Item

Discussion

Motion/Action

Minutes of June 12, 2007 meeting

Charles Huntington and Sue Kinney had reviewed and approved the minutes previously.

No objections were made to their approval of the minutes.

Minutes discussion

The issue has been raised as to whether minutes can be distributed, reviewed and approved more quickly so that they may be published on the website before the next meeting.  Discussion ensued as to pros and cons, including logistical issues. Process is for the secretary to send to the president, who reviews and then sends out to all attendees for review, comments and approval.  After minutes are official, they can be published on our webpage.    

Agreement to try to get the minutes out, reviewed and approved so they may be published before the next meeting and in any event, as soon as possible. 

President’s Report

General Assembly: six delegates attended the GA in Portland.  Five member delegates plus BJ:   Bill Young, Martha Page, Charles Huntington, the Kembles and BJ.  Next year, the GA will be held in Fort Lauderdale, FL.  Bill came back with tons of material and links to good web material from the UUA.  He reports that curriculum material looks really good on the web. 

Committee on Ministry issues – Bill reported that we will have openings on it.   Board is responsible for filling position on the COM.  There may be three openings.  Nancy Mandly is functioning as point person for receiving our appointments.    We will need to address this in the near future.

Calendar item – we talked in the spring when we would do a Board get together with BJ to talk about priorities for next year and specifically what BJ would like to focus on with the Board. 

Bill also mentioned that there needs to be a date for four council chairs to get together in August.  

BJ and Bill plan to get together and meet every Friday at noon; other board members may attend if they have particular concerns or issues. The idea is to provide a forum to discuss certain types of issues that can be dealt with quickly and informally, with one goal being to cut down on email

Additional work on the budget detail is needed; when Margaret returns from vacation she will be able to address this.  Also the board is responsible for reconstituting the Finance subcouncil.  This needs to happen fairly quickly.

Adult Programs: Adult Programs is proposing that extra monies from the last fiscal year get rolled over to pay for a new television, which will require Board approval.  Bill explained that as a fee based program, in a given period of time, AP takes in X amount of money for program fees while Y dollars goes out for expenses.  At the end of the fiscal year, the issue is what to do with dollars when more money comes in than comes out.  AP’s proposal to buy a new TV is governed by a financial policy, which requires Board approval, hence their request before the Board.  We will wait for Margaret to get back to address this issue. Some of the philosophical and practical issues were discussed, which the policy reflects.   

Bill also reported on the “Building the World” curriculum – a  multi-racial, multi-cultural UUA curriculum, for which we applied and were selected to serve as a field test for this program.  Bill noted that there are issues with structuring, participation; it is a major commitment, involving 26 sessions for 20 people over the year.  Based on the sheer amount of time and focus involved, it is clearly one of the bigger projects we have committed to.   Do we have people sign up?  Do we have more even and broad, and ID people from various counsels – representing RE, finance, COM; some combination?  These kind of issues need to be sorted out. 

In two and half weeks, Gail and Heather leave to go to Northeast Leadership School for a week. 

One of the things we talked about in the spring on the board, is to try to ensure that the agenda for the year was focused. We will try hard not to do the work of the councils. 

Currently we are looking at a Saturday for four hours – 9/15/07 to meet with BJ; slight preference was expressed for morning. 

DRE Report

Supplementing her written report, Gail underscores the support B&G have provided to us in classroom renovations, donating $3500 toward renovations of spirit play and nursery classrooms.  Renovations include drywall over walls, painting, carpeting, etc.  Skip Berrien is acting as general contractor for the program.  Jesse Richter will supervise drywall.  By 9/1/07, the plan is to complete renovations including a crib for nursery, new changing tables.  We hope to make clear that our focus is on the kids. 

Additional news

Rosie needs help on Sundays for Ushering, Greeting, etc. 

Business Manager

Brian reports that summer is catch up time.  Staff is starting to interact with Human Resources Subcouncil with a staff retreat in June.  Game plan offered by Sue Huntington includes having a formal review process in place, etc., which they hope to have implemented in the fall.  Brian also got church windows up and running on all the computers so all staff can look at the computer at the same time.  Brian’s next project will be working on the staff directory, including photographs. 

Draft Profit and Loss Budget Performance – We had about 12K more in income.  We also didn’t spend as much as we had budgeted for.  We were able to pay $15K from last year and paid all the bills for this year, so we are not going into the new year with bills to pay from this last fiscal year.  Brian attributed this stability to efforts to raise new member awareness of their financial obligation as well Nina Binin’s offer to function as a volunteer DRE.  This is the first year we have caught up in pension contributions.  In addition we have ministerial transition money we were given from the endowment- $35K budgeted and used $28K, 7K which we can carryover.  Pre-paid pledges also have helped us, providing a cushion. We budgeted $5000 for people catching up on pledges; we actually received $10K from people who are catching up on pledges.   

Treasurer’s Report

Next time from Margaret.

Ratification of 2007/8 budget

Next time from Margaret.

Appointment of Auditors

Per our bylaws, the Board shall appoint an audit committee – three people: Chair and two other members.  Board hasn’t done this in the past couple of years but we have committed to doing this this year  The audit committee is to look at the books and records of the society, including the Board of directors, and whether we are doing minutes as well as financial records.  They must provide reports to the Board and reports at the Annual meeting.  Emphasis is on general record keeping, are we depositing and logging checks?  And do we have basic control processes in place for example, if receiving cash, who counts it, who handles it.  This can be handled next meeting

Open Board Position

Peg Otto is moving out of state and so we need another person to fill the at Large position on the Board, aligned with the Social Justice Subcouncil.  Everyone was asked to consider names. 

Discussion of things to complete between now early September

Although the following matters are not exclusively or even primarily Board responsibilities, Bill suggested we review those matters which need to happen from now to early September for the church year to start off well. A calendar czar should probably be in place.  Gail reported on RE matters which need to happen in the next few weeks:  teacher recruitment, teacher training, RE start up in September, finish curriculum decision making, classroom renovations, cleaning and maintenance; basic start up stuff; Child care policy and protocol.  She reported that all of this is in the works.  One issue also raised was parent communications.  Gail noted that list serves need to be updated, mailing needs to go out re: RE registration, teacher recruitment, curriculum showcase event. The brochure also needs to be finished.  Once done, it was agreed that the brochure could go on our website. 

Gail also reported that youth group dynamics may be different this year.  OWL (Our Whole Lives) training needs to happen; we would like to offer that here so that our kids and Fern St may meet here as well. Currently they are meeting at Fern St because we do not have trained OWL facilitators.  Gail reported on her goal to shore up the Coming of Age (COA) program. 

AP needs to get their catalogue together. 

Festival of Seasons – it is not clear who is chairing.

Communications issues – before the program year begins, we need to improve external communications issues.  David Newton and Tom Reed are working on this. 

Originally, August 12 was scheduled for a discussion on worship services, thoughts people have, how experienced two services, style issues, etc.  Due to a conflict, the date is rescheduled for 8/19. 

Family Theme – where are we on this? 

Process check-in