Mayor Rossbach noted the interest expressed from the Cities of Shoreview, Vad- nais Heights, and others, as well as Ramsey County in a city-wide and/or county- wide effort, along with other groups involved in the RCLLG, but reiterated the need to coordinate a larger pool of volunteers for the program. Mayor Rossbach expressed his interest in the City of Roseville's efforts and process that would provide their openness to work within a larger group. Mayor Rossbach further noted that the City of Maplewood had changed their fo- cus by getting the word out to other interested communities and entities interested in participating in the initiative. Mayor Rossbach noted the difficulty in obtaining military family information as there was no central source of military personnel, t I