Our next Board of Directors meeting will take place on Monday, April 6 at 6:30 p.m. at 623 North Rendon. Board meeting are open to all members.

Meeting began at 6:26pm. In attendance: John Calhoun, Mimi Dimassa, Amanda Zug-Moore, Erin Laine, Michael Smith, Jim Drury, Pres Kabakoff, and Sally Glassman.

The Board approved 1/12/09 minutes.

Christopher Brown formally resigned from the BoD in order to devote time to the NOFC Buying Club activities.

A. NOLA Healing Center Presentation and Discussion

Jim Drury, Pres Kabakoff, and Sally Glassman formally requested the NOFC to rejoin the Healing Center (NOHC). Pres said that they had actively searched for other grocers and couldn’t find anyone to join up with the project. Three main reasons for this were: there is no parking in front of the Healing Center, they couldn’t work out the issues with the exact space, and there is a possibility that Robert’s market will re-open on Elysian Fields. There were a number of members of the Healing Center Salon that also always wanted the NOFC to be the NOHC grocer.

The NOHC is a for-profit enterprise, and Pres is relying on getting Historic tax credits to make the financing work. Other sources of NOHC financing are $2M from a state appropriation, $1M from the Louisiana Recovery Authority, $1M from ORDA, and Green Grocer money from ORDA.

Pres said that NOFC members could help lobby Landrieu and Paul Rainwater at LRA.

Erin Lain mentioned that one roadblock is that some in Bywater do not want 18-wheelers doing down the N. Rampart approach.

In order for any of the salon members to become operational, they will need approval for the whole building. The NOHC developers would build the space for NOFC.

NOHC is offering NOFC the back corner next to the parking. They are also considering tearing out the ceiling so the space would have 18-ft ceilings.

The NOFC will send out a notice to its members about discussing the Healing Center option at the next Action Team meeting (Feb 16) to get input about making a final decision.

B. The process of hiring Peter Koerber to reincorporate the NOFC

Erin is interested in working on the bylaws, together with John and Peter. Erin will make a spreadsheet comparing different bylaws to inform the process. The Board will use the FC500 grant money to hire Peter. Everyone should think about ways to change the bylaws. John C. will serve as the liaison between the Board and Peter.

C. Project Assistant

Yasmin has completed her first week on the job as the NOFC project assistant.

She will be meeting with Anne this week to learn to manage the Quickbooks. She is also going to begin calling all NOFC members to determine how they are willing to volunteer, starting with those that indicated they would like to help out. We need to work up a script for the calls.

Yasmin is an employee so the NOFC needs to pay taxes and insurance accordingly. Sarrah S. will set up the account to pay her. She will be paid every 2 weeks.

Yasmin should use yasmin (at) nolafoodcoop (dot) org for all her NOFC correspondence.

If anyone has suggestions for Yasmine, they can also email John C., as he will be working with her.

D. Reimbursement for NOFC purchasing

The Board will continue to reimburse members for purchases made for the NOFC. We will keep a few thousand dollars in the account to ease the process of making reimbursements.

E. Other Agenda Items

The Board discussed other possible members to serve on the Board to fill vacancies.

Amanda Zug-moore made a motion to adopt the version of the NOFC mission as shown on the newsletter for the official mission statement.

The next BoD meeting will be on 3/11 at 6:30pm at 621 N. Rendon.