Call to Order
The August 15, 2023, ACB Board of Directors telephonic Board meeting was called to order at 8PM Eastern Time by President Deb Cook Lewis.
Roll Call and Introduction of Guests: Denise Colley, ACB Secretary
The call of the roll was conducted by the secretary, Denise Colley. Members present: Deb Cook Lewis, Ray Campbell, Denise Colley, David Trott, Kim Charlson, Chris Bell, Donna Brown, Gabriel Lopez Kafati, Cecily Laney Nipper, Terry Pacheco, Doug Powell, Rachel Schroeder, Kenneth Semien, Koni Sims, and Jeff Thom. Board of Publications Member Penny Reeder was present representing that body.
Staff present: Dan Spoone, ACB Interim Executive Director, Clark Rachfal, ACB Director of Advocacy and Governmental Affairs, Swatha Nandhakumar, ACB Advocacy and Outreach Specialist, Nancy Marks-Becker, Chief Financial Officer, and Rick Morin, ACB Media and IT Manager.
Guests present: Janet Dickelman, ACB Convention Steering Committee Chair.
Approval of Agenda: Deb Cook Lewis, ACB President
It was moved by Brown and seconded by Powell to approve the meeting agenda. The motion carried.
Review and Approval of the April 25, 2023, meeting minutes – Denise Colley, Secretary.
There being no corrections or additions, it was moved by Powell and seconded by Trott to approve the June 30, 2023, Preconvention Board meeting minutes. The motion carried.
Mission Moment: Deb Cook Lewis and Dan Spoone
This Mission Moment celebrated all who contributed to the success of the 2023 ACB Conference and Convention in Schaumberg, IL. This includes every ACB staff member, the convention steering and program committees, our fabulous volunteers both members and people from the Schaumberg community, our IL host committee and so many more. We had about 1200 people registered and registrants were fairly even across in-person and virtual. Rick Morin and team were thanked for already having the podcasts for the general sessions and banquet already being released. The new experiment of using our own team of contractors to handle all of our audio/visual activities was quite successful, and everyone agreed that they did a stellar job with the quality of the sound and video in both the ballroom and breakout sessions. Everyone who had anything to do with both the planning and any part of the convention was commended. Everyone was reminded to complete the convention survey. Staff were also recognized and thanked for all they did to keep everything on track, as well as the hosts and streamers who keep all virtual parts of the convention flowing smoothly.
President’s Report: Deb Cook Lewis
Deb reminded everyone that the Fall Board meeting dates are September 29-30 in Jacksonville, FL. The program for the 29th is not fully put together yet, but there will be a Board training activity on that day, and we will be looking at two full days. Janet will be sending out hotel details for those attending in person as we get closer to the date.
Update on Committee chairs and assignments: A wholesale invite/ask regarding committee assignments has not been put out with this being Deb’s first year as president. The current committee structure is being reviewed and cleaned up. Once this is completed, she will probably be doing a specific ask for certain committees. By next summer there will be an actual committee application process, which will make it much more streamlined for people to be able to let her know their interest and availability. Many of our committees will be having periodic open meetings to invite people to come and learn what they do.
Deb then moved on to a Board discussion of a request from some members that we not hold a convention in Jacksonville, FL due to political considerations. In-put had been received from several members with concerns about having our 2024 convention in Jacksonville due to the political situation in Florida and some decisions that have been made by the governor and legislature around gender and restroom usage, abortion, and some things related to people of color, as well as some of those same issues and concerns in other states. Could we be putting our members in harms way by going to Jacksonville? It was also felt we might need to develop stronger policies regarding the places we would choose for future conventions. Others felt strongly that the responsible thing for ACB to do programmatically and fiscally was to continue with our convention plan, the Florida affiliate still wants us to come, and the fact that we had held several conventions in controversial places at controversial times in the past, and we could not necessarily control the environment in any kind of jurisdiction when we have to schedule our conventions so far in advance.
All of this culminated in receiving a letter on this topic addressed to the Board which had been shared with them. Because of the topic and the intensity of the emotion expressed by members on all sides of the issue, the topic was placed on our Board agenda to have a conversation and take an official position for ACB regarding this matter at this time. This is being addressed at the Board level instead of the Convention Steering Committee level because the Board is the elected body to represent the membership, and they represent a great cross section of our organization. The Board’s responsibility is to look at all the fiscal, programmatic, and philosophical ramifications of any questions that come before the organization. The concerns expressed do not rise to the level of being considered a national crisis, which means that the cost to the organization if we were to cancel our contract in Jacksonville, with less than a year to go, would be the full penalty of $387,000. We would also have sponsorship and convention revenue losses. The other factor is how this would impact our ability to have a major part of our programming, which includes our in-person convention.
It was moved by Campbell and seconded by Charlson that the ACB Board of Directors, having weighed both the concerns expressed by our membership and the fiscal and other implications to ACB, reaffirms the decision to move ahead with the 2024 Conference and Convention in Jacksonville, Florida, where we will gather to once again celebrate all people who are blind or have low vision from all backgrounds and walks of life. Discussion then ensued with all Officers and Board members having the opportunity to speak on the issues and the motion. The motion was adopted unanimously.
Board resolution to change signatures on all ACB and ACBES bank accounts that end in 9070, 9062, 9222, 9118, and 9097: The change would be to remove Eric Bridges and David Trott and add Michael Garrett and Dan Spoone.
It was moved by Charlson and seconded by Pacheco to make the required signature changes on the listed ACB and ACBES bank accounts. The motion carried.
It was moved by Brown and seconded by Campbell to accept the president’s report. The motion carried.
Executive Director’s Report: Dan Spoone
Other updates: Rick and Lary are working hard to get all the convention podcasts out. The general sessions and banquet are already available. All the virtual podcast sessions should be out in about a week. The goal is to get all the convention hybrid and other breakout session podcasts out by the end of Sept.
Our Membership Engagement Staff and Resource Development Committee have been working with JPMorgan Chase, and ACB has been selected to participate in a Hack-a-Thon which will be held Sept. 29-30. Cindy Hollis and Natalie Couch will be heading to Wilmington, Delaware, where ACB and our ACB Community Event processes, as well as one other non-for-profit organization will have our challenge statements evaluated. One hundred junior and senior college students from across the country are brought in to provide ideas on how our Community Event platform and processes and systems could be improved. Ten teams of five students, along with a JPMorgan Chase employee will work on providing in-put and developing suggestions and recommendations for improvement. From those ideas the two non-for-profit organizations will move into JPMorgan Chase’s Force for Social Good where they will help us do the programming work to help improve the Community Event.
Clark then reported on our activities that highlighted so much of our advocacy work across the disability community during the week of the 33rd anniversary of the ADA. The three main highlights were the announcement that the US Access Board was sending the revised Public Rights of Way Accessibility Guidelines to the Federal Register for Publication; the Federal Communications Video Conferencing Services Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was going to be published in the Federal Register and the comment period is now open, and ACB is working with our Audio Description Project co-chairs and SASI Committee to create comments; and the White House, Domestic Policy Council and the Department of Justice announced that the publication of the long awaited ADA Title II Website and Mobile Applications Accessibility Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was published in the Federal Register. Comments for the FCC’s Video Conferencing NPRM are due by September 6, 2023, and comments for the ADA Title II Rulemaking are due by October 3, 2023. There were also many events surrounding these announcements that ACB staff and Committee chairs participated in. The National Institutes of Health have published their new guidelines for the Accessibility of In-Home Testing Kits of all kinds, and that has now been accepted by the US Access Board.
Third Quarter Financial Update: Nancy Marks-Becker
Nancy reported that we have finally received our refunds for quarters 1-3 of 2021 for our payroll taxes that were paid. That was approximately $268,300. 80% of that income was recognized in 2022 and the remainder will be recognized in 2023. This is the last of the money connected with refunds during COVID. She said that after reviewing how much cash we have in the bank right now including these ERC funds, the revenue that we will potentially have coming in during quarter 3, along with our expenses, we should have enough cash flow to get us through September, and we have approximately $50,000 of money that has already been approved to pull out of Reserves, if needed. The best estimate is that we should easily have approximately $150,000 in positive cash flow at the end of September.
Review and approval of ACVREP letter pertaining to Resolution 2023-16:
It was moved by Campbell and seconded by Semien that the Board approve the letter, with some minor technical edits, as prepared for submission to ACVREP. Charlson had already spoken to Dan about some needed technical edits to the section of the letter referring to the work being done with them on a certification for audio description specialists. The motion carried. Campbell requested that, once this letter was approved and submitted, it be shared with the membership since it was initially requested by them.
Medicare and Medicaid services and who can provide them:
There has been discussion among disability service providers about Medicaid and Medicare services and the fact that only people with certain medical credentials can actually provide those services. Back in the 2003-2011 time period, VisionServe Alliance actually did some work around the ability for Medicaid and Medicare Rehabilitation Services to be offered by Vocational Rehabilitation Teachers, O&M Instructors, and Life Skills Instructors. This analysis was done as a part of a Demonstration Project they had, but no follow up program was ever put in place. They are now reaching out to multiple organizations inside of the blindness field asking if we would be willing to be partners in a conversation to look at next steps to bring forward and activate these Medicaid and Medicare Reimbursement Codes, and putting procedures in place that would be needed to start being able to offer some of these services to approved Medicare and Medicaid patients by individuals who have Vocational Rehabilitation Certifications. ACVREP has already invested $15,000 toward this effort, and additional funding would be needed. Since our NELDS funds are to be used to help provide legal assistance for advocacy work for our members, and legal assistance would most likely be required, it is being proposed that ACB partner with this project, and that a good use of the NELD funds could be to authorize that some money be taken from the NELDS Fund to go towards this effort that VisionServe Alliance is pulling together.
It was moved by Thom and seconded by Charlson that ACB donate $2500 from the Nelds Fund for this VisionServe Alliance request. A friendly amendment was put forward by Charlson and accepted by Thom to increase that amount to $3,000. The amended motion carried.
It was moved by Powell and seconded by Garrett to accept the Executive Director’s report. The motion carried.
Prioritization of this year’s convention resolutions: Clark Rachfal and Swatha Nandhakumar
The resolutions prioritization report was given, and priorities discussed.
It was moved by Nipper and seconded by Brown to accept the resolutions prioritization report. The motion carried.
Election of the Budget Committee: Deb Cook Lewis
Along with the president and treasurer, the three people elected to serve on this year’s Budget Committee are David Trott, Kim Charlson and Jeff Thom.
Selection of Public Relations Chair:
Deb explained that the Public Relations Chair doesn’t have a role that would be consistent with the way things are set up in the Constitution. This person actually becomes the consumer lead on the Public Awareness Steering Committee and does not have to be a Board member. She requested that the Board consider Katie Frederick because she has been significantly involved with our Public Awareness Steering Committee and has been integrally involved in our PR process over time. She is not currently serving in any other capacity due to work commitments and would therefore have the time to assist in this capacity. It was moved by Campbell and seconded by Bell to elect Katie Frederick as Public Relations Chair. The motion carried.
Election of the Executive Committee
The two Board members elected to the Executive Committee are Gabriel Lopez-Kafati and Doug Powell, and the two officers are Ray Campbell and Michael Garrett. The Directors requested that, in the future, when the officers are called together to discuss a sensitive matter, the two Board members on the Executive Committee also be included.
Adjourn:
There being no further business, it was moved by Campbell and seconded by Brown to adjourn. The motion carried and the meeting was adjourned at 11:24PM Eastern time.
Denise Colley
Secretary
Date submitted: 9/11/2023
Approved: 9/30/2023