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

May 6, 2008

Board Members Present:  Blake Ashley, Blake Barton, Linda Bacon, Chuong Tran, Debra Raeber

The minutes from the board meeting April 1, 2008, the annual meeting April 26, 2008, and the board meeting on April 26, 2008 were approved.

There was no financial report.

Call to the audience:  Alexius Greenwood, a member, offered to help us with installing a water harvesting system at the center. 

Lynda Gordon sent us an email about TCMC participating in Wave 1, a global healing event that takes place on June 18^th from 7 - 8 pm.  Possibly TCMC could make a poster and Lynda thought it would be nice if we had a presence there.

Wanda Poindexter had also sent the board an email with several items on it.  The first item asked the board to look for a volunteer and possibly an intern from the U of A to create an organized archive of TCMC materials.  Blake A. suggested sending out an email to ask members to volunteer.  It was decided to include it in the May enewsletter.  A motion was made and passed that we move forward with this suggestion about finding someone to organize the TCMC archives.

Wanda's second suggestion was to look for an intern who might be interested in doing some grant writing for TCMC.  The board approved a motion that we ask Wanda to go forward with checking on finding someone to do grant writing for TCMC.

Wanda's last suggestion was that the nominating committee work on getting more TCMC members involved in committees so that in the future we will have more people to draw on for future board openings.  The board approved a motion that we ask the nominating committee to ask people to volunteer to be on committees.

Website proposal:  Joseph, a member, came to the meeting to share his ideas with the board about sharing meditation on his website, guidedmindfulmeditation.com.  He would like to use guided meditations from TCMC on his website.  People would be able to listen to the guided meditations for free and would be asked to purchase them if they want a high quality upload to their computer.  The meditations would all be Vipassana.  The funds raised would go half to TCMC and half to a non-profit that his sister has started.  Joseph would also promote TCMC events on his website.

Blake A. would like the board to put further discussion about this topic on our next agenda.

Culadasa ceremony: Several members who regularly attend Culadasa's class have requested taking precepts on May 15^th after the class.  A motion was made and passed that the board has no objection to members having this Buddhist ceremony performed after the class.

Facility Maintenance:  Ying is going to be away for a month and a half this summer, and would like to turn the facility manager job over to someone else.  He asks that someone take over cleaning the bathrooms, taking out the trash and generally managing others to help with facility maintenance.  He is leaving on May 21^st.  It was decided to put a request in the May enewsletter asking for a new Volunteer Facilities manager beginning in June.  We need to establish a Facility Maintenance Committee to help with the chores.  Ying will make up a list of chores to give to the sit leaders to ask for help from members. 

Water harvesting/ Vegetable gardening:  Linda Bacon spoke about the possibility of our growing herbs and vegetables in the back garden of the center.  Linda is going to do some planning and come back to the board with some suggestions.

The meeting was adjourned at 6:30pm.