UMRBA Standard Operating Procedures for Quarterly Meetings

Statement of Purpose

The principal purpose of the Upper Mississippi River Basin Association (UMRBA) is to maintain communication and cooperation among the states of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin and among federal agencies with missions on matters related to water resources planning and management of the Upper Mississippi River Basin and in other areas of the United States.

A UMRBA member state shall be represented on the Association by a representative appointed by and serving at the pleasure of the Governor of the member state.  A Governor and/or the Governor’s duly appointed representative may designate additional alternate representatives.

UMRBA invites federal agencies having responsibilities related to the Upper Mississippi River Basin to appoint a non-voting liaison to offer the views and perspectives of the respective federal agency on issues addressed by the Association, to provide information to the member states on the respective agency’s programs and policies of interest, and to generally act as liaison between the UMRBA member states and the respective federal agency.

UMRBA convenes its Board Members, Alternates, Federal Liaisons on a quarterly basis for the purposes of evaluating and deliberating policy and programmatic matters and setting forth a course of cooperative action among UMRBA’s member states and, as appropriate, federal government.  The quarterly meetings are used to document the Board’s direction to Association staff and to report on the actions taken in response to the Board’s direction.  The meetings involve reviewing and approving organizational business matters (e.g., approving financial reports), hosting briefings on policies and programs affecting the Upper Mississippi River System, and sharing new ideas and progress in advancing interstate and multi-jurisdictional planning efforts.

The quarterly meetings typically occur in February, May, August, and late October or early November in St. Paul, Minnesota; La Crosse, Wisconsin; the Quad Cities, Illinois and Iowa; and St. Louis, Missouri.

Standard Operating Procedures

General Communications

  1. Information about quarterly meeting date, location, logistics for in-person and remote participation, agendas, and minutes will be made available on UMRBA’s website and disseminated broadly through a distribution list.
  2. Meeting information will be posted on the Events web page, which can be found on the top menu bar.
  3. The distribution list will be open to anyone who requests to be added.
    1. UMRBA will monitor turn over in people serving relevant positions within state agencies, federal agencies, and other organizations who actively participate and attend UMRBA quarterly meetings and update contact information as appropriate.
    2. UMRBA will circulate a hardcopy attendance list, on which attendants are asked to provide an email if they choose to be added to the distribution list.
    3. UMRBA will submit a comment in the chat of the remote connection platform at the beginning of the meeting asking attendees to email UMRBA at umrba@umrba.org if they wish to be added to the distribution list for the quarterly meetings.
  4. UMRBA staff will use microphones and a large speaker to accommodate sound quality, particularly for people who are hearing impaired as well as to accommodate remote participation.
  5. UMRBA makes the quarterly meetings accessible to remote participation through Zoom.
    1. Participants have the option to view a live transcript (or closed captioning) and the ability to select preferred language for closed captioning.  Additionally, the participant may adjust closed captioning size to their individual preference.  Participants can freely enable captions and select language without the involvement of the meeting host and without visibility by other meeting participants.
    2. The UMRBA Board Chair and Executive Director will use a tablet or laptop to monitor interest in remote participants to engage in the meeting, particularly by monitoring for “raised hands” and comments in the chat forum.  The UMRBA Board Chair will use discretion to vocalize the comments given their relevance to in-person participants.
    3. UMRBA will assign a staff person to monitor technical difficulties and work to resolve them with other UMRBA staff and/or participants, as appropriate.
    4. The UMRBA Board Chair or staff remind in-person participants to state their name prior to making a comment and request that in-person participants use a microphone to voice their oral comments.

Potential Process Improvements

  1. Develop a web-based system for individuals to self-select to be added to the quarterly meeting distribution list or to unsubscribe.  If feasible and cost-effective for UMRBA, once developed, add instructions about subscribing or unsubscribing to the distribution lists to the standard quarterly meeting communications and Events webpage – and/or individual webpages for each quarterly meeting.
  2. Implement UserWay on UMRBA’s website to enable a more inclusive digital environment.  This will allow for meeting information (announcement, agendas, logistics information) to be translated into other languages and accessible to people with visual impairments.

Meeting Date and Location

  1. The date and in-person location for each quarterly meeting is determined during the quarterly meeting held three cycles prior – i.e., nine months in advance.
  2. As soon as it is practical after the date and location is determined, UMRBA shall send an announcement of the meeting date and location (city, not facility).  The meeting date and location will be disseminated via email with a downloadable calendar invitation.  The information will also be posted on UMRBA’s website.
  3. The in-person location (city) will be selected solely for the purposes of convening state and federal agency leadership.  The in-person location will be determined by the UMRBA Board Chair with consensus from the other Board Members.
  4. The UMRBA Operations Manager will research and make a recommendation for a facility within the determined city.  The Executive Director will provide authorization for the meeting venue selection and contracting.  Factors included in decision making will include accessibility, safety, cost, and meeting purpose.

Meeting Announcement and Agenda

  1. UMRBA will disseminate a meeting announcement and a preliminary agenda approximately four weeks in advance of each quarterly meeting.  The meeting announcement will include:
    1. A direct link to the quarterly meeting event webpage, which will include logistics information, schedule, and preliminary agenda.
    2. An attached PDF of the logistics information, schedule, and preliminary agenda.
    3. Future meeting schedule, including city location for the in-person meeting.
    4. The UMRBA Notice of Nondiscrimination.
    5. A request to contact the UMRBA Nondiscrimination Coordinator, Natalie Lenzen, at umrba@umrba.org, within two weeks (and two weeks prior to the meeting) to request language assistance service, auxiliary aid or service, and/or another reasonable accommodation. 

    6. A notice for public participants to submit a request to UMRBA Executive Director, Kirsten Wallace, on behalf of the UMRBA Board Chair, to reserve a special presentation time during the quarterly meeting within one week after the distribution of the meeting announcement, and one week prior to the dissemination of the final agenda. 

      The notice will also include a statement that requests will be thoughtfully considered, including in light of the UMRBA Board’s priorities for the meeting, the relevance of the request to the UMRBA Board’s mission, scope, and ongoing work as well as whether and how there might be other ways to convey the interested participants’ communication request to the UMRBA Board members. 

  2. UMRBA will disseminate the final agenda approximately two weeks in advance of each quarterly meeting.  The communication of the final agenda will include:
    1. A direct link to the quarterly meeting event webpage, which will include logistics information, schedule, agenda, and read ahead (or reference) materials.
    2. Future meeting schedule, including the in-person location (city) for the in-person meeting.
    3. The UMRBA notice of nondiscrimination.
    4. An insert of “how to participate” in the quarterly meetings, such as the process for engaging in the conversation and/or offering a public comment.  This insert will also include information about using features within Zoom (or other platform) that facilitate remote participation (e.g., raise hand feature).
      • A request to inform the UMRBA Nondiscrimination Coordinator, Natalie Lenzen, at umrba@umrba.org, of known challenges to participating in a meeting because of language or other accessibility barriers.
      • The notice will include information that certain accommodations may not be feasible, but that UMRBA staff will review their capabilities and work with the individual to consider opportunities to enhance the individual’s accessibility to fully participate in the meeting.
    5. An annotated agenda with an explicit purpose for the agenda topic and relationship to the meeting materials.  This information may be placed within the agenda packet of read head materials, on the attachment page for the section of materials.
    6. A list of acronyms frequently used during a routine quarterly meeting. 

 Meeting Documentation and Post-Meeting Actions

  1. UMRBA will disseminate draft meeting minutes as part of the next quarterly meeting’s materials. The UMRBA Board will consider the draft minutes and formally approve the minutes.  During the motion, the Board Chair will ask Board members for confirmation on the accuracy of the minutes or suggested changes to improve the accuracy of the minutes. UMRBA posts accepted minutes (with corrected as directed by the Board) onto its UMRBA Board webpage.
  2. For any “formal” public comment, UMRBA will take the actions listed below.  A “formal” public comment is defined as a comment reserved by a public participant in advance of the meeting – whether reserved as a special presentation time or to comment on a specific agenda topic.  Any other comment provided by a public participant during the meeting will be considered informal and, therefore, the same process of a formal response will not be undertaken.
    1. The UMRBA Executive Director will coordinate a response with the UMRBA Board Chair and other Board members.
    2. Within a month of the quarterly meeting or as soon as practicable, the UMRBA Executive Director will submit to the public participant the coordinated response to their comment.
    3. During the Executive Director’s report of the next quarterly meeting, the UMRBA Executive Director will provide a report on UMRBA Board’s consideration of the public participant’s comment and whether it will result in any change to a UMRBA policy or program activity.