EPIC Board Meeting Minutes 7-9

 

EPIC Board Meeting Draft Minutes

July 9^th, 2022, 10am – 11am

EPIC web address: eastphillips.org

Email: sarah@eastphillips.org

Office: 2433 Bloomington Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55404

Phone:  (612) 354-6802

 

Board Roster: Mary Gonsior, Cassandra Holmes, David Ingold, Shontal Lajeunesse, Steve Sandberg, Schyler Sellars, Karen Townsend, Nikolas Winter-Simat, LR Young

Board Members Present: Mary Gonsior, Nikolas Winter-Simat, David Ingold, Schuyler Sellars, Steve Sandberg

Board Members Not Present: Cassandra Holmes (E), Karen Townsend (E), LR Young, Shontal Lajeunesse

Members:

Guests:

10:05   Review vision and mission

Welcome guests/intros

Approve agenda,

Approve minutes,

Reminders:

●      Next Community Meeting will be: Thursday, July 14 from 6 to 7:30 at Little Earth Farm (corner of Ogema Pl and EM Stately St). Rain location East Phillips Community Center

o   Agenda here

o   Note no option to join online for this one

o   Note food etc. starts at 6pm, community conversation at 6:30

●      Next Board Meeting will be: Saturday, August 6 from 10am to 11am at the EPIC office and online (link to join meeting can be found at eastphillips.org)

o   Board Meetings are open to the public

●      Letters sent by board since last Board Meeting

o   Friends of Lake Hiawatha letter of support

o   LERA Greenhouse letter of support

●      Monthly financial report

            Updates:

●      Hired:

○      Hindolo Pokawa for Program Manager (15 hours/week)

○      Hayat Guled for Outreach Worker (4 hours/week) and Project Manager (15 hours/week)

○      Emrys Stramer (8 hours/week) and Cup Uani (8 hours/week) for Garden Coordinator

●      Any board member available on July 16 to participate in a Wavelets Creative Sound Garden in Karen’s lot?

○      Live performances/storytelling/poetry/art/composed tracks

○      Karen would love to weave it in with EPIC somehow

○      Waveletscreative.org

○      Time 12-3pm

○      Send out via email list, Facebook etc?

10:05   Report/Update from Executive Coordinator

●      Update on BIPOC Centered Wellness Services

            Report from Departments - Vision

●      Update from board members who edited the strategic plan

○      Next steps, will be to report back to community

■      Share at July 14 Community Meeting?

●      Where do you want to plug in?

●      Ideas how to accomplish this

○      Sign up sheet - what area do you want to be contacted to engage in?

○      Board is approving it as a living document, a few things may change (not the larger goals, but perhaps the strategies to achieve those goals)

■      Let board members not present know

 

MOTION: The EPIC board adopts the strategic plan as outlined with minor grammatical changes to be made and changes for cohesiveness, MG, StS, Approved

 

Next step will be to put vision and mission statement in bylaws once board members who are absent review and approve

 

10:35   New business and delegate to proper spaces (work group, department etc.)

1)     LifeStyle Recovery Community Groups Proposal

a)     Food is included in proposal and would need to be taken out - $1500

b)     Are they an organization? 501(c)3?

                                              i)          No? If they can do everything via reimbursement

(1)   Contractor 1, contractor 2, reimbursement

(2)   Financially responsible - count that on their taxes

(3)   Do they have capacity to gather people together?

(4)   Clarify that needs to be used by December 31

(5)   How reporting back? What’s happening, how it went?

(6)   Accessing funds from other neighborhood organizations?

(7)   Have you done other activities like this before?

 

Ask for bio for proposals in the future

 

Set aside money, we need questions answered before can fully approve ^^

Could do $1k from Microgrant - if haven’t done it before?

 

If questions answered, comfortable with, send out to Board, ask for board approval via email

 

2)     Updated Budget - David, are we ready to approve?[1] 

a)     Numbers added from use of funds - move anything around? Bob Cooper wants confirmation that the amounts are the final amounts for these items

                                              i)          Community Hub $60,000[2] [3] 

(1)   Realistic number - update from Nikolas on use of space?

(2)   Waiting to get confirmation that we can just use the lot

(3)   Where to pull from

(a)   $3,000 undesignated - community events

                                                                                                        (i)          I.e. contracting a food truck

                                            ii)          YOUTH PROGRAMMING - $10K

(1)   Youth Worker (LERA) $10,000

(a)   Depending on community hub - increase?

(2)   Take out East Phillips Park programming

                                           iii)          Small Business grants $5,000

                                           iv)          Home Grants $20,000

                                             v)          Microgrants $30,000

                                           vi)          Community Gathering Infrastructure (4 Sisters) $35,000

                                         vii)          Signage was lowest interest from community survey - back burner

 

MOTION: The Board approves of Version 5 of the EPIC Budget, DI, MG, Approved

 

3)     Microgrant application - Cleaning Captain (Mary, David, Schuyler, LR, Nikolas and Karen)

a)     Draft contract for Cleaning Captain

                                              i)          Legal and Finance Department approve?

                                            ii)          Change to arbitration for litigation clause - list arbitration in document - from Mary

                                           iii)          Share with Cleaning Captains:

(a)   Participants will be well informed of risks involved in picking up trash

(b)   Expected to safely collect and dispose of trash and hazardous materials

(c)   Expecting that you’ll do due diligence in facilitating the clean ups

(d)   Put in contact with each other

(e)   Which blocks are getting cleaned

b)     Sent an email to both the Executive Committee and Legal and Finance Department - we have our first Cleaning Captain application!

                                              i)          Mary - update on contract for this?

                                            ii)          Question about paying youth (14-17 year olds) for this

(1)   Share funds, no contract with youth

(a)   due diligence in safety and health is concern

(2)   If doing the organizing and eliciting engagement can get paid

(a)   Informal payment to youth for

(b)   Legal adult to be on contract

(3)   Not paying 5 people to do one block

                                           iii)          Question about upping the hours

(1)   Have maximum of 12 hours/month on application

(2)   Had been planning to have this up and running in May, so do we want to up the hours to closer to 15 or 20 hours/month to be sure we are spending this money since we have someone that is interested in doing more hours?

(3)   18 hours/month

c)     SHRS interested in Cleaning Captain program as well. It would look a little different than what we had set up with the $21/hour payment.

                                              i)          Gracie said it would likely be about 5 participants per clean up event, every other week and one hour per clean up.

                                            ii)          The five people would get $20 gift cards for 1/2 hour of clean up. And they would like to do it for 3 months. Either Gracie or a participant would be the primary applicant and SHRS would help coordinate the clean ups.

(1)   Gracie more of organizing side of it

(2)   Gracie and participant sign contract and get the funds, they do what they would like with the funds

(3)   One designation of funds towards this

(4)   Helping organizing cleaning with other community members

(5)   $420/month

d)     Can board members receive microgrants?

                                              i)          Need disclosure - let full board know if board member applying

(1)   Document in minutes

(2)   Anything over $100 in email blast

                                            ii)          Board member can’t influence decision if applying for microgrant

                                           iii)          Financial limits?

                                           iv)          How many can a board member receive? One per year, one every other year?

(1)   As we go, maybe develop - may not have funds

                                             v)          Show that it was advertised

                                           vi)          Prioritize non board members

11:52   Adjourn