September 9, 2012

Minister: Marcia
Board Members Present:
Nancy
Tode
Dan
Kate
Robyn

Guests:
Mark Alter

4:40 Check-Ins

Approval of Last Meetings Minutes:
All approved.  Robyn will send them to Anders for posting to the website.

Minister’s report:

• Focus on RE: creating some curricula for the RE teachers
• Giving more support to the RE teachers
• Offering some adult RE classes (use the new Rose City church space at night?)
• A spiritual deepening class
• Some 1-off events for adults around our theme of race
• Increasing membership through path to membership classes
  • -Mark requests that we explain the path to membership classes more clearly during service.
    • 1st class is spiritual sharing and W’east info
    • 2nd class is UU history and general info
  • Renewal of preliminary fellowship: meet with a team once a month.  BE evaluated, meet with mentor once a month.  Will need a review in January/February.  

Treasurer’s report:
Nothing particularly new or urgent from Dan, still transitioning from the old bank.

Tode: budget on our mind,  Would like to take another look at the budget

Proposal: try bring a balanced budget  proposal to the budget meeting on  Oct 28th
Discuss at Oct 14th meeting.

Insurance:
Find out what is on the lease at Hollywood Senior Center Dan will forward the lease from HSC
Find out what rose city Park requires us to have Marcia will forward Nancy this.
Tode moves that we keep paying at the current rate until we have the new information.

Retreat Reschedule:
What is a retreat: A slightly less structured environment than a board meeting.  Agenda-free time to discuss the role of the board, the goals of the board and wy’east in general. Who are we? What are we doing in the board?
Scheduled for 12 on Friday Oct 26th somewhere downtown Robyn will look for location

Ministerial Committee:
Need to find at least one more person for Marcia’s ministerial committee.  Support and help work through difficult situations.  Volunteers to contact some of these people to see if they might be interested in being on the committee.  There is a training on Oct 14th so it would be nice to be able to meet with this committee sometime in Sept.

Everybody Reads Program:
The UU program with one book The New Jim Crow
Buy some copies of the book with special collection buying 6 copies and paying them out of the special collection.  Robyn has ordered the books and will keep them until they are needed.  Leftovers from the collection will be used for other one-time learning experiences.

Yard Sale Recap:
Location was great.  The basement was dusty and Nancy is not sure if the clothing was actually worth it.  Next time we would sort clothing as a group perhaps.
Probably need to wait a year or two to do this again.  Possibly this Spring.

Budget: 13,000 deficit, probably can get that down below $10,000.  
Options:
Cut expenses: This would be difficult.  Not much left to cut.  Can’t cut RE teachers without more volunteers
Ask for more pledges: Our pledges are a little lower than expected. We will ask people to up their pledges.  Budgeting was not great last year and the pledge drive was not great last year.
Get new members: Marcia is working on this.

Still like to get Marcia up to half time. We agree that this isn’t reasonable to cut. It’s not that much of the budget.

Portable electronic Piano:
Find a home for it!
Kate Merrifield’s kids would like to learn to play piano.  She is an option but it would be living with children.  Always risky.  Kate will take care of this