Board Meeting Minutes
January 13, 2004
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This meeting was held at the home of Betty Weir. Present (14 members total) were: President: Stephen Souza, Vice President: Barbara Slemmons Treasurer: Betty Weir Recording Secretary: G Richard Yamagata Past President: Bob Bockwinkel Newsletter Editor: Anais Vayssieres Board members: Joyce Wilson, Max Roth, Jim Pollack, Mary Lou Hernandez, Adrienne Candell, Tony Gruska and Mike Syvanen. Guests: Guest, Avi Singh representing the Campus Democrats. Stephen Souza called the meeting to order at 7:05 PM. MINUTES OF PAST MEETINGS: The minutes from the December Meeting were approved with on change, a reference to the general meeting. The minutes were moved forward for a vote by Bob Bockwinkel and were seconded by Mike Syvanen. The motion carried unanimously. OTHER MINUTES Stephen Souza commented about the Woodland Democrat Club. It was suggested again that they send a representative to the Davis meetings. No Action was required nor taken on these minutes. TREASURER'S REPORT The club has $3232.72 in the checking account and $7000 in a reserve CD. A total of over $10232.72 remains in the treasury. It was again commented that this is not enough money to keep a campaign headquarters open. The club had over $15,000 the last time it opened the headquarters. Ideas were put forward for raising funds and to get more people to pay their dues into the club. MEMBERSHIP Stephen moved that we hand out the membership phone lists, divided up amongst the board members to telephone. We would remind people that we need money towards opening the campaign headquarters for the general election in November to defeat Bush. The idea of a database to be set-up and call the list was made. The cost is 5 cents a call and to telephone all 3,000+ Democratic households, it would cost about $150. This will be done after the March primary election. No second of the motion was recorded and no vote was taken on this item. The “red dot” campaign on the next newsletter was implemented with this newsletter. Those that owe dues will have a red dot on their newsletters. The newsletter will be mailed out within the week. GENERAL MEETING The general club meeting will be from 6:30 to 8:30 PM at the Blanchard Room, located at the Davis Branch of the Yolo County Library. It should be announced that you need to be a member to vote and you need to pay your dues to be able to vote. The slate mailed out to members needs to be mailed back for the votes to be counted before the general club meeting on the last Tuesday of this month, February 24. The program will focus on the new officers that will be elected. At the general meeting, there will be a slate of officers presented to the club. The floor will be opened and any candidate can be nominated. The people that previously mailed in their ballots will not be able to vote for the person nominated at the meeting. Other business that needs to be take care of at the general meeting is that the representatives from the young Democrats need to be appointed at the meeting to the board. The offices are ex-officio and representatives from Davis High School and UC Davis are needed. Potential nominees at this meeting will be Julia Bockwinkel of Davis High School and Avi Singh of UC Davis. These student representatives will be asked to give a report at the general meeting about their campus club activities. At this point in the meeting Mike Syvanen made a point about the students pushing for a candidate running for vice president as a write-in candidate at the meeting. It was stated that the charter states that students are afforded ex-officio membership and therefore are represented, though they do not have a vote on the board. Avi stated that he was not going to run for the vice presidency and was satisfied with the ex-officion role. Avi Singh gave a preliminary report to the board about the activities of the young Democrats registering voters on the UC Davis campus and their volunteer efforts in San Jose at the State convention. This included various dinners and meetings with electeds such as Art Torres, Barbara Boxer and Mike Machado. The candidates for city council will be introduced at the meeting with Mike Syvanen being introduced as Sue Greenwald’s representative (this changed at the general meeting). All candidates will be invited to bring their campaign literature to this meeting. There are 14 candidates that were club members or are currently club members that could speak at this meeting. Since the primary function of the club is to promote Democrat candidates running for public office, we should allow time for all candidates to speak. Max made the motion that each person be given 2 minutes to speak. Bob Bockwinkel seconded the motion and it passed unanimously. All the candidates will be informed as to the meeting and will be invited to bring their campaign literature to the meeting. For those that need suggestions as to what to bring to the potluck, the division of the alphabet follows: RECOMMENDED DISH A-H Salad I-S Main Dish T-Z Dessert Or Your Choice. It was stated that the new president would be introduced at the meeting and take over leading the meeting. The current slate that will be mailed out to the membership will be: President: Tony Gruska Vice President: Mike Syvanen Treasurer: Betty Weir Recording Secretary: G Richard Yamagata It was stated again that we need a membership person that would follow-up on recruiting people into the club that contact us. We currently get 1 to 2 of these through the web site. NEXT MEETING It was decided that we need to have an April meeting. This meeting will be billed as “come meet your newly elected representatives” and will honor the newly elected. The format will again be a potluck dinner. No date or time was selected for this event. It was stated that we need to look at the Blanchard room schedule before setting this date. The last Tuesday of the month was suggested. NEWSLETTER The newsletter editor was present . It was noted by Stephen Souza that the by-laws of the organization state that the newsletter editor will be an official member of the board and given full voting rights at the meetings. Stephen moved that Anais be accepted by the board as a member. Max seconded the motion, which passed unaminously. It was suggested by Bob Bockwinkel that the next newsletter will be a tabloid, newspaper format. Bob then made this a motion. Stephen seconded the motion for sake of discussion. There was general discussion of the costs. It was noted that the costs to print 5000 tabloid issues is more than it presently costs to print 300 issues on our club list. No vote was taken on this motion. Stephen stated that he wanted to use the tabloid format for important election issues. It was stated that in hindsight, this issue could have been made a tabloid. The next potential tabloid issue would be for the November election. It was stated by Barbara that it is unrealistic to publish the newsletter on a monthly basis with all of the information that has been lately, going into the newsletters. Barbara made this into a motion and Bob seconded it. The motion was that the newsletter would come out at least 4 times per year and that this would be made an amendment to the by-laws. This would not preclude that the newsletter come out on a monthly basis, but would make it such that the current state of affairs be acceptable to the club’s by-laws. A substitute motion was discussed that the newsletter would come out every other month. A vote was take on the original motion and it failed 9 votes for the motion and 4 against. Motions to pass modification to the by-laws need a 75% majority. The newsletter is now required by the by-laws to come out n a monthly basis. Anais stated that she will try her best to meet this schedule. Mary Lou Hernandez made the suggestion that board members could volunteer or commit themselves to helping her with various tasks in creating the newsletter. It was noted that already there is a lot of cooperative efforts being given over to publishing the newsletter. The next newsletter will come out at the end of March, after the primary election. It will concentrate on statements from the newly electeds and the upcoming presidential primary, stating how the club needs money to open the headquarters in August. The general club meetings were then discussed for in the past we have not had the required monthly meetings. There will be an April meeting honoring the newly electeds. The May meeting will be the Champagne Brunch. June meeting, no topic was decided upon. The July meeting is the 4th of July booth in the park. August meeting is the booth at the County Fair and the opening of the campaign headquarters. September is the ice cream social at Jerry Kaneko’s. September-October will be the club barbeque and the bean feed. December is the annual club holiday party. FURTHER OLD BUSINESS: COMIC BOOK The secretary of the club, Richard, brought the comic book to the meeting. Stephen Souza took it home to read it at his leisure. No action was taken on this at the meeting. (Recap – it was moved by Bob Bockwinkel that the club sell the comic book at its web site to the public. The board agreed that is must see the comic book first, before it voted on this issue.) NEW BUSINESS Avi Singh reported in detail about the Young Democrats registering 50 voters and tying the another group on campus for registering the most voters. He also spoke about Christopher Cabaldan coming out to the campus and speaking to students about participation in government. Max commented about Ralph Nader’s campaign to find out if he should run in this election. There is a phone number and e-mail address that people can use to contact the pollsters. It was stated that there is strong support among the Republicans to see him run to split the vote. At this point in time, Stephen moved to adjourn the meeting. Tony seconded the motion and the meeting was adjourned by unanimous agreement at 9:20 PM. These minutes are respectfully submitted by:
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