Board Meeting, Minutes - January 18th, 2015

Chippewa Valley Civil Liberties Union

Board Meeting Minutes for January 18, 2015,

Herrick and Hart Law Office, 116 Grand Ave., Eau Claire

Present: Myron Buchholz, Ann Heywood (recording), Marni Kaiser, Mildred Larson, David Rice, Stephanie Turner (presiding), Paul Wagner

Absent: Sara Thielen, Mahmoud Taman

1. Stephanie called the meeting to order at 6:35 p.m.

2. The minutes of the November 9, 2014, meeting were approved as emailed with the addition of the note about Heidi Sanders declining to serve on the board at this time.

3. David reported a balance in our treasury of $660.50. Expenditures since last report were reimbursement for speaker lodging to Stephanie($129.39), Digi-Copy ($6.65), and reimbursement to David for the pizza fundraiser costs ($153). The CVCLU received a second donation from a member ($50).

4. The board discussed three points of Ann’s state board report. First, since the Strategic Planning Committee is inviting state board members to volunteer as speakers on various ACLU topics, Ann asked if any of our board members would like to offer such a service. Paul expressed interest in developing a presentation on privacy and security. He will contact Molly at state about his intentions.

The second topic was the ACLU’s legislative efforts coming up this year. The third was the role of the ACLU of Wisconsin in the new civil rights movement. Ann reminded the board members to vote for state board members before January 29. The full report was emailed to the board prior to the meeting.

5. Old business: Stephanie reported that she had tried to contact Chippewa County Sheriff Kowalszyk about our drone concerns several times. So far unsuccessful, there was no more progress reported on that issue. Since Stephanie, Paul, Myron, and Mahmoud expressed interest in pursuing such a meeting in November, Stephanie will get the ball rolling again.

Myron was sick in November the day of the meeting on campus of Cities for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and thus did not attend. Stephanie will write to Don Mowry to get information from that meeting.

7. New business: Gail Halmsted contacted Stephanie about proposed legislation in the Wisconsin Assembly to convert under-performing public schools to charter schools. She wanted to know whether this issue is something the ACLU is monitoring.

We questioned how things are going at North and Memorial this year. Marni will report next time about activities of the Gay/Straight Alliance at Memorial. Myron said he had tried to contact several staff members at North about finding a student representative but without success. Stephanie will contact Chris Jorgenson about the interns he had planned to send to North.

Since Paul Wagner will be developing a presentation for the ACLU, we began planning a spring program with his presentation to be held the second or third week in April. Planning will proceed by email.

8. The next board meeting will be March 15 at Herrick and Hart Law office.

9. The meeting was adjourned at 7:29 pm..