Hello, I’m Sue Yamane-Carpenter, your newly elected 2024-2025 Board President. The last time I served as board president was in 1991-92. Does that date me or what?! Since the pandemic, all sorts of practices changed. The Board now meets on Zoom, which makes it possible for someone like me, who is away 5 months of the year, serve on the Board.

For those who missed the Annual Meeting, I will reintroduce the Board members: Catherine Graham – VP, Dave Hafner – Treasurer, Karen Fothergill – Secretary, and Jim Wood, Richard Valasek and Juliet Begley, Directors. Except for Karen, we are newly elected members of the Board. The good news is that we come with a lot of history with this church community. We are seasoned warriors and hopefully know how to pick our battles!

In lieu of a regular business meeting, the Board will hold an Orientation for itself on Saturday, July 20. We will be re-familiarizing ourselves with church policies and procedures, the various committees and teams and their leaders, as well as reviewing the rejected budget that failed a 2/3 vote at our Annual Meeting. We will be meeting again as a congregation in the next couple of months to vote on a new budget proposed by the Board and the Finance Committee. We will be talking more about this in the coming weeks.

The Hope for Us (H4U) program will start in late August or September. In preparation, the H4U staff sent an intake form for church leaders to complete. Old and new Board members are completing the form now. This need not be limited to just Board members. If you want to take an active role in the program, please contact me at Board@unitariansofhi.org.