UCityUnited

UCU Board of Directors
May 1, 2007 meeting Minutes

In attendance: Jesse Swanigan, Anne Marie Kiddon, Acme Price, Shelley Welsch, Bronwen Zwirner, Mark Seigel, Margaret Johnson
(Absent: Michael Donovan, Lisa Greening, Miriam Wilhelm, Stella Hughes)

Minutes of April Board meeting were accepted (Margaret moved, Acme seconded, passed unanimously)
Minutes from April 13 special board meeting were accepted (Margaret moved, Shelley seconded, unanimous)

Planning for May 2 Town Hall Forum:
Agenda was developed
The speakers will be contacted again for a confirmation of their participation.
Mark offered to develop an evaluation for participants.
Margaret will facilitate the Q&A part of the session.

Treasurers Report
Lisa is out of town.
Agreed that a fundraising meeting will take place after UCU does some longterm planning.

Social gathering first (Margaret & Bronwen)
Board will get together for a social evening in May or June for purposes of getting to know one another better

Begin long term planning
Long term planning needs an experienced facilitator (discuss at June meeting)
Budget development
Fundraising

Committee Reports:
All committees should increase active membership by looking at the membership list.

Communications: Mark & Shelley
Monitoring needs to be re-visited
Web site is priority
News outlets such as Post, St. Louis American need more work so that they will carry our announcements.
Bronwen will call a much-needed Communications Committee meeting

Issues Group: Margaret
Education is meeting every two weeks
Race, Class and Culture is meeting regularly
Cool Cities seems to be working

In general there are problems with these meetings being properly facilitated (by someone who can manage flow of discussion as opposed to participate in decision making). We might re-visit decision that it isn’t our job to facilitate these groups as they are not UCU official arms. We might provide facilitator training or board members NOT involved with a particular issue might be the facilitator.

Jesse reports that, on the issue of Loop development, Streetside records has been sold and two franchise restaurants are moving in. There is no move to involve ourselves in that issue as yet.

Leadership Development: Shelley
The series has been quite successful

New Business:
Acme suggested – and board agreed - that we get UCU business cards to assist us when we are talking to people about UCU. They should have UCU address and web site with a space for individuals to write their own names and contact information. It might be good to have a brief summary of the mission on the card as well.

Next Board meeting June 5th at Shelley’s 7141 Delmar at 7:00PM (NOT 7:30)