I          Owner Comment: 

· I just wanted to come in because I heard you were getting ready for your retreat. I had heard about a need for owner linkage for the upcoming retreat. After two years on the ORC I am wanting to narrow down what it means to be an owner of the co-op. I want to define what role an owner has in the decision-making process.
· I think there is a lack of understanding in owners about how much input they have in decision-making. I often hear that I don't have much say in things or I think that my voice isn't heard. I have been involved in two surveys now and I think that the issue of patronage dividends has not been addressed. There seemed to be pretty strong support for having dividends. I would like to see clarification on the policy regarding dividends. It seems that we haven't addressed a lot of the concerns that were brought up by the surveys. Possibly an education committee could help address these issues.
· Should we keep doing these surveys? I have heard from owners that they feel the surveys are a bit patronizing and that they only get lip service.
· I feel that the survey was not written in a way that produced good results. Our recommendation is that the external organization that does the staff survey also write the owner survey so that we can get the answers we want. I think that the survey can be a chance to link the Board with owners.
· If we are to take action based upon the results of the survey, we must insure that we have a broad based survey. Otherwise we would only be addressing the concerns of the few who chose to comment or complain. I also think that it is important to tell the participants of a survey that we listened to them and additionally, what we did to address their concerns.

III        Approval of Minutes:
· Consent agenda

VIII       Proposed Retreat Agenda

· The Executive committee took the comments from the past board meeting and thought about what would make a retreat successful with identified tasks for the coming year. Decided to focus on two topics: growth and board process. The whole packet will include more information, but this is the outline of what might be useful this upcoming year.
· Went over the proposed agenda items and how that fits with the Board's expectations for the weekend
· General agreement on the agenda. Discussed things that might fit in during the weekend. The packets will be sent out this week.

IX        Revised M-4

Last meeting we agreed to ten new L-statements. We now need a revised M-4, which is the calendar of when these statements will be reported on.

Motion 09-2006 (#2) Motion to accept revised M-4 as seen in Board Packet. Mark/Colin
Discussion:
Proposed amendment to move the Vision and Mission statement to be reported on in May
Motion 09-2006 (#2) Friendly amendment to the motion to move the vision & mission to May
Discussion:
Are the new members ready to get the vision & mission reports at the first meeting they attend? Agreed that it is useful for the Board to receive the reports and become familiar with them at the first meeting of the new board.
Motion 09-2006 (#2) Friendly amendment V&M May, Guiding Principles III & IV to August, and L-Statements as submitted in the Board Packet. Dave / Colin Motion Passes 9-0-0

It was proposed that the L statements be renumbered (not changed) so that the numbers correspond to the month in which they will be discussed. This will be done with the revision of M-4.

X        L-2 Customer Service and Internal Co-Op Relations

Comments:
· I like the interpretation parts that were included as part of the report.
· I also like this new report format. The interpretations are helpful. Supporting data would help to have a little more quantitative information.
o This year, as this is new, we haven't got the data gathering in place but we're going to be working on this now. This is our first attempt at working with the new report format.
· On page 33, #4 on safe & pleasant shopping experience, what do we use to gauge this? I think there are experts in designed environment that might be used to inform us.
o This one is hard to quantify, as it's everyone's personal taste.
· I know from being in design school who is qualified to come in and, with fresh eyes, make a professional assessment.
o This sort of thing is a good idea to give us data. We need to balance how often we can afford to have someone come in with wanting to collect data.
· It would be useful to even have the citations of the books and articles you use as reference to make your decisions.

Motion 09-2006 (#4) Motion to accept L-2 report. Dave / Toni Motion passes 9-0-0

XI        Review L-2

Comments:
· #6 seems redundant in this statement. It was originally in the growth statement and has a different feel here. It seems like it could stay here, if context is changed to change the growth aspect.

Toni will revise L-2 statement #6 and will submit as an agenda item in October.

XII        Preview L-9 (Michele's latest L revisions)

· On #4, if you're faced with a really tight budget, how do you prioritize what needs to be done?