LWV Board meeting. Oct. 17, 2022 (by Zoom)
Board meeting minutes
Meeting (via Zoom) called to order by Lauri Gross, at 5:02pm. (Jan ran the meeting once she joined, a little after it started.)
In attendance: Mary Beth Coker, Jim Filson, Jess El-Zaftawy, Jan Goodman, Jill Griffith, Lauri Gross, Claire Kondig, Sue Krause, Rosemary Orthmann, Ellen West
Sept. minutes approval: No comments. Approved as submitted.
Treasurer’s report: Claire reported some trouble getting into the League PayPal account. Currently we have a balance of $4862. We had one member who donated, and we have $572 in the education fund due to an anonymous donation. Claire is paying our League dues to the LWVMD and LWVNCA. We are waiting for about $500 from the county Board of Elections for poll evaluators so that money will be coming into our League account. Our storage unit price will increase to $70/month starting in Dec. Jill and Jim might look for a place with a lower price. The current storage unit is about a 5x5 closet. Claire offered to store League items in her garage until the League finds a new storage solution. Jim and others agreed that we will transfer items in the storage unit to a section of Claire’s garage.
Membership report: Sue Krause reported that she will be sending out paper letters to the people who haven’t paid dues for this year. Sue is working with Claire to get a list of people who have outstanding dues so they can get those letters out pretty soon. Then they’ll follow up with phone calls. Neither Claire nor Sue is getting the Paypal report that they used to get. Claire said Carole used to send Claire an email when there was news from Paypal. Jim said Sarah Matthews should check the league email and send anything from Paypal to Claire, but Sarah had indicated that there were no emails from PayPal. Claire said Sarah Malec set up our Paypal account originally so Claire will call Sarah about that.
Newsletter: Lauri reported that the newsletter came out in Sept and the next one will be out in Nov.
Ethics: Sue Rovin was not on the call/meeting. Jim reported that Sue is recovering from surgery.
Jess said interview is set for Thurs., Oct 20, for candidates who are interested in serving on the Ethics Commission. Jess is supporting Sue and Mary Beth this year, on the Ethics committee.
Voter Services:
- Vote411: Lauri reported that Vote411.org has been live since late September, and the printed Guides went out with the Oct. 15 Frederick News Post. Currently, she is rounding up League members who can distribute Guides at county libraries. Jess said the library has a rigorous process to get approval to distribute material. Jess asked Claire for historical info about guides at libraries. Claire said league people used to drop the guides at the libraries. Jess has submitted our League request to the libraries and we hope to hear as soon as Tuesday, Oct. 18, that we have approval to distribute. Mary Beth noted that, on the back of the Voters’ Guides, it says that donations to the League are tax deductible, but in reality, the League is not a 501-c-3 organization. Claire clarified that donations will go to our education fund, which is a 501-c-3.
- Forums: Jim reported about the forums that were cancelled, and the one that is yet to come, which is board of education on Oct. 25.
- Poll evaluator training. Jim reported that, on Oct. 10 several LWVFC members attended a poll evaluator training session at the county Board of Elections. The training was recorded so people can watch that. We’ll get another $500 for doing this round of poll evaluations. Barbara Wagner of the county Board of Elections was pleased with the reports that LWVFC evaluators turned in from the primaries.
LWNCA – no report
In person meeting: Jim and Mary Beth hosted this at their home Oct. 7: Jim reported that seven people attended. He added that we need to see if we can find a date after the holidays to try another get together. People did express that they do want an in-person meeting. People discussed picking a date in January so people have time to plan and put it on their calendar. Ellen West said she will be gone at the end of January. Jim said we can meet at an estate in Thurmont for free. Lauri and Jess said also a library community meeting room would be free. Leadership team will talk about a date and location.
Yard signs: Members can pick up signs at Jill’s house (5015 Mallard Lane, Frederick) and Claire’s house (416 Fairview Ave, Frederick). Claire said people picked up 4 from her so far. Jim said people picked up about 15 from him. Lauri will email this to all members to encourage them to pick up signs.
Why Vote presentation: Mary Beth and Rosemary presented to Envision Frederick and several conservation organizations like the Sierra club and a Catoctin Mountain group (and Jim also attended). Mary Beth reported that about 20 people attended. It was a cold rainy Saturday morning. Afterwards, people were supposed to go canvassing but the weather was too bad. Mary Beth said the presentation went well and they got a lot of questions and positive comments. Mary Beth added that they tailored the presentation to include things that people can say to others to encourage them to vote, such as commenting if they have an American flag in front of their house. In that case, maybe you’d ask if they served in the military, and ask what they fought for (which was the right to vote). Mary Beth gave this as an example of how to make the conversation personal to appeal to particular demographics that might not be inclined to vote as regularly as they should. Jim was surprised by the number of people in the county who do not know about vote411.org, and expressed the need for us to be more vigilant about spreading the word. Mary Beth said we passed out a lot of vote411 business cards at the Why Vote presentation, and she added that there are something like 13 million people in these conservation agencies in the US who don’t vote. She added that it’s good to march and sign petitions etc. but it doesn’t make a real difference if you don’t vote. She added that, hopefully those people will share what they learned with their members.
Other comments: Claire said the Voter Services group did superior job and that the Voters’ Guide was very good.
Jan adjourned the meeting at 5:41pm.
###
LWV Board meeting. Sept. 19, 2022 (by Zoom)
In attendance: Mary Beth Coker, Jess El-Zaftawy, Jim Filson, Jan Goodman, Lauri Gross, Claire Kondig, Rosemary Orthmann, Cindy Powell
Jan called the meeting to order at 5:06 p.m.
Minutes from the last meeting were approved as presented.
Treasurer’s report: Our previous balance was $7,589. We had three new members join at $60 each. Claire will use PayPal to update the records. Claire transferred approximately $300 to the League Ed Fund. We have paid half our assessment to LVWMD and the remainder can be paid out of the Ed Fund at the end of the year.
Lauri brought up: LWVMD has money available to spend to help county leagues promote the voters’ guides. Jess suggested an ad in Frederick Magazine. Jim suggested radio ads. Marybeth said run ads in FNP for about 5-7 days. Lauri will talk to LWVMD about these and other ideas.
Membership: Sue Krause was not present so there was no membership report.
Newsletter report: Lauri said she is working on it and will get it out this month, with help from Vicki.
Publicity report: Rosemary said that with help, she wrote a press release about our forums, and one about Vote411. Lauri will send to FNP and the full LWVFC membership to ask members to send the release to their church newsletters, HOA newsletters, company newsletters etc.
Voter services:
- Voters’ Guide: Lauri said she sent the Guide to the FNP and they are working on designing it, and the FNP will then send it back to Lauri, so she and the LWVFC team working on the Guide, can proof and edit. The FNP will also be mailing approximately 1,000 Guides to voters in areas of the county with low voter turnout, as part of a pilot program of the LWVMD, to see if the Guide helps increase turnout.
- Forums: Jim reported that we had scheduled seven forums but we will have to cancel some, like the forum for County Executive candidates, because the Republican candidate declined to participate since he is already participating in other forums and debates. Trone has accepted District 6 but Parrot has not. These candidates wanted us to do an in-person forum. We told them the board voted and said no, we are just doing virtual. Jim would like our moderator to explain that, in the cases where the League did not hold a forum, it was due to one or more candidates declining to participate. For instance, Jim said neither sheriff candidate has responded to Jim’s invitation to be in a forum. Cindy Powell said she talked to Karl Bickel (sheriff candidate) and he thought he had responded to the League and that he said yes, he would participate in our forum. So, Cindy will talk to Karl again about it. Jim said we will at least have three good forums. Also, Jim is talking to Vicki about keeping the info up to date on the League’s FB page and website about which forums have been cancelled. MaryBeth added a suggestion that our forum moderator or leadership person who makes opening remarks, can talk about which forums are upcoming, and also about which forums we had to cancel due to candidates choosing not to participate.
Poll evaluators: Sara Matthews is the lead for this, in the general elections. Sara was not at the board meeting but Jim said he talked to Theresa Church at the County Board of Elections to ask if LWVFC members who have already been trained in how to be a polling place evaluator for the primary election, need to be trained again, to do the job for the general election. Jim is following up on this to see if the training is different for the general election, or if people who were already trained just need a refresher sheet or something similar.
Liaison reports:
- LWVNCA: May Sue Krause was not at the meeting. No report.
- LWVMD Presidents’ Meeting: Lauri attended this virtual meeting Sept. 10. She reported that the person running the meeting talked about the Get to the Polls event, which is a fundraiser for LWVMD (to help pay for Voters’ Guides, interns, etc.). Participants can walk, run, swim, bike, skate etc. and log miles as they earn money from pledges. At the meeting, representatives from other county Leagues discussed how to produce and promote their Voter Guides, and how and where they hold voter registration events.
Discussion on translations:
- Jessica asked about voter guide not being in Spanish. Jess said she would donate money to hire a translator. Mary Beth mentioned the possibility of speaking to someone at the Asian American group in Frederick County, and the Hispanic American group, for ideas on who could do the translating. Lauri explained that, in the past, when Carole Sepe translated our Guide, she only did the intro info, and not the actual candidate responses. Jess suggested that we should translate all of it; not just the intro info. Jess encourages the board to take this on for the next election (after this November’s general). She also said we could reach out to Montgomery County about how they do their guide in Spanish. Claire said we do have a huge Hispanic population. Jim said he will see someone at the Asian-American Center and can talk to her about her connections to the Hispanic Center to see if we could find someone to do it and get this set up for next time.
- Jan asked: what about live translators during forums. Mary Beth said we have been approached to have sign language interpretation at forums, and she asked if anyone knows how we can get automatic closed captions to show up on our virtual forums. Jan said she thinks it’s a button/setting to turn on so she will look into that.
Why Vote PowerPoint Presentation: Mary Beth said she and Rosemary will present the WHY VOTE Power Point Presentation on Sat., Oct. 1, at an Envision Frederick event from 10 a.m. to noon, at the cafeteria at Lincoln Elementary in Frederick. Other groups will present too, like the Sierra Club, etc.
The Delta’s: Marybeth read an email from a Delta Theta member who asked how they can support the League. This person said she saw info about forums on our website and wants to partner with us. Marybeth asked for ideas on how we can encourage the Delta’s to submit questions for the candidates at our forums, so we can recognize the Deltas and their concerns and get their concerns answered. Jan said she will share League info with the Delta’s and encourage them to submit questions for the candidates for the forums.
Yard Signs: Cindy said maybe we use our yard signs to give to the Deltas to ask them to help get the signs put out around the county. Jim said a couple people including Rosanne Roe said the League can use their house as a staging area from which to distribute yard signs, so League members can pick them up there. Remember that, when we put up the signs, we want to keep track of where they go so we can get them back. Lauri will put in the newsletter a note about letting Jim know if you want to come get some yard signs. Claire said people can also come get signs from her front porch.
In-Person League social gathering. Jim said he and Mary Beth are hosting an open house from 4-6pm at their house Oct. 1. They’ll have a bon fire and keep it light. There will be opportunities for members to meet each other and also maybe sign up to help with some committees – but no pressure!. If people want, they can bring some small, simple food items to share.
Ethics Group: Jim said Mary Ellen and Sue have asked for assistance with the ethics group. Jess said she will assist and Jess will shadow Mary Ellen and Sue for the coming year to learn the job.
Jan confirmed that, at this point, we covered all the items in the meeting agenda.
Jan adjourned the meeting at 5:57pm.
