JOINT TASK FORCE (JTF) MEETS

You will recall that the two Districts – NH/VT and Northeast – will vote this coming Spring on whether to consolidate into one District.  We have already hired a shared District Executive (Rev. Mary Higgins) and Small Church Specialist (Rev. Karen Brammer) and they are hard at work meeting people in both Districts and learning about us.  This past April, we authorized sharing an RE person.  And, the committees from both Districts are meeting and talking about how they might coordinate their efforts.  A joint Fall conference is planned to be held next month at Purity Springs in E. Madison, NH. (See related article.)

 

Your Joint Task Force met last week to outline their agenda for this year.  Rev. Bill DeWolfe has resigned as co-Chair, and we decided that we now know each other well enough that co-chairs are not necessary.  John Sanders of Nashua, NH who has been serving as one of the co-chairs was elected Chair.  Roger Comstock of Yarmouth, ME will continue as Treasurer.  In the absence of some of our members, decisions were deferred on choosing a Secretary and a Communicator.

 

Hiring a Life Span RE Specialist

Sandra Greenfield, DRE in Portsmouth, NH joined us for this discussion.  We will follow a process similar to the one used this past Spring to hire our first two staff persons.   We hope to be able to introduce our new RE Specialist to District leaders at our Annual Meetings next Spring.

 

District Structure

During the next several months, both the JTF and the new staff will be canvassing our members for their ideas on how the new District might work .  The next task for the JTF is to evaluate possible organization structures for the new District in the light of this gathered information and to make a recommendation to our two boards in advance of the 2007 Annual Meetings.  Should the two meetings vote there to consolidate, we would then be in a position to recommend how we should be organized.  Should we consolidate, the resulting new District would be one of the larger Districts in the UUA in terms of number of societies, but not in terms of number of members or in geographic size.  For the structure, we need to consider board size and functioning, relation of the District’s committees to the board, geography, travel distances, the present cultures of the two Districts, and politics in the three States the district would encompass.  One of our members will bring a list of possibilities to our next meeting.

 

The transition

Once we have arrived at a recommended structure, we will then consider how to get there from our present organization(s).  This will involve naming several committees to work during the 2007-08 year.  These would certainly include a nominating committee, a by-laws committee, a budgeting committee (and perhaps others) so that at the 2008 meeting delegates from the three states can approve by-laws for the new District, elect officers, and pass a budget.  If the vote is positive, we also plan to initiate a contest to name the new District and its newsletter and to create a new logo (you can be thinking about ideas.)  Meanwhile, the various committees will continue to work on how they might function together, and several associated organizations such as the UUMA will look at how they will work.   

 

We will try to keep you posted on developments as they happen.