Minutes of the Board of Director's Meeting Tucson Community Meditation Center

April 1, 2008, 5:30 pm

Board members present:  Blake Ashley, Blake Barton, Lhasha Tizer, Debra Raeber, Chuong Tran, Frank Tomizuka, Linda Bacon

Audience members:  Wanda Poindexter, Peter Axelrod

The minutes from the last meeting, March 4^th, were approved.

There was no financial report.

Call to the audience:  Wanda asks if the board is going to take care of sending out the slate of nominations that the nominating committee has prepared.  Debra will send them out after consulting with Wanda.

Blake A. brought up the fact that we have 8 nominations for Board of Directors.  There are 9 seats on the board.  It was discussed whether we should amend the bylaws to lower the number of the seats on the board to 8.  It was decided to leave the number of seats at 9 and possibly add one more person to the board during the next year.

Approval of Allan Cooper to teach at TCMC:  Blake Barton knows Allan Cooper and has asked the board to approve him to teach sometime in the future at TCMC.  He has been recommended by Joseph Goldstein and others.  He lives in Silver City, NM and could possibly fill in once in awhile for Culadasa or possibly teach a weekend workshop.  Lhasha thinks we should invite him to come teach and see how people respond to his teachings.  A motion was made and passed that we invite Allan Cooper to come to TCMC to teach.

Teacher Advisory Committee:  Lhasha had originally recommended that TCMC consider having a committee made up of teachers to help direct TCMC's future.  She saw it as a sort of check and balance to have some guidance from teachers.  She is going to think about how she sees this working at TCMC.

Decorating the Center:  Lhasha thinks we should cover the fireplace area at the far end of the meditation hall.  Linda Bacon and Pam Ballingham are also interested in working on the interior of the center.   A motion was made and passed that we establish an interior decorating committee to come up with ideas to present to the board.

Joseph's proposal for guided meditations on-line:  Joseph, a member, wants to create a website that makes recorded guided meditations available, and also live guided meditations.  People can listen to them for free, but there would be a charge to download them.  The money received from the downloads would be split between TCMC and an orphanage in India where Joseph's sister works.  The board is interested in being supportive of this idea but we would like to meet with him and also see the website. 

Classifying TCMC events:  A motion was made and passed that we table this discussion until our next meeting.  Debra will redistribute the proposal that Blake A. made a while back.

Yard Sale:  Linda Bacon, our calendar manager, will take a look at the calendar and choose a Saturday sometime next fall. 

Monday night class:  Blake A. mentioned that the Monday night class has been quite full, in fact some people have had to be turned away due to lack of space.  He is thinking that we may want to add a second class that evening, having the first class run from 6:30 - 7:15 and then a second class beginning at 7:30 until 8:15.  Frank mentions that Tuesday evening is also flexible.  Lhasha  thinks that Terry may be interested in teaching a class one evening also.  Blake A. asked the board to approve his idea of splitting the Monday evening class into two classes if he needs to.  A motion was made and approved that Blake A. can break the Monday evening class into two classes if it seems to be necessary to accommodate everyone.

Blake A. asked the board if we would like him to make a suggestion box to have at the center.  He will put one together and ask us if we like it.

This will be Lhasha's last board meeting and she said that she wanted all of us to know that she wishes us the best in our future endeavors at TCMC.  We all thanked her very much for the many years she has been on the board.

The meeting was adjourned at 6:25 pm.