Board
of Trustees
Thursday,
July 20, 2006 DRAFT Minutes
Church
Social Hall, 7:00p.m.
Shelly Canterbury, Brian Haluska, Bob
Kiefer, Nick Laiacona, Josie Loyd,
Board
of Trustees Focus for 2005-2006
·
Develop and implement a shared vision for growth and
facilities management
·
Improve board meeting management to increase efficiency,
effectiveness and transparency
·
Refine and empower governance including council system,
task forces and committees to delegate board responsibilities
·
Foster a sense of membership as stewardship to increase
participation
·
Ensure stronger financial infrastructure
B.
Check-in
A. Review of agenda
1. Added to new business the Center
for Peace and Justice event and broader question of space rental policy
B. Minutes from June 8, 2006 board
meeting
Minutes accepted.
III.
Consent Agenda
Bob moved, Nick seconded. Accepted
A.
Motion to approve Nancy Nolte-Shotwell as a member of the Personnel
Committee.
B.
Motion to allow the board president to approve disposition of old
church computer equipment.
C.
Motion to approve dissolution of the Molly Michie Preschool Task
Force.
D.
Motion to approve the agenda for the August 27 Congregational
Meeting.
IV. New Business
A. Treasurer’s Report
1. Shelly explained several points of the financial report, including that there had been a surplus at the end of the six-month budget period. There was discussion about financial matters and interest expressed by the board to hear more about bonds, finances, reserves and so forth. This will be incorporated into the Board Retreat.
2. Finance committee made three recommendations:
a. Marty Bass was recommended for the endowment committee
b. Ministers Professional Expenses will be overspent in the six-month budget (due to need to pay for GA expenses).
c. Take $10,000 out of capital campaign fund and $8,000 out of building reserves to pay for Summit House improvements. If the expense for Summit House go over $18,000 as it probably will, the balance will come from either the capital campaign fund or building reserves. Sally moved and Nick seconded.
B. Discussion on disposition of six-month budget surplus: A Capital Campaign Receivable account was set up to pay for the architect in preparation for the capital campaign. We are not in a capital campaign and have no immediate plans to launch a capital campaign so this expense must be dealt with. A motion was made to use the surplus from the six-year budget to cover that expense, as recommended by the finance committee. It was moved (by Bob) and seconded (by Sally) that we expense the capital campaign receivable to the six-month budget.
C. Motion to reaffirm the process for congregational public witness. This was voted on in April 2005 but since there were several versions in board records, it was felt important for the board to read through and reaffirm the process. Dorothy moved, Shelley seconded to reaffirm the Process for Congregational Public Witness—attached at the end of these minutes.
D. Motion to approve the following candidates for the Endowment Committee
1. Finance Committee recommends Marty Bass. The Board of Trustees recommends Al Shapero, Stephanie Lowenhaupt, Neil Glassberg, Chip Bumgardner, Ed Berger, and Bob Gross. Moved and seconded (Sally, Bob) to approach these candidates to ask them to serve.
E. Formation of task force to issue invitations to candidates for the Endowment Committee—Bob Kiefer will approach the candidates and report back at the next meeting. We need three of them to accept to serve on the committee.
F. The flyer that was sent out for a recent event (7/19/06) made it seem like we were sponsoring the event. The initial flyer said “How to impeach George Bush” and then at our request that was changed to “How to impeach a President.” A copy of the flyer was sent to the church, with a note of concern. Josie and Carole arranged for signs and an announcement to be made at the event to make it clear that it was not sponsored by TJMC. Discussion held on how to deal with organizations who rent our space who cross into partisan politics. There are legal and public relations ramifications. Josie will write to the person who sent the flyer and to the sponsoring group. The Administrative Council will take a look at the building rental policy and the contract in light of this situation.
V.
Old Business
A. Discussion: board recommendation for publicizing building use policy and contributing friend’s designation.
1. It had been previously discussed that we let people know about the “contributing friend” designation during the canvass, but it wasn’t done then. We discussed the issue at some length and decided to table it until August or September when the ministers can be a part of the discussion.
B. Update on Summit House repairs—following finance committees, the repairs will be paid out of capital campaign fund ($10,000) and building reserves ($8,000). The remainder will be paid out of either the capital campaign fund or building reserves.
C. Update on JUUST Change Consultancy—Josie sent information in her president’s report. We received word that we have been accepted, paid a down payment ($450 from the six-month budget leadership development funds), and have a balance of $1,000. The recommendation is to use 2006-2007 leadership development funds to pay this cost. We will discuss this consultancy opportunity during the board retreat in August.
D. Update on board retreat Friday, 8/25 and Saturday, 8/26 and leadership retreat 8/26.—old and new board members will meet Friday night, and on Saturday RE council and others will participate in the leadership retreat. Members of the board will make calls to invite people to the leadership retreat. Josie will send out those lists to current board members.
E. Congregational meeting assignments—Josie has written a letter and an agenda. Sally moved, Brian seconded that the congregational meeting agenda be approved. Shelley will make ballots for the silent vote (yes, no, abstain). Other board members signed up for other jobs we’ll do at the congregational meeting.
VI.
Questions and motion to approve received
reports
A.
Co-Ministers
Report
B.
President’s
Report -received
C.
VP
Administration
D.
VP
Programs—Carole is taking over the “who does what” list
E.
DRE
Report
F.
Report
on membership: 442
G.
H.
Governance
Task Force Report—gathering information from what works and doesn’t in other
U.U. churches
VII.
Check-in
process observations
We took longer than expected on a couple
of issues, but they warranted our attention.
VIII.
Adjourn
Bob moved, Shelley seconded, and we adjourned.
Next Executive Committee meetings: July
27, 2006 and August 24, 2006
Next Board of Trustees meeting: Thur., August 10, 2006, Social
Hall, 7:00p.m.
Process for Congregational Public
Witness
Reaffirmed by the Board of Trustees 7/20/06
This document is the work of
the Public Witness Task Force, which was directed by the Board of Trustees in
2004 to create a process for public witness at TJMC. It was presented to the
congregation on April 17, 2005 and approved as official policy of the church.
Members seeking acts of congregational public witness should follow this
process.
What is Public Witness?
Acts of public witness
happen all the time in our community in the form of individual actions or
actions by small groups or committees. Members of TJMC attend anti-war rallies,
marriage rights events, and write letters to the editor. These acts of
individual witness are a natural expression of our UU beliefs. The church forms
an environment where like minded individuals can find one another, band together
and in the great tradition of Unitarian Universalism, form a committee!
Public Witness Committees
As a church we encourage our
members to form committees to plan events, meetings, protests, and letter
writing campaigns to raise awareness within our church and the larger world of
social, moral, and ethical issues.
Forming a committee to
facilitate public witness is simple. Initially the group should go before the
Social Action Council to request recommendations for forming itself into a
working committee. The Social Action Council should advise the new committee
about the communication tools available within the congregation, written and
spoken.
When the committee wishes to
perform acts of public witness, they should notify the Board of their intention.
In general, this is necessary when in public the committee identifies itself as
“The Committee on XYZ of Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church”. By “in public”, we
mean ads in the local newspaper, spots on the radio, banners in a march on
Most acts of public witness
follow this path. This should be sufficient in most cases. However, sometimes
there is such energy behind an issue that the entire congregation feels compelled
to speak as one. In this case, an act of congregational public witness is
appropriate.
Congregational Public Witness Process
When a committee seeks to
facilitate an act of congregational public witness, they should follow this
process. This process is required for public displays on church property or
when we wish to speak as a whole church, not just a group within the church.
1. The committee should draft a plan for the act of
public witness they seek to conduct. This plan should be made publicly
available and form the basis for discussion.
2. The committee should make itself known to members
through means such as bulletin boards, suggestions boxes and mailings. The
communication tools must be effective: written, spoken, group and individual
and should not be just views expressed, but views heard and learned from.
3. The committee should hold meetings with
congregational members in small groups such as cottage meetings, standing
committee meetings, and congregational conversations between services.
4. We should trust that honest discussions only build
community. All discussions should enable everyone to express divergent views.
Everyone should be made to feel welcome at the table and those leading the
discussions should foster an environment that encourages us to learn from each
other. They should let the issues be pursued, heard and discussed throughout
the church.
5. Next, the committee should go to the Board with a
petition signed by 10% of members to call a congregational meeting about the
issue.
6. The Board will call a congregational meeting for
informational purposes only, allowing for the presentation of all sides of the
issue in some suitable format.
7. Finally, the Board will call a special congregational
meeting for a final discussion and a vote. The vote should be private, with
ballots. The vote in favor of the resolution needs to be at least a 2/3
majority of those present.
8. If the resolution passes, the committee should
perform the planned act of public witness, speaking for the church as a whole.
President’s
Report – August 2006
Dear
members of the board,
I
have some activities to report to you and I want to provide some information on
some of the items on our agenda for this month.
Activities:
General
Assembly. It was great! I went to workshops on diversity and accessibility
issues and attended quite a few workshops that were designed for and limited to
congregational presidents. I’m going to spend time this year encouraging church
members to attend GA (June 20-24,
Summit
House and church buildings. I have been in conversation with Kip Newland who is
our new buildings person. He has done a fabulous job of getting bids and
getting work going on Summit House. Please thank him if you get a chance. Holly
Glassberg has volunteered to work on volunteer recruitment for building
maintenance projects and that will also be a great help to us. Thank her too
when you can.
Parking. I sent a letter of reply to the neighbors regarding their interest in identifying parking spaces and pursuing with the City some sort of time limit on parking spaces in the neighborhood. My letter thanked them for their efforts and expressed our willingness to work with them on these things while also noting that we did not know if we would ultimately decide to expand the parking area in some way. I have not heard back from them yet but expect that we will soon.
Computers.
There are several computers in the church office that can now be given away
because we have upgraded all the church computers. IMPACT would like to have
them and the consent agenda includes a motion to allow the board president to
make that decision. I am not sure if this is a ‘policy.’ Sally?
Disposition
of six-month budget surplus. Sadly this item must now be renamed something like
discussion regarding finance committee’s recommendations for the six-month
budget wrap up. Shelly and Johan will walk us through all of this but basically
the situation is that we had a $21,002 surplus to the six-month budget (thanks
in large measure to our awesome canvass committee). We thought we were going to
decide about how to spend that. However, Shelly noted at the finance committee
meeting that we have been carrying a Capital Campaign Receivable of $21,534.26
for the last few years. This expense was for the architect who worked on the
draft masterplan. The intention was to pay that expense out of the capital
campaign revenue and to carry it over as long as we were reasonably assured
that we were close to doing a capital campaign. Since we are not IN a capital
campaign yet and we are still in the midst of preparing the congregation to be
able to consider a capital campaign, it seems that it is not valid to continue
to carry this expense on our balance sheet. Finance will also offer
recommendations for several other items on the agenda, including overages to
ministerial professional expenses and how to pay for renovations to Summit
House.
Public
Witness. We had a draft policy that we worked on in the board and then
something was presented to the congregation and subsequently voted on by the
board. There is some confusion about whether the final board version was
presented to the congregation and subsequently voted on by the board. This is a
board policy and presentation to the congregation was for information purposes
only. I think since confusion exists it would be best to revote on the policy
and to include the correct version in the August congregational meeting. You
have already received both versions of the policy in the packet you were mailed
Friday.
JUUST
Change Consultancy. The JUUST Change Consultancy is offered by the UUA to help
congregations expand and deepen anti-oppression work. We applied for the grant
and received notice that we have been accepted. We paid a ‘downpayment’ of $450
from the six-month budget leadership development funds and will have a balance
of $1,000, which can be paid from this year’s leadership development funds.
During our retreat we will explore this consultancy further and decide if it is
something we want to adopt as one of our prime focuses this year but in the
meantime, I wanted to update you on this.
Congregational
Meeting. I will have an agenda to present for board approval. Please note that
this congregational meeting will require written ballots for the vote on public
witness. It will be important for board members to be at the meeting if at all
possible.
Best,
Josie