Board of Directors

Regular Meeting -- February 20, 2011

The Board of Directors held its regular monthly meeting at 2007 Bert Avenue, Austin, TX 78704, starting at 2:50 pm. The following directors (constituting a quorum of the full board) were present at the meeting: Vice President Tamara Vogt, Secretary Pam Chambers, President and Treasurer Kathy Lee (by phone). The following directors were absent: Penny Chambers. Robert McGarey (Executive Director), Laine Morales and Fritz Vogt were also present at the meeting.

Reading of Mission Statement and Approval of Minutes

The Mission Statement was read aloud at the beginning of the meeting. Minutes from the previous meeting were read aloud and approved.

Executive Director's Report

Online Classes. Bob talks about Online classes and the options available for the Center working with AHP. Bob said that he signed up for a class with IONS a month ago and they still can't get Bob onto the site to take the class. So online classes are complicated.

Finances. Bob talked to Sonny and the quarter ending in December was the best we've ever had. So things are improving. At the end of April Sonny thinks each charity will be getting $3,000 for the quarter. Additionally, we have new members, so this is picking up too. Also, Bob sold a manual wheelchair for $600 this week. And the mortgage has been refinanced with Pat Sconci for a monthly payment of $2300 (instead of $2500) and an interest rate of 6% (instead of 8%), and the balloon payment has been extended for 5 years, so that is all extremely good.

However, we are still hemorrhaging around $1,000 per month, so we really need to do something to improve our finances.

Volunteers. Justin is volunteering with GoodwheelChairs, repairing, cataloging and putting the chairs onto the web site.

New Business

First Item. Bob starts talking about all of the stuff he is having to do. Tamara asks him if there is any way that he could focus on the things that will make money. He talks about the things that come up constantly to take him away from the things he needs to do, such as the water leak that is costing the center $150 per month and is increasing our wastewater bill for the whole year.

Tamara commits to calling the City of Austin utilities to tell them about our leak and try to get some kind of dispensation from them, based on our usage last year. Also, she said her daughter's boyfriend can come over and look at the leak to see if he can fix it. Fritz said he would pay for it.

Then Tamara talked about marketing the workshops by doing a short video of Bob talking about his upcoming workshop, whichever it is, and putting this onto YouTube. She said we can then link this video to the Center's Facebook page so people can click on the link to YouTube and see what the workshop is all about. She says that she has often gone to look at a YouTube short to find out what something is going to be like.

Since there was no further business, the meeting adjourned at around 4:45 pm.

Minutes submitted by Pam Chambers, Secretary, February 20, 2011.