PLAIN Meeting Minutes
April 1, 2010
The meeting was called to order at 7:49 p.m. by Gwyneth Butera.
Attendees: Gwyneth Butera, President; Lalah Manly, Vice President; Mary Stuckey, Treasurer; Linda Orgain, Secretary; Matt Pulsts, and James Schwarzlose.
Minutes accepted with changes.
Treasurer’s Report. Mary Stuckey provided the Treasurer’s Report, which showed a positive balance of $4,240.15.
Mary gave the materials for the 509(a)2 and is still trying to identify an accountant. Linda will work with Gwyneth on selecting an accountant. We need someone to review past 6 years and year by year. We also need assistance with completing the IRS application.
Easter Activities. Lalah is coordinating the Easter Egg Hunt, which will be held this Saturday, April 3. We have 10 volunteer Easter bunnies for this Saturday. Gwyneth will purchase the prizes. Mary will check with Nicky Rosenbluth about the number of prizes needed. She said we would need first and second prizes for the children age 5 year and under, and a couple of prizes for children age 6 and older. There is a “Prize egg” and a prize for the child who collects the most eggs on each side. Gwyneth has already purchased 5
presents and has 50 goody bags.
Volunteers helping with the morning’s activities will meeting at the Beach House at 7 a.m. Lalah will have
coffee and Allison is bringing muffins.
Citywide Yard Sale. The Yard Sale will be held on Saturday, April 17. Needed are signs, forms and advertising. Faye will take forms to people who wish to participate. There was discussion about advertising for the sale. It was recommended that we advertise on Craig’s list and the Atlanta Journal Constitute Community Events Calendar. Linda volunteered to write and place the ads. She will also check on the cost of helium balloons and purchase balloons for participants. There was discussion about other ways to indicate streets where there are participating households. James will put signs up on Rockbridge. Linda will bring Yard Sale forms to next weekend’s Pancake Breakfast. Gwyneth has some original signs from 2 years ago.
Welcome Packet. Greg Creech is currently revising the Welcome Packet. Faye said the Neighborhood Watch sheets also are being updated.
General Membership Meeting. June is the annual membership meeting and election of new officers. Lalah wrote an article for this month’s PLAINTalk to encourage PLAIN members to consider a leadership role, or other volunteer opportunities. Lalah provided the current active member list.
The membership list was reviewed and there was a discussion of the need for future volunteers and leadership. There is a critical need for leadership because most of the current board has been serving in their positions for 3 years. Linda suggests approaching people and asking them to consider volunteering to help with small tasks at individual events. Matt suggests approaching people at an event, in person.
Matt says that a lot of work done at meetings can be done via e-mail. Gwyneth says once-a-quarter face-to-face meetings are probably all that is needed to coordinate PLAIN’s activities.
Pancake Breakfast. There is a need for a crew for May. Faye says Neighborhood Watch has not cooked yet. Other groups that could be invited to cook include the Tree Board and the Pine Lake Arts Council. The leadership will ask organizations to consider volunteering to cook an upcoming breakfast.
Future Meeting Topics.
In general, there was a feeling among this evening’s attendees that people in Pine Lake are attending many meetings and are tired of some of these. Faye suggests that some groups could hold their meetings sequentially on one night, since there is a lot of overlap in membership. Each group’s meeting could take about 30 minutes.
PLAIN’s May meeting will include a discussion of nominations for the leadership positions. A topic for a future meeting includes bat houses for mosquito control – Diane Johnson has volunteered to coordinate this discussion.
The June meeting is the membership meeting and annual elections of officers. However, at this point, there are no candidates for any of the leadership positions. Several have held their position for three years and would like to step down. Faye thought that perhaps more people might attend if we had activities for children during the same time as the PLAIN meeting.
However, other members thought that the time of the meeting was too late for this. James said that he is a big fan of chaos theory. Chaos precedes community, and sometimes an organization must let things deteriorate and trust that a new community will arise out of the chaos. The community will self organize. Linda suggests putting together a schedule for events for the year, and having volunteers select their projects in advance. Matt says it could be intimidating if everyone is looking at all of the projects throughout the year. However, he noted that other organizations do what Linda suggested. Faye suggests sending out form letter e-mails to the membership to request some assistance. She said it needed to be emphasized that PLAIN is going to cease to exist unless we get some more participation.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:35 pm.
The next meeting will be held on Thursday, May 6, at 7:30 p.m. at the Clubhouse.