North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities - NCCDD

Membership & Development
Ad Hoc Committee Meeting
MINUTES
April 14, 2015

Members Present:  Carrie Ambrose, Wing Ng, Cheryl Powell

Members Absent:  Karen Armstrong, Joshua Gettinger, Michael Groves, Katie Holler

Staff Present:  Melissa Swartz, JoAnn Toomey

Carrie Ambrose opened the tele-conference meeting by welcoming the members.  

The first item on the agenda was to identify a Chair and possible Vice-Chair.  The members agreed that Carrie would remain the Chair and Wing would serve as the Vice-Chair.

The next order of business was to review the member demographics. Members agreed that while the ratio of self-advocates to family members was good, we were falling short in the areas of African American members and geographically, we needed to recruit members from the Mountains and Coastal regions when there are vacancies.  Melissa explained to the members the requirements of membership diversity on the Council per the DD Act.  

The members next reviewed the member term summary report.  JoAnn explained the report and let the members know that Chairman Reeves has sent the report, along with a recommendation for re-appointment of all the members whose terms are expiring June 30, 2015.  Wing asked what the “upcoming issues” legend meant and JoAnn explained that was to highlight members whose term would expire June 30, 2016, and that two of those members are serving their second term and replacements would need to be reviewed by this Ad Hoc Committee. This committee will review the applicants we have on file and make their recommendation to the Executive Committee.  The process then would be for the Executive Committee to approve and recommend those applicants to Boards and Commissions for appointment by the Governor.

Members then discussed if there was a timeline to complete the tasks as described in the March 2nd memo outlining all the ad hoc committees.  This committee is charged:  To assess current membership make up, consider strategies for member recruitment, options for member development activities and member accommodations.  All the members agreed that this committee needs to be regular and on-going; at least monthly.  Another role of this committee might be to review the Council Development Fund.  JoAnn explained what the fund was meant to be: to provide travel reimbursement to members for travel to events other than the quarterly Council meetings, for formal speakers/presenters at Council meetings and for general member and staff development opportunities.  Wing and Cheryl were not aware of what this fund was for and further discussion and ideas occurred.  Melissa reassured the members that this was a topic that would be covered at the Member Orientation meeting next week.  

The Membership and Development Ad Hoc Committee’s first recommendation to the Executive Committee is for a list to be created of the annual and up-coming conferences that members might go to, to be listed and maintained on the NCCDD website, with a link to the conference website – as well as being sent out by e-mail to members.  They also asked that this list be included in the “FYI” section of the mail out for the Council meetings.

The last agenda item was to review the draft agenda for the Member Orientation being held at the Council offices on April 21st from 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.  Melissa went over the draft agenda with the members and the members agreed that it will be a good learning opportunity for those attending.  Melissa extended a special invite to members of this ad hoc committee.

The members scheduled their next meeting for Tuesday, May 5, 2015 at 1:00-2:00 p.m.  Carrie thanked those in attendance for their lively discussion and input.  Meeting adjourned.

Members Present:  Carrie Ambrose, Karen Armstrong, Katie Holler, Cheryl Powell

Members Absent:  Joshua Gettinger, Michael Groves, Wing Ng

Staff Present:  JoAnn Toomey and Melissa Swartz

Carrie Ambrose opened the tele-conference meeting by welcoming the members.  

The members reviewed the May Council meeting member survey responses.  They noted that most responses were positive.  Cheryl Powell thought that they weren’t given enough time to talk or ask questions during the initiative presentations and were sometimes cut off when talking and that some members say too much for too long.  She felt that there wasn’t enough time to make good decisions about the initiatives when they were all together.  

Karen Armstrong said it would be good for members to get more information ahead of time on the initiatives that were presenting.  Katie Holler agreed, but thought that the information shared was concise and she felt all the members received more information than they had in the past.  She liked setting limits on the time and having members wait until the end of each presentation to ask questions.  All the members discussed how to be more professional when asking questions of guests and/or the initiative presenters.  They all agreed that ground rules should be stated at the beginning of every meeting – Thursday morning.

JoAnn Toomey let members know that staff were working on “one-pagers” for every initiative so that members will have on-going information and updates.  Melissa Swartz suggested that we may want to again offer pre-Council meeting calls for questions members may have regarding the upcoming meeting.  She wanted members to know that they can call staff anytime if they have questions or need information.

The members then reviewed the schedule for the NCCDD Listening Sessions and agreed to try and attend at least one close to their home and would encourage people and agencies in their community to attend.  

The members scheduled their next meeting for Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at 1:00-2:00 p.m. Carrie thanked those in attendance for their input.  Meeting adjourned.