May Meeting Minutes

Date: May 19th, 2007
Local Coordinators: Painter's
Attendees: Penn's, Pedroza's, Burchett's, Hale's, Bell's, Mueller's, Painter's, Larkin's

1) Changes to the National Handbook

• Submitting articles to Horizons- If you want to submit an article, get the guidelines from the Local Coordinators as the guidelines are in the National handbook.
• Financial audit process/procedure
• We are due for a CPA audit. Per national guidelines if we have the same Finance Coordinator for 4 consecutive years we must have a CPA audit. Rich Ferrone (he and his wife used to present weekends as a Senior team) is a CPA and agreed to look at our books pro-bono. We will report to community, Unit, District when audit is complete

2) Spanish notebooks

• To order Spanish notebooks contact- David & Mary Lazcon (San Diego) LC’s for the Spanish.

3) Non-disclosure agreement
The San Diego community had couples who left CEE and took CEE materials (outline, etc.) to start their own “Marriage Prep Business”. CEE is in legal action against them at the present time. CEE materials are copyrighted, however that does not protect us completely. We passed around a “Non-Disclosure” type agreement that the San Diego Community is now using and we have decided to use it or one similar ourselves. Our community decided it should be mandatory to sign it. Once our Unit coordinators have a final draft we will bring it to the next meeting to be signed. In summary it basically states that we agree that all materials used on CEE weekends are property of CEE and are copyrighted and we agree not to duplicate them for any reason whether for profit or gain. Legally this doesn’t completely protect CEE, however it is more of a preventative measure.

4) Disclosure statement for materials
Due to the San Diego situation, it was also decided that we should place a disclosure statement on our website on the Registration page as well as on our materials and Registration Form stating something to the following- “Terms & Conditions- By registering for the Catholic Engaged Encounter weekend retreat and by using all supplied material I/We understand they are the property of Catholic Engaged Encounter and are copyrighted and therefore agree not to use or copy any materials/documents to benefit financially or otherwise myself or someone else.”

5) Unit dues
Unit Dues are paid by each community ($1 per couple for SLC) to go into a Unit fund which can only be used by the Unit coordinators for Unit needs such as to reimburse Local Coordinators within the community for airfare/hotel expenses for Unit meetings. Currently the Local Coordinators have to book their own travel arrangements for Unit meetings and wait to be reimbursed which can oftentimes take longer then the typical 30 day grace period on credit cards. It has been proposed to increase the Unit Due to $3 per couple effective 6/1/07 to build up the Unit 1 fund so that Unit Coordinators can book the travel arrangements for the Local Coordinators straight out of the Unit fund. All other Units are raising their dues, some up to $5 per couple. There were some concerns brought up and discussed such as our own expenses going up being at a hotel vs. retreat house as well as accountability for the Unit Fund. It was ultimately decided by those present that we would be willing to raise the Unit Dues to $2 per couple and we will re-evaluate in 1 yr. Painter’s will bring this to the Unit board where the final decision will be made for the entire Unit or where it will be decided that it require further discussion.

6) District Convention

• When- August 3-5
• Where- Ontario, California
• More info.- www.eeconvention2007.org (site is now up and running, it is eeconvention without the S as was on the previous meeting agenda) There was some confusion over some things so I emailed District 5 for clarification and this is their response-
  

1. Meals are NOT optional for adults but should be included in the registration (so $200 + 4 meals = $286)
2. Meals for children ARE optional (and are $15 per meal, regardless of time of day)
3. $50 childcare covers entire weekend
4. There is a general session Saturday afternoon and a Friday opening session. They should have a time schedule on the website soon.
• There should be more information on the registration site soon, so let us know if you have questions and we will find out what we can. Some of the information is a little confusing and Unit 5 is working on streamlining and having better information in the form...they have worked very hard on getting this conference going and it looks like it will be fabulous! The most confusing part seems to be the food and even though it doesn't state on the form that meals are required that is the information we had on Sunday when we checked with the coordinators. Check with your unit coordinators Gilbert and Nicole for updates to the info or we can help as well when we hear something.

• Please email localcoordinators@engagedencounterutah.org if you have any interest in attending.
• What is our budget? Typically we try to cover at least half if not slightly more than half of convention expenses (airfare/hotel/fees, etc.) depending on how many decide to attend and how much our budget allows. Last year nobody went to convention so we have slightly more funds to work with. Conventions are great fun, fantastic marriage enrichment, full of ideas for weekends and a great opportunity to meet other EE couples and learn more about the National and International CEE community!
  

7) National convention 2008

• When- ? Typically National Conventions are held in October
• Where- Kansas City, MO
  

8) District Convention 2009

• When- Summer 2009 (typically August)
• Where- SLC or El Paso. It is Unit 1’s turn, Albuquerque hosted 8yrs ago, neither Gallup nor Tucson have the real means nor ability to host due to issues within their own communities. Unit board decided to leave decision up to District Board. There will be a Convention Board that will be created which will consist of people within communities from Unit 1 (Unit 1 consists of- SLC, Albuquerque, El Paso, Gallup, Tucson) and the National Board has a process in place which the Convention Board will use for making a convention happen. Hopefully we will all be able to help and participate in one way or another.
  

One item that was not on the agenda was our community meetings. Painter’s proposed rotating meetings as we did many years ago so that the burden is not solely on them to coordinate, host, etc. Those in attendance agreed to move forward with this proposal. Please email localcoordinators@engagedencounterutah.org with a first and second choice for the month you would like to host for 2007 by June 15th. Burchetts are hosting the June 15th get together at their house which will be a BBQ with the Bishop (they will email you with the details soon).
Painters will schedule each couple to a month and will have Frank post them on the web site. It will be your responsibility to pick a date in that month to have the “get together”, the time, the place, etc. You can choose a weekday evening or a weekend evening or day. You can chose to make it a meeting, an enrichment, a party, a recruitment social, a family enrichment, dinner, potluck, BBQ, wine and cheese, etc. Painter’s reserve the right to add 30-60 min. of “business” if it is necessary. Please email the community (localcommunity@engagedencounterutah.org) with at least two weeks notice of the “get together” date with all of the details.

If you want enrichment ideas, there are some on the national website (www.engagedencounter.org), Hales are also a great resource as they lead many great enrichments at Unit Board Meetings when they were Unit Coordinators. Painter’s also have some enrichment ideas and could get more from Pinon’s, our current Unit Coordinators.

We ran out of time and therefore the rest of the meeting agenda items will be covered at our get together in July (we do not want to talk “business” when we have our BBQ with the Bishop).