1. Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment Working Group December 2010 meeting decision and action items

2. decision items  The Working Group accepted the consent agenda as presented and projected.

3. action items  The Council will produce for print-on- demand glossy marketing materials for use in Councillor briefing and funding proposal packages.

4. action items  The Working Group will re-engage and strengthen committee/ subcommittee leadership and membership with assistance from current co-chairs and three-month interim co-chair Canadian volunteers.  US co-chairs, interim or long-term, will be named by their agencies to participate in the committee re-engagement.

5. action items  All GOMC participants including Councilors, WG members, and committee and subcommittee members will be subscribed to receive Gulf of Maine Times notification emails.

6. action items  Jennifer Hackett and Paul Currier will contact the Working Group members who volunteered in October 2010 to work with the Information Management Committee on the homepage/website revision.

7. action items  With Ted Diers and Jackie Olsen as leads, the Working Group will form a committee or group to draft next steps for the Great Waters Conservation and Restoration Plan.  Ted Diers will lead a discussion Great Waters advocacy with a focus on organizations’ roles, including that of the Council, at a future meeting or conference call.

8. action items  The Working Group will recommend to the Council that it adopt, “A healthy and valued Gulf of Maine from the rivers to the sea,” as the vision statement.

9. action items  The Working Group recommends to the Council that it start an annual Sustainable Communities Award.

10. action items  The Working Group will present to the Council a high-level, edited, and honed list of Action Plan Goal activities and examples of tasks (“Possible Tasks” will be edited to provide examples of tasks.). The “2007-2012 Activities” and “Outcomes/Results” columns will not be included).

11. action items  Working Group members will provide to the Secretariat email addresses so that the GOMC may distribute to users of Council products a 2-3 question survey using a third-party survey tool (NS agencies cannot access Survey Monkey). This effort will build on and not duplicate the GOMC logic model evaluation process and Dalhousie.

12. action items  The results of the Council products user survey and the agencies input using the EC spreadsheet model will inform the current AP objectives draft (Feb/Mar 2011) so that the Working Group can present the results and a draft plan at its March meeting.  The committees/subcommittees will provide their input before and after the March WG meeting

13. action items  The next WG meeting will be convened March 14-15, 2011 in Saint John, NB