- WIB Chair (also chair's the executive committee) - Bill Kreysler
- WIB Vice Chair - Sandy Cooper
- Secretary/Treasurer - Bruce Wilson (non-voting)
- The Chairs of each of the WIB committees: Youth Council - Barbara Nemko; Strategic Partnerships - Peter Schiller; Finance and Oversight - Mark Bontrager; Marketing - vacant
The executive committee has a big job in that it is responsible for the overall make-up and performance of the Board. This group certainly seems ready to take on the challenge of assuring a high performance and well run policy board. The group jumped right into the organizational discussion by touching on the following topics:
- WIB Membership & Organization - The group began a discussion that tried to balance our new legislative requirement, via SB293, that we add two additional labor seats with our desire to reduce the size of the Board, if possible, in order to have more substantive and focused discussions. It is also important to note that since these additional labor seats are public, we would have to add three additional business seats in order to maintain our private sector majority. This would bring our overall board size to 36 if nothing else changed. After considerable discussion, the committee approved a plan to both added the required labor seats and reduced the overall size of the board by selecting community members that could meet more than one of the required seats. For instance, Beth Painter can represent both a business seat as well as an economic development seat, and Brad Wagenknect can represent both housing and veterans. In addition, there are a few members that don't represent required seats. We will allow those seats to term and will not refill them.
- WIB Meeting Structure - The committee asked itself if the meetings are being approached appripriately. For the past year, we have used the 1/3 rule, meaning that for the first 1/3 of the meeting we would take care of old business (mostly through consent calendar), for the 2nd 1/3 we would have more in-depth discussions on new business and for the last 1/3 of the meeting we would conduct board development. The committee members believed that this approach worked and that the meetings have been successful. There was no desire to change the meetings at this point.
- Board Development/Member Expectations - I had conveyed a small level of frustration that some board members continue to claim ignorance of their role and responsibilities and that we had to come up with a way to assure that board members had the capacity to fulfill their obligations. I handed out a board member job description that clearly outlined responsibilities and the committee endorsed it. The committee also asked me to design a comprehensive orientation package for new and existing board members.
The committee also reviewed the work of the Strategic Partnerships committee and endorsed the strategic initiatives plan that was presented. Bill asked that the committee give some thought to assure that the other committees were tuned in to the plan and had responsibilitiy for oversight of particular portions of it. Peter will add a new column to convey this.
I distributed the most updated youth council roster and the committee endorsed it. I also informed the group that the youth council was set to review and recommend a youth service provider based on the solicitation process that we had just gone through.
I explained that the County HHSA vocational services division has undergone a re-organization that has benefited the WIB tremendously. Although, no new positions were created, the reorganization has aligned staff positions with the work of the Board. The WIB now has full time staff to oversee and implement its initiatives. I accepted an offer by the County to serve as the full-time Executive Director and Julia Smith had accepted an offer to serve as a Business Services Coordinator.
All in all, this was a very substantive meeting and the group made decisions that are sure to improve the performance of the board over the course of the next year. The committee is just beginning to learn how to work together and I expect that as they get compfortable with each other they will drive the agenda more. Certainly, I can tell that each of them are eager to lead and have the full capacity to do so. I think the WIB has a fantastic leadership team!
