Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes

Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes

December, 2006 minutes

Date: October 29, 2006

In attendance: Felicity Pickett, Fred Schoeps, Guy Thompson, Doug Wilson, Simon Delekta, Cathy Perkins, Bob Scheier, Zack Leven, Granger Macy.

Cathy moved that we accept the minutes from Sept 10. Guy seconded. Motion carried unanimously.

Treasurer’s Report

Fred Schoeps

Fred went through the Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss statements for the benefit of new and prospective members.

Executive Director’s Report

Doug Wilson

The Centerpost has been printed and we are awaiting its delivery from the printer. Editing has been an intensive and interesting process that involved balancing the submissions from workshop leaders, many of whom are published authors and write about a wide variety of interesting topics.

John Terlazzo sent in a proposal for a four day camp for kids aged 15 – 20. Part of the proposal involves a workshop off-campus. Another possibility would be to hold the event during Kindred Spirits. (A discussion on this proposal will occur at the end of the meeting.)

Director’s Report

Felicity Pickett

As a staff we often think about the end of summer as being a break, but in fact, the end of summer doesn’t really happen until mid October because September is the busiest conference time. We had a good month made even busier by the Green Nations gathering, with 125 people attending. We purchased a popup tent on eBay for an outdoor dining area to make this work. We also hosted the Greenfield Center School and The Berkshire Group, a UU Minister’s study group that has started using Rowe as a gathering place. Work Week was also very successful. We’ve been trying to finish the dining room project. It’s almost complete. We painted a number of rooms in the Rec Hall which turned out well. Our sewing crew did tons of pillows for the rug room. And there’s always a lot of mailings that get done. A snow roof was put on at Fromson House. Work weeks are getting very productive and we’re seeing a regular group of attendees.

Lance Smith is resigning from his position of Guest Facilities Coordinator. He’s leaving Tuesday.

There are a number of camp directors moving on this year. We will be forming three search committees to look for new directors. Tom Allan, Kindred Spirits Co-Director is rotating out, based on their model of goose energy. YPC directors Jonah Spear and Rosa Kessler will also be moving on. Pippi Kessler was acting director last year and will probably be applying for the position. Yorba Zeti will not be returning to Transitions Camp next year. We will not be replacing her position since there are still two remaining directors. Aram Rubenstein Gillis and Sarah Kavanaugh are leaving Jr. High Camp, so we’ll also be searching for their replacements.

I am asking for a Board member to sit on the committee to search for director replacements.

Zack and Simon volunteer to serve on the Jr. High search committee. Sue and Cathy are volunteering for Kindred Spirits. And Guy is doing YPC.

Stewardship Committee

Guy Thompson

We had our meeting on Sept 30th. Jeffrey Frye was there, who was the maintenance director at Rowe in the 80’s. And he was interested in the committee. I believe he’s a project manager of a large construction company, so he has a lot of expertise. The big discussion was about the Orchard Guest House. Apparently, he had anticipated a number of the problems we’re having with it. His suggestion was not to try and patch in a foundation. His suggestion was to go behind the present location and put in a new foundation and then just move the house off the old foundation and onto the new one. He may have been overly optimistic, but he believed the actual move could be done in one day. He believed they would be able to use the guest house right up until the weekend before the move, and would be available the weekend after, and it could be less expensive. Another advantage would be the availability of more parking.

The following day, October 1st, we prioritized all the capital items that had been presented in the reports. The list has been presented to Felicity.

The top items include:

Farm House – Completing the floor in the meeting room and dining room, paying attention to the acoustics in dining room. Rot and deterioration in Brook house. Deck footings in the bath house. Replacing the floor in the barn.

Cathy’s Report on Committees

Cathy reported that two important committees had lost members. The Long Range Planning Committee lost its chair and the Development Committee lost a very creative member when JT decided not to join the board. Since the LRPC is in a "stuck" place after many of the focus groups failed to materialize, Cathy will chair it temporarily until a plan of action can be developed. The Development Committee is in Bob's very capable hands, but could use more help. Two domain names have been obtained for fundraising purposes. Pauline and Sue volunteered for the Development Committee, and Sue and Ellen volunteered for the Long range Planning committee.

General Items

At the annual meeting there was some trepidation about contact info for board members being available online. We will convert contact info to a graphic so it won’t be scanned by webcrawlers.

A discussion was held on John Terlazzo’s proposal. The consensus was to go ahead with the proposal as long as it is carried out in a way that does not place any additional burden on the staff.

Bob moved that we adjourn. Guy seconded. The motion carried unanimously.