Call to Order
The American Council of the Blind (ACB) Board of Directors met virtually via zoom on Friday, April 1, 2022, for the primary purpose of making a decision on whether to hold a hybrid versus a virtual only 2022 Conference and Convention. President Dan Spoone called the meeting to order at 8:02 PM Eastern Time.
Roll Call and Introduction of Guests:
At the call of the roll, the following Board members were present: Dan Spoone, Deb Cook Lewis, Ray Campbell, Denise Colley, David Trott, Kim Charlson, Chris Bell, Jeff Bishop, Donna Browne, Jim Kracht, Doug Powell, Kenneth Semien, Pat Sheehan, Koni Sims, Michael Talley, and Jeff Thom. Board of Publications Member Penny Reeder was present representing that body.
Staff present: Eric Bridges, ACB Executive Director, Clark Rachfal, ACB Director of Advocacy and Governmental Affairs, Nancy Marks-Becker, ACB Chief Financial Officer and Rick Morin, Technical Director of ACB Media.
Contractor: Larry Gassman, ACB Media Coordinator.
Guests: Janet Dickelman, ACB Convention Steering Committee Chair.
Approval of Agenda - Dan Spoone, President
Review and Approval of Agenda:
President Spoone reviewed the agenda. It was moved by Bell and seconded by Semien to approve the agenda as presented. The motion carried.
Review and Approval of Minutes: March 11, 2022 (D.C. Leadership Conference) - Denise Colley
It was moved by Trott and seconded by Powell to approve the March 11, 2022, Board Meeting minutes. The motion carried.
Mission Moment - Dan Spoone and Eric Bridges
Dan began the discussion by acknowledging all the work the Leadership Team has done, beginning with Clark and Swatha and the efforts they put forth with the letters ACB wrote to the Whitehouse related to the lack of accessibility of Covid in-home test kits. A subsequent letter was sent to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), along with a follow-up letter. The NIBIBE is the Center that is responsible for engineering and developing the Covid test kits, and their director reached back out to ACB about putting together a listening session that included multiple disability groups. The three-hour listening session was held on March 24, and present were the director, the deputy director, and the lead consulting team responsible for the development of all the Covid test kits. The participants were broken into three teams; one dealing with senior and aging issues, one dealing with fine motor skills and their inability to independently administer the tests, and one dealing with blindness and low vision. ACB was represented by Clark Rachfal, Jeff Thom, Kim Charlson, Claire Stanley, and Dan Spoone. Dan said the session was very positive. A letter has since been received from the Director to follow up and indicating that they want to put together focus groups to continue the dialogue with ACB. The bad news is that all of this takes time due to the scientific methods being used and is not going to happen overnight.
Decision on Hybrid Versus Virtual for the 2022 ACB Conference and Convention
Janet Dickelman first provided an overview of the situation if we chose to hold a virtual convention only. If we were unable to make any arrangements with the hotel as she has been able to do in the past, we would owe the hotel a cancellation fee of $185,000 if we cancelled between now and April 29. If we cancelled after April 29 the cancellation fee would be even higher. If we hold the in-person convention we would need to meet our room quota of 2,867 room nights to avoid going into attrition. Right now, we have about 500 rooms that have been booked, but it is still very early. In the rooms that Janet personally takes care of booking she will probably be looking at booking an additional 800 to 900 room nights. That would bring us up to about 1300 room nights. The rest would have to be reserved by convention attendees. If we only make 50% of our room quota, which would be 1434 room nights, we will owe $186,000. If we can reserve 75%, which is 2150 room nights, we could owe up to $43,000, but she believes she could work with the hotel to reduce that. If we made 80%, which would be 2,293 of our room nights, we would owe $21,000. She said she believes we can reach the 80% level. She said the hotel understands that we might not be able to reach our full room and food and beverage commitment, they would be willing to work with us to reduce those expenses. Our food and beverage commitment at the hotel is $31,000. We have a food and beverage commitment at the convention center, but most of that will be covered by the ACB café. We have given the tour bus company a deposit. If we have to cancel tours, we have the ability to cancel buses up to 72 hours prior to the convention.
The Convention Steering Committee does believe, based on taking some precautions, that having a hybrid convention in 2022 would be their recommendation.
All Officers and Directors were poled to provide their thoughts and considerations, and all were in agreement that we should hold a hybrid convention.
COVID 19 Registration Rules for the “In Person” Portion of the 2022 Conference and Convention
Vaccine Requirement: The recommendation of the Convention Steering Committee was that all individuals attending the 2022 Conference and Convention in person will be required to show proof of vaccination before receiving their convention badges. Registrants with medical or religious exemption letters must provide a negative independently verified COVID19 test administered within 48 hours of the time the registrant receives their convention badge.
It was suggested that we set up an arrangement for attendees to be able to upload their proof of vaccination in advance of coming to convention. Janet indicated that, while we can look into adding this option as a part of registration, a lot of our attendee’s op to have someone assist them with registration over the phone and probably more than half of registrants would not be able to do this.
Masking requirements: The possibility of hotel staff wearing masks was also discussed, and Janet will check with the hotel to get information about their policy. She said the hotel has agreed to have all staff wear masks when they are providing service in our convention functions.
It was moved by Thom and seconded by Lewis to amend the Committee’s recommendation to require that registration contain the option of providing an electronic submission of the vaccine card for proof of vaccination. This could also mean emailing a scanned image of the card. The motion carried.
It was moved by Lewis and seconded by Thom to change the time for the negative COVID19 test to be administered from a maximum of 48 hours to 72 hours prior to the time the registrant receives their convention badge. The motion carried.
There was a lot of discussion around which test or tests results would be accepted and it was decided that the PCR vaccine is the one that will be required because there is no record of the results of a home test and the PCR test is more reliable and verifiable. Exceptions may be necessary for individuals who may, for example, live in a very rural community where the tests are rationed, and they may not be able to get one. We want to keep exceptions down as much as possible. The exemption must specifically be requested by the person, and the requested exception must be approved on a case-by-case basis. An individual plan will need to be put together for how he/she will be satisfactorily tested and verified. This exception must be requested no later than 14 days in advance of the date of onsite registration at the in-person event.
It was moved by Bell and seconded by Lewis to adopt the vaccine requirements with amendments. The motion carried.
Facial Masks: masks will be optional: All ACB Conference and Convention official meeting rooms will have a section of the room area identified as a “Mask Required Seating Area”. All participants seated in this area will be required to wear masks. All other seating in meeting rooms will be mask optional areas.
It was moved by Bell and seconded by Campbell that the definition of acceptable face masks are those as stipulated in the Federal Transportation Guidelines as of the date of the convention. The motion carried.
One of the ways of helping to identify the “Mask-Required Seating Area) in the convention hall would be to number the tables and designate those where masking is required. This year, due to the way voting is going to be done, attendees will not have to be seated with their specific delegation.
Concern was expressed about the handling of situations where people might not comply with the safety rules being established. Since there was agreement that our staff and volunteers should not be expected to enforce anything, ACB is going to have to hire security to be on hand. The Convention Steering Committee was tasked with the responsibility to put together a Masking policy or protocol that will be made available to the security staff and all convention attendees and bring it back to the Board.
The facial mask requirements as amended were approved unanimously.
Hotel and City of Omaha Areas: These areas will follow the COVID19 guidelines currently in place in the local community.
The language related to Hotel and City of Omaha Areas was unanimously approved as submitted.
After some discussion it was decided that all ACB sanctioned volunteers will be required to be masked at all times when assisting convention attendees. It was also recommended that ACB provide all volunteers with hand sanitizer since they will be guiding people.
It was moved by Sims and seconded by Bell that all ACB-sanctioned volunteers be required to wear a mask at all times when assisting convention attendees and carry and use hand sanitizers provided by ACB, to be used when guiding or assisting convention attendees. The motion carried.
It was moved by Powell and seconded by Kracht that all hotel staff will be required to wear masks when interacting with attendees at all ACB Conference functions. The motion carried.
It was moved by Campbell and seconded by Bell to approve the COVID 19 Registration Rules for the “In Person” Portion of the 2022 Conference and Convention in their entirety. The motion carried.
Support for the Blind and Low Vision Community in Ukraine through the WBU - Kim Charlson, President of the WBU North American and Caribbean Region of the World Blind Union
The WBU is planning to raise money to provide assistance to those blind and low vision individuals living in the Ukraine who have been displaced by the conflict. Kim was bringing forward a recommendation that the Board authorize the expenditure of $1,000 to be taken out of our Disaster Relief Fund, and Nancy verified that there is enough in the Fund to cover this amount. We could use this to start ACB’s campaign and our members making individual contributions. The contributions could be made directly to the WBU Ukraine Unity Fund.
It was moved by Charlson and seconded by Brown that the American Council of the Blind make a $1,000 contribution to the WBU Ukraine Unity Fund. The motion carried.
Ad Hoc Committee to Better Define Policy for Roles and Responsibilities for ACB Board, Staff, Program Steering Committees, and the EOS Leadership: Dan Spoone
Dan said that while we have a definition of the responsibilities of our Board of Directors laid out at a high level in our Constitution and Bylaws, we have never really defined a policy of Roles and Responsibilities that would detail the responsibilities of the President, Board, Staff, the nine Program Steering Committees, the ACB EOS Leadership Team, and our members. Dan believes there would be real value in asking our Administrative and Management Program Steering Committee to work to form an ad hoc committee to work through and put a policy in place defining those roles and responsibilities and come back to the Board with a document at the fall 2022 Board meeting. The organization is getting large enough now that these areas need to be more clearly defined and set down in writing.
Campbell moved and Bishop seconded the motion that the Management and Administration Program Steering Committee be charged with creating an ad hoc committee to put in place business process roles and responsibilities document with a draft to be presented at the fall Board of Directors meeting. The motion carried.
Clarification on 2021 Financials - Nancy Becker, ACB Chief Financial Officer
Originally, in 2020, if an organization received Payment Protection Program (PPP) Loans they weren’t eligible to apply for Employee Retention Credit (ERC) Funds for federal payroll taxes. In 2021, these guidelines changed so those who received PPP Funds could also apply for ERC Funds. ACB did apply for PPP Funds in 2020 and 2021 for ACB and ACBES. With this knowledge that we would potentially get a refund for the Employee retention Credit, in 2021, ACB and ACBES also applied for ERC refunds in October pertaining to the 2020 fiscal year. At the time we applied for this refund, based on guidance using the Generally Accepted Accounting Principal Standards, Nancy took the conservative approach and didn’t recognize the revenue for the 2021 fiscal year. In speaking with the auditors recently, she learned that there has been updated information, and she can book the revenue as a receivable in 2021, and the amount of money that she is anticipating that we applied for is about $135,000 that we should be getting back. She has not applied for ERC money for 2021, but will work on getting this done soon after she completes the audit.
Request for Board/Staff Workshop on 2022 Strategic Plan
This was a recommendation that previously came from Board Member Sheehan, based on the Strategic Plan being presented at the DC Leadership Conference and other activities that have taken place. We should take the opportunity to better understand the Strategic Plan, where we are in the process, and the effort it’s going to take in terms of time, talent, and funding in reaching our targets. It was recommended that this type of review be done on an annual basis. It was suggested we schedule a time to do this in September when the EOS Leadership Team will begin looking at year three to re-evaluate what we have in the plan and modify where needed.
Board Approval of Revised Standing Rules
The Voting Task Force worked to put together an updated version of the Convention Standing Rules for the annual business meeting for 2022. The Standing Rules Draft document was sent out to the Board previously and reviewed by Jeff Thom at this meeting.
It was moved by Sheehan and seconded by Campbell to approve the proposed changes to the Standing Rules and recommending their adoption for the 2022 annual business meeting. The motion carried.
Adjourn
It was moved by Powell and seconded by Bell that the Board meeting be adjourned. The Board moved into Executive Session to discuss legal and advocacy issues. The motion carried.
Executive Session
Updates were received on legal and advocacy issues, and no motions were adopted. The Board adjourned out of Executive Session at 12:10 AM Eastern Time.
Denise Colley
Secretary
Date submitted: 4/22/2022
Approved: 7/1/2022