Council Approves 2012 Budget;
Appoints Two New Members

Thursday, 01 December 2011 23:22

By 12th Moon, 

Council President

Council met in The Space on Election Day, Nov. 8, for our regular meeting. We moved quickly into our monthly report from General Manager (GM) Brandon Kane. During Brandon's report we heard that Oasis will be getting some additional equipment to add space for grab-and-go Deli foods between Thanksgiving and Christmas. There was concern expressed for the continuing congestion in our West-End store parking lot, where signs were recently added directing traffic flow to help make the lot safer for our shoppers. Brandon also reported that our efforts to accept donations at the registers in our stores yielded over $4,400 for victims of the Southern Tier flooding this October.

This fall has been especially busy with all of the events in October — a Member Forum, the Fall Membership Meeting, an All Staff Meeting, the GreenStar Community Projects Food Justice Summit, the Annual Kids' Halloween Party and a lecture and workshop by Michael Shuman of BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies), co-sponsored by GreenStar and Local First Ithaca. With all that behind us, we now move into the holiday season.

We next received the GM's 3rd Quarter Financial Report, which showed continued growth over previous years even within the constraints imposed by the limited space at the West-End store, and we referred the report to our Finance Committee for review and a report back in January. Continuing to delve into financial spreadsheets, we next reviewed and approved the 2012 GreenStar Budget with a conservative growth projection, as we closely monitor our expenses and abilities to improve, given our physical limitations and the poor national economic environment.

A request from the Mariposa Food Co-op in Philadelphia came next on our agenda. Mariposa is currently renovating a new location to move their operations into in early 2012, and they are conducting a loan drive that has been supported by their members, local businesses and other regional co-ops. GreenStar's managers, recognizing that the support of other co-ops is part of our mission, asked Council to approve a loan of $25,000 to the Mariposa Co-op. After discussion as to the specific language in the loan agreement, and the viability of the prospect as we ourselves look toward our needs to expand from our present location, we decided to ask Mariposa for the answers to a few clarifying questions before we make an agreement with them. This item should be further discussed at our Dec. 13 Council meeting.

A second agreement, this time with a local realtor to assist in our search for a satellite location in the Collegetown area, was up for discussion next, and it, too, was tabled until our December meeting as we are requesting some amendments to the agreement prior to our signing on.

Two applications for appointment to two vacant Council seats and an application for a member-at-large seat on our Expansion Committee came up next. Both Joe Marraffino and SunShine Huntone were appointed to serve on Council after they were given time to briefly present themselves. Chrissy Stoll, a staff member, had applied to fill a vacant member-at-large seat on Expansion. After some discussions regarding our policy not to fill member-at-large seats with staff on our four standing committees (of which Expansion, an ad hoc committee, is not), we decided instead to create an additional staff seat on the committee. This allows the GM to fill that seat by appointment. Brandon indicated he would assign that seat to Chrissy.

After our mid-meeting break, we approved minutes for both our Oct. 11 Council meeting and our Fall Membership meeting, after a few small amendments had been approved.

Forms that member-initiated petitions should conform to, and rules governing the form and process for submitting member-initiated petitions, were next presented by our Governance and Monitoring Committee. Over the years, Council has received member-initiated petitions in various forms, with wording that has not always been clear or explicit as to how the requested subject of the petition should be handled (as with the referendum to allow for the sale of meat), or placed in the bylaws or policies (as with a bylaws change). Our bylaws, while supporting member-initiated petitions, state that they should be submitted "in a form prescribed by Council" — but there has never been a Council-approved form. Council has in the past produced a policy regarding referendums and how they should be handled by Council when received, but there have never been clear guidelines for bylaws change petitions, nor approved forms that the petitions should follow. After some discussion and a split vote of seven for and two against, we did approve new rules and forms as submitted by the committee. Look for these rules and forms to be posted in the stores and on GreenStar's website.

Continuing the presentation of new policies following the Policy Governance system, Council reviewed the latest drafts of new policies from our Policy Drafting Committee. This committee has been meeting twice a month, since our Council retreat weekend in July, to draft a whole new set of policies, utilizing the Policy Governance format, which will eventually replace most of our current policies. The committee hopes to have all of the new policies completed for final review and adoption by Council at our Dec. 13 meeting.

Lastly, we voted to go into Executive Session to review the results of an evaluation, conducted by survey, of our new GM at the end of his 90-day probationary period. We had our consultant from Cooperative Board Leadership Development compile the results, and decided to ask him to also compile conclusions from the evaluation prior to our presenting the GM with goals for the coming year.