Board Meeting Minutes: April 2, 2022

Attendees: Jo Ella Coles, Greg Fisher, Adam Goforth, Rosalie Karunas, Alex McCauslin, Melanie Odom-Groh

Meeting start: 9:48am

Opening Devotional - Melanie Odom-Groh
West Willow Student Intern Presentation (Bridget Jones)
1. Bridget has been the lead social worker on the Healthy Together West Willow project for the last year.
2. The project started with providing lawn and snow services to West Willow residents, because that's what the residents asked for.
3. Many residents are being fined or being reported to the city for overgrown lawns or snow buildup. It's dangerous for the residents to maintain their own property because they are older and at risk of being injured through falls.
4. There was a pilot program and they were also able to help at 31 residences last winter.
5. They hope to expand to offering year-round maintenance service this year.
6. For the medium-to-long term Bridget recommends hiring a full-time employee to do this maintenance work.
7. Bridget is moving on from this project, but she has already met with the summer intern to enable a smooth transition.
Finance update
1. We have made significant progress in the work with Jitasa. We have given them a lot more information that they were previously waiting for. They now have everything they need to give us a clear picture of the church's expenses.
2. We are able to provide 1099s to people now, and we likely will do so for all of our contractors. We might need to obtain some financial information from some people, which we can now do more easily due to the secure upload feature we have through sync.com.
3. The IRS will send us another letter documenting the church's name change, which we can use to update the name with financial institutions. Larry Odom-Groh is tracking it.
Communications Update - Adam Goforth
1. The team page on the website has been cleaned up.
2. Adam and Jo Ella met and have documented all the church's digital accounts.
3. Website content updates and new flyer creation still ongoing.
Operations Update - Greg Fisher
1. We have many wobbly chairs in the sanctuary. They are a liability for us, especially for people who use them during space rental. We have an "elevated duty of care" for providing safe facilities for the renters, and we would be liable if anyone got injured. Our liability is lower for people coming for services or for the warming center guests. We have essentially no liability for trespassers.
2. We had some people camping on the property without permission last night and they damaged someone else's moped in the night. In general, campers on our property must obtain permission from Rose and sign a document agreeing with the camping rules. Greg will talk to Rose about our policies around homeless guests.
3. In previous years we have sent out postcards and distributed door hangers to people living near the church to keep them informed about what we're doing with the homeless ministry. It was suggested that we could consider doing this again.
4. Greg suggested that we might want to gather information on police reports filed since we started the homeless ministry. It might change our response to complaints if there has been an actual increase in crime, versus residents just not liking having to see some homeless people around. We could also check Nextdoor to see what people are saying about the church.
5. Greg has been meeting with people to better understand the Healthy Together West Willow project. He is looking into legal and financial issues around the paid interns on the project. He and Jo Ella are also working on creating a more formalized onboarding process for new interns.
6. Greg is also investigating the details of the contractor/employee/internship relationships we have with people. These details could have legal and financial implications for the church.
7. Question: how do we pay the stipends of student interns?
  1. Answer: the funding comes from grants. The church pays them out from the church accounts, since we don't have a separate entity to do it from. A Servant's Heart is intended to be this entity in the future.
8. There has been no progress on investigating the church's insurance policies.
9. Update on the broken hot water heater: we have hot water in the shower and downstairs sink, but nowhere else in the building. Occasionally we briefly have hot water throughout the building, but we don't understand why.
10. Update on the large heating contractor bill discussed at the last board meeting: we got an itemized breakdown, but it was mostly labor. We probably ended up paying the bill.
11. Update on changing elevator maintenance companies: Susana has made an appointment to get an estimate from another maintenance company.
Ministry Reports
1. Homelessness Ministry
  1. Over all of the warming center days in our building, we had 433 guests. It was about 40 people per day in December and about 60 people per day in March. Nearly all of the shelters closed down for the year at the end of March, which is creating stress on the homeless community.
  2. Jo Ella suggested doing something nice for Rose, Sheri, and Susana to show the church's appreciation for their work over the winter.
2. Report from Jo Ella Coles
  1. There are National Public Health Week events in West Willow next week. There will be a booster shot clinic next Friday.
  2. We are working on a couple of grants and waiting to hear back on a large $100k grant.
  3. We're looking to pilot a community health worker in West Willow.
  4. Some new projects are being started to connect older residents with young people in the community.
  5. We are currently missing a clear process for tracking expenditures, but Jo Ella has talked to Matt about creating one.
  6. Three of our four student interns are reaching the end of their term, but we have new interns coming in either this summer or in the fall.
  7. We are moving forward with the paperwork to create LLCs for A Servant's Heart and the Art Gallery. We're currently talking to people to be members of the LLC.
  8. There was discussion about how the board needs more information and a better understanding of the A Servant's Heart project so that the church can properly move forward with the LLC creation. It was suggested that we spend time in future board meetings digging into the details of these projects. Jo Ella would also welcome help and support in moving these projects forward.
3. Report from Alex McCauslin
  1. Alex has been focusing on pastoral care recently and the Wednesday evening small group continues to meet.
  2. Alex will apply to a United Way community impact grant soon, which would provide $25k per year for 3 years.
  3. There is currently a lack of support for Alex in worship service planning. In general, there are no clear processes for finding people to take on certain roles like communion host, greeting guests, etc. Alex brought a sign-up sheet for different roles on Sunday mornings and asked the board members to sign up for some tasks.
Bylaws Update
1. Rosalie, Alex, Melanie, and Greg met last week to discuss the bylaws.
2. Right now Melanie is creating a written description of how we handle various pieces of church business as a starting point for drafting the new bylaws.
3. The committee will continue to work on drafting a set of bylaws.
Dr. Meadows Report and Next Steps (DEI)
1. The board looked at Dr. Meadows' recommendations, but recognized we need a bigger discussion about what our goals are. We would like to end up with a clear roadmap for how to go forward, but we need to decide where the road should lead. We intend to make this a major point of discussion at the May board meeting. The board should read more of the book The Conversation and also from the book Racecraft.
2. Greg brought copies of the book "Racecraft" and gave them to the board members.
COVID Policy Check-in
1. Rosalie pointed out it would be helpful to not wear masks at board meetings, for the sake of clarity of communication.
2. Until the warming center started, we required everyone to wear masks indoors at all times, but we didn't require it for warming center guests.
3. The current worship service policy is for people to wear masks when talking to others or singing. The CDC does not currently recommend mask wearing in our area. We could also consider asking people to be mindful of the people around them and wear masks if they are around a high risk person.
4. Proposal from Alex: at board meetings and other meetings, if everyone agrees, then not wear masks. Ask people to bring masks and wear them if people around them want them to.
5. Communion proposal from Alex: return to some form of shared bread loaf.
6. The board agreed unanimously that Alex would work out the details and implement something similar to what was outlined.
Closing

Meeting end: 12:18pm