Executive Board Meeting – May 5, 2022

Present: Mary Cook, Ellen Caswell, Carol Macknis, Dylan Burns, Judy Blumenthal.

Elections.

The June upcoming NCPCA elections were discussed. Ellen won’t be running again for Vice President due to heath issues but is willing to help in a limited capacity, possibly as an Executive Board member. Dylan won’t be running again for Secretary due to the nature of his job which makes it very difficult to be as active as he really believes he should be. Carol will be willing to run again for Treasurer as she has learned a lot and is still learning. Carol has been documenting things that are part of the Treasurer’s job which either had little documentation or no documentation at all. Mary said she has mixed feelings about running again for President. She has found the organization of civic association presidents, to which she belongs, is starting to show promise on various issues that are of concern to NCPCA. There may not be anyone else running for president and Mary is willing to run for one more year.

Judy said she would be interested in continuing as an Exec Board member.

Suggestions about other NCPCA members who might be candidates for the Vice President and Secretary positions or just Executive Board members were Alaina Pitt, Carissa Janis, and Stephanie Butler.

Mary asked if folks felt there was a need for a Nominating Committee. The primary function would be to handle the use of Election Buddy if needed. Everyone agreed a Nominating Committee isn’t needed. Ellen will look into Election Buddy.

Dues Payment via the Website Update.

Carol reported the paid website effort has been done with a lot of thanks to Councilmember Kabir who spent a lot of time working on this. We’ll be using bluehost (bluehost.com) as the platform but still use the WordPress software for website updates. Folks can check out the new website now accessible via the same domain name as before: myncpca.org. Carol said there remains some “clean-up” but it’s more cosmetic than functional in nature. An example is the NCPCA postal address and email address are at the bottom of the items listed on the right side of each webpage. That needs to be moved to the top of the list of items. There are also a lot of what Carol sees as unnecessary blank lines and she’ll look to remove the blank lines. There’s no longer a need for the $13/year domain mapping fee. The cost for the paid website is just a little more than $35/year. There is also a fee for each transaction. Carol will be meeting with Alaina Pitt this weekend to work on the payment of dues process. The goal is to have it ready so Carol can send out an email by the end of next week. Carol and Alaina have discussed the use of PayPal vs. Stripe vs. other similar processes. They decided to use using Stripe because of its close relation with WordPress.

Possible Picnic in the June/July Time Frame.

Mary expressed the desire to have a member picnic in the June/July time frame. This was discussed and everyone felt it was a good idea. Will have to get volunteers to organize and work on this.

Status of Bylaws Update Effort.

Ellen stated she has had to drop out of working on this due to health problems. Carol and Carissa will be working on it with the goal to have something ready for initial Exec Board review in early fall. The intent is to have a secondary document which will point out where changes from the current Bylaws have been made. Ellen has offered to help with getting this. Most of the changes deal with syntax or semantics. The biggest area of change deals with the officer functions.

Arrangements for a 30 Minute NCPCA May Meeting Right After the M-NCPPC Presentation on a North College Park Community Center.

Mary stated the M-NCPPC person she’s been talking with assured her there will be at least 30 minutes at the end of the Community Center discussion available for the May NCPCA meeting. Mary will be talking to the person about this.

Meeting Minutes: February, March, and April.

Dylan said the February meeting minutes were never approved. He plans to have the minutes for February, March, and April sent to Mary, Carol, and Ellen by next Tuesday.

Setting NCPCA Priorities.

Mary mentioned there needs to be another meeting on setting NCPCA priorities – a follow up to the effort from the March meeting. Mary hopes to get this scheduled at an NCPCA meeting soon.

Maryland State District 21 Update.

Mary reported she is anticipating the Maryland State District 21 Delegation asking to come to a meeting and provide an update on the Maryland General Assembly session which just ended. This might be something for the June meeting. The issue is “how much time it will take”. It was suggested we get something from them ahead of time summarizing their efforts and have time for questions vice listening to their presentation. This may or may not work out.

Minutes written by Carol Macknis, NCPCA Treasurer.