Board of Directors

Regular Meeting -- February 3, 2008

The Board of Directors held its regular monthly meeting at 2007 Bert Avenue, Austin, TX 78704, starting at 1 pm. The following directors (constituting a quorum of the full board) were present at the meeting: President Pam Latham (Oceanna) via telephone, Vice President and Treasurer Pam Chambers, Secretary Kathy Lee, Leslie Harvey and Robert Gardner. Robert McGarey (Executive Director) and Maxine Jacoby were also present at the meeting.

Reading of Mission Statement and Approval of Minutes

The Mission Statement was read aloud at the beginning of the meeting. Minutes from the previous meeting were read aloud. The following changes were suggested: in the first paragraph, Bob needs to be listed as Executive Director but not as a board member. The minutes were then approved as amended.

President's Report

Retiring. Oceanna announced that she is retiring and will be leaving the board as of the end of the next meeting. She will also be giving up the room she is renting at the Center. The board expressed appreciation for her years of service and regret upon losing her wisdom and experience. We wish her well on her travels from her on.

Vice President's Report

Intern. Pam reported that Morgan is now up-to-date on her rent and doing pretty well in her position as intern. Now, we need to make sure that she stays current on her rent. Pam sees her as a good networker, and says she's excited about doing workshops about gardening for kids. She's doing cold-calling for possible lecturers. Kathy suggests that we keep trying to figure out what motivates her. Leslie suggested that we set SMART goals for her: goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

Executive Director's Report

Volunteers. Bob reported that Colleen is continuing to do financial data entry, and that she's enjoying it. Bob said she's doing a GREAT job, and that he wishes we had more volunteers like her! Also, Rick Cain is almost finished re-roofing the Art Barn. The total cost for the supplies has been around $1K.

Marketing. Bob is working on listing our events on all the local online event lists, such as Craigslist and Austin360, but it's difficult to set the computer up to do that automatically. So for the time being, Morgan is manually listing a few of the most important events each month. Bob feels this is important, since the Center has been less visible ever since New Texas Magazine folded and that has affected our attendance and income.

Leasing space. With Oceanna retiring as of the end of March, we'll need to rent out the room she has been leasing. Our asking price for the 185 square foot room is $200 per month. It has an outside access door, a bathroom and a closet. The room is quite lovely, and we are planning on refinishing the bathroom at some point in the future, though that may not happen before the end of March. Also, since Bob is the on-site manager and there is no other shower available on the campus, the new renter will need to work with Bob to arrange times when Bob can use the shower that are convenient for both the new renter and Bob.

Finances. Our $10K CD matured on January 21st, so Bob cashed it in. Since the CD was securing our $10K line of credit, we had to terminate that but Bob will re-apply for a new unsecured one. The line of credit helps improve our credit, and our credit is important because we'll need to refinance our mortgage soon.

Unity Church Grant. We received a $2.5K grant from Unity Church of Austin (thanks, Unity!), which we will use to hire Chris Grigassy to spend 6 hours each week for the next 5 months, working primarily on GoodwheelChairs. Properly managed, the income from GoodwheelChairs could easily surpass our monthly bingo income.

Back Porch Grant. Since we haven't heard back from the Fentress-Brown Foundation about our grant application to repair our back porch, Bob assumes that it was not approved.

Since there was no further business, the meeting adjourned at around 3 pm.

Minutes submitted by Kathy Lee, Secretary, February 3, 2008.