Leadership Board Minutes

Leadership Board Meeting Minutes of December 2, 2021

Meeting came to order at approximately 6:38PM.

Attendees: Gerry Schmitz, Dan Lusk, Julie Zumach, Reverend Tony Larsen John Cabaniss, Leigh Hoftiezer, Dean Johnson, Betsy Muellenbach, Ed Ahrenhoerster, Jennifer Wilke, Sherryl Andrus, Jackee Orozco, and guest, Brian Bunzel After member check-in, Gerry lit the chalice and presented a very interesting and enlightening story about a nineteenth century Unitarian.

Open Forum was deferred to later in the meeting with guest Brian Bunzel.

November meeting minutes Dean Johnson moved to approve the November minutes; Sherryl seconded, and the minutes were unanimously approved.

Old Business

Committee Reports:

• Lifespan Faith Development: Jackee Orozco informed the Board that she has decided to resign as Director of Lifespan Faith Development (DLFD) effective January 1, 2022. She stated she will stage the children’s Christmas pageant and thereafter take the rest of the month off. She offered many reasons for her resignation, among them being pursuing full time employment elsewhere, high expectations from members, working under scrutiny, and not feeling supported by the congregation.
  Dan will ask Dana to consider serving as interim RE Director. A search committee consisting of Brian Bunzel, Sherryl Andrus, Julie Zumach, Ed Ahrenhoerster, and possibly Dana will canvass possible candidates for a paid, part time RE Director. Other members may also be invited to join the committee.
• Finance: Ed said he has nothing at this time and will wait until New Business to bring up his report.
  
  Treasurer reports - Sherryl Andrus stated that essentially things are good financially for UCN. She informed the Board that there is a new tax-exempt form and that we have a new tax exempt number. The form can be obtained from Sherryl or Lyn.
  
  She is also working on reformatting the reimbursement form to make it more user friendly. Sherryl did ask for ideas to improve the form.
• Worship: John Cabaniss reported that he is very appreciative of our Worship Assistants (WAs), especially the newer ones. Since Jackee has resigned, he pointed out that the Worship Committee needs to come up with something for the January 19 service that Jackee had planned to do.
  
  John also mentioned a few new service procedures that included presenting the offering to Tony or the WA and having the Board President make announcements at the start of the service to give the WA a break. He also reported that the big screen monitor does not work for Power Point presentations, but that there seems to be no real solutions presently.
• Social Justice: Jennifer Wilke said most all her information is in the report. Her only point to bring up was that the Wisconsin UU State Action Network (WUUSAN) had a move to propose we sponsor an Afghan family that has one child in the US to pay for the application fee for admittance. She said this will be put on hold for another week to do conduct more research.
• Membership: Dan, subbing for Rosa, said most everything is in the report. He did mention that a New Member Recognition ritual has been moved from December 12 to January 9 with Rosa and Tony’s approval. This will give the committee more time to prepare. The only other point Dan made was in regard to name tags: The committee would like to suggest members put their preferred pronouns on their name tags to make members and visitors feel welcome and to recognize their preference.
• Minister’s Report: Tony pointed out that his contract with UCN officially ends June 2022. He would like to meet with the “Special Leadership Team” members to discuss parts of his contract that deal with specified tasks. He would like to discuss what he prefers and what the team would like to see
  
• Re-opening Subcommittee report – Leigh said the COVID discussion can be deferred to New Business. She shared the response from the Mequon City Clerk’s points given to Peter Blain about mask wearing for pollsters and voters.
  • Per the Wisconsin Election Commission, no voter can be required to wear a mask.
  • We can require poll workers to wear a mask.
  • We can’t have a sign the says “Masks Required”.
  • We can have a sign that says “Masks Recommended, Free Masks Available”.
  • Poll observers cannot direct UCN to change procedures on site but can call the Wisconsin Election Commission which can order changes.
  In other words, we can encourage voters to wear mask but not require it. Brian mentioned how 890 people came to our church to vote; could help with our membership but violates church policy. Leigh stated that this will be discussed at the Reopening Subcommittee meeting. Sherryl suggested a “mask preferred” sign in lieu of “required”. Brian will make new signs. The Board will make a motion to change our requirements for voters after the Reopen Subcommittee meets next week
• There were no other non-trustee committee chair reports.
• Review of Leadership Board Retreat – Julie Zumach looked at a proposal from the July Leadership Team Retreat to improve in person attendance at Sunday services. With Todd’s assistance, she put together a spreadsheet with attendance dates for the last five years. Julie discussed the spreadsheet data to examine attendance preferences whether more people chose virtual or in person attending Sunday church services. It did appear from the spreadsheet that attendance seems to be trending downward.
  
  Brian Bunzel stated that, on balance, we look good over the last four years. John Cabaniss said the virtual part is improving with more zoom hosts. Gerry Schmitz mentioned the big problem of burnout with people doing virtual work for the service and that we didn’t think we would be here today with the COVID pandemic.
  
  Julie said we will continue to monitor attendance and continue the hybrid service. Leigh asked about personnel to fill positions when there is no cohost to take over the slot. Gerry said she can make someone else cohost.

New Business

• Reverend Tony’s contract update/review of special meeting: Gerry showed the minutes from the special meeting revealing that people wanted to continue the tasks he has been doing and how much he was approved of. One task that was mentioned was that the COVID phone calls can be reduced.
  Tony said the list looked good. He explained how things were when he first came on board. He can still make meetings with Zoom. What would be helpful for him is to look at list and see what he should delete or prioritize.
• All Souls Cafe -live version: Dan will MC. The Sandersens have four acts already. Not sure about food, but probably will not have it. Brian will recommend cancelling the All Souls Café because of the new variant. Discussion followed.
• Covid update: Gerry showed the stats on infections. He says we should continue the hybrid services.
• Harvest Host - Dan and Katie Egan-Bruhy – Dan requested that we table this topic until the January meeting to give himself and Katie more time to discuss their report.
• Hybrid services: Betsy said it’s important to have the person by the mic be muted. Discussion followed on the audio portion and how to improve it. Brian will mention muting the mic to Mark Ludwig. Brian said we have three sound people now: himself, Mark, and Todd
• Worship: Gerry mentioned he will make announcements as Board President when required. He also suggested a sign-up sheet for making announcements when he is not present.
• Website Development - Gerry and Jennifer: Kudos to Jennifer for putting in the time. Jennifer says we have a start with photos by Dean. One person’s vision makes it best. She contacted our rep at the company who is the “Chief Creative Officer”. He asked what is unique about UCN? Jennifer mentioned that being a Green Sanctuary is just one of the things that make us unique. She said what she saw that looks good is to simplify a banner with five or six topics. She went on to describe our home page and some of its aspects. Jennifer also asked about a “Members Only” section. We also need input from others. Julie Zumach mentioned that it’s a good idea to also focus on families
• Steward/Pledge Drive Re-evaluation – Ed said that the Finance Committee agreed that stewards will not query members on non-money matters during pledge drive. The idea is to have Board members query people in September for their input on what they think about UCN. Ed also said that pledge month has been changed to pledge week. People forget about completing the form when they have a month. Board should agree to do this.
  Motion was made by Dean to have the Board members and or its designees contact congregation members as stewards separate from the pledge drive. Julie seconded the motion, and it passed unanimously.
• Potential bylaws revisions:
  Some examples presented by Gerry are Personnel Committee, RE Support Committee, Past President voting status on the Board. Gerry said there are several other items for attention. Gerry said the requirements are too restrictive and narrow. The writing of the bylaw statements should be making it less restrictive to allow the committees to make decisions. One example of restrictions is the number of people who can serve on a given committee. More people should be able to serve on certain committees such as the Personnel Committee.
  Regarding voting – some members, such as Past President, should be able to vote on motions made in meetings.
  It was suggested to put a note in the Northliner to mention bylaw changes and have a barn banner to discuss before the bylaw committee meets. Gerry said we should form the bylaw committee in January.
• DLFD Credit Card - Since Jackee resigned, this particular credit card was not discussed. Sherryl said we need to change charge limits. She also has some ideas on managing the paperwork associated with the credit cards.

A motion was made by Dan to adjourn and seconded by Dean. The vote was unanimous to adjourn.

Meeting adjourned at 8:24PM

Respectfully submitted,

Dan Lusk