PO
Box 173
Manchester,
WA 98353-0173
“it’s a great place to live…”
Those in attendance: B. Ballard, R. Ballard, M-C. Edwards, C. Leininger, R. Rada, A. Rebelowski D. Trudeau, J. Winslow,
Action
Items:
1)
John Winslow to forward copy of 2006 draft budget to Debby Trudeau for
her potential use as treasurer.
2)
The “Agencies” group will meet to formulate questions for Jan
Angel’s presentation on 1/24.
3)
J. Winslow to determine Saturday morning dates available monthly in the
Library for sub-committee meetings.
4)
Carrilu Thompson to complete her efforts to find past MCA not for profit
documentation by 12/5. Arlene to
verify whether Phil Paquette is continuing to pursue the same effort, and if
not, notify Carol Kowalski by 12/6 that Todd Smith should take the appropriate
action to re-instate both the Washington not for profit and Federal 501c3 for
the MCA.
5)
Ron Rada to provide copies of the LID #9 meeting handouts to Arlene
Rebelowski for inclusion on the web-site, and E. Board members were asked to
attempt to pull up the PDF file on the sewers section of the web-site and let
Arlene know whether you are successful.
6)
Carol Kowalski to begin writing letters of welcome to new members in
2006.
7)
Debby Trudeau to attempt to secure a not for profit bank account by
1/1/06 to receive annual dues checks.
8)
John Winslow to provide Carole Leininger with the list of names of people
interested in serving on a Design Guidelines advisory committee.
Minutes:
The meeting was called to order by Chair, Bob Ballard at 6:57PM. Minutes of the previous meeting were approved as written.
Old
Business:
Follow-up
items from previous meeting:
In a review of action items from the past meeting, the following was reported:
1)
J. Winslow presented a draft 2006
budget for review. It was agreed
that the dues for 2006 would continue at $20 per person.
John agreed to forward a copy of the spreadsheet to Debby for her use as
treasurer.
2)
C. Leininger spoke with Mark
Rebelowski on his prior contact with downtown businesses in his efforts on
Revitalization of the Village Center. Cissy
of the Manchester Inn is supportive of the business owners meeting to discuss
common issues and has offered her business for a meeting location.
In light of all the turmoil with the businesses, this effort by the
Action Group is temporarily suspended. Bob
suggested that the Revitalization group might want to make a further effort to
engage with the two developers to help provide a pipeline of information for the
community. Carole did mention that the group is struggling for direction
with the business turmoil and said that the Mama Java business has closed and
will be replaced with a café operated by David Hopkins’ daughter.
3)
D. Trudeau and “Agencies” group
will be meeting after the Holidays to assemble a list of questions for
Commissioner Angel to address at 1/24 meeting.
Issues such as real estate developments in Manchester will be taboo due
to open issues with the County. Questions
from the floor will be restricted with guidelines to avoid those sensitive
issues. Debby is still trying to find a larger venue for the 1/24
meeting. The elementary school
library (capacity of 100) is available but requires payment for two extra
janitors for a total of three hours for a two hour meeting at a total of $159.
Debby will investigate the South Colby Methodist Church.
Manchester Community Church has expressed a willingness to cooperate in
use of meeting space, but the room was not available this night.
4)
J. Winslow raised the question at
the 11/22 meeting whether the sub-committees were interested in having a regular
monthly meeting space for sub-committee gatherings. It was felt that the interest existed, but no regular date
was selected. John will determine
available Saturday morning dates (at least during the winter) and offer them at
the 1/24 meeting.
TREASURER”S
REPORT: Carol was not
available to make a report. Carole
Leininger mentioned that the Treasury review meeting is scheduled for 12/3 in
the Library at 10AM.
No new mail had arrived since
our last meeting.
The potential merger with the MCA was discussed as well.
Ron Rada voiced his thoughts on potential Bylaws for the new MCA
suggesting this should be an umbrella organization with a Board of Directors
with representatives from each sub-organization represented.
Each sub-organization would fall under the 501c3 tax exempt, Washington
not-for-profit status of the MCA, but would they would maintain their own
individual checking accounts as MCA-“sub-group”, with treasury data reported
monthly to the MCA leadership. We
are still attempting to confirm the status of the 501c3/Washington not for
profit licensing of the MCA. A
motion was passed to approve an expenditure of up to $50 from the MCC treasury
to re-instate the Washington State documentation if necessary.
Arlene will verify whether Phil is still pursuing this and if Carrilu has
found past documentation; if not, Carol Kowalski will ask Todd Smith (our
pro-bono attorney from Davis-Wright-Tremaine) to push ahead on the applications
necessary for both the Washington registration and the Federal 501c3. Ron Rada
has a CPA friend who could step in to help us on a pro bono basis.
Ron Rada agreed to draft new, simple bylaws for the new MCA umbrella
organization using the basic bylaws provided by Todd Smith prior to our 1/5/06
Executive Board meeting.
SEWERS
SUB-COMMITTEE REPORT: Ron
Rada said the 11/29 LID #9 meeting held at Givens Center was attended by 130
individuals. The County gave a briefing on the LID process and responded
to questions. One key issue arose
and that was allocation of sewer assessments to owners of large lots having the
potential for sub-division. The
approach taken with these assessments is to initially charge for one
connections, and if the lot is later sub-divided, to add on assessments for each
new lot, which could result in repayment of the borrowed monies sooner with
lesser impact on the other members of the LID. Ron mentioned that one of the strategies in including so many
properties in this LID is to lessen the individual cost impact of the pumping
station that would be required. Ron
will provide the information in the handouts on the sewers sub-committee section
of our web-site (www.manchesterwa.org).
Arlene also asked those present to try to pull up the PDF file on the
site that illustrates the boundaries of LID#9 and let Arlene know if you are
successful. The next public meeting
on LID #9 will be held in early ’06.
CRIME
PREVENTION SUB-COMMITTEE REPORT:
No report.
ACTION
GROUPS:
Revitalize Village Center:
See Carole Leininger’s comments above.
Regain
Historic Village Character: Mike Valentino has a meeting scheduled for 12/3
at 10:30AM in the Library.
Bob Ballard commented that Mike and the group are aggressively pursuing
the issue of lot aggregation. Bob
has cautioned Mike to not take a lobbying stance with the County on behalf of
the MCC, but rather use this as a means to educate the membership how they might
respond to the County on an individual basis (this is necessary for us to
function as a not-for-profit corporation).
Partnership
with agencies: See Debby
Trudeau’s comments above.
Recreational
Venues: No report.
Village Commons:
John Winslow said that the group will hold a meeting on 12/10 in the Library at
9AM to initiate the formal action on a new/expanded building to accommodate a
bigger Library, community center/meeting room, Water District Admin. Offices,
Sheriff’s way-station, and other community needs.
Old
Business: Letters
of welcome have been previously discussed, but no action taken.
It was hoped that Carol Kowalski may be able to find time to take on this
task in the future. It was
re-affirmed that our member dues for 2006 will remain at $20 per person per
year, payable on January 1, with unpaid dues being delinquent after February 1,
2006. We should attempt to have a
bank account by January 1 so checks could be made payable to the group beginning
on that date.
Carole Leininger mentioned that she was interested in assembling the
previously approved Commercial District Architectural Design committee as part
of her efforts on Revitalization of the Village Center.
John Winslow agreed to forward the list of name of those expressing an
interest in this effort from the original “group of 42”.
It was agreed that our agenda for the 1/24/06 meeting would be pretty
full with Commissioner Jan Angel as our guest speaker, so we agreed to postpone
Eric Baker’s participation. We
will be planning for attendance at the 1/24 meeting to be approximately 80.
New
Business: We
discussed meeting time for our Executive Board meetings, and in the interest of
avoiding confusion, we will start these meetings at 6:30PM (was 7PM) in the
Library on the first Thursday of the month.
There being no further business, Chairman Ballard adjourned the meeting at 8171 PM.
Our next regular meeting will be Tuesday January 24th
at 6:30-8:30PM in a yet to be named location. The next Executive Board meeting will be Thursday January 5th
at 6:30PM in the Library.
Happy Holidays!
Respectfully
submitted,
John
Winslow, Secretary-Manchester Community Council