Meeting of the Rondout Valley Business Association Board of Directors Thursday February 4, 2010, 7:30am at Friends & Family II.

In attendance: Richard Travers, Carl Pezzino, Pam Kimmerling-Hoveling, Ben Shor, Rocco Pucino, Dan Gagnon, Denise McCarrol, Laurel Sweeney, Cindy Sweeney

Not present: Tim Sweeney, Ev Mann, Eric Stewart, Dan Johnson

Meeting convened at 7:30

Motion made by Carl to adopt the minutes of January 2010 board meeting. The motion was seconded by Dan and unanimously approved.

1. Website update: Richard presented. According to recent conversations with Cornerstone the website is scheduled to be finished at the end of this week.

2. Membership Meeting 2-11-2010: The next membership meeting will be a mixer and will be held at the High Falls Café. The agenda for this meeting will include the election of Board members. Up for re-election are: Laurel, Dan G., Pam and Dan J. The membership will also be asked to vote on the by-law changes. Brief discussion followed regarding the use of electronic voting. Dan G. felt the current method and time frame of holding a vote at two consecutive meetings was an appropriate system. There was general consensus regarding this viewpoint. A motion was made by Dan G. to accept the by-laws as written and seconded by Rocco and unanimously passed. 3. March Breakfast Meeting 3-11-2010: Steve Kelley, CEO of Ellenville Hospital will be the guest speaker. Richard requested of Dan G. to inquire if the event could be held at Ivan’s Restaurant. Brief discussion was held regarding the merits of Ellenville Hospital as a presenter.

4. Workshops: Discussion on this subject began when Cindy brought a request from Doug Motel, local business owner, to the Board. Doug requested an opportunity to make a presentation to the membership regarding his services as consultant. The initial conversation was centered on members vs. non-members as speakers. Considerable discussion was had on the subject but no clear consensus was found. Ben strongly expressed his opinion that his initial vision for the workshop series was that it be an opportunity for the membership specifically and that inviting a non-member would not be in keeping with that ideal. Many of the other Board members felt that if a subject were relevant enough and not available within the membership that the benefit would outweigh the negative. Discussion then turned to defining what the workshop idea would look like. Several ideas were explored. Two prominent concepts were, a full day of business development workshops & a multi week series featuring a different topic each week. Carl made a point regarding the RVCSD plan to bring BOCES based adult education courses to the RV High School campus. Brief discussion followed regarding the possibility of partnering with BOCES to offer these courses to the membership. Ben again expressed his desire to remain with his initial concept of making the workshops for members and by members only. Richard closed the discussion by suggesting that Ben write a detailed description of his plan and submit it to the Board for review and discussion. This discussion prompted Richard to suggest that the new business plan should include creation of a format for submission of ideas to the Board.

5. Other: Ben opened by stating that he had done research in bulk emailing. This was in response to the marketing idea presented by Tim at the BOD annual meeting. The idea would partner RVBA with member businesses in an email marketing program. Board discussion was held regarding the ethics of bulk emails. All present agreed that an ‘opt out’ would be a necessary part of the mailers. It was generally agreed that the program would offer a benefit to the membership. Richard reminded the Board that the program would be included in the Business Plan as an idea and that execution would come only after subcommittee due diligence had been done. Carl chimed in with a useful anachronism: SPODE….study, plan, organize, do, evaluate. Richard responded with his advice to think ahead three years when planning direction.

Action items:

·Ben prepare detailed outline of Membership Workshop concept

The meeting adjourned at 8:50am.

Submitted by Cindy Sweeney February 4, 2010