Minutes
Board of Trustees
First Unitarian Society
Madison, Wisconsin
October 18 , 2006
7:00
p.m.
Lower
Meeting House
Present:
Officers:
Pat Anderson, President
Tom Detmer, Secretary
Sue Radtke, Treasurer
Alan Knox, Past President
Laurie Joiner, President Elect
Council Trustees:
Kathy Luker
John Mathis
Nancy Kosseff
Jim Christensen
Chris Glueck
Barb Avery
Ministers:
Michael Schuler, Minister
Kelly Crocker, Associate Minister
Scott Prinster, Associate Minister
Staff:
Wendy Cooper, Social Justice Coordinator
Observers:
Visitors:
Craig McComb, Capital Campaign Co-Chair
Gary Liesman, Music committee
Elizabeth Barrett, Journey Towards Wholeness Committee
Minton Brooks, Journey Towards Wholeness Committee
Mark Clear
JJ Streicher
CALL TO ORDER
After an
opening and chalice lighting by Jim Christensen, Pat
Anderson called the meeting to order at time 7:05 p.m. and reviewed the agenda.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES
MOTION to approve the minutes of the September 13, 2006 and September 20,
2006 Board meetings.
CARRIED.
BUSINESS ITEMS
Journey Towards Wholeness Committee
Minton Brooks introduced the background of his interest in fighting racism and introduced Elizabeth Barrett to provide her background as well. Minton then talked about how racism was a difficult issue for UUs back in the 1960s and 1970s. Much healing was required to address it and to figure out how best to fight racism within our denomination. Almost every General Assembly since that time has had reports on how we are doing in fighting racism. In addition there have been issues that have developed at General Assembly in recent years that have brought focus on the issue.
Elizabeth Barrett talked about the scorecard on how we are doing in recognizing and fighting racism. On some things we are doing well and on some we are doing not so well. This is what we might expect. All three UU congregations within Madison are involved in this scorecard and discerning how we are doing and what we should do next.
The intention of this Committee is to be as inclusive as possible. We will go as slow as necessary to get started on the right foot. Ann Pooler, Elizabeth Barrett and Minton have joined a group called Groundwork to learn and get started on their effort.
It is the sense of the Board that this draft charter is a good effort and we like the direction the Committee is taking but the charter needs to be completed and a policy needs to be drafted and added to it. Future Board training is probably in order. A committee of Minton, Elizabeth, and Michael will work towards improving the charter.
The committee, plus Michael and Nancy will work on developing the training for the program.
Information Security Policy
We recognize that we are using electronic forms to communicate with each other and the information is then completely open in the public sphere. We need to consider how and when we want information transmitted and how protected it should be.
We should consider information integrity, which Barb Avery described as how do we protect data so it is not lost. That needs to be considered and discussed. It is in addition to the question of how we provide access to information.
This initial draft provides us with a starting point for talking about information.
Questions of access are involved and questions of security are involved. The question of fear is a real one according to Mark and it gets involved with privacy issues.
Information may be (1) public, (2) private and (3) information that we want to share among a select group but not share generally.
Starting with a WEB policy will be a good exercise and provide focus on how we want WEB information secured and not secured. We should then be prepared to work on expanding the concepts into other areas as they become evident. Certain obvious categories of protected information may include:
Financial information
Personnel information
The next step is to develop a policy of what is private and what should be put on the WEB site and what should be kept off it.
New Insurance Plan
A summary of the new UUA insurance plan was described for the information of the Board. We need to develop a policy on how to provide some transition to insured’s who will have increased out of pocket expenses. In the coming year we will work on implementing an FSA.
Work on policy for two half time positions.
Parish Meeting
The parish meeting went really well. The feedback from members has been positive. Some members have expressed very positive thoughts in spite of previous reservations they may have had about the project.
Sharing Facilities with the Progressive Jewish Community
We have been approached about sharing space of our new facility with another possible user. The commitment to something on an on-going basis may be a problem when we don’t know yet what our own use of the new space is going to be. Michael may meet with the possible user and report back to the Board in December.
Facilities Committee
The possibility of contingent contributions has been raised and Alan drafted a possible resolution to address the issue. We think the likelihood of the issue coming up is small but we want to at least consider the policy before a particular proposal is made.
Change “new facility” to “expansion project.” Add language to indicate that indicates that we will accept a donation related to a particular part of the expansion project. If the proposed amount is to be used for the something outside the scope of the campaign, then the canvasser will take the proposal to the Board for consideration.
MOTION When a donor specifies a desired project within the scope of the overall project as approved, the canvasser should welcome that preference, with the recognition that if all such preferences exceed the amount for that purpose, we may ask them for a second related project preference. If the donor suggests a designation outside the scope of the project, it should come to the Board for approval. CARRIED.
Children’s RE Committee
Why don’t children get involved as they become older? The Children’s Religious Education Committee would like to address this and will report back.
ADJOURNMENT
MOTION by
to adjourn.
CARRIED
Meeting was adjourned at 9:10 p.m.
Minutes by, Tom Detmer, First Unitarian Society Board Secretary
