The members convened at 3:30 pm using the virtual meeting technology.
PRESENT: Jenni Tilton-Flood, Celeste Branham, Luke Shorty, Pam Proulx-Curry, Ed Barrett, Stacie Haines Maryalice Crofton
Filling leadership positions. Biennial election of board officers is June 16. The slate has nominees for 2 of the 3 positions: Luke Shorty for Chair and Pam Proulx-Curry for Vice Chair. An email will go out to the full board calling for nominations for chair-elect. Terms are 2 years so the chair-elect would not move to chair for three years.
Reappointments and recruiting for vacancies. There are at least 5 vacancies and recommendations for appointments as well as requests for reappointment need to be submitted June 12. Ed Barrett will not seek reappointment but will stay on the Grant Selection task force. Stacie Haines will also not seek reappointment but will remain on the Climate Corps task force. Both are task force chairs so someone else will need to take the lead. Task Force chairs need to be commissioners. Others not seeking reappointment are Phil Bosse and Nate Rudy. Pam Proulx-Curry is seeking reappointment. Sue Hawthorne is expected to reapply but Maryalice needs to check and send the forms to her.
Vacancies represent natural resources (candidate application in hand), business (candidate application in hand), expert in human services, a town or county government official, and a representative of the state volunteer sector. Celeste will focus on the government representative. All Commissioners need to help recruit qualified candidates so appointments can be made on time in September.
Legislative priorities. Executive Committee weighed the merits of setting priorities among funding requests and decided each was necessary. Jenni will organize the recommended sign-on letters to Appropriations committee for Maine Service Fellows and Maine Climate Corps. The support letter for the training and technical assistance center for community volunteer programs was delivered last week. There were 30 signatures from around the state. So far, Commissioners have been encouraged to reach out but now it is “go” time and contact has to be made.
Strategic Planning. There was discussion about whether the timeline for Strategic Planning which says “start in June” is realistic. There are a significant number of bills, funding opportunities, and other items not settled. It was agreed to postpone launch of the planning process until September.
Policy on new funding streams. At the May board meeting, Maryalice was asked to draft a policy on staff pursuing new funding streams and bring it to Exec for discussion. The draft was reviewed and one edit made to provide that non-emergency funding opportunities should be reviewed by Executive Committee and brought to the full board with a recommendation. The edited draft will be presented June 16 for action.
Debt ceiling deal impact on funds and AmeriCorps. The report from earlier in the day came from the federal agency. ARP funds underwriting grants already selected or announced were committed and therefore not part of rescission. CSG and Formula ARP funds attached to grants are defined as committed so they are ok. This means the decisions and awards made for the grant year starting 8/15/2023 are safe along with the Climate Corps Coordinator position. The federal agency is checking with OMB and lawyers about other funds. More to come as the impact unfolds.
Task force status reports. Communications meets next week and will discuss what is needed in the next PIO. Excellence and Expertise meeting schedule keeps falling on holidays so it is struggling to get the Ambassador program organized. Pam will work with Kelsey so the program can be launched within the June 16 meeting. Climate Corps hosted a guest speaker who discussed collaborative grant making. The next meeting will review that approach and what aspects might fit into our government grant processes. Public Policy organized a support letter for LD666. That was delivered to legislators. The next support letters will focus on LDs 142 and 143 plus personal outreach. The Grant Selection and Performance task force is going to take a break in June but meet in the summer. Maine Service Fellows task force attempted to do a public launch yesterday but the MSF volunteer had a family emergency, could not attend, and the event had to be called off. Everyone will regroup. The DEI Task Force has two pending items: meeting with the UMaine professor and a survey of Commission members about the lunch/learns. The final lunch/learn is June 16. Celeste would like a bit of time on the agenda to explain the survey.
July Exec Committee meeting. The first Tuesday, normal meeting time, is July 4. It was agreed the meeting would move to July 11 at 3:30 pm.
Topics for board agenda. In addition to policy adoption, time should be allotted for Conflict of Interest review and the Final DEI session.
There being no other items to discuss, members dispersed at 4:52 pm.