STANDARD BUSINESS:
Owner Comment: None
Announcements & Affirmations: Dave has taken over as Treasurer and Chair of the Finance committee as Toni will be taking on the role of Vice President.
Calendar and Timeline: The next meeting will be June 6th at 5:00pm.

SUBMITTED AGENDA ITEMS:

Review of March Financial Statement
Finance Manager Kevin Oder presented the March financial statements.
· Commissary expenses continue to exceed budget.
o A consultant from NCGA, Chris Ryding, came last week to help fix the problems in the kitchen/deli operation. He listed several areas, including cost of goods and labor, for us to focus on and will be providing a detailed report in the coming weeks.
· Sales have slowed slightly in the month of April, especially at the South Store.
o Owner sales days continue to be very successful.

New Board member training process
· Marty Schulz has been invited to the May Board meeting to train our new Board members how to read financial statements.

Non-ops Budgeting Proposal
Kevin prepared a report generalizing the effects of our current non-ops budgeting system and the potential benefits that could come from changing our system.
· When comparing the non-ops budgeting to the net operations income it showed that the relationship fluctuated greatly and also deviated significantly from budget.
· The report also showed what the numbers would have looked like if we had based non-ops budgeting on the operations earnings of the prior year rather than the sales of the current year.
o Though it would not provide great stability to any given year, a stabilization trend would begin to take effect.
· The various non-ops expenses were classified as either discretionary or necessary to better show how much latitude there actually is in the non-ops budget.
· There are several unanswered questions that still need to be worked out. Individual committee members will review the numbers and talk about their findings at the next meeting.
· Tied into any potential outreach savings plan is the dividend discussion. We will continue to talk about how dividends figure into this outreach discussion.
o Topics that Kevin will focus on for future discussions: what constitutes necessary business expenses and reasonable reserves, do only active owners generate patronage, and preferred shares possibilities.

Other Items
Discussed whether the Spectrum external audit needs to be sent to every Board member.
· We will look to see what was done last year and possibly only send the packet to those Board members who request it.

Discussed the need for a finance committee in a policy governance system.
· One point that was made at the recent training was that a Board exists to hold the GM accountable not to be an informed body. This committee mainly acts in an information-gathering role.

Meeting adjourned: 6:35pm