Who’s at the table?

Ransom
Stone
Allen Schild
Paige Worthy
Adam
Katy
Ashley
John Ratzenberger

Old business

@Ransom — can we have minutes from January and March meetings by next Wednesday?

Ransom will work on the January minutes. John Ratzenberger was newly elected as Secretary and will put together the March meeting minutes.

New business

How cute are my cats?

Everyone unanimously approves.

Choosing new board roles
1. Officers?
2. Committee heads?
3. @John — as our business member, are you happier just pinch-hitting as needed/in an advisory role?

Elections for board officers and committee assignments were held:

President: Paige Worthy (Stone, Katy)
Vice President: Stone (Paige, Adam)
Treasurer: Allen Schild (Stone, Paige)
Secretary: John Ratzenberger (Adam, Stone)
Planning/Advocacy Committee Chair: Adam (Ransom, Ashley)
Beautification Committee Chair: Ashley (Allen, Stone)
Outreach/Fundraising Committee Chair: Katy (John, Ashley)
Events Committee Chair: Ransom (Allen, Stone)

Setting dates for future board meetings
1. Second Tuesday of even months still good?

Board Meetings are second Tuesday’s of ODD months and the board is good with those dates.

Setting dates for future community meetings

The community meetings will fall under the leadership and direction of the Vice President with the support of the Events and Outreach committees and the rest of the board.
April Community Meeting: “Build A Better Block”
1. Lead by board members Stone & Julia
2. Dates TBD
  1. April 23
  2. April 24
  3. April 30
3. Topic under consideration: TIF’s and SSA’s
  1. Non-debate style but wish to have to off-setting points of view to help explain what TIF’s and SSA’s are and their purpose.
4. Potential speakers:
  1. Ben Javorski - reporter who is anti-TIF on a broad Chicago-scale
  2. Potentially Rudy Flores or Ryan Warsing from the Lincoln Square Chamber of Commerce who can talk about the TIF and SSA projects that are hyperlocal to the area and the benefits they have brought.
  3. Potentially seek input from someone that is contracted by the city to help manage TIF applications.
June Community Meeting: Beautification
1. Will be coordinated by Ashley & Adam
2. Looking at potential events/topics - everything from Community Yoga to softball game to educational event
3. More information to come
October Community Meeting: State of the Neighborhood
1. Will be coordinated by Katy & Paige Worthy
2. More information to come

Survey to current opt-ins RE: HOLS in 2019

Board seeks to put together a couple of different surveys (SurveyMonkey or Google Forms) for different audiences:
1. Those who have not renewed:
  1. Why not?
  2. Was there something you were hoping for?
  3. And more questions to be developed by Outreach committee
2. Those have renewed:
  1. Why?
  2. What would you like to see?
  3. What communications would you like to be a part of?
  4. Are there any specific interests or volunteer opportunities for the community we can arrange?
  5. More questions to be developed
3. Paige will look into putting a link to the survey for those that have renewed into the auto-reply email asking people for their input.
4. Have 484 people on our email list.

Technical infrastructure
1. GSuite accounts for committee and any human who wants a HOLS email to streamline board work! (Go @Katy!)

New email addresses were assigned to assist in the communication flow.
Will continue to use Google Drive and other G Suite apps to streamline communication.

Mailchimp for committee communications

Paige wishes to get out of the survey of association members their interests so we can “tag” their accounts within Mailchimp. This will allow for more targeted communications from the Board/Committees to those who are interested in a topic and not spam others out.

Other tools that would help you do your job better/more easily?

The Treasurer has expressed an interest in finding a better way to track membership renewals.
1. Paige is going to look into Salesforce. She believes we may already have a 10 user license from techsoup.org.
2. Will also make sure that we sure that we do have an account with techsoup.org.
Discussed potentially using Slack but was concern about the archiving/loss of historical information after 14 days. Still an option to look into as we continue to grow and work better together.
Discussed Meetup.com as a resource to work side by side with Facebook events to help recruit attendees to specific events like Happy Hours, etc. in the area. (Katy would be primary user)
Nextdoor - need to find a way to see about getting an Association account, not just one individual if even possible. Katy and the Outreach committee to look into.
Paige Worthy says she feels like the connection with the BlockClub reporter is great at the moment and we should continue to feed information to that person.
Continue to use Eventbrite for events.

Committee biz
1. Beautification
  1. Not a lot to discuss other than the desire of Ashley get as much knowledge transfer from prior committee chair as possible before he moves from the area.
2. Planning & Development
  1. On the radar is the joint Lincoln Square SSA/Master Planning Committee meeting that we have members a part of on April 18th.
  2. Next the committee is in a holding pattern until after the April runoff elections for the Aldermanic races for the 47th and 40th Wards. Hope that there will still be a positive interaction and demand from 47th Ward for input from HOLS Neighbors Association for committee positions.
3. Outreach/fundraising
  1. Beyond all the work of putting together surveys, the committee wishes to really work to analyze what causes members and non-members to interact with the Association.
  2. Will look deeply into the Facebook metrics and corresponding events (like the BlockClub story that was recently shared about the debate -- did that drive interaction?)
  3. Also looking to a “refer-a-friend” program that will enter members and their recruits into drawings for prizes from local businesses.
  4. Welcome-wagon? Will look into all the ways that new residents, buyers or renters, get information about the area and how we can welcome them.
    1. Do the aldermanic offices send out anything?
    2. Can we use public information to find out?
    3. What kind of information/goodies do we share?
    4. We wish to be a resource for all residents so we need to continue to get in front of them.
4. Events
  1. Other potential events beyond the Community Meetings in Agenda #4:
    1. Square Roots?
      1. July 2019 - official date not released
      2. Volunteer to serve beverages
    2. Farmers Markets?
    3. Apple Fest?
    4. Maifest?
    5. Oktoberfest?
    6. Gene’s Rooftop private event?

Other topics that need discussing?
1. Paige wishes to get out a small monthly newsletter to the membership highlighting all the things that the association is doing. All the committees are doing work so we need to share that with the membership to continue to be a resource for them.

Meeting adjourned at 8:48 pm. (Paige, Katy)

APPROVED 5/8/19