Minutes of NWSSA BOD Meeting 1-10-2024

NorthWest Stone Sculptors Association

Established 05/27/1988
Board Meeting Minutes

ORGANIZATION NAME: NWSSA 

Date: 1/10/2024

Time: 6:36 P.M. PST

Location: Virtual via Zoom

ATTENDANCE

Board members: 
Ellie Hochman, Cyra Jane Hobson, Tamara Buchanan, Pat Barton, Markos Weiss, Denny Tsang, Deborah Wilson, Batya Friedman, Michael Yeoman

Board Members Present via phone/virtual: All

Absent: Jeremy Kester, Stephen Taplin

Quorum: Yes

Staff Present:

Guests: Rachell Jarvis

CALL TO ORDER

A meeting of the Board of Directors of the ORGANIZATION was duly called on 01/10/2024, at 6:36p.m. PST.  Ellie Hochman (President) called the meeting to order.

Approve Consent agenda: 5 min

1-Minutes were not submitted
2-General Membership survey – approved
3- New Event Application – approved

Reports

Treasurer’s Report- (Michael) 5 min
-All refunds for Suttle Lake cancellation have been completed

Website report (Carl)  -5 min 
-Carl gave an extensive update on the new website that included history of its becoming and current status. He created and is submitting a document with explanations of all pages in the main navigation and their (almost exclusively) complete status. He says the website is ready to go live. 

We then diverted into New Business. 

Phase 2 for Board Feedback to Web Dev team (Batya) 10 min

-Batya is proposing that we ‘divide and conquer’ on final website edits by breaking into teams, spending 2 hours apiece on our sections, and submitting a form. Carl suggests that we separate Functionality from Content in our comments. 

-Batya then stepped down from the board due to professional conflict concerns regarding the new website. As a pioneer of value sensitive design (https://vsdesign.org/), Batya has a professional conflict with the web site development project: namely, as a Board Member she is personally responsible for vetting the quality of the website; should the Board release an “adequate” but not exemplary website—particularly around issues of inclusion, representation, access, accessibility, and other important human values—that would jeopardize her professional reputation. In light of this, Batya will step down from the Board effective Jan. 11, 2024.

Nominations Committee (Tamara/Markos) 20 minutes

Motion from Tamara: I propose that the Board agree to changing our Bylaws so that beginning July of 2024 the term of office for the Board of Directors will be 3 years, with a limit of 2 consecutive terms and the terms staggered as evenly as possible.  In the event of a Board member not being able to fill the 3 year term, the balance of that person’s term would be filled by appointment to the Board. The appointed Board member would stand for election at the next regular election for the original Board member.

-Seconded by Denny Tsang
-Discussion of the motion
-Vote on Proposal; 1 Yes, 4 No, 3 Abstensions 
A collective Thank you to Tamara for exploring this possibility and starting this discussion. 

We then went back to Reports

Finance Committee Report (Michael)-5 min
-Financial committee will bring donation structure in February
-and Proposing a formal budgeting structure

SL  Planning Proposal-Denny (5)
-Denny presented the Calculator for Suttle Lake Planning. The calculator shows that with 16 FT paying participants is the break-even point for Suttle to become profitable. 

We then tabled the rest of the agenda due to time concerns. That agenda was:

Old Business:
Events process for new and renewing events (Markos) 5 min (Please review this document and provide any feedback to Markos 
Dates of future Board meetings  2/14/24 (Batya ) 5 min

New Business:
BOD Data Management Approach (Google Docs or not) Training in Docs? (Michael) 5 min
How to Handle Paper Docs? (Michael)
BOD use of Gmail (Michael) 
Benefits to Being on the Board?

We then all said Goodbye to Pat, who has resigned from the board effective 1/11/24, who graciously thanked each one of us for our contributions: 5 minutes

Meeting adjourned at 8:22 P.M. PST by Ellie Hochman (President).