Board of Directors

Regular Meeting -- September 29, 2013

The Board of Directors held its regular monthly meeting at 2007 Bert Avenue, Austin, TX 78704, starting at 2:30 pm. The following directors (constituting a quorum of the full board) were present at the meeting: President and Treasurer Kathy Lee, Vice President Tamara Vogt, Secretary Pam Chambers, and Laine Morales. The following directors were absent Penny Chambers. Robert McGarey (Executive Director) and Fritz Vogt 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 and approved as read.

Executive Director's Report

New Board Member. The Board invited Lesleigh Ellinger to join the board, and she accepted. The board unanimously approved of the addition.

Bob discussed the electric usage and how we have kept it under the 10 KW rate. It's around 4.5. Has a volunteer who is going to come in and build solar panels, based on blueprints that were sent to him by his brother John.. They still have to figure out how to hook it up to the city of Austin.

Bob reported on the Virginia Satir conference and how we all got to go due to the clientele from Bob's practice. And while in attendance he asked how we could have more Satir workshops here at the Center.. Wally Zahnd told him that he could come and do a weekend workshop inexpensively. So, we are very happy that he will be here as he has done the Satir work all over the world. We are all excited. If we do it right, we may even be able to pay him.

Lesleigh and Samantha both want to have yoga classes here. One of Lesleigh's buddies teaches yoga. Thinking about doing it in the evening and announcing it on the Campus Board.

Samantha, our practicum student is once again here to practice. She needs more clients to meet her quota for school. Lesleigh asked 'How is this being advertised?'.A few ideas were thrown around. Pam said she could advertise on Facebook. She finishes her practicum this semester. If we could get her enough clients, she might be able to do her internship here. We all appreciate her and her work.

Bob had to let two of the work program from ITT-Tech go. Now there is another student, but he may not work out. Bob is going to call the woman who takes care of sending the students here.

Bob got the 990 done. Yay!

Patscianna is a new volunteer who is going to do social media for the Center, Facebook and Meetup in particular. We would like to see a rejuvenation of member events. We did a survey of what members would like to do. We put the most popular one on the calendar and no one showed up. So Patscianna is excited about getting some energy started for these events. She is a teacher who is going to go part time and go to school to be a psychiatric nurse.

Break was called and a field trip was had to go look at the work going on at the cottage.

After break, Bob tells us that our financial data entry volunteer is leaving.

Kyle, who was living in the cottage is getting married and left. We started looking for new tenents and the Kyle was in charge of finding a new renter. There were several good applicants. Bob talks about whether it should be a consulting or a collaborative effort to find new tenants. Or whether the board should take a part in the selection. Kathy suggested that the board only get involved when there is a conflict. The consensus was for Bob to make the final decision, based on extensive consultation with everyone who is going to be affected by the decision.

Mortgage: We got a no from Compass bank after 3 years of working on refinancing the mortgage.

The bills are going to be paid, which is a plus. That's largely due to Bob's practice going well.

We discussed accepting a hot tub from a former member, Matthew Riley. The following questions arose: !) Who's going to take care of it? 2) What is the upkeep? 3) How are we going to get it here? We are going to need more information.

Pam got up and found the purple cotton candy.

Since there was no further business, the meeting adjourned at around 4:39 pm.