Notes from Transition Team Meeting 5/18/09

Attending: Abby, Tiana, Courtney, Rob, Teri, Wes, Ed, Scott, Jerry, Jen

Sunday recap and prep for votes

Based on feedback from Sunday, we’re adding the length and limits of Board terms to the by-laws.

We also had a discussion about the Board Nominating Committee. Teri expressed a concern that three of the proposed members had not submitted commitment cards. We agreed to discuss this with them to either secure a commitment or get a reason why a card has not been submitted. There was a general acceptance that there may be valid reasons why people might not submit a card even though they are concerned for the future of the church.

Scott will send an e-mail pointing people to the blog for information to be voted on.

Financial team report

April was an expensive month: more than $11,000 went out. There were a few reasons for this; we still had PL and Neeki on payroll for a couple of weeks; we are still paying their benefits; we sent Courtney and PL to the Alliance of Baptists conference. Additionally, we had not received checks from the Methodists for their portion of Courtney’s salary. (We have it now and it will be deposited this week.) The result is that we are in the hole to CoH to the tune of about $8000. The $3500 from UMC will cover part of that, but we will have to also dip into the remaining CityChurch account, which currently has about $8800. It was decided that we will leave this account as a safety net until the Board is in a position to make a further determination.

Perhaps of greater concern is the spending since the beginning of this fiscal year. It seems that there were a lot of expenditures that were not budgeted. The finance team is going to audit all the transactions. There is a possibility that things were simply miscoded in the CoH system. For example, we were significantly over on child care costs, which should be a fixed cost. It is certain that there were not adequate controls in place, which will be one of the first tasks for the Board.

We also discussed a sunset on the commitment cards. We need to have them by March 31. Rob will write a paragraph for the weekly e-mail explaining what they are. Wes will talk about them on Sunday.

Role of CoH

Courtney met with Jo at CoH. There has been some discussion of their role and the nature of our relationship with them. They consider us a partner and will support us in any way they can. However, they will not be a financial supporter, except in smoothing out our cash flow. CoH handles our accounting for us, so we are set up as a department of CoH in their system. They pay our bills with money from our account. If that account is short, they still pay the bills, but we are ultimately responsible for that amount. This is why we owe them the money mentioned earlier.

Music

A couple of weeks ago, Courtney asked if we could pay someone on the music team to coordinate the music each week. While it was a nominal amount, the transition team felt that it was not possible within our current budget and income. This week, Courtney reported Paul has agreed to assume this role on a volunteer basis. (Thanks, Paul!) We all agree that we would like to grow into having paid music staff.

Next two weeks

There will not be a community meeting before church this week. The Transition Team will also not meet on Monday. The following Sunday, March 31, there will be votes on whether to accept the by-laws and the Board Nominating Committee.

Action items:

Rob and Scott will speak to Board Nominating Committee about commitment cards.
Scott will send e-mails about by-laws and Board Nominating Committee.
Scott will update by-laws with information about Board terms and post to blog.
Rob will write a paragraph on commitment cards for weekly e-mail.