CMM 2016-02-14

Minutes of Meeting for Worship for Business

Concord (NH) Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

Second Month 14, 2016

Attending:  13

2.1  Opening:  The meeting opened with worship following a reading from Advices and Queries [1].

2.2  Membership:  A letter requesting Meeting membership by Jon Hall was read, and the report from his clearness committee recommending him into membership was accepted.  We united in celebrating this commitment Jon is making to the Meeting community, and we joyfully welcome him into membership.

2.3  First Month Minutes:  We affirmed the minutes from January 2016, which have already been approved.

2.4  Financial Report:  We accepted the Income/Expense report from the Treasurer who noted that we are a little behind in income for this time of the year.

2.5  Legacy Fund Request:  J.J. Smith has been actively working on a request for funds from the NEYM Legacy Gift Fund [2] in order to put solar panels on the Meetinghouse.  We hope to create a group net metering [3] project, but this is actually more complicated in NH than in many other states.  March 1^st is the deadline for submitting the proposal.  J.J. is considering writing the proposal to include net metering and acknowledge that we may scale back to just put enough on the roof to satisfy our own needs (which are rather small).  We would need $5,000 from Building Reserve in addition to the $10,000 grant request and the 25% of total project cost state rebate to do this.  The savings in electric bills would pay that $5,000 back into the Reserve.

We approved an oversight committee of Ruth and Greg Heath, J.J. Smith, Jon Hall for this proposal and the project.

We will have a called special called Meeting for Business on February 28^th to consider final approval so the grant can be sent before March 1^st.  Even if we approve of applying for funds the Meeting would not be committing to the project until funding from the grant was approved.

2.6  Community Safety Statement:  Youth Religious Education Committee has been working on our Community Safety Statement [4] that we will be asking the Meeting to approve eventually.  They have been using the NEYM statements [5] and Safety Statements from other NEYM Monthly Meetings.  The policy was shared and comments/questions were welcomed.  There are questions about numbers of adults that need to be present with small numbers of children and whether open doors to both rooms mitigate the need for extra adults.  Edits were suggested and questions arose:

• Would parents who want to visit the classroom need background check?
• What about when some children go outside to play while others are finishing up projects inside?
• Is hearing the other group enough?
• Is there a role for technology in this, such as a camera whose images could be reviewed if questions arose?
• What are the criteria for an acceptable background check and how do others group handle this issue and confidentiality?

This draft policy will be sent with these announcements.  The committee is meeting Sunday, February 19^th and would welcome comments before then.

Closing:  The meeting closed with waiting worship.

Submitted by

Acting Recording Clerk, Ruth Mobilia Heath

Presiding Co-Clerk, Mark Barker