Employee Assembly Meeting
316 Day Hall
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
12:15 — 1:30 p.m.
Minutes

1.  I. Call to Order (D. Goss)

2.  II. Call for Late Additions to the Agenda (D. Goss)

J. Miles added a report on the Emergency Grant Fund Committee to the agenda.

3.  III. Report from the Chair (D. Goss)

3.1  Expanded Group Discussion

D. Goss reported meeting with Mary on Monday to discuss goals. The goal discussed was to nail down this expanded group idea and to put some kind of framework around it. We have not seen a list of members of this expanded group yet.

The executive committee meet to decide what outline that would like. Donna will put together a draft of a plan and send an email around to everyone by late Sunday night.

After having a meeting with the OA we decided to call this group the “staff forum” group. It is a broad term that seems to fit.

3.2  Cornell University Fundraising Campaign Kickoff Dinner

D. Goss wanted to know if everyone received an email invitation to the Kickoff dinner from Jim Mazza. This is a big event and at one point we will be asked to stand up on stage. Friday, October 27th is the dinner. Thursday, October 26th is the rehearsal.

J. Miles said that she is amazed with the amount of involvement with the President the EA has enjoyed.

D. Goss is passing around a “Thank You” note from Mary Opperman for recognizing her with the award and plaque at the Presidents Address to Staff on 9/25.

4.  IV. Trustees Report (M. Esposito)

M. Esposito reported that the Trustees will be on campus next week Friday, October 27 and Saturday, October 28. Their open meetings are at the beginning. He encouraged everyone to attend. He will have more to report at the next meeting.

Mike will be Vice Chair on the Trustee Nominating Committee this year. He was on the committee last year, but this is the first time a staff member in a lead position on this committee. It was a hard won victory.

5.  V. Committee Reports

5.1  ComCom

P. Korolov met yesterday with ComCom. A few changes need to be made. Peter will send out a final Chili Chat draft report in a couple of days. If any one has any suggestions or changes please send to Peter before Friday.

D. Goss says please read the report and be familiar with it so when we have our “staff forum” discussions, maybe three a year, you will be familiar with it.

5.2  Internal Operations

Master Plan Workshops will be at the end of November. After that the open community events will take place. Nina is thrilled we are taking a leadership role and that we are involving the community. Nina will let us know what will be happen after that, but there will be another deeper level of involvement. If anyone would like to add any names for attendance to the first workshop, please send them to Andri. Please keep the names coming. We have about 12 people; we are halfway there.

D. Goss will be sending out official invitations from her office.

A. Goncarovs said that Ari Epstein has helped with committee lists. We still need more people to attend, please help us recruit. We can have 5 non-EA people on committees. Andri will be sending out a query soon to get more committee involvement. It is a great way to get more people involved with EA activities.

5.3  Emergency Grant Fund

J. Miles said that the committee had received another application.

D. Goss told everyone that almost $8,000 was raised at auction. Whoever thought of the lunches with senior staff was a great idea, it raised a lot of funds.

D. Stein said the precedent has been established to ask VP’s to give, and that it has turned into a competition to offer more than just something ordinary.

5.4  Minutes

The minutes from June 7, 2006 were approved with one change — � M. Esposito was in attendance

D. Goss asked for a motion to approve the minutes with changes, all were in favor.

The minutes from August 23, 2006 were approved with several changes - � “So the money”, not “so they money” — under “Finance Committee” last paragraph � last page, second paragraph before adjournment, it was Pat Mahoney that recommended we talk about Leon’s proposal at a later date � Torrey Jacobs was there � Leon Lawrence asked that we add page numbers to the minutes

D. Goss asked for a motion to approve the minutes, all were in favor.

6.  VI. Old Business

6.1  Email Voting (C. Brown)

C. Brown said that back before the meeting with President Skorton, we sent out proposal on this with only a couple of responses back.

M. Esposito had a couple of comments — Who will receive this? Voting members, non-voting members? Questions whether this should always go through the chair, or if it should go to IOC or Parliamentarian. Needs more than 1 person to be able to call it, at least 2 people should be able to call.

L. Lawrence said that he did not feel comfortable voting on this before reading it.

This discussion was tabled until next meeting.

D. Goss asked that members please send changes to Christine by 10/25.

6.2  Financial Report (P. Mahoney)

P. Mahoney reported the good news that we are not in the hole. The June deficit of $9,000 includes a $4,500 carry over from the prior year. This year from July ‘06 forward to date, we have a balance of $6,930 (and change), which will have to carry us until June 30, 2007.

D. Goss said our appropriation is $9,400 a year, and we are going over that. Also reported she is doing a lot of networking to help raise money. Additionally, there has been an expression that the Office of Human Resources would help us with the expenses from the Chili Chats.

P. Mahoney has sent out copies to committee chairs a couple of different times to receive 06–07 budget requests and hasn’t received responses yet. Please fill this out with the requested amount for 07–08. It is very important to get this information into the OA by next Friday, October 27. It doesn’t matter what we spent last year, just that we have exceeded our budget. This is a great opportunity to get our voices out to receive more money with solid projections. A discussion followed.

D. Stein asked if standard items that happen every year need to be submitted again?

P. Mahoney said yes — everything needs to be re-requested every year. Please, committee chairs need to be in touch with outside contacts to see what will continue, an email is sufficient at this time. All items are clearly in the budget as a line item. An example of an event that needs a proposal is the SEED event.

D. Goss said to think about what has come up in our retreats, our true priorities. Give your committee budgets your best guess.

M. Esposito volunteering to help with this request for additional funding. Michael questioned the budget for $1,200 for EA elections; a) there was no election and b) this expense was never supposed to come out of the EA budget, was supposed to be the Assemblies office.

P. Mahoney says that it was agreed at the last budget that Hope Mandeville proposed EA pays 1/2, OA pays 1/2 of the cost of it. Not saying this is valid, or that it should be in there, but that is what we have. It is in here in hopes that we would do electronic elections this year. It was there to help the election happen when in fact it didn’t. This was the quoted price from CIT.

A. Goncarovs asked if we had this agreement in writing anywhere. At some point we will have an election, hopefully next year.

P. Mahoney said that we should talk with Ari or someone in OA, that has some experience with the costs of holding an election.

M. Esposito asked why we agreed to this. He does not understand why you would allocate your funds to this.

D. Goss said the budget is different every year, and we did agree to do it last year, for the one year. This is not approved yet. It was not being paid for, and Hope said they did not have it within their means to pay for it all, so we agreed to split it in order to help make the election happen.

D. Stein asked a question regarding the Peer Appreciation Luncheon is this on for next year- yes or no?

P. Mahoney said that would probably fall under SRAC. She reiterated that she needs final numbers by 10/25, in order to turn the information around for the Office of the Assemblies.

D. Goss said that if it’s not a line item in the budget, and not identified as a priority for your committee, it will be put way down at the bottom of the pile for funding.

6.3  Kite Flying

This item was tabled from last meeting. It will be discussed at next meeting.

P. Mahoney said this is a good example of an event that she would love to see appear in the proposed budget.

6.4  Book Reading

This item was tabled from last meeting. It will be discussed at next meeting

7.  VII. New Business

H. Hall said there will be a new process for copies and handouts for our meetings. Hazel and Donna had a meeting with the OA, and we will send the call for items out mid-week. Any items should be sent to me by 4:00 p.m. on Friday. Minutes will always be put on the agenda for approval. We need to get Amy caught up with approvals of meeting minutes. Then, Monday Hazel will send out the entire packet that will include all handouts and minutes so we can make effective use of our time. Amy will bring extra copies, but stated that most people do bring their own in order to review items prior to the meeting.

A. Epstein shared that other assemblies follow this procedure and it works very effectively.

D. Goss voiced her approval of this, so that everyone has everything in advance and can review all attachments and be prepared when they come to Wednesday’s meeting.

A. Goncarovs asked about the Forum group.

Keep in mind the agenda would change if President Skorton attends, and there are some dates on hold now; a possible timeline would be; Nov 1st — EA w/Skorton and discuss Chili Chat Nov 15th - Skorton w/both EA & forum group

December in Geneva?

Jan. 17th - EA w/Skorton and discuss Master Plan Feb 7th - Skorton w/both EA & forum group Wrap up meeting afterward?

April 4th — EA w/Skorton and discuss Campus community or Paw Print April 18th - Skorton w/EA & forum group Another wrap up meeting to discuss all meetings, and topics?

Some possible topics may be; � Chili Chat � Master Plan � Campus community If other hot topics come up during the year, we could add it to the list.

At each session we could have a feedback form, then a general survey at the end of year. This will help us judge if it is successful, helpful, etc. We will then have our wrap up session in time for the Trustee Report at the end of May.

We will need to discuss the Geneva meeting, travel, etc.

A. Goncarovs asked if the “staff forums” will be closed or open to the public? Good question. We will need to think about. What will the governance be?

D. Goss said that Mary had indicated that the EA would drive the agenda, and we need to think about this, and lay it out at the first meeting with them.

A. Goncarovs said that our EA rules should apply, but announce it at the beginning that this is a special “staff forum”. This would include food counts too. Need to keep the counts reasonable.

L. Lawrence said that this is an open meeting, and that people should be acknowledged because these people may end up being EA members.

D. Stein said that what Inda said is true about not having many visitors, but once the word gets around that the President is attending these meetings regularly, you may have higher numbers of people attending. It would be important to publicize it in Pawprint that it is an open meeting or not. RSVP system to Amy would be needed if it was an open.

L. Lawrence said that the only time we should be closed was if we went into Executive Session, otherwise the meeting should be open.

I. Mahler said it would be a burden to have 40 people arrive, she likes the RSVP idea, maybe take the first 10 RSVP’s.

D. Goss said if we are discussing the Chili Chat report, they would need to read it, and how would we make sure they had it and had done their homework.

A. Goncarovs said that you are going to a meeting representing the wishes of the board, so we need to express our ideas to you on this.

J. Miles asked if 20 people walked in to today’s meeting, we wouldn’t have done anything differently.

Andri said to question the “forum” name because it is more of a joint session. A forum is a different thing.

P. Mahoney said that we may need to hold them in a different location so that we could accommodate more people.

D. Goss said that Pawprint would advertise what the topics were, and that would help. If there are materials that should be looked at in advance, that would explain it.

A. Goncarovs said that the up side is, that we can staff committees, we can have elections, etc. with more staff involvement.

7.1  Employee Day

M. Esposito said employee day went great! There were a lot of people that volunteered. President Skorton and his wife came and were dishing out chicken, even though he is a vegetarian. The committee that plans this even is always looking for more help, please let Donna or Michael know if you are interested.

Last year they advertised Cornell chicken, and they did not have it. This year, the committee made sure that catering had it, and they had BBQ pits set up to do it.

8.  VIII. Open Forum

8.1  Once Around

M. Esposito said that Ezra’s Cornell’s 200th Birthday is coming up. Many events will be scheduled though out the year. Other, much bigger events will occur in March. He suggested that since employees are the only ones on campus in January, that would be the ideal time for EA to do a mini event on his actual birthday, January 11. It would make the EA stand out.

Many ideas were discussed on how this could be done.

8.2  George Peter’s Birthday

D. Goss announced the date for George Peter’s 85th Birthday party is Friday, October 20. Everyone should have received the invitation, please come if you can.

D. Stein said that it will be from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the Founders Room in Anabel Taylor Hall. It will be a small, simple program. Starting at 3 p.m. we will have comments, Donna could say something, Mary could say something, perhaps others, then sing “Happy Birthday” and have cake and ice cream.

9.  IX. Adjourn

D. Goss asked for a motion to adjourn at 1:30, and A. Goncarovs made the motion to adjourn.