STANDARD BUSINESS:
Announcements & Affirmations: none
Calendar and Timeline: The next meeting will be May 1st at 12:00pm.

SUBMITTED AGENDA ITEMS:

Review "Talk with the Board" Comments
· Esther received comments from almost all of the Board members who participated. Donna will compile the results and bring them to the next Board meeting.
o This will be included in the ORC notebook so future committees can make year-to-year.
o Additionally, Esther will request comments and suggestions from Board members on how to improve this event if it was to be done in the future.
· Discussed the possibility of including a discussion of these results at the annual Owner Meeting.
o Will review the itinerary to see if this can be included.

Review ORC Calendar Proposal
· Donna prepared a rough draft of the ORC calendar.
o Something we may want to discuss in conjunction with preparing this calendar is whether we should limit how long we should allow owners to serve on the committee.
o That should probably be discussed at a future time.
· It would be prudent to add something about resolving conflict with owners.
o "This committee is the opportunity for owners with issues concerning the store and its management to seek information and resolution."
· In this vein, should we have ORC members periodically attend the "Talk with the Board" discussions?
o Owners may be more likely to approach committee members more openly than board members.
o It does seem that we should develop some kind of 'path to the board', facilitated by this committee.
o If we do go in this direction, who would be running this event and what should it be called?
§ I think we could still call it "Talk with the Board".
o The beginning of the month seems to have heavy customer counts and is also not as busy for the Board.
· Donna will draft a schedule including a variety of days of the week, alternating between Board and committee members.
o Esther will draft an agenda item to send to the Executive committee.
· We can take the dinners off the calendar and include these new "talk" events.
· One item we should add is discussing and planning the next year's budget; maybe start in June. Finalizing and submitting, maybe in August. Needs to be completed before September.
· Feb, review owner packet questions. March, finish and submit any info for the owner packet.
o We actually have this in October. Maybe March could be a final deadline.
· December: we could add a review of the calendar.
· In April: add a review the effectiveness of our outreach events.
· Every month, work on board assigned tasks.
· April: add a review and update of the ORC notebook. Doesn't necessarily have to be in April, but may be good with new Board coming in.
· The committee reviewed the draft and made appropriate changes and additions.
· Sept: review the candidate ads in the Thymes; make suggestions.
· Candidate forum? It has been tried but no one came. Maybe we could squeeze in a review of this somewhere.
o We should definitely develop this idea in future discussions.
· Donation applications and vote. Do we want to look at the application? We could use help recruiting. These could be August items. Recruitment should go back to June or July.
· October. Board retreat items.
o Begin talking about Ballot questions.
· November will continue these items.
· Maybe put in a brainstorm for outreach events in one of the months that looks thin.

Review Committee Spending
· Discussed the cost to benefit ratio of the board-owner dinners versus the "Talk with the Board" event.
o The idea has been brought up at the Board meeting. The consensus seemed to be that the dinners would not be missed.
o We did have trouble getting Board members to the most recent Friday.
o We could look at a rotating schedule that might reach a more diverse group of owners; also including the north store.
o The budget for the dinners last year was around $1600. These in-store talks would probably only cost $160 if they were done monthly.
· Discussed whether $750 seems high for the Owner Meeting.
o There are a lot of intangible overhead items that go into the Owner Meeting.
o Since we are holding it here and Donna will be giving the presentation, we probably will not use the full $750.

Meeting adjourned: 1:30pm