Wy'east Board minutes from August 12th, 2009 --

Present were Tode O, Elizabeth S, Karl A, Mark A, Rev. Susan Maginn, Alex R

Alex was unanimously voted onto the board. Karl will announce this at church, and Elizabeth will put it out on the Wy'east church business email list.

The board minutes from our July meeting were approved.

Karl gave the treasurer's report for the month of July. He said that there was a small surplus in July (income over expenses), but not as much as last year. This could have implications further on in the church fiscal year, but it is unclear at this point what that lesser amount means. It could just be tied to lower attendance rates in the summer.

Betty Hadaway will become the new person handling pledge and deposit inputs into both MemInfo and Quicken. She will also be writing checks. Barbara will be training her through September. Mark will continue to make the collection deposits, and give that paperwork to Betty each Sunday.

Karl will continue to compile and present the treasurer's reports, print them out for the board meetings, and also bring the current bank statements to the monthly meetings.

There was a full discussion of whether or not to keep paying for a Wy'east phone line. Given that it costs us $37 a month for the phone, we receive few calls, and are only in the office weekly to retrieve messages, there is a case to be made for cutting out this expense.

The alternative would be to rely solely on our website bringing our message to the world. Most people already access information about Wy'east online. One question is how user-friendly is the website in terms of someone wanting to be in contact with us.

Two action items. Each of us will look at the website by this Sunday to see what we think of its usefulness as a contact source. Another move would be to change the phone message, in order to make it reflect our reality more in terms of returning calls.

Karl presented a revised budget (reflecting an earlier estimate along optimistic lines). With the lower loan repayment schedule, we have an additional $1,500 that can be put toward this fiscal year's expenditures. Those include increases of $50 to Susan for ministerial expenses; $400 for speaker fees; $150 for religious education; $25 for the newsletter; $129 to miscellaneous; and $714 as our Fair Share contribution to the PNWD. This revised budget was formally adopted by a unanimous vote of the board.

Question: when does Sarah Schurr need money from the budget for the Reed College UU group. And how much. We will be taking a Special Collection for that contribution during the same month we collect for the Community of Welcoming Congregations.

It was decided that we will do a Special Collection for a health-related organization in September, and Association Sunday in October.

The new membership committee, made up of Betty, Hank, and Mabel, will be looking at whether they want to create a visitor packet.

A new member ceremony is to include Maureen, Stephen, and Roseanne.

Susan's offering of a meditation time before services is going well.

One upcoming priority will be how to put together a long-range plan.

Susan is suggesting that we might offer a single parent group.

Susan said that two useful numbers to track on the health of a congregation are the attendance figures and the amount of money donated in the collection plate.

There is also the issue of approaching our Wy'east work as a to do list vs. coming from a vision.

Tode added the focus of what is it that inspires us.

Susan's goals for the new church year include Children's Chapel and membership.

Items to be on next month's agenda include long-range planning, fundraising, and Susan's hours.

The next board meeting will be on 9/16.

minutes by Mark A --