Fall General Council Minutes (2011)
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Nez Perce Tribe
Fall General Council Minutes
September 22-24, 2011
Nez Perce Tribe General Council - Fall 2011 Minutes
Table of Contents
GENERAL COUNCIL BUSINESS
House Rules ....................................................................................................................................................... 3
Minutes ............................................................................................................................................................. 3
Agenda .............................................................................................................................................................. 4
Resolutions Committee Report .......................................................................................................................... 7
Q & A Resolution Committee ............................................................................................................................ 7
General Council Officer Elections ..................................................................................................................... 10
NPTEC OFFICER REPORTS
Chairman’s Report – Brooklyn Baptiste ........................................................................................................... 15
Treasurer’s Report – Joel Moffett .................................................................................................................... 17
Q & A – NPTEC Officer Reports ........................................................................................................................ 21
EXECUTIVE REPORTS
Executive Director – Rebecca Miles ................................................................................................................. 24
Executive Officer – Jaime Olson ....................................................................................................................... 31
Q & A – Executive Reports ............................................................................................................................... 40
BOARDS / COMMISSION ELECTIONS ............................................................................................... 54
NPTEC SUBCOMMITTEE / BOARD / COMMISSION REPORTS
Law and Order Subcommittee Report – Larry Greene ....................................................... 57
Gaming Commission Report ............................................................................................................................ 59
TERO Commission Report ................................................................................................................................ 60
Human Resources Subcommittee Report – Roberta Bisbee ............................................... 61
Senior Advisory Board Report .......................................................................................................................... 64
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NMPH Report .................................................................................................................................................. 65
NPT Housing Authority Report ......................................................................................................................... 69
Q & A ............................................................................................................................................................... 71
Budget and Finance Subcommittee Report – Joel Moffett ................................................. 85
Land Commission Subcommittee Report – Joanna Marek ................................................. 87
Natural Resources Subcommittee Report – McCoy Oatman .............................................. 89
Q & A ............................................................................................................................................................... 90
Nez Perce Tribe Enrollment – Roberta Bisbee ................................................................... 95
Q & A ............................................................................................................................................................... 96
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Nez Perce Tribe
Fall General Council
September 22, 23, 24, 2011
Kamiah Idaho
Meeting called to order at 8:58 am, by Chairman Elliott Moffett. Invocation by NPTEC Chaplain Julia DavisWheeler. Flag song by Wec’t qan. Flags brought in by Steve Reuben, Timothy Wheeler, and James
Spencer.
Chairman Moffett: We turn now to the draft agenda. The next order of business is to adopt the house rules.
We’ll give you a few minutes to read the House Rules and then I’ll entertain a motion to adopt the House
Rules. Is there a motion to adopt the House Rules?
House Rules – Motion Made by Connie Watters to approve the House Rules; Seconded by Julia Davis
Wheeler; Motion Carried
Chairman Moffett: Motion has been made by Connie Watters and seconded by Julia Davis Wheeler to
adopt the House Rules as submitted. Motion has been and seconded. Is there any discussion? Any
discussion? That motion is in order. We’ll vote by voice vote. All those in favor of the motion to adopt the
House Rules say “aye.” All those opposed to adopting the House Rules say “no.” The House Rules are
adopted.
Minutes – Motion Made by Lee Bourgeau to table the minutes from Spring 2011 to address them right after
lunch; Seconded by Skip Williamson; Motion Carried.
Chairman Moffett: Next we turn to the draft Minutes 2011 Spring General Council meeting.
Mr. Kipp: [inaudible] the General Council Secretary. We haven’t seen the Minutes all year and we are just
now seeing them today. [inaudible]
Secretary Mazie Wilson: I went through four (4) recorders and the recorders didn’t get all of the Minutes so
it took me that long to compile all the dates. We finally got a new recorder so hopefully the next Secretary
doesn’t run into the same problem I did. I apologize for not getting those out.
Chairman Moffett: Knowing that the Chair will also entertain a motion to table the minutes until later in the
meeting when we’ve had time and [inaudible] able to read the minutes. Motion has been made to table the
Lee Bourgeau: So moved.
Chairman Moffett: Motion has been made to table until when? Table the Minutes of the of the Spring
General Council. When do you want…tabled until when? What time in the meeting do you want them to be
addressed? How about Friday, first thing tomorrow morning? Motion has been made to table the draft
Minutes until tomorrow first thing after Registration and Call the Meeting to Order we will address the
Minutes and I see a Second.
Skip Williamson: Second
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Chairman Moffett: Seconded by Mr. Williamson. Any discussion on the motion to table?
Kay Kidder: I have just a couple questions and a comment. I think in lieu of not having a recorder that
works the Secretary’s responsibility is to ensure that there is a listing of the actions that the floor of the
General Council took and that would be acceptable at least. In the event, who is responsible for making this
report [inaudible] tomorrow? Let’s say we are having elections today and there is a new chairman seated
and a new secretary seated. Does this mean both of your positions are responsible for getting that out and
is that with or without pay?
Chairman Moffett: The motion is to table the Minutes until tomorrow unless you are ready to vote on them
right now. So that’s the motion to either approve the minutes or disapprove them. The motion is to table the
minutes. Suggestion has been made to address the minutes right after lunch. Motion maker is that ok? So
the motion is to table the minutes until right after lunch today. Is there any further discussion on the motion?
Kay Kidder: Who will have the responsibility in the event we have newly elected Secretary and Chairman?
Does that mean you two are responsible for getting that to us [inaudible] out there?
Chairman Moffett: Who’s responsible for bringing the minutes..?
Kay Kidder: In the event the Chairman and Secretary’s positions have been filled by new people. I’m
assuming that this is the Chairman and the Secretary that was at the meeting to meet after the election and
take care of business and then come back [inaudible] after lunch, right? This is your responsibility to review
and [inaudible]. I just want it understood that so that when we walk away from this motion we know that two
key people are in the positions [inaudible] right now to bring it back to us.
Chairman Moffett: Whoever the Chair is will handle business after the election. And that often happens for
elected positions that people will have to take that responsibility on after they are elected. And so the
responsibility if you were not to run or be elected then our responsibility and our authority in those positions
will end at that time. Any further discussion on the motion to table the minutes? We will vote by voice vote
again. All those in favor of tabling the minutes for the Spring General Council to right after lunch say “aye.”
All those opposed say “no.” Motion is carried.
Agenda – Motion Made by to approve the Agenda by Wilfred Scott, Seconded by Skip Williamson; Motion
Carried.
Chairman Moffett: Our next order of business is to adopt the agenda.
Wilfred Scott: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move to adopt the agenda.
Chairman Moffett: Mr. Scott moves to adopt the agenda as presented. Is there a second? Mr. Skip
Williamson seconds it. Discussion. Discussion on the motion to adopt the agenda. I have been presented a
memorandum from the NPTEC NiMiiPuu Health Board Liaison. It is addressed to the General Council
Chair. It concerns the Health Board vacancies. In summation it said on draft agenda for Friday that…I’m
sorry, that’s on Saturday, the Board and Commission Elections. They have to do with the 3 p.m. Board and
Commission elections continue. Seat 1 - three (3) term, Seat 2 – three (3) term and according to this
memorandum from the NPTEC NMPH Board Liaison that there is no need to have an election for the
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Health Board membership. So the result from this memorandum would be that there would not be a Health
Board Election for Seat 1 and 2 until 2013.
Chairman Moffett: Connie Watters.
Connie Watters: Mr. Chairman, as I understood [inaudible] the two members of the board would be filled
by people who are interested in serving on the board and they would [inaudible] apply..their reasons why
they should be on the board and submit it to the NPTEC [inaudible].
Chairman Moffett: Is there a NPTEC Liaison available this morning or somebody from…
Connie Watters: Two positions will be filled.
Chairman Moffett: Ms. Blackeagle (Shannon Jackson).
Shannon Jackson: [inaudible] minutes from the NMPH Board and according to the NMPH Board Bylaws
four members are to be appointed by NPTEC and one by General Council. So right now they are currently
in compliance [inaudible] and at this point to maintain compliance with their by-laws two people have to be
appointed and apply through the application process. So that is why there is no need to have an election
today or Saturday. So that’s the only reason. So a memo will be coming out from the NPTEC [inaudible]
two vacancies. Anyone who is interested can apply.
Chairman Moffett: Mr. Kipp. Discussion on the motion to approve the agenda.
Robert Kipp – Discussion [inaudible].
Chairman Moffett: That‘s appropriate because it on the agenda under elections.
Robert Kipp: My question is to the Health Board, Mr. Chairman. Is it usual and custom to do it this way?
And if not, does it have to be posted and is there a deadline for people who want to be on the Health
Board? Thank you.
Chairman Moffett: Mr. Jackson.
Herb Jackson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and all General Council. I would like to see on the agenda here
for Fish and Wildlife and all the other elections to be put up here instead of in the back because 140 people
elected the Fish and Wildlife commissioners [inaudible]. On Saturday everybody gets tired and leaves. I
would like to see the elections moved forward instead of way back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Moffett: Ms. Marek.
Joanna Marek: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, General Council. Mrs. Bisbee is on an
important conference call this morning and we are very privileged and feel very honored that the Nez Perce
Tribe has been asked to be involved in this health conference call. And it’s over, I believe it’s over at 10 this
morning, she will be up here. We discussed this yesterday with NPTEC members and everybody when we
met it was very important for her to be on that conference call. So she’ll be up to answer any further
questions but the positions for the Health Board are per the bylaws that had been adopted by the tribe.
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Chairman Moffett: Clarification. The bylaws had been approved by NPTEC, correct? And not the General
Council, is that correct? With that then we will entertain a motion to correct the agenda so that the, deleting
the Saturday Health Board elections.
Jennifer Oatman: Motion.
Chairman Moffett: Motion by Jenny Oatman to change the…and delete the Saturday afternoon NMPH
Board elections. And is there a second?
Connie Watters: Second.
Chairman Moffett: Seconded by Connie Watters. Discussion on that motion to change the agenda to
delete the Health Board elections. Any further discussion? The Question has been called for. The motion
on the floor is to delete the elections of the NMPH Board based on the bylaws of the Health Board. That
there is only one elected position from General Council to the Health Board and we will vote by voice. All
those in favor of the motion say “aye.” All those opposed to this motion say “no.” Motion is carried.
Subsidiary Motion by Jennifer Oatman to remove the Nimiipuu Health Board elections of the agenda based
on the bylaws of the Health Board, Seconded by Connie Watters. Motion Carried.
Chairman Moffett: We are still on our agenda. Mr. Jackson. A member from the floor has suggested that
the board and commission elections be moved up. Is that the motion, Mr. Jackson?
Herb Jackson: Yes, it is.
Chairman Moffett: When would you like to have those elections?
Herb Jackson: Tomorrow morning at 10.
Chairman Moffett: Friday morning at 10. The motion made by Mr. Jackson to move the board and
commission elections from Saturday to Friday morning at 10. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded
by Mr. Kipp. Discussion on the motion. Is there any discussion on this motion? Question has been called
for. All those in favor of moving the board and commission elections from Saturday to Friday morning at 10
say “aye.” All those opposed to the motion to move the board and commission [elections] up to Friday say
“no.” Motion has been carried.
Subsidiary Motion by Herbert Jackson to move the Boards and Commission election from Saturday
afternoon to Friday morning at 10 am, Seconded by Robert Kipp; Motion Carried.
Chairman Moffett: Is there any further discussion to accept the agenda? Is there any other discussion on
the motion to adopt the agenda? Seeing none, we will now vote on the adoption of the motion to approve
the agenda with those changes. We will vote by voice. All those in favor of adopting the agenda as
changed, say “aye.” All those opposed to adopting the agenda as changed, say “no.” Motion is carried.
Chairman Moffett: According to the agenda the Resolutions Committee now has the floor.
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Resolutions Committee Report – Danae Wilson, Chair; Marie Arthur, Vice Chair; Stacey Kash Kash,
Secretary; & Betty Kinser, Member.
Dane Wilson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Taac may wii, General Council. I would like to introduce our
Resolution Committee Members. Marie Arthur is the Vice-Chair, Stacey Kash Kash, Secretary; & Betty
Kinser, Member at Large. I would like to apologize as photocopies of our report to General Council is not at
the back table. They are being transported from Lapwai so hopefully by noon that report will be here. We
do have our binders in the back if you would like to go through them. It has all over our minutes and all of
the activities that we did throughout the year. And we will be passing one of these binders on to the [new]
Resolutions Committee [inaudible]. I would like to state that the [inaudible] for the Resolutions Committee is
that the Budget and Finance Subcommittee has been very appreciative and aware of General Council’s
wishes to have a feasibility study done. At the last General Council this Board passed a feasibility study to
be done on reducing our NPTEC from 9 to 5, on absentee ballots, and also on having the General Council
elect the NPTEC officers. They heard it loud and clear, they understand that it is an important thing for the
people and they included that in the General Council budget. So we, hopefully before next year we’ll have
the funding to begin that feasibility study whether it is this committee or whoever we elect will carry that
task. Does any of the Resolutions Committee want to address the General Council? I would like to say that
it has been a privilege serving on this committee. We have had a very good year, we’ve been very
aggressive. We have seen resolutions that this committee has done on the floor. I would also like to thank
the NPTEC for their response to the Resolutions Committee. They worked with us very, very well on any
issue that we had that we forward and they were very responsive. The Executive Officers as well, NMPH,
Enterprises, Housing and Law Enforcement. We had a lot of questions about law enforcement. The
Executive Director and the Law Enforcement Chief Hendricks were responsive to us every time we had
issues brought to us we took it right to them and they responded in a very timely manner. So I would like to
applaud the staff for recognizing that the Resolutions is a very important committee for the Nez Perce Tribe
General Council. Mr. Chairman, that is our report and our printed report will be here this afternoon.
Q&A
Chairman Moffett: Nancy Wheeler.
Nancy Wheeler: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have come to many of these meetings so I do know [inaudible]. My
concern to Ms. Kinzer and she forwarded it on to the rest of the board. I wasn’t satisfied with the reply back.
And it was in regards to the NMPH Optical department. And I was asking to get some kind of resolution or
answer back because awhile back my mom had lost her glasses and so I called NMPH to see if they could
get her in to get it [inaudible]. They said that they were [inaudible] out of three months and she would have
to go in in February. Well this was back in the summer time but she would have to go back in [inaudible] to
get her glasses. And since she is an elder she got to get in there and she needs her glasses. I said don’t
you have a list for elders who are diabetics for emergencies? No, we don’t. [inaudible]. Why is the optical
department open only two times per week when there is such a backlog for three months to [inaudible]?
And why isn’t there a list for emergencies for diabetics and elders to get their glasses if they lose them? I
know there is a lack of funding issues but we are in priority one. This is a priority one concern. So I would
like some kind of answers to these questions because they really need to be addressed and not put on the
back burner. Thank you.
Danae Wilson: Thank you, Nancy. We did get in contact with NMPH and asked about eye glasses
procedures. And I did respond to your email [inaudible]. They had mentioned to us that eye glasses that
[inaudible] able to get a prescription outside and they can fill it for you. So they gave us a lot of different
avenues of addressing the problem with eye glasses but they didn’t commit to making a priority for elders at
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that time. We can bring it up again and also the health board can bring it up to address the issue to have a
priority list for people with diabetes could be put right to the very top because [inaudible] so we can request
it again and bring it up again.
Chairman Moffett: Ms. Powaukee.
Alene Powaukee: Thank you. The NPTEC did provide in one of their line items from the gaming allocation
program for the NMPH clinic. It shows $100,000 in there for that so if nobody knew that especially our
elders, I think that where that money should go into [inaudible]. The gaming allocation has allotted 100,000
to the Nimiipuu budget. Every tribal member should have knowledge that there is funding there for these
situations.
Chairman Moffett: Mr. Kipp.
Robert Kipp – Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see on the Resolutions Committee last May to adopt a resolution
regarding trespassing on tribal land. Could you provide, the General Council, what the status of that is and
other resolutions?
Danae Wilson – Thank you, Mr. Kipp for your comments. The resolutions that were passed at the last
General Council there were four. The four that we had were the trespass, the feasibility study, the Indian
preference, and there was another resolution that passed that I believe Eric Holt sponsored and it was on
the SRBA water funds. We submitted those initially. We were told that the minutes had to be, the General
Council minutes had to be attached and that those resolutions needed to be signed by the Chairman and
the Secretary of the General Council. And to my knowledge those haven’t been signed or taken forward to
NPTEC. But we did present them, NPTEC did recognize the request for funding for the feasibility study.
And I apologize I do not know the current status of the trespass or SRBA. I don’t know if there is anybody in
here that worked with Eric on the SRBA..on the SRBA paying the water bills. That didn’t come through
resolutions committee that came through the General Council floor and did pass here at General Council
floor. But to my knowledge, and the Chairman can correct me if I’m wrong, I do not believe that those have
been presented. I haven’t seen the signed copies myself yet. Mr. Ken Jones has been in my office every
week asking for a signed copy of the resolutions.
Chairman Moffett: Mr. Kipp, I’ve not seen those resolutions that were passed by the General Council.
Secretary wrote the resolutions from the last General Council.
Danae Wilson: Sorry, Mazie, those resolutions were provided here at General Council and after. Stacey
delivered resolution copies but to my knowledge the resolutions themselves have not been signed. And we
do have them here and we can print copies today and they could be signed at anytime.
Shelly Higheagle: Good morning, tribal members. I was wondering where do you guys post your meetings?
We need something done about this enrollment stuff. We need to do something about our grandkids
because my granddaughter is not going anywhere and that’s my concern. As grandparents we should be
able to stand up for our grandchildren to be enrolled. That’s my main concern. I am trying to get my
granddaughter enrolled and we need to do something about our laws or something..get something done.
Thank you.
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Danae Wilson: Thank you. We did post our meetings in the Taac Titoqen. They are posted on the website
under current events on the Nez Perce Tribe website and also they are mass emailed out to anybody or
tribal employee that are on the listserve. So if you are not the listserve just give us your email address. The
tribe also has a text service that comes right to your cell phone. And all you need to do is provide your cell
phone number [to receive notices].
Chairman Moffett: Further questions for the resolutions committee. Kay Kidder.
Kay Kidder: I’m really concerned about your comment about the process that, really, people want to
believe in. We want a resolutions process that works. And that work requires teamwork. The resolutions
committee needs the cooperation of the chairman and the secretary [inaudible]. I guess I am really
disappointed to see that [inaudible] are not pulling out apparently. I encourage those individuals that are
elected to those seats understand the responsibility. What is the process of a recall for people that are not
doing their job duties for their positions?
Danae Wilson: Thank you, Ms. Kidder. We have received several concerns and complaints about
resolutions not being [inaudible] not getting signed copies to the NPTEC. And there was discussion about
what’s the process for recall and there were emails that were sent out. I have whole list of emails that
resolutions committee for all of our meetings, for all of the discussion items that we shared with each other.
We forwarded that information onto the election judges and to the General Council officers as a whole.
After the last General Council we didn’t have an officer’s meeting for follow-up so we made an effort to
provide what was required of Resolutions Committee and I apologize. Also related to the resolution tht
passed even though it was not signed they took it into consideration for Universal HRM. So both the
NPTEC and the Executive Officers recognized that is what the people wanted and they took that into
consideration even though they have not been officially presented to the NPTEC as signed resolutions.
Chairman Moffett: Any further questions for the Resolutions Committee? Ms. Arthur.
Mary Arthur: This recall should include not only NPTEC, General Council officers, Boards & Commissions,
but managers and bosses who are not doing their jobs. Because there are some students that wanted to go
to school and their application was put aside [inaudible]. These things should be [inaudible] to all entities of
the tribe.
Chairman Moffett: Any further questions?
Delores Wheeler: I wanted to get glasses. And I told them I wanted these tinted. I found out my reading
glasses were tinted and not these. So I was wondering if I could go down have that changed for my reading
glasses and my regular glasses.
Danae Wilson: Thank you, Delores. I believe there is staff from NMPH here in the audience. The
resolutions committee can definitely forward your concern and we can address it with the Executive Officer
and we can share with Health and Human Service subcommittee. I don’t know that corrections for lenses
come to Resolutions Committee but we can help in any way possible.
June Stewart: You need read more into the concerns that people are bringing. But if you go and talk to
them those managers take up for their organization and department and I think you need to go beyond
that..talking. Especially meet law enforcement. I did submit a letter against the cops here and Leslie
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reviewed it and of course she is going to take up for the cops. I just think that we need to dig more into the
requests that are coming because there must be a reason why people are submitting to Resolutions
Committee.
Danae Wilson: Thank you, June. We also did send copies of those emails to the NPTEC and the results
that we received were sent back to the people who brought their issues to us.
Chairman Moffett: Any further questions for the Resolutions Committee? If not, the Chair will entertain a
motion to accept the oral report of the Resolutions Committee. Connie Watters makes the motion to accept
the report of Resolutions Committee and seconded by Mr. Scott. Any discussion on this motion? Seeing
none, we will entertain the motion to accept the report of the Resolutions Committee. All those in favor say
“aye.” All those opposed say “no.” Resolutions Committee is excused.
Motion Connie Watters / Second Wilfred Scott to accept and excuse the Resolutions Committee, Motion
Carried.
Chairman Moffett: On our agenda next we have General Council officer elections. And the floor is now
open for position of Chairman.
General Council Chairman Election
Herbert Jackson nominates Shannon Jackson. Shannon Jackson accepts.
Timothy Wheeler nominates Jennifer Oatman. Jennifer Oatman accepts.
Sandra Davis nominates Mary Tallbull. Mary Tallbull accepts.
Motion by Skip Williamson that nominations cease, Seconded by Timothy Wheeler; Motion carried.
Results
Shannon Jackson - 46
Jennifer Oatman - 38
Mary Tallbull – 42
Invalid - 1
Run off between Shannon Jackson and Mary Tallbull.
Results
Mary Tallbull –
Shannon Jackson Invalid – 0
Shannon Jackson elected as the General Council Chairman.
Chairman Jackson: Motion by Danae Wilson to make all the elections plurality for this election and the
boards and commission tomorrow. Seconded by Stephanie Lawyer. All those in favor of this motion please
signify by saying “aye.” Those opposed. Okay. We’ll do this one more time. All those in favor of making all
the elections plurality including tomorrow’s elections, please signify by saying ‘aye.” Opposed. Can we get
a hand vote please by the tellers? Tellers please get in your positions. Can the sergeant at arms please call
the house? Elections by plurality please raise your hand. Tellers report back to the election judges. Tellers
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report back to your positions. Okay, all those against the motion, please raise your hand. Tellers report
back to the election judges. Yes – 68; No – 41. Motion carried.
General Council Secretary Election
Sara Sedgwick nominates Danae Wilson, Danae Wilson accepts.
Chairman Jackson: It has been recommended that the remaining elections the candidates introduce
themselves.
Sonya Samuels nominates Jennifer Oatman, Jennifer Oatman accepts.
Angela Broncheau nominates Aqua Greene, Aqua Green accepts.
Motion by Robert Kipp that nomination cease, seconded by Nancy Wheeler; Motion carried.
Results
Danae Wilson – 45
Jennifer Oatman – 53
Aqua Greene – 39
Jennifer Oatman elected as the General Council Secretary.
General Council Resolutions Committee Seat 1
Motion Julia Davis-Wheeler / Second Trish HeavyRunner to cease nominations. Motion carried.
Results:
Danae Wilson - 67
Betty Kinser - 23
Shelley Higheagle - 41
Dane Wilson elected to General Council Resolutions Committee Seat 1.
General Council Resolutions Committee Seat 2
Chairman: Floor is open for nominations for Resolutions Committee Seat 2.
Skip Williamson nominates Mary Tall Bull. Ms. Tall Bull accepts.
Carla Domebo nominates Shelley Higheagle. Ms. Higheagle accepts.
Nancy Wheeler nominates Betty Kinser. Ms. Kinser accepts.
Angie Broncheau nominates Aqua Greene. Ms Greene accepts
Motion Mazie Wilson / Second Allen Slickpoo, Jr. to cease nominations. Motion carried
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Results General Council Resolutions Committee Seat 2:
Mary Tall Bull - 31
Shelley Higheagle - 22
Betty Kinser - 15
Aqua Greene - 48
Aqua Greene elected to the General Council Resolutions Committee Seat 2.
Motion Olicutt Watters / Second Marilyn Bowen to recess for lunch at 11:58 a.m. Motion carried.
Chairman Jackson: Return at 1:15pm. We will return at 1:15 p.m. and continue with Resolution Committee
elections for Seat 3.
Chairman called meeting back to order at 1:15 pm.
Chairman Jackson: I am taking this time to call the meeting back to order and recognize and honor the
previous motion by Lee Bourgeau and seconded by Harold Williamson to bring back to the table the
minutes. Hopefully, everyone had enough time to review the minutes for action. I would like to entertain a
motion to bring the minutes off the table.
Chairman Jackson: Motion by Rebecca Miles. Is there a second? Second Carla Domebo. Any discussion?
Any discussion? Is there any discussion? The motion is to lift minutes from the table. All those in favor
please signify by saying “aye.” All those opposed same sign. Motion carried.
Chairman Jackson: Now I will take this time to entertain a motion to approve the Spring 2011 General
Council Minutes. Motion Julia Davis-Wheeler. Is there a second? Second by Constance Watters to approve
the General Council May 2011 meeting minutes. Is there any discussion? Any discussion? Any
discussion? Question has been called. All those in favor of the motion please signify by saying “aye.” All
those opposed same sign. Motion carried.
Chairman Jackson: The Spring 2011 General Council Minutes have been approved. And we will proceed
with Seat # 3 on the Resolutions Committee.
General Council Resolutions Committee Seat 3
Chairman: Floor is now open for nominations for General Council Resolutions Committee Seat 3.
Betty Kinser nominated Marie Arthur. Ms. Arthur accepts.
Carla Domebo nominated Shelley Higheagle. Ms. Higheagle accepts.
Robert Kipp nominated Mary TallBull. Ms. TallBull accepts.
Motion Mazie Wilson / Second Lucinda George to cease nominations. Motion carried.
Results Resolutions Committee Seat 3:
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Election Judge Melissa King: There were 121 votes cast, 3 invalid.
Marie Arthur - 64
Shelley Higheagle - 22
Mary Tall Bull - 32
Marie Arthur is elected to the General Council Resolutions Committee Seat 3.
General Council Resolutions Committee Seat 4
Chairman: Floor is now open for nominations for Resolutions Committee Seat 4.
Nancy Wheeler nominates Betty Kinser. Ms. Kinser accepts.
Carla Domebo nominates Shelley Higheagle. Ms. Higheagle accepts
Mollie Harris nominates Mary TallBull. Ms. TallBull accepts
Motion Al Wheeler / Second Melvin Wheeler to cease nominations. Motion carried.
Results:
Betty Kinser –
Shelley Higheagle –
Mary TallBull Shelley Higheagle is elected to the General Council Resolutions Committee Seat 4.
General Council Election Judge Elections.
General Council Election Judge Seat 1
Chairman: Floor is open for nominations for Election Judge Seat 1.
Sara Sedgwick nominates Shirley Allman. Ms. Allman accepts
Mazie Wilson nominates Alexis Walker. Ms. Walker declines.
Laurie Ann Smith nominates DelRae Kipp. Ms. Kipp accepts.
Motion Robert Kipp / Second Mazie Wilson to cease nominations. Motion carried.
Results:
Election Judge Melissa King: There was a total of 151 votes cast.
Shirley Allman – 86
DelRae Kipp - 62
Invalid 3
NPT General Council Minutes
Fall 2011
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Shirley Allman is elected to the General Council Election Judge Seat 1
General Council Election Judge Seat 2
Chairman: Floor is open for nominations for Election Judge Seat 2.
Mary Jane Souther nominates Feather Broncheau. Ms. Broncheau accepts
Trish Heavyrunner nominates Melissa King. Ms. King accepts.
Robert Kipp nominates DelRae Kipp. Ms. Kipp accepts.
Motion Mazie Wilson / Second Mary Jane Souther to cease nominations. Motion carried.
Results:
Election Judge Shirley Allman: There was a total of 164 votes cast.
Feather Broncheau – 47
Melissa King – 80
DelRae Kipp – 34
Invalid - 3
Melissa King is elected to the General Council Election Judge Seat 2.
General Council Election Judge Seat 3
Chairman: Floor is open for nominations for Election Judge Seat 3.
Mary Jane Souther nominates Feather Broncheau. Ms. Broncheau accepts.
Mary TallBull nominates Eric Kash Kash. Mr. Kash Kash accepts
Motion Mary Johnson / Second Mary TallBull to cease nominations. Motion carried.
Results:
Election Judge Melissa King:
Feather Broncheau – 69
Eric Kash Kash - 94
Erik Kash Kash is elected to the General Council Election Judge Seat 3.
2:55 pm
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Fall 2011
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NPTEC Chairman and Treasurer Reports
Mr. Brooklyn Baptiste, Chairman
Mr. Joel Moffett, Treasurer
Mr. Baptiste: I serve as chairman of the Executive for the past few months. It’s definitely an honor to
represent the Nez Perce Tribe. It’s been an honor to serve and represent at that level. It’s also an honor to
serve with the eight other members. They do a great job, hard work and diligence. It is not an easy thing to
serve on council. I appreciate the hard work they do and sacrifices they have made. Want to say thank you
to the other 8 members. My brother here has a newborn. It’s definitely a hard job. Mention the NPTEC and
everyone else who had losses this past year. Keep in mind the relatives you all have lost. I want to be
mindful of ones who are still out there struggling, trying to make it through the loss of a loved one. Continue
to keep everyone in prayer. Lastly, thank everyone who volunteered to fill these positions. Thank you for
the ones who have served in General Council, new chair and secretary and all the ones who have served
in the past.
Since the last General Council the tribe has been involved in a lot of ongoing issues. I’m grateful for the
assistance with the per capita payment. A resolution that came forward from the people. We have a plan in
place and are starting to build upon that. Hopefully we will be able to continue with this as time goes on. It
will be tough to maintain the casino nationwide we are hoping to diverse our economy and bring in new
business and stabilize our economy not only bring money but create jobs. Appreciate the General Council
for bringing forward the per capita payment but also to develop a plan.
I would like to speak to the Snake River Basin Adjudication. SRBA settlement agreement, it has been a
long learning experience with SRBA but also implementing is just as hard.
[inaudible] for the SRBA to kick down to protect some of our water that we needed for our fisheries. It is
always difficult. We had to give up a few things to retain our rights forever. Those type of water settlements
although they happen, I don’t see those happening so much in the future because of the scarcity of funding.
With an agreement the water settlement is funded. That has definitely started to dry up. [inaudible]. We
have an implementation team. They continue to work on recommendations on how to spend a portion of
the SRBA funding each year.
Tribal trust mismanagement. It’s kind of similar to the Cobell case. The fiduciary responsibility of the
federal government was mismanaged not only for individual tribal members but for tribes as well. The tribe
was lead plaintiff on it. In December of 2006 the tribe filed two complaints against the United States.
Represented by NARF, the Native American Rights Fund.
Obama administration is making some headway to settle the Cobell case and settle this as wel. We are still
working on it. If Obama doesn’t get back in it will be tough for the tribes to work collaboratively with the
federal government. Mary Wak Wak Oatman is a shining example of how the administration is utilizing
tribes. If the Obama administration doesn’t get back in it will be extremely hard to fill those positions and we
will go back to kind of how it was before. To continue that trust responsibility. It will be tougher for us as
tribes so it is important for us to work collaboratively with other tribes. We can exercise our sovereignty.
Nez Perce Tribe vs Salazar.
NPT General Council Minutes
Fall 2011
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NMPH contract support costs. Tribe filed against IHS. We have to persevere in this case. We have such a
hard time with IHS. The ability to provide health care through that trust responsibility with the federal
government getting appropriations for this .. trying to mitigate for the loss
Judge Redding decision that came out. BiIOp with the state of Oregon. The Nez Perce Tribe filed against
the operations for the dam system. The Nez Perce Tribe is one of the strongest and largest tribal fisheries
in the United States and Alaska . We put more salmon back in the river, habitat restoration. But operations
of the dam do not provide good flow to the ocean and back. The BiOp was not suitable for fish to survive. It
was not a very good plan. It was a tumultuous case. Our staff did a very good job. It provided the best
possible benefits [inaudible] in this situation.
Bonneville Power Administration runs and operates the hydro systems and they wanted the tribe to sign an
accord. We couldn’t quite come to an agreement on that. It was difficult. There were several other tribes
and states who signed an accord with BPA. We have been arguing against that. Other tribes ostracized us.
We had to kind of bear that burden. It gave us an opportunity to go back to the table. It is going to be hard.
We can give the best sound science in the end but it is dictated by politics of the situation. It is an uphill
battle.
Long House – Another issue that is paramount and is hard to try to find one common resolution to is the
Long House. We are trying to build a Long House for the tribe. We had a spot picked out, look for funding
and also recommendations [inaudible]. We have to re-evaluate [inaudible]. We definitely need a facility.
Travel for the policy members here. Sit at the table where the decisions are made. It’s imperative to have a
balance of the welfare. If you’re not at the table you are on the table. They will make the decision for you if
you’re not there. We have met with a lot of members of congress to discuss issues that we have. It’s
important we have key people that the tribe can access. Especially with salmon recovery it is hard. It’s
important to maintain that continuity. We have a lot of contacts out there.
We have had issues with our own fisheries. Sometimes the fish commission had to make decisions and
close fisheries so they could maintain that broodstock. Those are different parts to that [inaudible]. I know a
lot of people that utilize the fish as income. [inaudible] there is a balance between ceremonial and
subsistence [inaudible]. Members have the ability to go fish. We are working on that and also trying to
maintain the broodstock that need to continue that lifecycle. Fish are now coming back to the tributaries,
that is something that I’m proud of. People from other parts of the country and northwest no longer have a
fisheries. It has also been a part of our culture and it is important that we continue that. We have
encroachments by other tribes. The Sho-Bans. We are working on that issue as well. Umatillas, right next
to us. Sometimes we have fierce competition trying to catch fish. We have a lot of relationship issues and
we are trying to protect that. It is not an easy fix. Worried about our children years from now down the road.
It is important.
Big Sheep Restoration - It doesn’t seem like a big thing but it follows the salmon issue as well. We use the
bows from their horns, bones, hides, horns. We work with the federal government; we work with the forest
service. They are the ones who protect and manage the federal land system. We kind of pushed them a
little bit. What happens is the big horn sheep they migrate [inaudible]. Idaho is not an easy state to get
along with. The Tribe depends on its [inaudible] protection area through the treaty of 1855. That doesn’t
always go along with the rights of you and me. We are trying to protect it at the same time it is an uphill
battle.
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Fall 2011
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Chairman Jackson: Thank you, Chairman Baptiste. Next we will hear from Treasurer Moffett.
NPTEC Treasurer Joel Moffett. Good afternoon. I would like to tell everyone that I am glad to be back
here for General Council. The fall meeting. It was a quick four and a half months. I hope everyone had a
good summer. Mine flew by having a little one at home. All the events are rapidly flying by. Trying to take
them all in and take stock and make time for family and friends. I hope everyone had the time to do that as
well.
First off before I get to the PowerPoint. I am proud to say that we completed our fiscal year 2010 audit this
summer. We submitted our 2010 indirect cost rate and got that approved by the National Business Center.
So we are completely caught up. We are current and are in compliance with all federal requirements. We
have our auditors here [inaudible] and after my presentation, I’d like to give some time to them as well as
we have our investment firm, Merrill Lynch, who will be going over in more detail on the SRBA investments.
So I would like to give some time to both entities. We have an approved resolution by the Nez Perce Tribe
that requires the annual audit to be presented to the General Council. And our contract with Merrill Lynch
also stipulates that they will present at General Council the investment earnings report. As I said before, it’s
been a quick four months, but there have a series of substantial developments within the Tribe’s financials
that I would like to inform you about. First, the revenues and the expenditures are something that we have
been dealing with for quite some time and we have hoped our presentation of the financials last General
Council is the first time that we seen the newly revised Treasurer’s report. And again, it is on page 104 in
your General Council booklet. I hope that everyone has found the new format a lot easier to understand. It’s
user friendly, a lot clearer. We want to be transparent and detailed. All of the revenues that come into the
tribe. Where they come from and where they are expended. How programs utilize all the revenues. This
Treasurer’s report is the month ending July 31. So this ten months of financials and there is a lot of
information to go through and I hope that everyone has a chance to look at it, to develop some questions or
comments and I will be happy to address those after the presentation. This goes through all of our hard
dollar budgets. How much we budgeted for for fiscal year 2011 and expenditures that have occurred
through July 31st. It also details our BIA trust funds, our investments, and our debt. It’s a lot of information.
The format is extremely useful to NPTEC, Budget and Finance. It allows us to focus in on the issues that
need attention. It is a lot easier to track expenditures and to focus in on the programs that either are not
expending in a fashion that is appropriate or that are overspending. So every month we receive this
Treasurer’s report and we analyze it and go over it in detail with the Executive Director and Finance
Manager and we make corrections as necessary. I wanted to point that out. It starts on page 104. This
revenue and flow chart together on one page. As you can see on the left that is all of the revenue sources
and those are detailed in the Treasurer’s report. And we have a whole series of programs and services that
we provide. The Executive Director will into more detail about that. We have a whole host of categories that
run the whole spectrum from elders to community to cultural preservation. Our enterprise revenue, now our
gaming revenue. This flow chart is 2011 and we currently working on the 2012 budget. The enterprise
revenue goes to all those programs and services. The tobacco tax program in 2011 fund strictly law and
justice programs. The fuel tax revenue under the fuel tax agreement go to law and justice and
transportation and transit programs. The other revenue sources that we have these are interests off our
accounts, lottery proceeds, permits and fines, those revenue sources go to the general fund. The general
fund the expenditures for the general fund half go to NPTEC operations and three-quarters of the office of
legal counsel as well as property taxes that we pay annually on our fee land. We have a number of grants
and those in addition to all the other programs pay indirect cost approved rate in 2010 and that rate. is
22.5%. And all those programs pay indirect cost rate which goes into a pool which funds our administrative
programs and support programs: Executive Direction, Finance department, Human Resource department,
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we pay the light bills, housekeeping and so on. Next is a series of trend reports over the last six years. This
one is for our enterprise allocation. The new [inaudible] for 2012 adheres to the revenue allocation plan that
was approved. At the last General Council I presented details of the revenue allocation plan that was
submitted to the BIA office of Indian Gaming [inaudible]. It was finally approved in June on the 15 th. The
gaming revenue from now and here on forward adheres to the revenue allocation plan, the formula which
breaks out the annual net revenue. For fiscal year 2012 which is coming up here starting October 1
[inaudible] utilizing $3.815 million for gaming [inaudible] . The indirect as you can see over the years has
fluctuated and has changed pretty much with the enterprises. And this year the amount is $600,000 for a
total of $4.415 million in revenue from the enterprises. As you can see the trend report has fluctuated.
Earlier in the 2000’s to mid 2000’s there was a resolution that stipulating the amount of enterprise revenue
that would be transferred to the government side and programs. For 2010 the resolution had expired and
was not in effect and there was no cap. In 2012 we do have a revenue allocation plan, a set form of that we
adhere to every year. Sixty-five percent of the net revenue, the net profit that we generate to pay for
facilities every year. From now on we have a roadmap that is clear and we know where the money is going
every year. This slide is a refresher of where the gaming dollars are going to this year, fiscal year 2011. All
those categories that I talked about run the full spectrum from paying our debts, to paying our loans, to
helping assist with scholarships for college students, helping to preserve our culture by funding the
language programs and helping fund our senior programs. So they run the whole gamut. It’s something that
I’m proud of that the majority of the, about 70% of our gaming funds move to direct services for tribal
members. The next slide is our tax revenue. If you look at 2011 we had budgeted, we had projected that we
would collect $565,000. We are about one week away from fiscal year end so it looks like that we are not
going to meet that target. It looks like we are going to be more than $10,000 short. We are going to collect
about $550,000 this year. We took that into account in 2012. You can see that the 2012 draft budget is well
above $550,000 but that is because we have a proposal to the tobacco tax and I will talk about that in a
future slide. That tobacco tax does raise cigarette tax but it’s charging a tax on smokeless tobacco,
cigarettes, and [inaudible], cigars. We have done that in the past. That’s why you see that figure much
larger than what is reflected this year. The next trend report on is on fuel tax revenue. For 2011 we had
projected to collect $1.1 million in fuel tax revenue and that is based on gallons sold, 25 cents per gallon.
Because of the economy, gas prices, it looks like we are not going to reach that $1.1 million item. So we
estimate that we are going to collect about $1 million off our gasoline sales this year from our two gas
stations. And so to be conservative next year, the draft budget is $1 million that we will collect. So we are
not anticipating that the sales are going to pick up as gas prices are going to stay very high. But we are
firmly hoping that the new Camas Express a year from now will dramatically improve gallons sold up there
with the agreement with the state of Idaho to make that a rest area / truck stop. I have high hopes that that
will increase gallons sold in 2013. We hope to increase the revenue generated from our fuels tax. These
are the two to three proposed new revenue sources. We talked about at the last General Council that we
need to fill the gap. We have dwindling timber revenue. Again this year we are not, do not anticipate to cut
any trees to generate any stumpage, timber revenue. We are under a new formula, a new revenue
allocation plan whereby we are held to this [percentage] of net profit for [inaudible] operations. And there
are more and more needs in here and we have to look for more revenue sources, revenue and exercise our
sovereignty. The three proposed revenue streams are currently right now being considered by NPTEC.
They were posted through Law and Order Subcommittee for public comment and they entail as referred to
earlier, a tobacco tax on chewing tobacco, loose leaf and cigars. And that’s a 15% wholesale tax for those
tobacco items. In the consideration of this new legislation we have had an analysis that was performed by
our enterprises, the Enterprise Executive Officer and managers based on last year’s audited financials. So
we looked at the sales, the sales figures from our audit last year and we applied a 15% wholesale tax to
those new items. And it is actually pretty [inaudible] the whole sales figures for tobacco products come from
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Fall 2011
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25%, about a quarter of all tobacco sales fall into this category, fall into the non-cigarette category. So it
was a significant amount. Just like targeting 15% which is less than half of what the state of Idaho charges
on its tobacco products. So we will still want to enjoy our tribal enterprises, the price advantage over nonIndian stores. So we proposed a 15% wholesale tax on these new tobacco products, projected to generate
$225,000. That’s based on last year’s audited sales. In the proposed 2012 draft budget that we recently
held public meetings on in August and September at the three communities in Kamiah, Orofino, and
Lapwai. We presented these new budgets and new proposed revenue sources and the proposed 2012
draft budget expenses the new tobacco tax revenue in this fashion. A little over $106,000 would be utilized
for the current tobacco tax programs and those are the law and justice programs. A little under $65,000
would be proposed to be utilized for our general fund. As I mentioned earlier that is used to fund
government operations, half of NPTEC, and 75% of legal counsel, and property taxes. The next two
proposed revenue sources are code amendments as well. They were posted through Laws and Order
Subcommittee for a 30-day comment period for tribal members and they are a sales tax of 6% that would
not apply to tribal members. The sales would only be levied at our tribal enterprises. Our gas stations, our
restaurants, our gift shops and in addition to that there is a proposed hotel tax that was also put out for
public comment. That hotel tax is proposed at 8%. There was an analysis done on these two items as well
based on last year’s audited sales figures. We had to project an amount of tribal member sales in
comparison to non-tribal member sales because we don’t keep track of that. So we had to make an
estimate on what, how much percentage of the sales come from tribal members because we are going to
exempt them so we need to back that out of the anticipated revenue. We came up with a conservative
figure of 35% of all sales generated at the enterprises would come from tribal members. So we backed that
out and so the figure that we arrived at for projected revenue when we applied the 6% sales tax and the 8%
hotel tax would be $477,000. As you can see from the pie chart the 2012 draft budget proposes to dedicate
those funds to fuels tax programs in the amount of $358,000, and the general fund in the amount of
$118,000. The fuels tax programs as we saw from the revenue. The revenue has been on a slow downturn
because of the economy and people aren’t travelling as much. The price of gas is up and, but our
commitment to our law enforcement and transit program still remain the same. And so there is a gap there.
We don’t generate enough fuels tax revenue in order to fund our conservation enforcement, our law
enforcement and our transit program. So we need some supplemental funds and so we proposing to fill the
gap with the new sales and hotel tax. The comment period has closed. We wanted to put it out for a full
month but we also wanted to be able to take action at NPTEC in the month of September so that these
taxes can be applied for a full twelve months next year. So that’s what the proposed revenue figures were
generated were based 12 months. This next trend report is the general fund revenue comparison. As you
can see the 2011 budget was almost $2.3 million. And the draft budget for 2012 is $2.95 million. For those
of you who haven’t attended the budget meetings or gone into more depth in all these budgets, the reason
for the increase is because we are looking seriously at the problem of our indirect cost deficit and historical
debt. I have been reporting to the General Council in all my Treasurer’s report the fact that historically and
annually we have encountered an indirect cost deficit. We get a series of grants and contracts every year
and we have a series of hard dollar programs that we all charge an approved indirect cost rate. For a whole
host of reasons we don’t collect fully on the amount that we project. One of the most notable reason is that
we miscalculated our indirect cost rate in 2005. We submitted a rate that was too high and when everything
settles up at the end of the year and the Nation Business Center receives our expenditures and the amount
of grants that we collect and the amount of expenditures we utilize for our indirect cost programs. Then they
calculate how close we were to our indirect cost rate. And we were way off for 2005. Well, when that
happens, we basically over-collected. We charged these grants and contracts too high of an indirect cost
rate. The federal government doesn’t make you pay back that. It doesn’t make you write a check to pay
back that money you over charged these federal grants and contracts. What they do is the next year they
NPT General Council Minutes
Fall 2011
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penalize you. They say you have to reduce your rate next year and you will pay it back by getting less. And
so we are still paying on that mistake in 2005. So every year we are encountering an indirect deficit.
Another reason is some grant agencies they cap the rate that can be charged. So even though we have an
approved rate of 22.5% for certain federal departments we can only charge 15%. That gap of 7.5% is a
significant amount of money when you are talking about million dollar grants. But the bills still have to be
paid. And so who pays for that? The Tribe pays for that. The general fund pays for that. So we get a deficit
every year. There is a lot of factors that make up this problem that has built up over the years. Over ten
years. And we have a significant debt and it’s in our audited financials every year and I think it’s significant.
It’s in the millions and it’s built up over the years so we wanted to tackle this problem and try to solve it. We
have hired an indirect cost consultant for the last two years to help us draft our indirect cost rate proposal.
He understands the ins and outs and the details and now our staff who have had a training with this
individual which we required in his contract. We have had over 70 staff and NPTEC and managers and
directors there and we are starting to wrap our heads around and fully understand indirect cost programs
and rate and how that is generated. And looking at strategies to pay down that debt and to alleviate the
annual deficit and so that is what this increase is for. Is to dedicate $600,000 to bring down the debt and
the deficit. $200,000 will be utilized to pay down the debt. The one that has built up over ten years. The
problem was caused over a long time. It’s going to get solved over a long time unless we win the lottery. So
we want to dedicate $200,000 a year. And if it takes 20 years, it takes 20 years but we’ll pay off our debt.
And it’s basically an IOU to ourselves because we haven’t paid for the indirect deficit. $400,000 is going
towards this next year’s annual deficit so we are not digging ourselves more into the hole. We are paying
off our debt that was built up over the years and we are paying the annual deficit so the problem doesn’t get
any bigger. That’s the main reason for this increase in this general fund. An update on the gaming revenue
allocation plan I referred to earlier. It was approved on June 15th and immediately NPTEC acted and
implemented that revenue allocation plan because we knew people have been waiting for years and years
in order to receive some monetary benefit dividend from their gaming enterprises. Just to refresh your
memory there was an initial plan that stipulates an initial million dollars seed money invested from prior
year’s revenue from the enterprises and that was done and put into an account. Then once the account
reaches or exceeds $1.5 million then a distribution is made. The distribution was made immediately
because with the $1 million seed money and the way that the formula applied to the unaudited net gaming
profit of $5.8 million. This is how the budget is going to play out in 2012. In the per capita fund the 15% was
a positive into that fund. Fifteen percent is going to be utilized for economic development to re-invest back
into our enterprises and 5% is being utilized for our local education fund programs. That is part of our state
compact. The per capita turned out to be $534.32. It’s not a flat thing number but it was exactly 15% of the
net profits for gaming plus that million dollar seed money and we divided evenly between 3,519 members.
How many members we had on January 31, 2011. And that was through the revenue allocation fund. It was
a long time coming. There were a lot of people who worked on this plan. A lot of people deserve credit for
that plan being written and approve. I think it was a huge success. We done a lot of pre-planning after the
plan was approved and were working on the per capita distribution. A lot went into that and a lot of people
to thank to get those checks out on September 1. At the rate we are generating profit at the casinos it looks
like it will be every two years. I know $534 is not at the level some of the I-5 corridor tribes and other tribes
receive but it is significant. This is truly an historical moment. First per capita payment from gaming for the
Nez Perce Tribe people. I hope we can deliver that every two years to our people. A total of 3,227
distributions were mailed out. So if you recall we have 3,519 eligible tribal members. There is still a lot of
people out there that have yet to turn in their form. You have 120 days to fill out that form from the date of
distribution which is September 1. Encourage your family to get their form in so they can receive that check
in the mail. The total amount disbursed is a little over $1.7 million. The minors we must put extra protection
on the their money and so the plan stipulated that the parent/guardian can access half of the per capita for
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Fall 2011
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the needs of their child. But there is also an option for the parent to put the full amount into trust for their
child. The delinquency garnishments under the revenue allocation plan allow up to 15% of the per capita to
be garnished if you have a delinquency with a tribal program. A total of over $50,000 was garnished from
per capita checks to pay off these debts. The SRBA settlement funds. So we received, so you can see that
over a series of years we are going to receive all of our settlement monies from SRBA. We have gone
through a majority of the payments from 2007 – 2011. We finally received the 2011 payment just a month
ago. From fiscal year 2007 – 2011 we have received $77 million in principal payments through the SRBA
settlement. Next year we are due a little over $9.4 million and the final year 2013 the last $9 million. And in
total that will be over $95,700,000. That was the exact figure that it was settled for and the SRBA term
sheet and we are fully committed to holding the federal government to that responsibility and commitment.
Because if we don’t receive that full money then the SRBA agreement is null and void and they know that.
The total expenditures to date since we started receiving the SRBA dollars is $1.9 million. Thank you for
listening to my report. If you have any questions after the SRBA investment presentation and the 2010
audit report, I will definitely be here to answer any questions.
Chairman Jackson: Thank you, Mr. Moffett and Mr. Baptiste.
Motion Susie Weaskus / Second Mary Jane Souther to go into executive session for the SRBA and 2010
audit report. Motion carried.
Motion Julia Davis-Wheeler / Second Rebecca Miles to come out of executive session at 5:21 p.m. . Motion
carried.
Q&A
Chairman Jackson: Robert Kipp.
Robert Kipp: Thank you. For the Treasurer, as far as the public meeting in Lapwai, correct me if I am
wrong, but the deadline says the 19th and only gave 2 days to comment. Didn’t you say that we would have
these public comments on these budgets at General Council today this week? And if that is the case are
you extending the public comment period?
Joel Moffett: Your right we had a meeting on Friday and it only gave until Tuesday to provide comment.
Had to reschedule a couple of times. I can make copies of the draft budget. The comment period has
closed. We have a deadline of September 30. It is coming up on a very tight timeline.
Mary Tallbull: In regards to the public hearings on the gaming allocation. I don’t think it was appropriate. A
lot of tribal members missed out because it wasn’t advertised. If you don’t work here or at the tribal offices
in Lapwai you don’t know about the meetings. They should have been posted in the newspapers and we
were just not notified. You are mandated by resolution to have those meetings in August of each year. So
year after year we are going with the budget not being approved until after 9/30. The lack of communication
should not be held against the people, we should be allowed to look at that budget, we should able to have
some say. We were also informed the indirect program the tribe has had to bail them out. And right now the
Indirect programs are indebt 400k, correct?
Joel Moffett: yes
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Mary Tallbull: We were told we have been up to a million dollars in debt. Who’s picking that up? The Nez
Perce Tribe and the gaming is picking that up. I don’t think that is right. All management should be
responsible for their budgets. We were promised that there would be a budgetary meeting on indirect. The
NPTEC should follow their own promise and have that meeting on the indirect budgets. It was not handled
right in all fairness you should give them a longer comment period. Most of the people in this didn’t get to
attend because they didn’t know.
Joel Moffett: I believe the notification for the budget meetings was a tight turnaround because they were
postponed twice due to unfortunate circumstances. It was advertised in the paper and mass email and
posters were made up by the front office staff. The effort was made to get the word out but it was less than
a week. The indirect program budgets. Part of the work budgets that were handed out at the budget
meetings does contain the indirect cost budgets in the draft 2012. The indirect program budgets were
discussed at the budget mtgs. The reason there is an indirect cost budget deficit. It’s not the case that the
indirect cost programs are overspending. In fact, historically, they do not spend all their budgets. We are
still being penalized for overcharging indirect cost in 2005. The national business center said you cannot
charge the full indirect cost rate next year and next year. We have a deficit that has been built up over the
years.
Darcy Scarborough: I also want to agree with her on notifying tribal members of the events that are going
on here. A lot of our tribal members that are not on the rez they don’t hear anything about what is going on
here.
Rebecca Miles: Thank you, Chairman Moffett of Budget and Finance. For clarification: the indirect
programs do not put the tribe in the hole $400,000 each year. We will be under budget significantly. I have
been involved in General Council since I was about 20 or 21 and I haven’t missed since I was 18 years old.
I have seen very little involvement even if there is very good communication. We got three times the
response with survey monkey on SRBA from our tribal citizens than we did with a paper survey or if you did
a meeting. It shows that we need to get more information from all tribal members. I’m talking less than 20
people. Sometimes we have more staff. We do need to hear from everybody not just a small group. I very
much appreciate the tribal members who go to meetings.
Motion Rebecca Miles / Second June Greene that the NPTEC begin to institute on-line surveys for
feedback regarding the annual budget process / policy.
Chairman Jackson: Discussion on the motion.
Robert Kipp: How is that going to affect the budget for October 1?
Rebecca Miles: It is not intended to do this when we have to do a budget. The annual budget process is
approved by NPTEC action. It is a booklet. What I’m asking is that they institute this into their policy for
future years. I want to make a correction that it is not year after year we go past October 1. Last year was
the first year since 2004. It’s not every year. It is very important the General Council get accurate
information. Survey Monkey is very beneficial to get feedback from tribal members. We can create them
that they only go to tribal members.
Susie Weaskus: I guess I don’t understand. Is the tribe’s budget going to be out there for everyone to see
online?
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Fall 2011
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Chairman Jackson: Ms. Miles said that they could set it up on Survey Monkey to punch in your enrollment
number so it’s only tribal members that are allowed to get in there and only for a certain amount of time. It
is not for the whole world to see.
Susie Weaskus: So anybody can just punch in their tribal number?
Rebecca Miles: We just completed the SRBA survey. You have to utilize tribal membership number and
you can’t use it again. We could have a default if someone knew your tribal ID number, they could probably
do it. We would know if you wanted to do a survey and someone already used your tribal number. That
would be an error and we would need to do something about it. But generally it’s been very successful for
us to get feedback from tribal members that really have busy lives. They can’t be at meetings. Really we
have meetings for everything, listening sessions.
Chairman Jackson: Okay, this is just a survey for feedback.
Point of privilege: Ollicut Watters: Do we have a quorum?
Chairman Jackson: We have a motion. Can we have the tellers in their positions to count their sections,
please. That is a valid question, so we’ll have the tellers take their positions.
Election Judges: There is a quorum.
Chairman Jackson: The motion is that the NPTEC begin to institute on-line surveys for feedback regarding
the annual budget process / policy. All those in favor of the motion please signify by saying “aye.” Those
against same sign. Motion carried.
Motion Sara Sedgwick / Second Constance Watters to accept the reports of the Chairman and Treasurer
and excuse them. Motion carried.
Chairman Jackson: Is there any discussion (3x)? Question has been called. All those in favor of the motion
to accept their reports and excuse the NPTEC please signify by saying “aye.” Those opposed same sign.
Motion carried.
Brooklyn Baptiste: Joel was elected Secretary/Treasurer of the ATNI Executive Board.
Chairman Jackson: At this time I would like to recognize Sara Sedgwick’s motion to recess until tomorrow
at 8:30. Is there a second? Al Wheeler.
Sara Sedgwick motion to recess; second Al Wheeler. Motion carried.
Recess for the day at 5:42 p.m.
General Council Officers take Oath of Office administered by Judge Eva White.
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Friday, September 23, 2011
Chairman Jackson: Good morning, General Council, and welcome to the second day of our General
Council meetings. We do have a quorum as confirmed by the Election Judges. Therefore, I would like to
call the meeting order at 8:45 am. I would like to call our NPTEC Chaplain, Julia Davis Wheeler, to open
our meeting with a prayer.
Chaplain Julia Davis Wheeler: Opened meeting with prayer.
Chairman Jackson: Thank you, Julia. Okay, on the agenda we are continuing from yesterday’s schedule.
We will start out with Public and Private Sector Reports with Rebecca Miles, Executive Director of the
Public Entity, and Jamie Olson, Executive Officer of the Enterprise.
EXECUTIVE REPORTS
Rebecca Miles, Executive Director: Taac may wii, General Council. I have a power point for you and I
also have an important video. Natural Resources has been overlooked and they have requested to have
some time on my agenda. It’s an eight minute video. It’s certainly is an honor and a privilege to serve as the
Nez Perce Tribe’s Executive Director of governmental operations.
Chairman Jackson: Can we have a member of facilities please dim the lights for the power point?
Ms. Miles: I can tell you it has been a very busy summer with most people are doing vacation since school
is out. That is actually a very busy time for the NPT. Our annual budget process begins, we have a lot of
field workers come back on, and so we have over 600 employees on the government side. So it becomes a
very busy time for us and it’s a very quick time from the May General Council to the Fall General Council.
It's not like halfway in between; it’s only a little over four months. So I am definitely very honored to be in
this position. I always start my first three slides out with our mission. And right now the NPTEC is in the
process of redoing or updating their Strategic Plan. And right now the Strategic Plan from March of 2009
says that together we will protect and advance Nez Perce Culture and Sovereignty. And so when I see
that mission I take that as every single employee of the Nez Perce Tribe, that is our directive, that is
what we have to believe in, our leadership has set the mission and this what they are requiring their
staff to accomplish.
Their vision at the time and looking forward to their new updated plan is to improve social, cultural and
economic prosperity for Nez Perce people, to preserve and maintain the land and water rights of the
Nez Perce people, and to provide services and opportunities to our people. I always like to include the
role of the Executive Director up here so you can understand how our organization operates. It’s
essentially top-down when the NPTEC says this is what my role is and in my class description. I
administer all the tribal direct services programs. I serve as a conduit and liaison to the NPTEC in all the
government side. I align any policies and processes to ensure that that policy is funneled down. We also
administer tax compliance for the Tribe which is now becoming a major operation for the Tribe. The
government has to bring in some revenue to be able cover its expenses and exist as a government ... I
oversee all the financial operations of the Tribe and meet all the financial goals in terms of competitive
grants, contracts, and other opportunities. We hope all of this when everybody is doing their role,
government does their role as policy, I do my job as an administrator, and everybody on down does
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what is required in their class description you hope to accomplish that highly effective, performing and
healthy organization. I always put these as how the inner workings are required in my role. They are not
separate at all. They require a great deal of working together in order to make those things work. I am
required to implement the strategic plan and I can tell you all of the he executives of the Tribe, there are
four of us that are anxiously waiting NPTEC’s final draft plan. I have to ensure that whatever that plans
says that also department program plan goals are achieved. And if they are not, why aren’t they? Our
universal human resource department and what I mean by that is we submitted a final draft to the
NPTEC, it went out for employee comment and I believe I have the booklet that is about this thick with
employee comments. I believe it will take NPTEC a little while to let those comments soak in and
determine does that change any of the draft language in our draft plan or does it leave it the same, does
it support what we had submitted. Organizational development and infrastructure over this next year
you are to see some changes we submitted…NPTEC already has prioritized their organizational changes
but over the last two years we have been unable to fund those changes. And those include key positions
that really separate the powers of the Nez Perce Tribal government. However, within the Executive
Director’s role, there is some major growth in information systems and we are going to look to elevate
that to an entire department. It is absolutely essential to how we do business and it has become
absolutely essential to how the government will even grow economically. So we are very anxious and
you will see that on our organizational chart. Finally, I can tell you there was a question yesterday about
funding. I was reading yesterday House Speaker Boehner’s comments on another potential shut down.
So all of these threats in congress very much affect how the government operates. If you do not have
your federal funding or your funding reauthorized or extended or whate4ver even for a few months
until we get to the next budget year. That is also indirect money that we can’t capture so you can see
how the inner workings of the Tribe and how your government operates is very much tied to congress.
We will be watching it very closely. I can tell you the last time we had the threat of a shutdown, I was
anxious to report that our programs were doing very well. For example, if we had a program that was
authorized for funding and let’s say they have to report back to the federal agency. They were able to
withdraw all of their funding for the entire year. So there were so many programs that we thought we
were going to have to furlough and they already had their funding here at the Nez Perce Tribe to
operate. That’s just very good efficiency. At this point, the Water Resources Department, let me just talk
quickly about what’s going on in Water Resources. I think right now it’s been the most physical
program. Not the most important but I think what everybody does is important. But the Nez Perce Tribe
and the NPTEC have taken some big steps in enhancing our utility. And one of those is replacing a forty
year old outdated lagoon system. And when I say forty year old outdated I don’t mean it’s forty years
old, I mean forty years ago it was out of compliance. And it was continuing to get from the state a
permit and when I said the economics of it, we literally could not provide the Nez Perce Tribe had no
room to grow and neither did the City. And literally we did not have room for one person to flush the
toilet. And so fourteen years ago the Nez Perce Tribe in partnership with the city began planning a new
waste water treatment facility. It was the Nez Perce Tribe water resources staff that recommended the
state of the art facility that we have now. That we have recently completed. We will be watching a
grand opening and tour to that facility in conjunction with NPTEC in October, I believe, if you can find
some time we would be, we had some time this week but obviously it is not a good week of General
Council. And finally, in talking about, we think about fisheries, is protecting watersheds and those types
of things. But we also have another function under Water Resources does this as well and I would like to
show this video now. Hopefully you will be able to see it. I know Helen text me this morning and I don’t
know if she can be here this morning but it was something their staff feels like the General Council…Oh!!
There you are!! Great, Great! Awesome, she’s here.
9:00 a.m. – Water Resources video
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Rebecca Miles: If you can’t hear the [video], it essentially, this is talking about the mud bogging that happens on
our reserves and federal national forests that have also considered our usual and accustomed territory and
gathering.
Rebecca Miles: Congratulations, Helen [Goodteacher]. We have a touch screen, a flat screen out there and you
are more than welcome to watch it as well during the weekend. Some of the comments made had a big push this
year to hire Nez Perce interns from high school and college. And two of those interns, I read these yesterday,
Zachary Terry said I learned about the effects of mud bogging and how wetlands can be severely damaged. It was
kind of disappointing that so much could be ruined from mud bogging. I learned so much about water and how
important it is to our people. And that was NPTEC to get us to hire a lot of our own people and this is the kind
impression we are leaving with them and it is a very good investment in our future. Sierra Higheagle says one thing
that surprised me was how people treated the land. I have seen things like mud bogging on Nez Perce land. This
really disappoints me and makes me want to try and help our Tribe with these problems.
Moving on to economic development and economic development team under Ann McCormack and we also
share the staff under the Enterprises. However, you were just able to receive your the first per capita from
gaming revenue ever. That deadline for turning in that survey, of course, has already passed and they are
going to draw the names today. But I can tell you that they had a goal of getting 1,000 back and for a paper
survey that’s actually really good. And I don’t know if it’s letting the cat out of the bag but they did not reach
their goal. They reached I believe a little over 900 which is still fantastic. So we are going to do a drawing
today but you can still turn in your survey because we still want to reach that goal of 1,000. And that is very
important…how decisions and goals are made by your NPTEC. So I just wanted to add that. Also this
summer we had 22 U of I Architecture department students and two professors from the community
architecture and planning class that are conducting a business hub zone and visioning this semester for us
on our behalf. And we’ll see those results soon. The Tribe does not have a current comprehensive plan or a
sub-comp plan so I can see how frustrating it is to NPTEC and anybody who wants to develop or build new
houses. We don’t have our land prioritized in those ways. And so it’s very important that we start this
process. And because of funding we have to go to the universities because it is a lot more inexpensive.
I am very proud of information systems. I know you have all seen how visible they have become. We have
now and I noticed last night at the casino, Meredith Moffett pointed out that we are now listening to our own
radio station in the casino. But as you are aware we now have a radio station owned and operated solely
by the Nez Perce Tribe right here in the Wa-a’yas Community Building. This is a new station it’s the first
public radio service to over 13,000 people an additional service to over 7,000 people. Because it is a public
service and it is not profit-oriented like your KMOK or you know 105.1 station. It is not the type of revenue
driver that you would see. You can run public service announcements, which is exceptional for the Nez
Perce Tribe to get information out and volunteerism. So really for the tribe to target our communications
majors or people who are currently transitioning to start begin to volunteer in the program. I am very excited
because not only is that a statement about the Tribe but I know you’ve heard our language, I have seen
people’s comments on Facebook, from other places that say we have our language, we hear stories. Its
brought a lot of pride to our people to be able to have that type of communication here. It has definitely
improved communication and will continue to improve communication on the reservation that is considered
very rural. Further, in information systems, we are one of the very few tribes that received the broadband
grant which I have reported to you the last, I believe, three or four General Councils. 1.5 million in
equipment to build the infrastructure for broadband. Our project will become best practices for all other
awardees. I can’t tell you what kind of investment this does for the tribe when you are talking about
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economic development, when you’re talking about quick communications. You have to have that
infrastructure. I went to an NCAI a year ago and there are no longer any grants given. Now tribes have to
actually get a loan for these types of broadband grants. And they get a very good loan interest loan. But we
were able to strike while the iron was hot and get the grant funding while it existed. That just says
everything about how well we are doing in information systems. It’s not limited to economic development for
new businesses to grow, our education, our culture, and e-government. We are currently constructing more
towers. We are not complete. I know that broadband exists in Lapwai so you get your internet services
through the Nez Perce Tribe. You’ll have seen if you were on the old system and now you’re on the…you
didn’t have to do anything. Now you are on broadband. You’ll notice the increase in speed in y9ur internet.
And soon this will be…is offered in the Lapwai area. It will be in the Cherrylane area and soon to be
Culdesac and Peck areas where you really don’t have any communication at all. I know one of my best
friends lives in that area and once she crosses a certain area we don’t see her until the next day at work.
We don’t know what she’s doing. And we will have a map in the Wa-a’yas lobby [inaudible.]
I was honored to be able to attend ATNI annual conference and I can tell you it was extremely beneficial.
And I will say I supported our Information Systems director to attend as well. I can tell we are very much a
leader and I will continue to support our staff to attend those. To tell how we are doing. We were at the
Tulalip tribes this year and so Jamie and I were actually able to go tour facilities and look at other things the
tribe is doing outside of the meetings. This is a three year old building right here that is their new
administrative buildings. You all know the Umatilla have built their new administrative building they call it
their government center. If you see the picture over to the right that was the view from the first floor but if
you go up to the third floor that is where the council chambers are. They are able to overlook their gathering
and fishing areas right there from their offices. So what happens when everybody goes in one building is it
improves communication between departments. Right now we have little islands in the Nez Perce Tribe.
And one of my battles is that we sometimes can get on our island and think that I work for the island and for
the rest of the people. No, we all work for the Nez Perce Tribe. Nobody works for just the department of
Fisheries or ERWM or the E/D’s office. We all work for the Nez Perce Tribe and it’s very important that we
are reminded of that every day. The other thing that I think it more importantly improves, it improves the
services to tribal members. Anybody that has been a student knows that in years previous you had to go to
three different places to apply for a scholarship. Anybody knows that if you want to get a fish permit you go
to a different office. There is burning permits…there is all these areas that need to come together in order
to be a better service to our tribal citizens. And also it would bring our costs down. Right now we are paying
very expensive costs in utilities and set up. Every time we get a new building we have to set people up and
put the wiring in the buildings, their phone up and their internet. And it’s very expensive if you have to do
that when it’s not already existing and plan for a new building. I had to take a [inaudible] of this because
when I started as the E/D, I was almost like I was speaking a foreign language when I came in and I said
customer service has to be the most important thing to anybody who works in the Nez Perce Tribe. And no,
we are not revenue driven on our side but we serve the people. And it’s very important that we understand
that when we are there 8 – 4:30 we are not tribal members, we are serving tribal members. And so this is
the very first floor right when you walk in at the Tulalip center and it says customer service centers. You
can’t see it very well but they are little, almost like you are in a bank and there’s tellers right there. And they
are all tribal members and they are there to serve anybody who walks through that door with any of their
needs. And that says everything. Right when you walk through the door the tribe is saying Tulalip tribe we
are here to serve you, what can we do for you. And that is exactly what was stated to me when I asked the
lady if I could take pictures of the sign. She is called a customer service representative. I think that is
fantastic and we have got to make that jump; we have got to understand that we are here to serve you all
and improve those services and may be…those always need to be worked on. You can never accomplish
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great customer service and think it’s achieve it’s something you always have to work on. Next slide. Our
Social Service department is making great strides in our elder and senior citizens services. We had a
wonderful elder day with over 350 registered participants. I believe we had more than that actually
attending…additional folks. Tribal departments donated in mass all these gift bags that I don’t think we’ve
ever seen before. We had to keep having drawing after drawing to get rid of all these great baskets for
elders. Of course Mr. Wally Wheeler and Ms. Betty Corbett were honored as both elder of the year. So
congratulations to both of those elders. We have increased our elder travel this year and our policy has
been fairly flexible to allow people to go to these locations. The elders this year have gone to Nespelem,
Muckleshoot, Tulalip, Pendleton, Grand Ronde, Northern Quest, and the final trip of the year will be a jet
boat tour up to Dug bar, the old Nez Perce crossing, and also to Worley this year. That sign up went out
and I had an update a few weeks with our Social Service manager and asked well how many people have
signed up because our boat could fit 40. And at that point we had over 60. So I am very excited that we are
going to do everything that we can do to meet the need of our seniors. Someone said over there at Tulalip,
boy, your seniors are sure spoiled and I was hoping that some time we would be able to say that here. Boy,
we are spoiling our seniors. They are sure spoiled. And I know you don’t feel that right now but I can tell
that it’s on our staff’s mind. The late in life program hosted a kick-off event in May. This program is geared
to address and facilitate support services for victims of elder abuse and the team will be training local law
enforcement agencies in February on elder abuse issues and response…how to respond. The team
includes our law enforcement, prosecution, judicial, social services, the YWCA, and Area Agency on Aging.
We’ve developed a Senior Citizens newsletter now and that newsletter is available at the Senior booth here
at General. And please let us know what you think of that newsletter. Give us some feedback. The
wheelchair accessible handicap mini-van was purchased for the Kamiah and Orofino area senior citizens in
August. That is a wonderful van that meets all of our requirements. Of course, the Women’s Outreach
Program was awarded over half-million dollars from DOJ [Dept. of Justice] – the office of violence against
women. Our program director has done an exceptional job, Sydel Samuels who wrote that grant. Social
Services will be expanding hours at the Wa-a’yas effective October 1. Hours will be Tuesday through
Thursday, 9:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. Anybody who lives up here knows that it’s very hard to get services. You
have to fax, you have to count on staff being here. It very much could seem very secluded and that’s not
what we want to have happen. I appreciate the departments responding to how we can improve services to
the whole reservation. Not just at the headquarters of the Nez Perce Tribe. Next slide. Our Indian Child
Welfare department has provided positive Indian parenting classes both here in Kamiah and in Lapwai. Our
next one will be held in Kamiah. Our Outreach has shared with and done quarterly meeting with other tribal
departments. We have hired a part-time Indian Child Welfare Parent Education coordinator to focus on
foster home recruitment and retention. And if you understand…each year after year the tribe was always
trying to recruit native foster parents. As you are aware, all of our child protection workers are tribal
members and they are MSWs which is outstanding. We now have two MSW interns working in our
program. And finally in this report, we submitted a grant Cultivating Life’s Garden in July which integrates
TANF, Child welfare services for children and families who are eligible to receive TANF and are striving to
reunifying and preserving their family unit. The project includes gardening, harvesting and preserving
traditional foods, preventative health care and grandparents as caregivers. The selected recipients of this
grant have not been announced. Finally for TANF I was very honored at ATNI, I felt like we were just
working around the clock. I was able to be included on behalf of the Nez Perce Tribe one of three tribal
TANF programs that able to testify or speak with the TANF administrator to the assistant secretary of
Human Health and Services. Under Secretary Sebelius which is assistant Secretary Sheldon. We were
able to talk about our TANF and the successes we have had. There was an overwhelming response of how
many cases that were seemed impossible walking through the door that became possible because of what
we are doing in TANF. So we can see up here with the amount of funding over $42,000 has been
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expended on eight single parent families, ten two parent families, and 10 child [inaudible] cases. There is a
lot of… a growing number of child only cases as grandparents or other relatives are taking responsibility for
caring for their children. Next slide. Real quickly, our department of Education, our Voc-Rehab department
has also increased their impact on ex-offenders after they have been released from prison so they have
seen a growth in those numbers. This is also through the Voc-Rehab program has been able to help them
get on their feet and reach their employment outcomes but it has also helped them transition back in to
their home life after spending many years in prison. Our students for success program and NMPH
community health program are getting national recognition this year under the CDC.
Congratulations, our Students for Success [program]. It’s due to their work with schools on the reservation.
They will be featured in the upcoming federal success story publication. As you are aware we have not
seen a lot of movement under our education and workforce development center. As congressional monies
start to tighten as we are still in this war, and you start to see future presidential budgets decrease in
funding to tribes and infrastructure. We are re-aligning our focus on our feasibility study. We have
contracted with Washington State University to cut costs to be able to give us a better focus. In order for us
to accomplish this state of the art facility it has been very difficult and we are completing that. If were a key
staff or if you were a NPTEC you might be interviewed in the next couple weeks or you have already been
interviewed by that facility team. Strategic planning I already mentioned this just briefly but NPTEC has
contracted with Ted Strong. These were the goals that were laid out a year ago for myself is in NPTEC’s
desire to separate powers especially when it comes to law and justice. And eliminate the majority of the
positions that the NPTEC Chair supervises. A draft organizational chart was also worked on in three
NPTEC sessions over a year ago. We haven’t worked on it since but I have requested that in the budget.
Last year I increased my budget by $90. This year I have requested because it was an action at General
Council to develop an EEOC position. We want to have a law and justice executive director at some point
that will help separate those kinds of things. So those are still important and I do not see them happening
this year with our indirect short fall and indirect deficit. Our correctional facility feasibility study grant was
$150,000. Our biggest goal right now and I understand NPTEC is very busy but our biggest goal is getting
NPTEC involvement. The feasibility does not mean the Nez Perce Tribe will build a correctional facility. It’s
only going to tell us if it’s even feasible to do so and if so what kind of facility would it be. Is it a juvenile or
an adult or is it a combination of both. And part of the goals in that grant when it was written is to make sure
the tribe was able to control our education and cultural practices of people who are incarcerated. Anybody
who knows or who has family or has been incarcerated or as a juvenile knows it’s almost like their
education stops. By the time a facility gets your education plan you may be being released and so you are
missing all this time of getting properly educated.
Department of Finance. I can’t even tell you how proud I am of our finance department audits. And your
Treasurer reported this and I can say it has everything to do with our leadership of our finance manager Ed
Brown. Our audits and indirect cost rates are current for the first time in years. And it’s a matter of fact in
just over a year’s time Ed was able to ensure we had three audits done: 2008, 2009 and 2010. Our auditors
will be in here in November to start the closeout of 2011 and that says everything about our financial wellbeing. Springbrook conversion is very expensive and difficult software is starting to be converted. If you
notice…, if you are on the tribe’s payroll you will have a different type of payroll. This will increase
communication to some extent. Where people who manage a budget will be able to see how their budget is
doing at leisure. They will be able to log on as opposed to overloading the accounting staff and wanting a
printout request and all that. They will be able to be almost like their own [inaudible] accountant. All the
requirements of policy and approval will still be in place but at least they will be able to see their operating
budget. And this year it was phenomenal to see what was going on with these audits,our indirect cost
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proposal, our Springbrook conversion, and the finance staff also distributed your per captiat check. On the
first roll was over 2,700 checks. And so it was outstanding to see the amount of work they were able to do
at the same time within the same two weeks they also distributed the school clothes assistance as well as
get payroll and everything on time. I really believe the finance department and Ed Brown deserve a round
of applause. Thank you.
I have two topics left. One that’s very dear to my heart and in the NPTEC’s current strategic plan is the
Longhouse. And it has been two years of planning and we’ve had setbacks and we’ve had challenges. And
right now we have accomplished many things including what has been the most controversial is picking a
land site. Now NPTEC has authorized a land exchange with the Nez Perce National Historical Park.
However, we have all these things in place, we received a grant fund for site-ing, we approved a land site
we already selected a contractor that has already met with TERO to establish the wage rates. We are all
systems go so to speak but because we have taken over a year-and-a-half to get to this point, construction
costs have increased. And so we have that challenge that NPTEC is a little hesitant right now to approve
those costs. They are estimated costs. We hope that when we actually bid that maybe we will see those
costs come down. NPTEC is going to be informed within the next few weeks of other construction projects
that now have increased costs as well because the cost of lumber and other equipment has increased
dramatically over the last year. We are in the high-end of construction. We are kind of skimming down
getting over the summer months and so when we take estimates in the summer, of course, you are going
to see them high. But we are going to try to navigate through this and it is important the General Council tell
their leadership what they would like to see happen. It’s a very good investment. SRBA funds will pay for
that. Here is a picture of the land exchange and where you see that arrow coming in is currently the boom
grounds. What was commonly called the [inaudible] grounds. It’s a tribal ground. And then you will see the
land right..that’s facing north and east, of course, is the river and then right where it says old US highway
12 and in-between the boom grounds that is land we are looking at exchanging with the Park Service. We
are actually doing a partial land exchange if we can get approval for to move forward with this. It’s going to
be beneficial. One of the things that increased the cost by $300,000 was this site selection because there is
so much rock there; the estimated cost of excavating are estimating to be that much greater. So we are
going to try to do our best to navigate through this. I think NPTEC would appreciate your opinion on what
you think should happen. We don’t want to see this goal that NPTEC set out in 2009 and NPTECs 20 years
ago set to accomplish for the Nez Perce Tribe. We would hope that we could build this and then look at
another location where we could build another longhouse, maybe, preferably, here in the Kamiah area. This
is, of course, you see this slide this is final drawing for the longhouse. Next slide. This is just an inside
rendering. Next slide. Let me conclude my remarks. I always conclude my remarks with honoring
somebody who is very significant to the Nez Perce Tribe as an employee. I can tell you we have an
employee that has served 38 years to serve Nez Perce people. Now she’s served Nez Perce Elders for so
many years and now she will have the sole right to be a Nez Perce Elder and be served. I want to
congratulate Geneva Towner. She retired on September 1 with over 38 years of service to the Nez Perce
Tribe. For years she has provided meals at the Lapwai Senior Citizens Program. And a reception was held.
She did not ask for any honoring or reception and she was very surprised when our staff had set up this
surprise reception. I wanted to have her honored today. Is she here? And she is not here today. I was
hoping yesterday when she was here we would be able to honor hre. I have a pair of cornhusk earrings for
her and a blanket. I think all seniors like these umbrellas. I will give it to Danae [Wilson] to give to her
mother. I very much wanted her to be honored by the General Council to show how long she has
committed to the Nez Perce Tribe.
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Just a couple final things. Very active at ATNI. I was honored to be asked to sponsor a resolution in the
Law and Justice subcommittee that’s called Indians for Justice. It was a resolution that first ever president
woman president of ATNI signed into law that would go to NCAI. It’s called Justice for the shooting of John
T. Williams. He was the [inaudible] wood carver that was shot down in the streets of Seattle for having his
closed knife. We actually got to see the video of that which was so emotional. I can’t even tell you. So they
are requesting all the Tribes to pass a resolution because the city of Seattle actually did their own
investigation and rendered the police officer innocent. The actual law that needs to be changed towards
officers is malicious intent. So you have to prove, they have malicious intent. Finally, Jamie and I will be
working and will accept any volunteers. You are going to see announcements over the next few weeks over
Nimiipuu “get out the Native Vote” campaign. We saw that it was really mostly geared toward Washington
tribes. So you are going to see us get more information out to the tribal citizens in order to increase Nez
Perce tribe voter registration and actually voting. Thank you very much, General Council. I very much
appreciate your time and am very honored to serve all of you and look forward to your questions or
concerns. Thank you.
9:40 a.m.
Chairman Jackson: Thank you Ms. Miles. Now we will hear from Ms. Jamie Olsen, Executive Director of
Enterprises.
Jamie Olsen, Executive Officer: Good morning, General Council. My name is Jamie Olsen and I am the
Executive Director of the Nez Perce Tribal Enterprise. And as always it is an honor and a privilege to serve
the Nez Perce people in this capacity. This morning I will be giving you the financial state of the Nez Perce
Tribal Enterprise and then will also give a presentation to you on the economic development strategies that
is currently in a draft form. And we are seeking from the General Council to approve that. Listening to our
Treasurer’s report yesterday, there a lot of demands on the Enterprise to be able to perform to meet the
financial needs of the Nez Perce Tribe. In going through the Treasurer’s report, what the Tribe needs to be
able to sustain the level of operations and to provide services to the people they need $6,602,105. That
comes from gaming revenue and also…I’ll get into this slide in a second. Anyway that comes from gaming
revenue, and also the revenue received from taxes. Sales of fuel and tobacco and now sales tax and retail
tax. How are we going to meet that demand? What we are going to do is we are going to meet it by
operating a production and performance driven organization. The Nez Perce Tribe is in business and how
you be successful at business is you work very, very, very, very hard on improving and growing your
revenue and, at the same time, you work very, very, very hard at holding all of your expenses in line so that
you are always have in site your bottom line and working every single day to improve that bottom line. We
will always be working on improving the operations within the Nez Perce Tribal Enterprise. We are working
very hard at right-sizing our businesses. An enterprise is not a government. We are operating completely
differently. We are very focused on profitability. We have a lot of revenue centers within the Nez Perce
Tribal Enterprise and the Gaming Enterprise and including the C-stores. And every single revenue center
within the Enterprise is expected to generate revenue to be able to meet the demands of the Tribe. We also
are working very hard on improving our business performance through networking and visibility. We know
that in order to grow our revenue we really are going to have to reach out to obtain tourism dollars. Tourism
dollars is new money that comes in to our area. We want to be able to access that new money and there is
a number of things that happen to…that will allow us to do that. But in order for us to be successful at it, we
have to do a much better job of networking amongst business communities on and just outside the
reservation and our market, I should say. And we also need to be more visible within our market and
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tooting our own horn. And really tuning our [inaudible] with everything that we could provide to the business
community and all of the things that we can do to actually make them successful. When we’re successful,
the business community around us is successful. The economy is successful. And when the communities
in our market are successful, we are successful. So it is a win-win if you work together. We have had some
successes. We had some successes in bringing some groups to the Clearwater River Casino. You may
have noticed that we were kind of the host for the international boat racers who came and raced on the
Snake River. We were able to bring in a group of people, they stay at the hotel, they play on the gaming
floor, they eat in our restaurant, they utilize the event center. We served a banquet. And that is all very
positive. It helps us to grow our revenue. We also recently celebrated our 15 year anniversary at the
Clearwater River Casino and we brought in Elaine Miles as an entertainer. She did a fantastic job and we
had a huge turnout of folks that wanted to come and see her. [inaudible] We have to do things that get
people to come to our business. We also recently hosted an international tour group. They were just here
this week. They came in on Monday. Our tourism director helped bring them in, working together with the
marketing director and also the hotel director. We were a very, very good host. And again, they stayed in
the hotel, they ate in the restaurant, they played in the gaming floor. We entertained them and we had the
ability to showcase who we are and what we can do. The best advertising that you can get in the business
is word of mouth. So the more that we can treat people to a great experience in our businesses, just doing
that in and of itself is going to help us to grow. We also recently hosted an economic summit. The topic was
“Where the rubber meets the Road.” We also feel we could tell by hosting the summit and we had people
on the gaming floor and eating at our restaurant and utilizing the event center. We brought in a lot of high
level, high profile people to come in and speak with the Nez Perce people in regards to all of things that are
happening in Indian country. To help support economic development and to diversify your businesses away
from just the reliance that we have on gaming. So we had folks from the Department of Energy. We had the
president of the Native American Contractors Association out of Washington, DC. We had the owners of
Sister Sky come down and tell their story, their small business story and share their entrepreneurial spirit
with the group in regards how hard it is to run a business but how rewarding it is to run a business. We also
had folks from ATNI talk about the salmon marketing program which the Nez Perce Tribe is very involved
with. We also recently hosted a Lewis & Clark Valley Chamber business after hours at the Clearwater River
Casino. That brings a lot of people out to our property. [inaudible] a chance to showcase who we are and
what we can do and what we can provide. So with that I am going to go into kind of a state of where we are
right now 11 months into this fiscal year. In your General Council report you do have some company
prepared financial statements. You have an income statement and a balance sheet for each of our existing
businesses. Those financials are through the month of July. This week the finance department got the
August financials completed so this report on the slide is where we are at so far through our fiscal year
2011. I’m going to focus on profitability because that is what we focus on. We focus on the bottom line. I
have very good news to share with you. As you can see in 2011, this is a comparison to previous years
because I am not going to see the growth.(1:01:43) The Clearwater River Casino, the earnings have grown
35% from 4.6 million dollars to 6.2 million dollars [inaudible] 11 months per this fiscal year. [applause].
Thank you. Itse Ye Ye Casino is kind of flat. We
We have been putting a lot of investment into Itse’ Ye Ye Casino. We have implemented an on-line gaming
system and switching out the gaming floor. There are a lot of costs associated with that. But in the long run
it’s best to invest in our business that is going to help us grow the business because with this new on-line
system we are going to be able to understand who our customer is because now our customers utilize the
players club card. There is a number of statistics and demographics that we can pull and we can do a much
better job of marketing to our customers; who they are and what they like. So those are things that are kind
of flat. At least we were able to be close to maintaining some level of profitability as previous year. So we
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are about $30,000 down. Thirty thousand dollars of net profit down from the same time last year. The Nez
Perce Express has been kind of holding its own as was discussed yesterday by the treasurer. Our
gallonage sold has decreased with the price of fuel. There are less people purchasing fuel. We do expect
that we will have about a flat year in comparison to the previous year. But I would like General Council to
know that if I were to show you a trend report but I do not have a trend report to show you but the Nez
Perce Express implemented a lot of changes in about first six months of the fiscal year. So actually most of
these earnings that you see occur starting in about February-March of this year. So what it tells me is that
we’re really on the right track and the Nez Perce Express should have a really good year. [inaudible] the
reduction in fuel sales, there is an emphasis in other areas. We do sell a lot of tobacco. We sell snacks and
beer and wine and we also have a deli. So the net profitability of that business has actually improved in the
last six months. You will be able to see that, you’ll really be able to start to see that. The Camas Express,
there has been a lot emphasis on Camas Express. It has posted some very large losses in the last two
fiscal years. So that was really an area that we put a lot of focus on. We had a strategic development plan
that we implemented in about January of 2011. In February we started to see some of the effects of
implementing that new plan. We did a lot of things to improve the profitability. We really started to see it
starting in February. So that loss has been reduced almost in half. It’s 42.29%. And all of that gain is gain
just in the last six or seven months. So that business is doing a fantastic job of turn-around. We are
basically in a turn-around situation at Camas Express and we’ve been very successful. So for gaming
revenue you can see that with two gaming properties that the Nez Perce Tribe owns and operates, the
gaming revenue has grown 31.49% between the two casinos. The Express revenue has grown 66.66%.
That’s a combination of both properties. So total increase or growth in profitability for your tribal businesses
is 32.7% which is about 1.7 million dollars in one year. So I think that is really good. [applause]. The next
slide shows you where we project to be at year end. At year end we are projecting to post earnings of $7.2
million. What does that mean because we implemented the new gaming revenue allocation plan that I think
you are aware of that was discussed yesterday. Of that $7.2 million 65% will go tribal government
operations. That’s $4,695,508.35. Fifteen percent of that of those earnings will go into a per capita fund.
There per capita fund will receive…these are company prepared financial statements. They are not audited
financial statements. The auditor will make some adjustments but our finance department under the
direction of Frank Barnes has been doing an awesome job so our company prepared financials are very
close to the audited financial statements. So this is a projection. Fifteen percent to the per capita fund we
have put in just over a million dollars. Put in just over a million dollars for economic development which gets
re-invested back into your business and is also used for other economic fund to be used that we are
looking at. And 5% as mandated by the state compact is [inaudible] to the local education fund and
disbursed by the Executive Director’s office and the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee. Which would
be around $360,000. So this is tremendous growth in comparison to where we were when I first came on
over two years ago. So the Express [inaudible] we will end up the year about $329,000. What I would like to
do now is go into two of our largest projects that we have going on. I want to talk to you a little about where
we are at with the Ahtway Plaza expansion. We completed a geo-archeological assessment by Northwest
Archeologists. This was completed on September 6. We do know that that site, I’m very sensitive to the
area. It is a historical village site. We know that people camped there and have lived there in that area for
tens of thousands of years. We did feel that it was very important that we did complete an archaeological
assessment. So under the recommendations of the Nez Perce Tribe’s Cultural Resources department we
went ahead did kind of the whole type of assessment and that has been completed. And they have not
provided us with a report yet but the report is forthcoming. We also purchased some additional property.
We purchased 6.88 acres which was now the former S & S Contracting site. The purchase of that land was
on September 15. That helps us to grow the land ownership down at Ahtway Plaza. What’s kind of the neat
thing about that is we now control all of the land on our road which is Nez Perce road. So there is no other
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ownership that even bumps up on either side of that road. So we completely control all access, all right of
ways, so that’s a plus. And we also we will be able to obtain through that purchase a building with two
shops. Which is critical in order to facilitate our expansion because we have a lot of buildings, if you notice,
and I think it looks terrible. We have all these sheds and modulars and this and that and now we purchased
land that we can kind of consolidate that into. The schematic design by Northwest [inaudible] Architect is
expected to be completed on October 5. We are very close. The interior design elements are currently in
the process and there is still time to provide any input that you have in regards to the interior design. One of
the goals through the expansion is to improve the presence of ownership of that casino which is the Nez
Perce people. So, if you go down there now and you go into the building…that’s really not the feeling that
you get. So we have an opportunity to really make this a beautiful property and to showcase who we are.
And so the cultural elements of the design are very important. So we do have a booth out there that kind of
shows you some of the things, some of the carpet samples they put together. This is all input from the
cultural committee. We would have them explain to the interior design folks what colors, type of design and
we also got to incorporate language. (1:11:01) We have gone out to the Nez Perce National Historical Park
and looked at some of the old beadwork and cornhusking and design patterns from all of the beautiful
artifacts that are held there, trying to incorporate that into the interior design of the casino. We are
expecting that the civil construction documents will be completed and we’ll have a [inaudible] plan of those
in October of 2011. The building construction documents will be completed and plan which will be
completed for the actual building in December of 2012. Yesterday, construction costs based upon the
schematic design is about $1.5 million. The [inaudible] construction is finalizing the project costs. They
need the final schematic design to be able to go out with costs. Every single thing that would go into
[inaudible]. We are currently in the process of bringing on Warren Construction management and owner’s
representative. That has gone out and posts on Monday. We hope to have somebody on board soon
because once we get into construction there is going to be a lot stuff going on. We will have subcontracting
bidding going on for the site work in October of 2011. We will be working with our TERO department on
that. We do, we will be holding job fair for potential employment for the construction of the building which
we are looking at in December of 2011. Some of the site work will actually start in October with the
construction of the building will be starting in December. We will have a groundbreaking ceremony
sometime in the month of October and [inaudible] coming in the last year soon. The expansion construction
project is expected to take about 12 to 14 months. We have been working on some other things to for
Ahtway Plaza. We did Inland Cellular is leasing a piece of land from the tribe and built a cell phone tower.
The cell phone tower is up and is behind the casino up on the hill. They need to find a spot for it t to directly
communicate with the other tower that is somewhere over by Potlatch. The only thing that we are waiting
on is Clearwater Power to bring the power line to the cell phone tower. Once the power gets installed, it will
take about two weeks and then we’ll have that cell phone tower. We will be able to go live. And that is going
to greatly enhance our profitability. You would be amazed at how many people will not stay in our hotel or
in our rv park because they cannot get cell phone service. And I am talking about the traveler who uses
those AT&T and some of those premium AT&T services. Because everyone keeps merging..but anyways it
is going to be awesome to have cell phone tower in that area because it is a dead spot. We’ve actually had
people check into their hotel room, go to their room, come back down and check out because they cannot
use their cell phone. These days people have to conduct business 24/7 or they have to be in contact with
their family 24/7. And even in the RV park we have these high end RVs come in and they want to come and
stay but as soon as they get out there and they cannot connect they come back in, they want a refund and
they leave. And so a cell phone tower might not sound like a big deal but it is huge. The other thing that we
are doing is working on our wireless access. Troy Mariano is our MIS Director and he is the person who
has kind of been facilitating a lot of these projects, coordinating them and following through to make sure
they are being done. He is working on improving wireless to our property because I see everybody has to
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check their Facebook. Everybody has to post their Facebook and I’m not talking about employees. I‘m
talking about guests. Everybody that stays at the hotel they have to work. They have to, if people come and
hold business meetings in our event center, they have to work. They are at a meeting and they are
participating in a meeting, money never sleeps. Everybody has to be doing their thing 24/7 and we have to
be able to accommodate this. This is now the expectation of our society. It’s not a plus, it’s an expectation
so we are trying to get there. We are hoping or I’m hoping that we go live with this also in October of 2011.
Here’s some other things that we are doing to improve our property. We are re-planning our lounge / sports
bar. We are getting more flat screen TVs and get them up on the wall. We are bringing in more satellite TV
shows, multiple sporting events [inaudible]. We also have a promotion going on right now. It’s a football
kiosk. You go into the casino, you put your player’s club card, it will automatically give you a pick of five
games. There is usually fifteen NFL games that happen every weekend. And so in order to maximize that
football promotion we want people to come in and watch those games. And then just tie in so many things
that we have people on property [inaudible], feed them, they can visit our gaming floor, they can stay at the
hotel and they can [inaudible]. We also are we have gotten a lot of complaints about the beds in the hotel
and so we are replacing all those. I think a third of them have been replaced and by the end of October
we’ll have the rest of the beds replaced. We also will improve the TV in the hotel rooms. Get rid of the old
TVs and put in some flat screen TVs. So we are very excited about all of our improvements. It’s going to
help us achieve our projections, our projected [inaudible]. I think that most of these slides are out there on
our display. This is how the [inaudible] and the expansion is going to look. Like I said we are really pretty
close to getting the schematic design done. But you can see where the bingo area is going in and where
we will have some meeting rooms and the cultural wall. That currently is the smoking section. The gaming
floor will be big enough to put in as many machines as allowed under the state gaming compact. The Nez
Perce Tribe has never maximized what they were provided and negotiated the gaming compact with the
state of Idaho. So the state of Idaho..we are allowed to have 1,044 machines through that compact. We
currently have close to 100 at Itse Ye Ye and we have about 600 at the Clearwater River Casino. So we will
be increasing our gaming machines with this expansion. We’ll have the ability to go to our past gaming
compact and so we’ll be able to bring in about 200 more machines. You can see there the event center. It’s
going to be the largest event center in the Lewis-Clark valley. Bigger than the Quality Inn, bigger than the
Red Lion. It will be able to seat 600 rounds. We need to be competitive in our market. That is very
important to us. If we are going to attract people then we need the property to support it. So that just gives
you an idea about how…there is a lots of other [inaudible] in there that you can’t really see, I’m not going to
go into a lot of detail but this a group of folks that [inaudible]. This is how the property looking from an aerial
view. Getting rid of that tent is going to be awesome and it’s going to allow us to improve property. A lot of
the customers are elders, a lot of our customers are disabled. And it is very difficult for them to get to our
property because of our parking. The best parking that we currently have right now is in the fire lane or it’s
over by the hotel. And so everybody has to walk through…we will have a lot better parking around the
casino area. And we will have some expanded parking over in the hotel. We are going to kind of upgrade
that RV park area. Some of the initial design we were going to take the RV park out completely but we are
trying to keep the costs within a reasonable budget. Asphalt is very expensive. That was a concession that
we made is we are going to keep some of the RV park but we are going to upgrade it so we need some
hopefully some people that will come and stay and take advantage of our all of our amenities that we offer.
This is an aerial view of the, exterior view of the left side. As you can see the west side is probably going to
become the primary entrance into the Clearwater River Casino. The exterior is going to look a lot better
than what we currently have now. Also as you drive in on both sides of the property it is going to extend out
a lot better. So it’s not like you drive by and “oh, is that a casino?” You’re going to be able to tell driving in
that this is the casino. This is the event center. You can see there is a loading dock [inaudible] events in
and out. There is also a nice patio area and there isn’t..you can enter the events center from that. But one
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of the main reasons we want the event center attached to the gaming floor is we want to drive traffic onto
the gaming floor. So most often unless it is a family event that access will be utilized for some purposes but
we don’t want people going straight to the event center without entering the casino [inaudible]. This is a
picture of what it might look like, it is going to be really [inaudible] the architecture is going to be really
pretty. The [inaudible] is staying, the pond is staying. There was a lot of people that wanted to get rid of that
pond and put parking in. We will be clearing out all of that use of the parking there. That’s really a lane just
to drop off and but we do know that people always park there. There’s no other place for them to park. But
we do hope to provide some added amenities to the casino. We are going to add valet parking because we
do need to cater to the customer. They are coming there, they have made a decision to spend their money
there and we need to take good care of them. This is how the gaming floor is going to look. It is going to
look more casino-ish. It needs too. When people are coming to our property that is what the expectation is.
And in all of design that you see in there are actually driven by things that fall back on the land or the
animals or the culture or. And the culture committee has been able to provide input on all aspects of the
design including what goes on the ceiling. I just want to let you know that we have done some projections
on this expansion because you don’t want to invest millions of dollars and not see a return. The whole
purpose of this expansion is to grow our revenue. So we did some cash flow projections and some
[inaudible] projections for the next four years. We do know during construction our revenue may decrease
because people are going to know we are constructing and they are going to think it is a hassle. Even
though we have been very clear with the contractor that we do not want our operations interrupted during
the expansion. We need to conduct business and they are aware. We do expect it to hit [inaudible] in 2012.
And these projections, there is a lot of things that can change these projections. These projections are
based on a certain level of play, they are based on a lot of different things. And they probably will be reworked as we get into it. And have a better idea of how we are going to perform. But there are also
projections done by [inaudible] who did a marketing study which first was the first impetus to get us to move
forward with this expansion. Because we can improve our [inaudible]. So we were at about 3.9 and then we
were at 4.6 and now we are at 7.1. We are projecting a profit at the Clearwater River Casino 2012 around
$3.82 million. And we are very in conservative in that projection. In 2013 we see it growing as high as $10
million. In 2014 we see it growing as high as $15 million. And in 2015 up to $16 million. This is because we
will have more machines on site. We will have improved property and we will also will now able to attract
more groups like I talked about before, the tourism dollar. Bringing more groups out to the casino. That will
also take advantage of all the other things that we have to offer. The next project that we will be working on
is the Camas Express. Where we are at with that project is that construction documents are being redesigned by Womer (?) Associates to reduce the cost. Based on the financial performance of Camas
Express for the last three years it has been determined the scope of the project and expansion is too
expensive. [Inaudible] to recover our investments, so we take a look at it, so we had an architect redesign
it, and let him know what is important to us [inaudible] this is the part of the treasurer’s report from
yesterday, the partnership with the State of Idaho, so that it can be designated as a rest area, which is
going to help to drive demand to that business, so the redesign is estimated to be a total project cost
ranging from 2.1 to 2.4 million, that is a decrease of about a million dollars. So we have increased the
square footage of the building. Currently the State of Idaho is reviewing the redesign to ensure that we are
complying with their rest area specifications. We are expecting the architect to complete the redesign of
this expansion in October 2011. At that time we will work with TERO, and we will select a contractor. We
could start this process and actually break ground on this as early as November. This construction
expansion is expected to take five to seven…these are some slides to show how this particular project has
changed. [inaudible] Feature about a 4,000 square foot building, it is actually more efficient and we can still
achieve the same goals we set out with when we decided to purchase the Camas Express. This is a picture
of how it will look; it’s a little bit different. The nice thing about this being deemed a rest area [inaudible] this
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grassy area, people can stretch their legs. Come in, hopefully purchase fuel, snacks, also there’s an island
that is just for the truck traffic, so they can get in and around the property. [Inaudible]…to attract truck
traffic. I just wanted to give you a quick update on where we are at with Itse’ye ye. We have converted
about [inaudible] game machines, we’ve updated the system, we have to put in wiring for the game
conversion, and all this is done [inaudible]. We have additional gaming machine purchases that are in
various stages of approval, so we do expect the floor conversion to be completed by November 2011. So
we were pretty close, we were hoping to get that done by fiscal year, but it is going to go a little bit into the
next fiscal year. We worked on, with Natural Resources and still looking at feasibility of that future
limestone quarry. Cass Kipp, working as a development planner for Natural Resources, she is a very good
grant writer. She wrote a grant and was able to obtain a $95,000 grant for us to complete that feasibility
study that has been dragging on for the last eighteen months, and so it kind of puts us back in the driving
seat, we were working with the office of Energy Development, out in Denver, on setting the limestone,
curing the limestone, looking at the mining operation, looking at what we need to get back going again,
looking at different product lines. There are a lot of uses for limestone, I learned a lot about limestone
quarry, what we have done in the past, and we basically had one customer, and we were purchasing one
product. If you lose that customer, you don’t have business. If we develop limestone, and process it, and
along the way we can diversify the product line, what we use that limestone for, we have a true resource.
And so we took that grant process, [inaudible] we will be working with Natural Resources, Our resource and
development partner which is Tony Johnson, Lily Kaufman, and myself. I’m used to working in the private
sector, I’m not used to [inaudible]. We also are working on [inaudible], directors office, develop a financial
institution, and that is where we just submitted another grant application, we ask for technical assistance to
be able to understand what financial needs on the reservation are, so that we can work to try to meet the
financial needs of our community ourselves, rather than be dependent on commercial financial institutions
that maybe not always understand exactly what our needs are. So there could be a number of different
outcomes with that individual study, such as we can look at developing funds to provide financing for
entrepreneur businesses, we can also look at forming our own credit union, delivering and providing
consumer banking services, or consumer financial services to our reservation communities. That also is a
very exciting project that we are working on. We recently did a financial literacy seminar, and they had a
good turnout, thirty some people showed up. We really want to encourage folk’s knowledge in regards to
finances. It is so stressful when you don’t have a good grasp around finances. It’s hard to plan for your
future, hard to meet your financial needs, and if we can improve education that way, people will feel so
much better, they will be so much more successful. Upcoming projects. [Inaudible] and Associates was
retained to do our audits this year, for both the Gaming Enterprise and the Express stores. They have
already been on site, they will be back in September, and also November. We are also looking at securing
a liquor license, we are working with Office of Legal Council on this, the reason why this is so important is
because we don’t just want to be out there serving alcohol, but it strengthens our ability to compete with the
market with our Clearwater River Casino and our event center. There have been many times when groups
have come to us to utilize our event center, but once they find out we don’t serve beer or wine they go
somewhere else. This is very important to bring larger groups to our project. We are also getting IGT
gaming software for free, which will upgrade all our gaming systems [inaudible] we have been on the same
program forever, and there has been I don’t know how many upgrades since we have put in the system.
We have not moved with technology, and that will hurt us, so we took this huge leap from a 2.0 version to
an 8. Version. We also are transitioning our health care benefits on the Nez Perce Tribal Enterprises to
Pacific Source from Regence Blue Shield of Idaho, this goes into effect next week, this is a huge effort from
our Human Resources department to reach out to all of our employees to make them aware their benefits
are changing. I think that it is a disservice to only address the tribe twice a year for a very short period of
time, like an hour, or however much time you were given to hear from the enterprise. I hope you know that
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you are very important to the Nez Perce Tribal Enterprise, and the Nez Perce Tribal Enterprise knows that
you are very important to us. I want to move forward with providing membership meetings, shareholder’s
meeting, it would be like a one day event where tribal members, tribal citizens can come and hear a more
in-depth about the performance of the Nez Perce Tribal Enterprise. You would be able to ask questions,
we would be able to provide you with detail about how we do things, you would get more detail about our
projects, I just think it would help communications, help everybody to understand what we are wanting, and
so we do a better job on our delivery. I would like to do that after we receive our audit and financial
statement which will be in January of 2012. So we would like to meet in March 2010. We are also working
very, very hard at diversifying our tribal enterprises. So we have a document, it is in draft form, it is in the
General Council report, it is on economic development strategies. Our research and development
manager, Tony Johnson, has been working very hard on this. There is a lot of things the Nez Perce can do
to leverage our advantages, we have a lot of advantages. One of the advantages that have been provided
to us because we are a sovereign nation [inaudible] inter-tribal trading concepts, working together with
other tribes to achieve diversified economies, and I’m going to have him give a report on where we are at
with that.
Tony Johnson – First I want to recognize my elders, it is an honor to stand before you, to stand before the
general council. In my beginning, I’d like also to thank the staff, they have been very instrumental in
assisting in moving this department forward. As I begin, I’m going to gloss over a lot of things, things you
have already heard of, so I’m not going to spend much time on them. But I’m going to show you the cover
of something that you can look at, it is at our research and development table, after I am done. It was put
together and analyzed prior to the economic development strategy, and was analyzed from the concept of
power, positional power, tribal power, and our status as a nation. As well as looked at the mission
statements of various tribal organizations to fuse them into a direction for research and development,
economic development strategies. Some of these projects all came out of an economic analysis of the
[inaudible] guide to Indian country. We basically looked at several tribes from the Cascades to the
Bitterroots, all the tribes of the interior economic profile, where the Nez Perce Tribe [inaudible]…initiatives
that have been added to our document, from the analysis of how we economize and how we maximize our
treaty reserve rights. And with that as a precursor, I would like to move into my presentation. I want to first
make a statement about the Nez Perce Tribe Enterprise Economic Development Strategy document is to
serve as a diversification of our Nez Perce economy. This began in July 2009, the Nez Perce Tribal
Executive Committee approved the Nez Perce Enterprises Economic Development Strategies document
2009-2012. There are many projects that we undertook in our desire to analyze potential opportunities to
diversify the economy of the Nez Perce Tribe. [Inaudible] Camas Express, tourism, [inaudible] expand our
tribal skills, feasibility of biomass, and with that you can see a number of potential diversification projects.
[Inaudible] We have been able to achieve the movement in our development projects than we were
previous, that operation master plan was completed, and we moved into the [inaudible] stage, working on
the Ahtway Plaza expansion project. Camas Express was a property also supported by our market
analysis, it was a lot of work, the finances have finally been at a point of breaking even. [Inaudible] the
Camas Express project, as you have heard will start in 2011, it is very neat to point out these are potential
construction projects, that Nez Perce Enterprise management has embraced tribal member priority with the
ground breaking construction, there will be job creations for tribal members, and the TERO ordinance will
apply. So the tourism, retail, and lodging will be looked at on many levels. Unfortunately, they did not look
at it as a tribal business, they look at it as another type of business, as a department analysis [inaudible]
the tourism retail, cigarette. Another property in Orofino for many years has been looked at it as a potential
development property for the tribe for many years, we are still looking at it, it is still a priority, but it is an old
rail site, so it is in a ground cleanup and the cultural resource department is working on it, we continue to
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consider it a priority. Looking at potential businesses that can go there, would be around the fishing
industry as well as potential business incubators that tribal members might lease for their own tribal
businesses. Energy development. [Inaudible] we continue to work with the natural resource [inaudible] as
you heard, and we will continue to assess that potential. Nez Perce transportation wholesale, this project is
moving forward, though not as quickly as we had originally planned. We are still [inaudible] the usage of the
Spaulding hill site, which the tribe is negotiating the purchase of right now. Because it has rail distribution
[inaudible]. We are currently working on the business plan which may entail a partnership or consultant to
assist in the startup operations, there have been many people in contact within our organization, that desire
to partner with us, or even to serve as a consultant to move projects forward, and this is one of them. I
know we once again have examples of successful development progress, Ahtway Plaza Phase 1, Camas
Express, Itse’ Ye Ye Casino. This ongoing project, as we look at expanding the Itse’ Ye Ye Casino also, so
this is a precursor to achieving and expanding Itse’ Ye Ye Casino, so it is very important. And where we
are today, I would like to place a statement somewhere up there to let you know that no man survives first
contact, intact. So, in short, our world changes, our progress don’t always match up with plans, we must
move forward [inaudible] All of this is an analysis of where we stand in our economies in Indian Country,
exercising our land power, our treaty reserved rights. As you know we have the right to [inaudible] national
forest, or BLM, or any of those lands that were trusts. So there are opportunities for the Nez Perce Tribe to
utilize those treaty reserve rights, to graze on those properties, and businesses that may flourish, so this is
a list of potential businesses that we might look at the Nez Perce Tribe creditor process [inaudible] increase
in credit card processing fees [inaudible] we are going to continue down that process, and see where it all
comes out. Looking at the Nez Perce Tribes strengths over the last years, we have developed our fisheries
resources, cutting edge science, fisheries restoration, our clean-up efforts at ERWM. We have many high
level, scientific technical individuals, we have natural resource, wildlife staff that all participate in our
restoration efforts, from ridge top to ridge top, all-encompassing approach to sustaining our natural
resources. So what does that mean? Basically, we have a lot of investors, if we play to our strengths
developing that to an environmental services business. [Inaudible] The Nez Perce Tribes big game
[inaudible] use our horses to do guiding, or use Dworshak litigation lands to provide hunting opportunities.
Eventually, we will get to a point where we have enough land to lease to potential businesses coming in.
Potential partnership with manufacturers, American manufacturer network actually wants to work with the
tribes to become a distributer, or even value added approach on reservation land. Nez Perce Tribal
Orchards, that’s just an example of potentially utilizing our land base to bring products for the tribe. Once
again, harvesting the power of our land base. So our updated economic development strategy, you can
see all the ways we have incorporated to kind of infused together to create our completed strategic
document. Our updated plan considers our position of power. This document I referenced identifies our
research development perspective, our thoughts of where we are in power, consider the basis of power,
also considers the tribal comparison to the economic activities of a tribe, considers our mission vision, and
our area of operation, it aligns our planning document with the Nez Perce Tribe government, and it was
also considered from the perspective of strategic operation, looked at from the [inaudible]. If you want to
look at it, our research and development table has our draft report, our analysis, as well as find our
strategic action plan for every one of those strategy, is an action plan that weighs out who is responsible,
potential completion dates. And I will remind you, our plans must remain fluid, that means some dates
might change, but we will move forward. We recently held our 3 rd Annual Economic Summit, September 8th
and 9th, and it was hosted by the Nez Perce Tribal Enterprises this year. It is very important that we work
not only with potential tribal owner businesses, but increase the financial intelligence of our tribal youth, so
we did a little bit of that. As the summit ended, as always, we provided opportunities for input
recommendations, asked for ideas on moving our tribe forward. You will see in our general council report
that that input was considered and infused into our draft. We are looking for input from the tribal public for
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the next two weeks, we envision that we will present the updates for approval at the last NPTEC meeting in
November. We are asking you to today to take a look at our documents, have an input, please contact
myself at tonyj@nezperce.org; Simone Wilson at simonew@nezperce.org; or Lily Kaufman at
lilyk@nezperce.org. We will be taking comment input, presenting it to NPTEC, we have presented it at our
summit, at general council, and we have considered and adapted our document to include tribal member
input, prior to being finalized. Are there any questions?
Chairman Jackson – Thank you Mr. Johnson. This concludes the reports from yesterday’s agenda. Before
we begin question and answer, I would ask all general council members to please reference the house
rules that were approved yesterday, all questions and responses should be made directly to the point.
Please do not reference personnel matters, hiring and firing, salary, etc. and also time is value, so each
member will be limited to two minutes. We do not want to assume that you are making a speech, the time
now is 10:43, after we are done with question and answer, we will motion to excuse the private and public
sector reports, and will proceed with today’s agenda. At this time, I will recognize Nancy Wheeler.
Q&A
Nancy Wheeler – Thank you Madam Chair. I know you just read off the questions we are able to ask. This
is a disturbing concern I heard that the managers for the food and bar beverage is advertising positions for
the line cooks on craigslist rather than going through Human Resource, doing the proper procedures. And
also the culture. I understand he took all the native pictures down and stored them away. Since we
stressed about the culture, I think that that was a wrong move. I guess he took down Celilo pictures. I was
wondering what is the reasoning behind that? I really would like to find out about the advertisement on
craigslist.
Jamie Olsen - When we do recruitments the food and beverage departments requested to be able
advertise positions on craigslist. A lot of people are looking for jobs there; they are not particularly paying
attention to the newspaper, but are looking online for jobs. Monster.com and even native job listings online.
We do need to expand our recruitment. There cannot be any hiring within the Nez Perce Tribal Enterprise
outside of what is currently a policy of the Human Resources Manual. We do have a manual and we must
abide by that manual and its policy. Depending on the positions and what kind of response are we getting
for those newspaper ads. They are very expensive and then we re-post and we do have positions essential
to our business, we need them filled right away. The length of time to bring someone on gets larger and
larger. We do have to follow the recruitment policy there cannot be any avenue to going around that.
In regards to the pictures in restaurant, I actually for those pictures to come down so they can be re-framed
better and then place the pictures back up. That was the reason they were taken down.
Laura Major – I’m glad to see all the plans do you have any projections how long will the plans take. A long
time ago I went to the EDA. I said we need to have cattle grain, make our own bread, our own flour,
because of the economy of the way things are going on today. We need to plant something to sustain our
people. We have all these white people taking our elk and our deer; we’re running short out there. We
have all these lands that we own and rent out cheap to white people we should use those for our own so
we can sustain this tribe. You don’t see many tribal members on GA and disability to hustle up a few bucks.
Our enterprise board needs to think about something to sustain us. We aren’t going to have commodities
and food stamps forever. We are poor people. Remember us common people.
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Robert Kipp – Good morning general council. To Jamie Olson. In regards to the stick game tourney
usually held the weekend after the powwow. I noticed there is no flyer up for the tourney. C’da,
Muckelshoot, Tulalip have annual stick game tourneys once or twice a year. It usually brings in thousands
of dollars. Why is there no stick game tourney this year?
When you go online and read about Clearwater River Casino some of the comments that are made a lot of
them are poor customer service it is not good to read it online and patrons talking about how bad our
customer service is.
Jamie Olson – The reason we don’t have the stick game tournament the weekend after the powwow, is the
person within the enterprise that leads that whole effort was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident. We
gave him time to recover from his injuries, and he actually just returned back to work. [Applause] I am
talking about Mr. Williams, and he is very passionate about it, and we didn’t feel right about moving forward
with that without him.
In regards to the poor customer service comments that are online, yes it does raise the hair on the back of
our necks when we read those comments. It is Trip Adviser.com website, where people can go online and
post their experience anywhere. So if you type in our property, there are a lot of negative customers with
this experience. I can tell you for us to improve that enterprise and improve our profitability we really do
need to rise to the next level. We don’t really want to invest a lot of money into improving our property, if
we don’t improve. That does include our staffing, and how we do things, and how we communicate with
people, and how we communicate with customers.
Pete Wilson – My questions or concern is to Ms. Miles. With the land swap thing for the longhouse I’m
wondering how long that is going to take and do we have a projected start and finish date for that. It is
overdue that we have needed a long house. I believe a lot of people would have come back to the long
house if it was in place. It is a big concern of mine. Do you have a projected date on the land swap?
Rebecca Miles – Thank you so much for raising that concern. If we had an approval on the increased
estimate, which is an estimate, the cost of construction has increased. The longer we wait the cost will
continue to increase. Just like the Lewiston School Bond, to build a new school. They turned that down,
and it’s not going to cost 60 million in 10 years, it’s going to be double that. That’s just the way construction
world works and inflation affects our development. If we had had an approval from NPTEC, we had
anticipated having a grand opening and blessing with all of our sister tribes, and all of the tribes waiting to
make this investment here. Because of the new estimated costs it has kind of halted the project in a major
way. With the land exchange it would be approved quickly, what we have learned with the last
superintendent it would take a long time, at least two years at best to get it through the secretary. They
often can take up to 20 years to do one land exchange, however if we already had the commitment to do it,
and our new superintendent, Tammy Brosky is supposed to be on the agenda today, says that we can start
building right now because we are doing a partial land exchange we could start building anytime we
needed, they would simply give us a permit to construct and then we would still be able to build without
having the land exchange finalized. And it is a win-win for the Nez Perce Tribe because the land they are
offering is actually a little bit more desirable to be able to get all the way around the building in parking. It
also protects the frontage road the tribe owns that would be maintained by the federal government and held
in trust. We have some agreements that are waiting to be established, and we have put a lot of work into it.
It takes a long time for people to agree on land and they are in support of that land exchange. Our issues
with the land are no longer a problem; it’s just now the increased costs. There is a settlement fund for 60.1
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million under SRBA, and it has several set guide lines it tells the tribe how the tribe can spend it. And one of
them is cultural preservation. All the difficulties with the 20 year settlement it tells me it should be in the
least an investment that the tribe makes based on what our concessions were in the water rights
settlement. I would encourage all of you to let your executive committee know how you feel about this
project because it is at that stage right now.
Lynn Pinkham – I will have my children’s memorial on October 13, the Thursday before the powwow. I
want to address Jamie about our art work at the casino. I am an artist, I design my outfits, and I addressed
this to her earlier. Our family does presentations and displays our art that we do, and it generates money
for my kids’ memorial. What kind of policy for things being sold at our casino. We bumped into a lot of
problems through our journeys through the United States and Canada where people are selling items that
are pretty much sweatshop items but said it is Indian made, but is made down in Peru, Uruguay and South
America. I don’t feel it should be sold as our artwork, especially with the upcoming powwow. What kind of
things are doing to protect our people and their artwork. Because the Nez Perce people are known for their
bead work, and I think it is a strong point for our people, and for us to not let that type of artwork come in.
Jamie Olson –After I spoke with you I did ask to see what criteria we do have for vendors and we really
hadn’t had any. I think it would be a good idea to establish something. So that all artisans that are
displaying Native American made have a way to qualify. I’m not exactly sure how to do that, we may need
some help to come up with some type of criteria or qualification.
Rebecca Miles – I was just going to suggest our arts coordinator.
Lynn Pinkham – We are dominated by Navajo artisans, and I don’t think we should exclude them, but I do
think it should be made by their own hands. It shouldn’t be non-Indian people coming in and selling Native
American work.
OJ Waters – Years ago, in the last months of her life, Mari had a will, if I could get a copy of it, and she was
leaving some land to the Nez Perce Tribe it says to support the construction and maintenance of a tribal
longhouse. If there has not been a tribal longhouse yet built, and NPTEC is overseeing the land, is the
money just being spent? Is it still just being built up?
Rebecca Miles – Thank you OJ. That is a very good question, and comes up from time to time. I just met
with the executor of Mari Watters estate, Rodney Costen. I was updating Rodney about the longhouse, and
Harvey, and other Nez Perce that live up there. I was able to introduce Rodney Coston to our treasurer
and we are going to be giving those reports. If you look in your booklet, the government side, on page 112
you will see that balance of that estate. Absolutely not one red cent has been spent. It is actually sitting in
trust at the BIA. NPTEC just started reporting it on its financials, so we can start seeing how it is doing.
When we started planning for the longhouse, because the longhouse is estimated at 2.3 to 2.5 million. The
amount of the will for the longhouse, because there is an education component as well for Upward Bound,
was actually something that would get absorbed very quickly in the construction, and we did not want to
see that lost. We left that alone. We will be working directly working with him. We need his and the family’s
input on the best way to go. Working with Rodney Coston, I asked him directly, we need your input, the
family’s input on where they would like this to go. And operation and maintenance is probably the best
way. We thought that would be acceptable, but we need the family to tell us. This is a person who gave
her estate to eventually see this dream come true. That’s a pretty big investment by one individual.
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Working with Rodney that we would honor in some way that major contribution. I hope there is no turning
back on this longhouse. I hope we can see it built
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