UUCS Board Meeting

Minutes of meeting March 10, 2016

Board Members:

Position	Name	Term end date	Present
Chair	LJ Frederickson	June 30, 2016	Yes
Vice-Chair	Jeff Geissler	June 30, 2016	No
Secretary	Paul Parmley	June 30, 2016	Yes
Treasurer	Lorna Youngs	June 30, 2017	Phone
Director	John Prohodsky	June 30, 2016	Yes
Director	David Jeffers	June 30, 2016	Yes
Director	Petra Berger	June 30, 2016	Yes
Director	Stephanie Jernstedt	June 30, 2017	Yes
Director	Elenie Smith	June 30, 2017	Yes
Director	(open)	June 30, 2017	N/A
Past Chair	Barry Halgrimson	June 30, 2016	Yes

 

Ex-officio:

Position	Name	Present
Minister	Rick Davis	Yes

 

Visitors: Samantha Scales, Lynn Cardiff

 

The meeting was called to order by LJ Frederickson at 6:04 p.m.

 

LJ lit the chalice and did a brief reading.

 

LJ and Stephanie attended a very good meeting in Eugene. Speaker was Jim Key. LJ is working on summarizing the meeting and will send to the board after Stephanie reviews. A couple notes from the meeting were: 1) UU leaders must give up control of the outcome. 2) UU leaders must work WITH the congregation. LJ is recommending that the board meet with the congregation 3 times a year, just to be more in touch with the congregation. First Sunday of the month, every 4 months. Jim Key recommended staying connected to the congregation. Rick D encouraged the idea. John P suggested having the meeting prior to the annual meeting to allow people to ask questions before the annual meeting, although with all that needs to happen to prepare for the annual meeting, that might not work this time. The first meeting will be 4 months after the annual meeting. Everyone agreed with the idea.

 

LJ offered a shared vision statement from the UUA and feels like we need to adopt a shared vision statement. There was a general feeling that the statement was too long for us to adopt. Rick D said communications is working on a 7-word statement/tag-line to draw people in and suggested that this could meet both needs. LJ will send the statement she has as well as the church vision and any other statements we have to the board to ponder.

 

A photo was taken of the board which will be sent to Vicki to update the website.

 

Paul P asked for approval of the February 11, 2016 board meeting minutes. David J asked for the sentence regarding the CAT team finding someone to lead the hymns in Aimee’s absence be removed as that isn’t a CAT team function. Rick D asked for the spelling of Aimee’s name to be corrected. Pending these changes, the board unanimously approves the minutes.

 

David J gave a summary of the Transition Committee meeting. An Informational/Orientation Meeting was held on Monday, February 29th. The meeting was led by David Jeffers & LJ Frederickson. A variety of topics and issues were discussed, including a brief summary and review of the Transition Workshop as three of the attendees were not at the workshop. All of the attendees are interested in moving forward on the committee, they just want to be clear about time and responsibility commitments. We think we have a chair-person and would like to have a co-chair. The next meeting will cover more team organizational matters and “next step” agenda setting. David J. will be the Board Liaison but will not be an active participant in the work of the team. LJ will also act as an ex-officio member of the team as Board Chair. Rick will attend meetings as his schedule allows. Attendees: these are persons who were invited to serve on the team by LJ as discussed and recommended by LJ, David J, Rick D. and Mary Gear: Don Wolf, Lea Ann Nail, Chad Halsey, Joy Dunlop, Jorge Garcia, Stephanie Jernstedt, and JP. Stephanie and JP were not present at this first meeting but do plan to attend future meetings.

 

Stephanie J asked if the Transition Committee was provided direction and what authority they have. David J said the team was provided information on how to proceed. The workshop identified two areas of focus: an increase of volunteerism and the number of paid staff needs to be increased over time. This team would try to take a look at all of the activities of the committees and teams to see if there are ways that they can be helped to be programmatic. This team would come up with the next steps on moving all of our teams to programmatic. David is confident that as the team meets, they will be successful. LJ says that the board will provide more direction for the team. The summary of the transition workshop is in the December or January newsletter.

 

LJ and Rick reviewed the Minister’s monthly report. There was some discussion about the literacy group. There is an online ride share scheduling program in the works. There was also some discussion regarding the annual board/minister review as specified in the bylaws. LJ will take a look and see if we are already filling these requirements or if we should actually have a separate annual board/minister review. Rick has suggested a year around stewardship group. LJ and John P who are part of the finance committee will write something up about how the finance committee will make this year around stewardship team functional. Rick added that the stewardship team alone should not be responsible for stewardship for the entire congregation. Rick feels there should be occasional updates from stewardship and there should be awareness that some stewardship activities may need significant lead time. LJ brought up participating in the UUA general assembly (GA) via webcast. Eugene and Corvallis invited us to attend the GA together through the webcast. John says we have the technology and space at UUCS to hold an event here for our members. The GA will be held June 22-26 in Columbus, OH. The cost is $130 per voting delegate but anyone can attend the webcast. The board is supposed to advertise for the delegates. Elenie will coordinate the GA project for UUCS with assistance from LJ. Based on the size of our congregation, we are looking for 5 voting delegates to represent UUCS.

 

LJ suggested the team council reports should be in the newsletter. There was some discussion about if it would work in the newsletter. David suggested maybe have one or two teams featured in the newsletter. Sam suggested the board/congregation meeting could include the team council reports or summaries of the team council reports. Rick said another way to keep in touch with the congregation is the stewardship dinner. LJ says we should celebrate more.

 

“Bring a friend Sunday” was briefly discussed and was encouraged.

 

Lorna reviewed the treasurer’s report and brought up that the fundraising income will be $2,000 short without another fundraiser, and investment income has been static since November so income for the operating budget could be short approximately another $1000. Also, the Ministers expenses exceed the budget because of medical insurance costs. There is a general concern that expenses will be over budget and income could be below budget which could leave us short for the 2015-16 year. Lorna got an email from Phil Carver who has collected $225,687 in pledges to date for the 2016-17 year. The Annual Meeting is May 22ND. The budget needs to be reviewed by the board and ready for distribution to the congregation 30 days before the annual meeting. The pledge total will be finalized at the end of this month so that the budget committee can prepare the budget for board review by mid April. Stewardship is not complete but we are still significantly short on the canvas as compared to last year’s total.

 

LJ asked Petra to review the volunteer manual. Petra first discussed that she met with 3 teams and asked 7 questions – 3 questions about what motivates them and 4 questions about their challenges, success, and accomplishments. Petra submitted a document with her findings to this point.

 

Petra reviewed the volunteer manual that LJ put together, and created an outline with 5 categories. For years we have been talking about a volunteer coordinator who would be the perfect person to implement the volunteer guidelines. John suggested we need to ask for different information from the teams in their team reports. LJ asked Petra if we can get the volunteer guidelines implemented. Petra has agreed to start as the volunteer coordinator. She anticipates it taking a year to implement this process. Sam met with the directory update committee, and their will be a form for all members of the congregation to complete. David will send LJ his list so they can formalize it and forward it to Sam to be included in the directory project. David wants the Nominating committee to lead this effort. LJ and David will work with the Nominating committee to complete this list and get it to same by May 15th.

 

Discussion around the Administrative Committee occurred. Rick summarized what he feels the committee doing and feels that this committee is filling a vacancy we have because we don’t have a church administrator. Paul P brought up that the Administrative Committee is not necessarily the same as the Executive Committee that was agreed on by the board during the September 10, 2015 board meeting.

 

John P suggested the congregation makes better use of the electronic communication. LJ enrolled in cerg.org and would like to see a requirement for the board to take leadership classes and would like to see it budgeted for.

 

LJ would like $1,700 for someone from the board to go to Palos Verdes, CA to attend a week-long UU leadership class. This class is supposedly very good and was taken in the past by Mary Solstrom. There was some concern over where we would get the money to pay for this give our current budget shortfall. There was consensus that if this training does happen that the individual commits to sharing the information with the congregation. LJ is willing (and happy to) go, but says it doesn’t need to be her. Stephanie J would like to see a general training plan before we decide to spend this kind of money to train one person. David has a suggestion that we may have a member of our congregation already that can provide some board training.

 

An Executive Session was called by LJ at 8:11 p.m. and visitors and Rick were asked to leave.
The Executive Session ended at 8:42 p.m. There were no formal votes conducted in the Executive Session part of the meeting. According to the bylaws, “discussions are to be kept confidential by all participants, subject to the chairs’ approval of release of information”.

 

On January 23rd, LJ emailed the board members who are planning on staying for another year asking if each would be willing to be Board Liaison for a committee during the following year. There was some additional discussion to finalize the liaisons for each group identified. Below is a summary.

• HR – LJ
• Communications – Paul P
• Finance – LJ, John P and Lorna Y
• Facilities – John P
• Membership – LJ
• Nominating Committee – David J
• RE – Stephanie J
• Transition Team – LJ and David J
• Worship Team – David J and LJ
• Social Justice – Elenie

 

The meeting adjourned at 8:46 p.m.

 

The next Board meeting will be Thursday, April 14, at 6:00 p.m.

 

Respectfully submitted by Paul Parmley