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Wy’east UU Board Meeting Minutes October 10, 2025, via Zoom

Finalized October 25, 2025

Attendance: Debra T; Willow D; Linda B; Andy S; Rev Leslie Becknell-Marx;

Linda M-Worship, Com. Chair

Absent: Larry B

 

Debra began with Chalice Lighting Reading

 

Employee Confidential Document Policy

Reviewed and approved

 

Membership Report

Diane I plans to take sign up sheets around to members after the service.

Heather D Job description includes help with set -up when she can.

The suggestion was made to simplify tasks ie A few Hymnals available 

on the table instead of each seat.

 

Review of Proposal Progress (See Attached)

Discussion of progress with Linda M was very positive. It was agreed upon by all members:The Worship Committee,lead by Linda M ,will make decisions about the Marketing and WEB site design proposal and keep the board informed.

Rev Leslie and all expressed their appreciation for all the work Linda M is doing to move forward on the proposal.

 

Supervision of New Employees:

Rev. Leslie will supervise Heather D, RE lead

Linda M will supervise Eddie S, Tech /support

 

Treasurer’s Report.

Approved transfer of savings to a 13 month CD . Larry will do this on 10/ 14/25

Discussion of increasing Rev. Stephanie’s compensation to $600 per service rendered.

Linda M explained that her time includes participation in Worship Committee meetings, time required to prepare the series of service;and relationship building with the members.

Unanimous approval of board members present of an increase to $600 per service is a fair compensation.

 

Progress of update on Directory

Emails have been sent by Linda B to those who have not participated in services or pledged to establish their intent to remain members. Kate F and Mary Pleier requested to be removed from membership. No response from Katherine O’Day or Lynettta Alexander thus, will be removed from membership. Linda B will give Gigi the updated list for the directory soon

 

Progress of update on Bylaws

Linda B suggested the addition of Diane Arnold when she is available. The deadline for updates is March 2026. This will not be worked on for a few months.

 

Posting of Board minutes

Changed to Members Only page of WEB site

Note: Linda B requested that Gigi remove the link to the minutes from the Wy’east news with an explanation that members who need a password contact Gigi or Anders.

 

Update to WEB site

Gigi is responsible for update with backup of Anders

Major changes should be also sent to Linda M who is working with marketing to update the WEB site

 

Monthly Board Meeting Time and date

Approved to continue meeting on the 2nd Friday at 12:30 pm

 

Linda Burk, Secretary

 

Membership Report for September 2025

On 9/7 Eileen Watters formally joined Wy'east and is already getting involved in hospitality.

On 9/21 we held our monthly committee meeting and Linda Mac gave a very interesting presentation on enhancing our web site with recorded offerings from members sharing their reasons for joining and getting involved in Wy'east. Several committee members offered to help Linda.

On 9/14 Linda Burk coordinated the return of our monthly food donation service.

Debra T. keeps the Chalice Circle running well with excellent topics for discussion.

Hanks keeps the Men's group going with our twice a month Zoom meetings.

At the end of our 1st month offering in person & Zoom services on the four Sunday's, I believe the attendance is up and more visitors are attending.

Our committee welcomes our new staff members(Heather-RE) and Eddie(IT). Both are eager to help Wy'east grow with their skills and energy

Ron T, Membership Chair


 

Status report on marketing, worship committee and MA’s gift for Proposal:

Funding M.A.s gift

M.A. has written a check to fund the following elements of his gift:

Elements of Gift

The original proposal as written was to fund Stephani Skalak's services at a level of $450/service. The Worship Committee and Leslie have recommended that we pay her $600 per service. This feels more aligned with the nature and depth of her work.

The offer to fund a marketing/outreach effort remains unfunded at the moment until we make some final choices about direction. I have shared all of the ideas/directions articulated in that section below regarding marketing and outreach with M.A. and he is enthusiastic about them. As soon as we have clear commitments to move forward with any of them, M.A. will forward those funds to Wy’east so they can be used to pay for those services.

 

Brief Worship Report

The Worship Committee has expanded to include Stephani’s participation as well as new member Eileen Watters. Having two ministers (Rev. Leslie and the addition of a monthly service focused on Spiritual Practice led by Stephani) in our monthly Worship Calendar is also making Worship Planning more easy. We are very energized, enthusiastic and excited about our upcoming service planning.

Eddie Sawyer officially began work as our new Worship Tech Support on the last Sunday in September. He successfully completed his first solo Sunday last week with D’On acting as his co-pilot. I think he is going to be a supremely capable addition to our team and we look forward to learning more from him about ways we can enhance and improve our setup.

We are exploring the wishes of the congregation around a Christmas Eve Service and intend to put together a survey with three possible choices for offering something. Of course it is always an option to not do a Christmas Eve service at all, which is what we did last year. If the board has any thoughts on this we would welcome them. The three choices would be: 

  1. An In Person Only Service (with no zoom support) - much like our pre-pandemic Christmas Eve Services
  2. A Zoom Only - space (with no in-person) - much like our mid-pandemic Christmas Eve Services
  3. A Christmas Eve Caravan/Carpool to attend one of the Christmas Eve Services at either First Church or Eastrose as a small group outing.

We are planning to continue to periodically use the UUA Recorded Sermon Series Videos for worship services and plan to continue to evaluate the congregation’s response to this type of service.

We are also continuing to evaluate the “losses” of moving to all Multi-Platform Worship. We have discovered that the equipment in Classroom B (with the large conference table) can be used to access the Zoom and plan to start trying to offer a Service Conversation Space with the “Zoomies” utilizing that room and technology. 

 

Website Update

I have completed a first pass at updating the website so that it accurately reflects our worship/meeting rhythms. The following pages received updates which are summarized in this document:

I am working on updating content on the following pages:

I asked these questions of the board last month:

  • Questions for the Board: The Contact Us page currently lists the board Google Group. Is that what you want? Do we have regular @wyeastuu.org address we can use instead? - I didn’t hear back from you on this
  • Do you really want the Board Minutes posted on our public website? It seems like this is "Members Only" kind of content rather than public information. This appears to be fixed thanks to a coordinated effort from Anders & Gigi

 

Adding Videos to our Website

As I described last month, I am working with Peter Bowden at the UU Growth Lab to support us in developing a Welcome to Wy'east Video and a Meet the Minister for our website. You can learn more about him and his work here: https://www.peterbowden.live/uugrowthlab

I consulted with the Membership Committee on the content to be included in this video and am working with Leslie to refine it. I met with Peter on October 6th. He has assembled this scope of work and pricing to help us pull that together into a video for our website. My suggestion is that we land on either Option 1 or 2. The first option will require a lot more “b-roll” images and video than option 2 which we may need to hire someone to help us collect.

Is the board ready to authorize this work and at what level?

I am seeking someone with some photography and video skills to capture some additional image content for both this endeavor and the website design reference below.

Leslie is also beginning work to record a “Meet the Minister” video for that page of our website.

 

Refreshing Our Website Design

I have consulted with Anders about the possibility of moving our website to a WordPress platform. He wholeheartedly and enthusiastically supports this idea. He told me that WordPress is a robust and easy to use platform that would likely be easy for us to continue to maintain with an Office Admin and volunteer support.

Through some UUA Facebook groups, I have located a potential independent one woman show Designer named Naomi Moon of wickedmoonwebs.com. She is based in Colorado and has done web design for a number of UU Congregations (list below) as well as support for 10 others who are using the 10-year old UUA WordPress theme for congregations. There were multiple comments in the Facebook group about Naomi’s professionalism and great appreciation for her work.

uucb.org - Berkeley

NVUU.org Napa Valley

WestsideUU.org Fort Worth, TX

UUCDC.org Delaware County

UUCWNC.org Wilmington NC

UUMarin.org Marin County

FVUUF.org Appleton, WI

DallasUU.org

I have initiated a conversation with her to learn more about her work and pricing. She charges $75/hour for non-profits and estimates that a website like ours where we are providing the bulk of the content would be about 30 hours or $2250. She designs with the idea for it to be simple to maintain and would provide training to Gigi and anyone else to make that happen. She also would obviously be available for assistance if we were to need it or needed her to train a new person. I have taken the liberty of asking her to provide a formal proposal with a scope of work. What would the board want or need to know in order to approve moving forward with work?

 

Marketing - Social Media/Traditional Media/Outreach

I don’t have anything new to report on this aspect of the Marketing/Outreach part of M.A.’s gift. We want to have our website refreshed and ready before doing extensive work here. I am hoping to find someone local with experience in Marketing and Social Media and some UU background who would be interested in doing this work as a side gig. IIwould welcome any thoughts about how or where to look for such a person.

Linda Macpherson, Worship Committee Chair

Date
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