Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation

Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation

Board Meeting Minutes

January 26th, 2016

6:00 PM

Board: John Young, Christina Kovach, Book Chrobak, David Martin, John Jenkins, Larry Avila, Sue Allen

Staff: Jeff Verespej

Guests: John G. Lynch, Alice Ratka, Dr. Jim Campbell and Chris Kuhar.

The meeting was called to order at 6:05 PM

John Young opened meeting with introductions and updates.

Sean McGrane and John Young will have a Governance meeting next week. Each Committee needs to submit a policy and procedures manual to the Governance committee.

Approval is requested for December 2015 Board Minutes.It was approved without objection.

Treasurer's Report was presented. It was approved without objection. John Jenkins would like to know why there is a $700 difference for the garden committee fund. It will be reviewed.

Book met with Jayme last week and discussed having a Real Estate committee meeting within the next month or two. As of now the process for purchasing houses will remain the same. The committee is also working on their policy and procedures manual.

“We Buy Houses” signs that are on the street corners of the main intersections in Old Brooklyn need to be removed.

John G. Lynch gave a 60 minute presentation on the preliminary strategic plan. John talked about the updates that were made to the plan and asked for any additional content that the board wants to see in the plan. He discussed several topics: Adapt, Lead, Grow are the 3 main themes that will appear throughout the plan, “20/20 Foresight,” success inquires, and strategic objectives. There will be three different types of plans. The public plan will be about 4 pages, the board plan will be more in depth and the staff plan will be more of a detailed work plan.Larry Avila suggested page numbers and a table of contents. John Jenkins suggested “footnotes” in the document. David Martin suggested an elevator pitch speech, half page executive summary. Lastly, John Lynch discussed Work Functions: Co-training and developing staff members on residential and commercial functions, greater focus on “selling” the neighborhood to businesses and developers, and more internal and external communications.

Board and staff retreat will be in March. There was an email sent out by Jeff requesting available dates,3/12, 3/19 or 3/22. Board meeting will be included in the retreat, plan for about 4 hours. Agenda topics: Team/staff building exercise, exercise on what our roles are and a membership exercise.

Jeff Verespej went over a few items from the Executive Directors Report:

• Graffiti guy was caught.
• Broadview Bend- Jeff will be coming to board soon for approvals on lending for the project.Director of Economic Development: confirmed full support of project for 250k. Architect is completing drawings and will start bids soon. Dollar Bank needs application for lending purpose; they also would like OBCDC cash deposits to be moved to Dollar Bank. Jeff was approved by Executive Committee to move forward with submitting documents to Dollar Bank to move towards closing. Ex: financial bids, construction costs, and drawings. Jeff will bring the terms and conditions of the loan to the February board meeting for approval.Closing would be in March or April if approved by board.
• Old Brooklyn News- The news needs to be more in line with the Old Brooklyn CDC. Starting in July there will be a change to the newspaper. It will be sent out quarterly to every resident and the directory will be included in the Old Brooklyn News. It will be more like a magazine in a vertical print. Paid advertisements will still be a part of it. Editorial control to staff and will not be contracted out.

New Business-

• Ben Franklin Garden will be having their Fundraiser at The Venue Bistro and Wine Bar in Parma Hts. on April 23rd from 6-9PM.
• Garden hours will be changed on Sundays from 11:00AM-4:00PM to 9:00AM-4:00PM. No equipment to be used before 11:00AM. Board approved change of hours.

No Executive Session.

Next Board meeting will be held on February 23rd, 2016 at 6:00 PM. Topics to be discussed and approved on: Strategic Plan and Broadview Bend.

Meeting adjourned at 8:10 PM.