President’s Report

Nominating Committee list was given to Nina; Brian will post ASAP.  The nominees are Mike Roy, President-Elect; Skip Berrien, Member at Large for Spiritual Life; Amy Hines, Member at Large, Community Within; Martha Page, Treasurer; Carolyn Cartland, completing Peg Horne’s term (one year);

The Building the World We Dream About program is going well, with 25, more or less, attending regularly.  They anticipate meeting a couple of times in the summer and resume in the fall.  Bill observed that they are working with increasingly complex and challenging material.

The Committee on Ministry update – Al Herzog, Greg Berg and Nancy Mandly are going off and we are looking for three replacements.  As of this evening, Peter Meny has agreed to join. 

Cheryl Wadsworth, organist/music director at the Fern Street Universalist Church is leaving due to budgetary issues. 

Minister’s report

BJ indicated that she was pleased with the meetings on the Sunday Service transition to 2008-2009, sensing that goodwill continues to persist notwithstanding very difficult issues.

RE issues

Marye Gail wanted to express her concern that in her work with the Coming of Age youth, she found that it was extraordinarily difficult to engage our young people; they seem to experience church as a requirement to get through.  She noted that there is so much difficult and hard work going on in the RE programs and there is still a gap between the hard work and effort and the effect/results as experienced by the youth.  She thought that as a Board we should be aware of this.

Budget discussions

Margaret and Brian presented their budget summaries to the Board and discussion ensued following the Board’s review.  Brian and Margaret each presented different proposals as to how the Budget might be balanced; as it stands given the council proposals as compared to projected expenses, there is potentially a 30K deficit, assuming we maintain our COLA increases for staff.  There was discussion as to whether the Holiday Letter income may be introduced as a line item, discussions as to suggesting that the councils be kept to a flat budget.  While we were reviewing the budget to consider what approaches we might want for balancing the budget, Bill reminded us that as a Board, our responsibility is to ask the Finance subcouncil to submit a recommended budget to us; what we have at this time is a compilation of what the councils have submitted.  What the Finance subcouncil has yet to do is meet, and given its membership including representation of and input from Council chairs and at large members, the discussions and outcome will hopefully reflect the many constituencies involved as well as the congregational best interest.  They will need to meet and make a recommendation before the next board meeting on June 10, 2008.

 Other issues

Appointment for Council Chair on Administration and Community Within will need to be selected. 

Partner Church

The board discussed the challenge of supporting the Partner Church program in the absence of congregational support, even after BJ’s service dedicated to the program.  As Discussion included the desire for us to celebrate the commitment and relationship which we nurtured in the past. 

Marye Gail moved to respectfully drop the partner church program, given the lack of a sustaining interest among congregants in the program at this time.  Carolyn seconded the motion.  Following discussion, motion passed; no abstentions, none opposed.

Process check-in