February 3, 2015

[CoNCA Admin]

Meeting of CoNCA Board of Directors
Tuesday 2/3/2015
Jericho, New York

In attendance:  Phil Franco, Claudia Borecky, Paul Franco, Paul Nehrich, Joan Ortiz, Sandra D'Arcangelo, Bradley Schnur

Meeting was called to order by CoNCA President Phil Franco at 7:30pm.  The following items were discussed:

1.  By-Laws Review... The Board members in attendance conducted an annual review of the by-laws.  Article 7 states that dues cover the calendar year and that the Board has the discretion to determine the amount of Dues.  It was discussed that for FY 2015 the dues for a member should increase to $5.  There was also a question as to whether membership needs to be renewed (with new dues paid) annually or whether once a member civic joins CoNCA is it a lifetime membership.  This matter will be further discussed at the March Board meeting (and prior to the annual membership meeting).


2. The Board discussed the recent proposal to open a OTB sponsored VLT parlor at the former Fortunoff site in Westbury.  There was discussion as to determining to what extent will CoNCA become involved with this issue. The Board agreed that for the time being CoNCA will remain a resource to provide information on the pros and cons of a VLT parlor in Nassau.  The website will be updated as needed.

3.  Website.  The Board discussed proposed updates to the www.concali.org website.  It was discussed that the renewal for the URL and website builder was coming up and that funds would be needed to maintain the site (approximately $100).  

4.  Elections.  The Board discussed the annual elections.  It was mentioned that in order to get more civic groups interested in CoNCA, we need to reiterate that CoNCA is non-partisan and we need to also publish a "year in review" piece to show civics that CoNCA is active, even behind the scenes.  It was suggested and those in attendance agreed that the election meeting needs to be tied into an interesting general meeting in order to ensure proper attendance.  With respect to the elections, as stated above, the Board will continue to examine whether payment of dues for a prior year allows for automatic future membership.  A number of Board members had differing opinions on this issue.

5.  Meeting Topics.  A suggestion for a future meeting "Using Social Media" was introduced.  CoNCA would invite leaders of recent social media movements (e.g. Casino/School Zone Cameras) to discuss how using social media helped promote the message.  We will attempt to schedule this meeting for late March or early April 2015.

6.  Board Member Communications.  Finally, the Board addressed communications with one another and how to reduce the number of emails on a topic.


Meeting was adjourned at 9:45pm.

[Rich]

1. Dues designed as ANNUAL. The more germane question is whether and to what extent we wish to enforce the annual payment membership dues. First, its not going to happed until we sent a notice to all members that their membership dues are due by (deadline). Secondly, I'm inclined to say that its far more important for our efforts to be recruiting member civics (filling vacant directors). I view the minimal dues of $1 will make that objective easier to achieve -even if it means at each meeting we have a donation jar to scrape up the $100 bucks we need to get us through another year of web-expenses. I prefer that approach over increasing annual dues.