STANDARD BUSINESS:
Announcements & Affirmations: none
Calendar and Timeline: The next meeting will be March 6th at 12:00pm.

SUBMITTED AGENDA ITEMS:

ORC Work Plan
· Esther will review the ORC charter and begin compiling a workbook with a calendar that details the various responsibilities of the committee.
o Will also talk to Dave Hockman-Wert to see if he knows of previous documents that may be beneficial to include in the workbook.
Review Dates for Quarterly Owner Dinner with the Board
· Discussed whether to provide dinner.
o Decided that dessert would be a better option.
· The date we prefer is Tuesday May 22nd, but we will reserve the 23rd as a possible backup.
· Discussed possible titles for the featured discussion.
o The topic discussed at the previous meeting was price comparison.
§ Donna came across an article that may be a good focal point for the discussion.
o Suggested using 'The True Cost of Food.'
§ There is a movie of the same name; a cartoon that shows a family shopping at a box store compared with locally purchased items.
o Esther will send submit this to the board along with the dates, as two separate agenda items.

Discuss February 20 Dinner with the Board and Speaker
· It will not work to have Harry McCormick speak at this meeting.
· A suggested idea was to have someone speak about our winter grown foods.
o Gathering Together has been contacted and they will be catering the dinner, and in addition, John Eveland will speak.
· Invitations have already been sent out.
o The meeting begins at 5:45pm.
· Discussed options for setting up the dinner.
o Mel Braverman leaves at 1:00pm, so Donna will be able to help with setup. She will start setting up around five.
o Esther will come at five to assist with setup.
o Donna will talk to GTF about having them set up.
· Discussed who would be available to act as a greeter.
o Jill will be able to attend.
o Dave will not be able to be there.
o Esther will email Mark and see if he can attend.
· Rivka is going to try to make set conversation starters to encourage the board that if they see owners not engaged in conversation, to talk with them
· We will provide nametags that can be filled out at the door for both owners and

Growth Flyer
· There were very few comments from the board.
o They do not need to see it again before it is mailed to owners.
· Discussed options for printing and folding the flyers.
o If we have enough, we could just send this to Cascade and they could print it and mail it for us as well.
o We would like to keep track of costs for this year and compare them to previous years'.
§ Josh will get a record of board spending over the last few years as well as the budget for this year.
§ If there is time, we will review this at the next meeting.
o Will look into color printing and having someone fold the flyers.
· Donna and Rivka will decide on the best option for printing and folding and let the committee know.

Questions for the Ballot
· The questions under discussion will be accompanying the ballot.
· Discussed the phrasing of the questions and how they should be presented.
o This is just a draft. The committee should decide if we even want to put this information out.
o The layout is solid. Nothing needs to be excluded, however we should only include budgeted dollars.
o We should pose a question such as, what are the top three programs you would eliminate. This way we could tabulate our results.
o What if we get overwhelming response that outreach programs should be cut? How will we respond to it?
§ We wont get that response. We have asked these questions before and we know what to expect.
o Part of the information should be, we just got business of the year, and this is a big part of why.
o We should avoid aggravating owners by asking them questions and then not doing anything about it.
o Perhaps we could give them a blank with a dollar sign to represent how much they would remove from the outreach budget. Then they could be given a few options of things to cut and they could designate how they want the deductions to be spread out. We should give them a just a few options to simplify tabulation.
§ This way we could easily rank the options.
§ This will probably still come out evenly across the board. Since there is no clear conclusion, we would then cut nothing, or maybe part of all programs.
o We want to make it clear what will happen as a result of this survey.
o The survey will be in the hands of owners by April 1st.
o We could have a sample ballot at the stores to let owners see what issues are up for vote.
o The idea of electronic surveys is good. They would save us a lot of time tabulating results.
§ We could then provide a computer in the store that owners could use to fill out the survey.
§ We could also send email reminders to owners and link the survey to our website.
§ Rivka will look into pricing for e-surveys.
o We don't have time to wait until the next ORC meeting. We need to make a decision now. Maybe we should focus on the questions and if time allows, come back to the method.
o Do we want this many questions? Maybe we should cut the fourth question.
o The crossover idea is still a little underdeveloped so it should probably be nixed.
o Maybe we should just do number one, but expand upon it a little.
§ We should make mention of the business of the year award.
o We should show how much dividend could have been earned if a certain amount was cut in 2006.
§ Perhaps we could allow them to put in percentages that they would cut from each program.
o This is information that will be shared with the board: when I spoke with our banker, he questioned why we are spending so much money on these outreach programs. Because we are giving away so much money, our interest rate has been increased. Our spending puts us in a higher risk category.
§ The suggestion was to cut the spending by a third and then put that third into a savings account that could then be used to pay future outreach programs.
§ This may not be legal for cooperatives. We would need to investigate this.
o We should add an explanatory sentence prior to the sentences about decreasing, such as, 'I would / want to reduce outreach dollars in order to receive a patronage dividend.'
o Then we put the breakdown of the programs.
§ It should be decisions of whether to cut, not reduce. These programs are at specific operational levels.
o Make sure that this says it is going to the board for consideration.
o It is important that we keep this as detailed as possible. It will allow us to make better decisions about what to cut and what to keep.
§ We should order it by amount.
§ We could also put three rankings for each category: lo, med, hi priorities.
· Donna will take all these suggestions and compile the questionnaire. Esther will send this to exec as an agenda item.

Meeting adjourned: 1:35pm