Council Approves Loan to Fellow Co-op; Discusses Low Turnout for Member Bylaws Vote

Tuesday, 03 January 2012 22:20

By 12th Moon, 
Council President

Meeting in The Space, Council held its Dec. 13 meeting with all Council members present. Receiving the monthly General Manager's (GM) Report as our first item of business, we learned that AFCU and GreenStar staff will be working together to spread the good word about the cooperative way of doing business and helping your community during 2012, deemed the International Year of Cooperatives by the United Nations. Brandon Kane, our GM, also reported that staff at both stores have handled an immense amount of seasonal business and that sales at and membership in our Co-op continue to grow. We learned of physical improvements at Oasis and the West-End's outside storage area, as well as forthcoming new entrance doors at the West-End store. Brandon reported that The Space is being utilized for many community arts and entertainment events, various meetings and this winter's Ithaca Farmers Market during the months of January and February.

Next, Alexis Alexander, Membership Manager, and Asha Sanaker, Finance Manager, provided Council with a report concerning the recent Focus Group Dinners held with members to invite feedback regarding possible changes to our membership equity contributions. Two dinners were conducted with a total of 20 randomly selected GreenStar members to openly discuss their feelings and impressions regarding possible changes to our equity contribution or time frame, as well as to discuss other Co-op plans for the future. The five-page report was very informative and warrants continuing these dinners to gather more of our members' ideas and impressions about the Co-op's direction and development.

Our Personnel Committee next reported back on the Annual GM's Compensation Report, and, with a few suggestions for future statistics to be collected, the report was accepted as complete, informative and received on time.

A loan of $25,000 for the expansion efforts of the Mariposa Food Co-op in Philadelphia, PA was next approved. The agreement incorporated some clarifying changes that were made to the agreement since it was presented at our October meeting. This is a great opportunity for GreenStar to support the development of another cooperative, and a great investment. (For more information about the expansion at Mariposa visit mariposa.coop/expansion.)

Certification of the Tellers Report of the recent Council-initiated member vote on ten sets of bylaws changes was next, and with it came some discussions about the lack of sufficient voter turnout. Topics ranged from individual Council members committing to table more often (and not just on the tenth of the month), to proposing that we move toward electronic voting and dissemination of information. We questioned the complexity of the wording and our presentation of changes to be voted on, the timing of the voting period, the total number of changes presented at once, and whether we should have scheduled an extra membership meeting focused completely around the proposed changes. Please let us know what would help you to participate in GreenStar votes in the future.

GreenStar member Alison Barrett was appointed to fill a seat on our Finance Committee as the last item on our agenda before our break. We welcome Alison, and thank her and all of our committee members-at-large who are helping to perform the work of Council and our co-op.

After our mid-meeting break, the minutes of both our regular and executive session meeting of Nov. 8 were approved, with a few minor amendments.

Transitioning to our new Policy Governance model was up for discussion next. Originally scheduled for a vote, the coordination of old policies to be repealed with the adoption of new policies was found to necessitate further scrutiny. A big thank you goes out to Melissa Blake, chair of the Policy Drafting Committee (PDC), and the other members of PDC for meeting twice a month, performing much research of our existing policies, and for coordinating, organizing and compiling thorough contents, appendices and cross reference tables to accompany the new policies you have all been working so hard to write. We hope to have all of the work done for a vote at our Jan. 17 meeting. For more information on this process, see Melissa's article on page 10.

We lastly moved into executive session with only Council members and our Board Administrator present to finalize our Findings Report from the recent 90-day evaluation of our new GM.

I wish all who have read this far, and all of our staff, volunteer workers, members and neighbors, the greatest, most cooperative year ahead, with many, many thanks for your support and appreciation of our GreenStar.