Planning for the Congregational Meeting to be held at 11:45 am on April 26 took considerable discussion at the Board of Trustees’ monthly Zoom meeting on Thursday, April 9. The agenda just seems always to be very full these days.
The Board decided to add an item to the planned agenda regarding the potential Payroll Protection Program funding. This program was created by the recent 2 trillion-dollar stimulus package approved by Congress. The program offers loans through local banks. They are to provide funding for the maintenance of salary and hourly payments for employees of small businesses and non-profit organizations. The initial rules state that a significant portion (perhaps all) of the loan repayment will be forgiven if the funds are used for staff pay or building expenses e.g. utilities and mortgage.
The Congregation has applied for a loan under this program. Considering possible revenue losses from reduced donations and pledges and the potential loss of auction revenue, it seems prudent to stabilize our income. The amount being requested is limited to two-and-a-half times our average monthly payroll expenses. This total is equal to 14 percent of the OUUC annual budget. Our bylaws require congregational approval by a simple majority to accept these funds. The Board is recommending this approval.
Other items for the Congregational meeting involve electing the new Board and Leadership Development Committee {LDC} members. Please look at the slate of candidates, below, recommended by the LDC and submitted by the Board for Congregational approval.
Board Nominees:
Sally Alhadeff – Sally is a Washington state native and has lived much of her life within a few miles of where her ancestors settled in 1846. Sally and her husband, Bob Sundstrom have been members of Olympia UU congregation since 2016. Sally has a varied religious past – she was raised Catholic, converted to Judaism and then lapsed from both for many years until becoming a member of OUUC. From her very first visit to OUUC, she knew she had found a new home. Since joining OUUC, she has participated in the annual auction and the plant sale, friendship dinners, and the choir. Before retiring in 2013, Sally spent her career in the commercial real estate industry doing everything from financing to legal documents, dispositions, and acquisitions, construction project management and development. She has served on many professional boards where she has served in roles including public relations, finance manager and president. She is a Master Gardener and her main occupation these days is working in her own and in community gardens. She is an avid birdwatcher and teaches senior fitness classes at Olympia Senior Center.
Diana Finch – Diana first attended OUUC in 1994. Everyone who comes to a church service comes for a reason. Her reason was addressed in the sermon on her first visit and she knew she was home. She became a member in 1997 and has enjoyed meeting and welcoming members, friends, and visitors with a smile ever since. More formally she has chaired the Membership team and facilitated membership classes, served on the Worship Arts committee and the Communications Team. She currently is a member of the Faith in Action team, serves as one of the cooks on the OUUC Community Kitchen crew and co-coordinates our annual Thanksgiving Dinners. She enjoys walks with her two dogs, gardening and reading.
Rich Kalman – Rich Kalman began attending OUUC in 2010 after he and his wife, Ann Rockway, attended adult education classes at OUUC on Calculating One’s Carbon Footprint and a film series about Ethical Eating. They became members in 2012. Rich served Olympia School district for thirty years; first as a teacher of students with special needs, then as an education specialist and later as an elementary classroom teacher. After his first retirement, in 2005, he started an independent educational consulting business to help teachers in various school districts increase student achievement in Science. He also participated in creating Science assessments for OSPI, and worked for a variety of academic publishers until 2011. Rich enjoys kayaking, X-C skiing and RV travel with his wife Ann. He hikes almost every Tuesday and is learning to speak Spanish and to play jazz piano. In the fall of 2018, Rich and Ann sold their home of ~40 years, spent 6 months traveling in their RV, and have recently resettled in the Panorama Retirement Community. Rich has served OUUC as a member of the Buildings and Grounds team, as an instructor of the Membership Class, as an RE teacher, and as a Spirit Circle (or Small Group Ministry) facilitator. He looks forward to serving our congregation next as a member of the Board of Trustees.
Leadership Development Committee Nominees:
Sharon Love – Sharon Love is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist who has been an active member of OUUC for nearly 30 years. Sharon has served the congregation in many roles over the years, including a couple of years on the board in the late 1990s. She is currently a member of the choir, is one of the Family Greeters on Sunday mornings, and for longer than is probably wise, she’s managed the item, bidding, and payments tracking for our annual OUUC auction. She is a civil engineer who has spent much of her career in transportation working on environmental compliance. In her spare time, she likes cooking, gardening, knitting, reading, and watching too much Netflix. She lives in Olympia with her husband, their teenage daughter, and two cats.
Don Melnick – I’m Don Melnick; 82 years of age and this May retiring from our Board of Directors after serving a full 3-year term with one year as President. Since first joining OUUC in 2012, I have also served on our Building & Grounds Team (occasionally as Chairperson), the Space Committee, the Ministerial Restructuring Team and also I Chaired the short-lived Program Council and later served briefly on the Executive Team until it was dissolved by the Board. Now with my pending retirement from the Board I began to wonder how else I might serve. Having held leadership roles in several other organizations before joining OUUC and having formally studied organizational behavior and leadership in graduate school I began to think about how what I had learned could be of service. Knowing that our OUUC By-Laws charge the Leadership Development Committee with “Development of an annual leadership training plan”, I reached out to Deb Ross current Chair of the LDC to offer my assistance. The result was that the LDC asked that I be a candidate for committee membership, and I accepted.