To ad hoc committee members and others working hard on this issue: (Please forward to other members and interested parties)

At the direction of the ad hoc committee, I met with William Howard to discuss a role for him as a paid organizer. He agreed (with reservations) and we talked about a number of strategy options. He agreed to immediately start talking to island Republicans to get them moving on letter writing, phone calls, email etc directed to the Republican leadership in Raleigh. The intent is not to divide our attack between D's and R's, but to recognize the importance of approaching the decision makers as "one of them". The reality is that both houses of the State Legislature are controlled by one party and we need to play to that position. If we can move even a couple of R's to see our side with some sympathy, it could make a big difference when amendments may be offered later in the process.

William also said he'd contact WOVV about getting some factual info and contact info going out on the airwaves. We also talked about his putting together a one page sheet (online and hard copy) to hand/send to letter writers/callers which will state basic facts and talking points.

He expressed some reservations about being paid ... we agreed that he would go ahead with the tasks he's on, that I would contact Darlene to set up a meeting of the ad hoc for Wednesday(?) next and kind of feel our way through the paid organizer thing. There are a lot of ways to spend money on this.

None of this is meant to fail to recognize the effectiveness of other efforts going on. The Facebook pages "Say No To The Ferry Toll" and "No Tolls For The Ocracoke Hatteras Ferry" are getting hits in the hundreds every day and are likely generating a barrage of emails and phone calls to key legislators and DOT admins. They are also getting up to date info out to activists about things that are changing daily or even hourly. Meantime, Mazie, Darlene et al at the County are continuing to get info out and encouraging good effective actions. All headed in the right direction, IMHO.

Our real challenge is keeping up and even growing this level of activity for the next six weeks or more. We need these legislators to feel the heat from us and learn a little bit more about Ocracoke every day...we want them getting phone calls and emails daily, we want them to open the newspapers every day and see an article, an editorial or a letter to the editor advancing our point of view. What we don't want is to create the "flash in the pan" impression - that we were active for a week or so and then we're gone. If that happens, they'll ignore us when it really comes down to it.

Tom