Oklahoma Council of the Blind Quarterly Board Meeting Conducted Via Zoom February 24, 2022 President Kay Love called the February 24 Quarterly board meeting of the Oklahoma Council of The Blind to order at 9:30 A.M. President Love began this meeting by asking that a moment of silence be observed in honor of those who have passed from this earth since the last quarterly board meeting in November including Ray Washburn; and also to remember the ukranians. Roll Call Secretary Marilyn Sanders called the roll. Board members present included: Kay Love, Elaine Boykin, Pam Holloway, Frances Poindexter, Vicky Golightly, Jane Thomas, Jeanne Meyer and Marilyn Sanders. As eight board members were in attendance, a quorum was established. Other OCB members in attendance included: Jean Jones, Tom Love, Rae Fitzpatrick, Julie Brantley and Jay Doudna. . President’s report President love expressed her thanks to all for the hard work in making effort to develop a new OCB brochure, updating the web site, keeping up with list serve, striving to put together the history of the organization, watching potential legislation that impacts the lives of people who are blind or have disabilities, and updating important programs. She thanked all for everything that has been done to help affiliates in the last few months. We have been busy. She reported the ACB legislative seminar will be March 12. She has asked jean, Jay and Vicky to attend if possible. Registration closes March 9 and can be completed on line. All agreed they would register and try to attend as much of the meeting as possible. She emphasized the ACB National Convention is scheduled for July 1-8 and will be held in Omaha, Nebraska. Although the convention wil be in person and virtual, it is hoped that many will be able to attend since this will be the first in-person convention in three years. She stated the OCB Convention will be September 16-18 and will be held in lawton. The Convention Committee has met a couple of times and the next meeting will be March 15. SECRETARY’S REPORT As there were no dissentions the minutes were accepted as distributed via e-mail and on the list serve. TREASURER’S REPORT As there were no dissentions the treasurer's report was adopted as e-mailed to the board. The Treasurer presented the proposed 2022 budget as follos: item amount Income Convention 17136 Donations 620 Fund Raising Profit 730.64 Money Market Interest 113.59 Total estimated income 18600.23 Expenses ACB Dues 2500 State Farm Liability Insurance 325 State Farm Bond Insurance 90 Freedom Voice 126.72 Blind Spot Newsletter 800 Convention Expense 13489.51 OCB Outreach 100 OSB Graduation Gifts 300 P.O. Box 254 Web Expense Domain Name 25 Web Expense Hosting 105 Judy Pool Hansen Transportation 200 Banking Expense 25 ACB Donation from OCB 60 Miscellaneous 200 Total Expenses 18923 Motion was made and seconded to accept the budget for purposes of discussion. After discussion, consensus was made that an additional category of Other Computer Expenses in the amount of 300 be added to this budget. Since this is a proposed budget, if additional expenses should be needed, it can be brought to the board for approval. No other discussion was brought forth and the question was called. Motion to accept the budget as amended was passed. Judy Pool Transportation Fund Jane Thomas reports she is in the process of putting the items presented at the last board meeting into the document including the toll free hot line telephone number and the oCB web site. A friend has agreed to type it and format it and when finished, it will be ready for distribution. She did emphasize that the documentation indicates this program is for OCB members. Freedom Voice Although the line seems to be working, reports of issues some have experienced were noted. Apparently some calls try to reach the local contact but the system simply says thanks and hangs up on them. Jay stated he would be checking into this situation and make effort to get these issues resolved next week. convention committee Tom and Vicky reported the convention Committee has met twice for planning. The convention is scheduled for September 16-18 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Lawton. Committees in place at present include: jay and rocco on exhibits and vendors jeanne and frances registration Other plans include: a silent auction and a live auction with Pat kelly as auctioneer. We will need great items for both events. Frances and Vicky are in charge of accumulating door prizes and auction items. We need: an active program committee to develop an interesting program. We also need a specific theme for the convention. Any suggestions for a theme should be submitted to Vicky. Question was raised regarding scholarships. We have provided them in the past. motion was made by Vicky, seconded by Elaine to provide 5 scholarships for first time attendees and for 5 OCB members. The scholarships will be for registration for the Friday professional seminar as well as for the convention on Saturday and Sunday. After some discussion, motion passed. The committee is in process of finalizing the registration costs. They hope to keep it around $120 for the entire program. Should a person choose to attend only Friday, the cost would be $65 and if for Saturday and Sunday the cost would be $100. The hotel rooms are $110 per night for 1-4 people. Contact has been made with Tracy Brigham, Division Administrator, and she is planning on sending both staff and consumers to the convention. Discussion regarding program content for the Professional seminar was made. It was decided that perhaps a questionnaire should be sent to Tracy, Teresa, Cheryl, Julie and Pam to see what they would like to have on this program to further meet staff development needs. Vicky, Elaine and Pam will work together to get this done. This needs to be completed quickly. LCB is working on goody bags and will assist Frances and jeanne with registration. debbie hendrickx is in charge of the Friday night hospitality. Ray Fitzpatrick gets accalades for arranging the donation of baked potatoes and brisket from Easy Go for a baked potato bar. They plan to ask for donations for the purchase of other condiments that are usually available for a baked potato bar. One board member pledged a donation of $50 to assist in the purchase of these condiments. Vicky asked if some accomodation will be available for diabetic such as a salad. Ray states she is sure some alternative will be available. Governmental affairs Members of the legislative and Governmental Affairs committee include Jean, jay pam, vicky andjane. jean provided the report for the committee. She reports she had provided the committee with a lengthy list of legislation being watched this session. There are many bills, some with language in them and some with only titles. The bill has to pass the committee by March 3 in order for it to proceed within the process so many bills being watched will probably not go anywhere. We do have to be diligent as many bills don't necessarily specify a blindness issue but could directly have an impact on people with disabilities. There are many new bills that deal with voting some are still shell bills they will either fill out or drop out. There are a few to watch. These bills deal with such aspects asabsentee voting procedures and accessible voting. Some bills deal with public health issues mostly antivaccination, anti masks, bills outlawing any type of employer or hospital having requirements for vaccination or mask wearing; penalizing employers for requiring employees mostly addressing covid. Some bills deal with health and safety. with the increase in prevalence of guns especially in schools, colleges, vocational training places.one example of a proposal would eliminate taxes on amunition. There are some bills that deal with discontinuing of sales tax on groceries but maintining local taxes so as to not remove the revenue for cities and towns. There are many educational bills that need to be watched. Specific bills introduced that need to be watched: SB-1223 by Bullard. The bill creates a misdemeanor for service animal accommodations misuse. The bill provides that, regarding use of public accommodations, “Any person who is not an individual with a disability or is not trained to assist individuals with disabilities, who uses a service animal in an attempt to gain treatment or benefits as an individual with a disability shall, upon conviction, be guilty of a misdemeanor.” SB-1349 by Haste. Supported by many Lions organizations. Stating that for-profit entities shall not engage in procurement or sale of eye parts. SB-1442 by Jett. The bill would prohibit schools, including OSB and OSD, from using any funds, public or private, to teach social/emotional learning. It would remove existing wording in law that includes social/emotional learning as part of the purposes of OSB and OSD. We need to contact the members of the Educational Committee to express our concern over this bill especially as it directly opposes the Extended Curriculum for both OSB and OSD. SB-1567 by Rosino. The bill eliminates the State Use Committee, and designates the State Purchasing Director in OMES/Central Purchasing Division, as the entity to administer State Use, make rules, etc. It allows an exception from State Use requirements when an agency can purchase goods/services at lower cost. The State Use Act when implemented was very beneficial to the blind especially and later to other workshops that hired people with disabilities. When the law was enacted, the Director of Visual Services was, by statute. to be on the committee. however, later this was changed. This bill would eliminate the committee and put under central purchasing SB-1570 by Hamilton. Modifying requirements and procedures for voting by absentee ballot. Limiting reasons why a person can request an absentee ballot. Requiring a person must request for each election. Forbidding the Election Board from sending ballots to a person for all elections during the year. Requiring submission of certain IDs with ballot. Allowing a witness to only witness one ballot, unless of immediate family members. HB-3476 by Stark. The bill provides a uniform sales tax exemption for charitable organizations that are registered in Oklahoma under the Charitable Solicitation provision, are nonprofit and federally tax exempt. HB-3976 by Bell. Requiring disability parking signage and other access signage be changed to a modernized symbol depicting a figure leaning forward in a wheelchair, indicating motion. HB-3977 by Bell. Creating the Commission on Independence and Ability. This would replace the inactive Strategic Planning Committee on Olmstead. HB-3978 by Bell. Specifying diabetes treatment covered by insurance should meet certain medical standards. HB-3668 by Turner. The Oklahoma Pedestrian Safety Act. Shell as introduced. No language showing yet. HB-4238 by Hasenbeck. A shell as introduced. Named the Blind Persons Act of 2022. Another bill deals with the teacher contracts at OSD and OSb. This would restrict contracts to a certain number of hours that can be worked and if hours are exceeded aadditional pay would need to be made. Historical Committee jeanne Meyer expressed her thanks to everyone who is putting in time for this. She recovered some notes of when we developed the fourst web site and will provide that for the history. Randy Howard was president. This is a huge project and is on going and we need the help of everyone. She encouraged all to always keep in mind when going through papers or think about things in the past what you remember that needs to be in our history and it will be given to the committee so it can be incorporated. Jean has sent scanned copies of Newsletters and Minutes from the 70’s and 80’s to committee members. We are going over the documents to make sure we have factual information of elected officers, events and accomplishments of OCB and its earlier organization. Marilyn is retyping many of them so that we will have accessible useable material that will be in a format that can be accessed by anyone. Norman has Agendas from early dates in Braille that he is going to read to Jay/Marilyn so they can be put in electronic format. Jay is transferring recorded materials to electronic files. It is a slow process but very necessary in order to get our history preserved. The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for March 21, 2022. constitution: Jeanne Meyer reports the constitution amended at convention has been updated and published on the web site so it is available to anyone who wants to get it. social media: Sandy Evans was not present to provide a report; however, vicky reports sandy posts lots of information on Facebook. She gets reports that we have people viewing the Facebook page. She has tried to engage younger people; however, we have a hard time drawing them in. It was suggested we check out Tick Tock as that seems to be the platform where the younger people seem to be. kay stated she would talk to Sandy about that possibility. public information: vicky provided an update on the status of our contract with site Weaver. Although we had some training sessions, Sarah Hale has had some health issues which effected the timeliness of training and her follow through with provision of handouts and tools to assist the group in learning to use Word Press.As a result, the contract is being terminated. Debbie Sanders has volunteered to assume the hosting and will be working with Sarah to move all of the web site functions to her. She will provide the group with training and will be the administrator. We have had a couple of wonderful training sessions with Debbie and she works diligently to insure our understanding of the essentials of Word Press. The committee feels Debbie needs to be compensated in some way as all she has done thus far has been grattus. we need to decide on a method compensating Debbie for her work. She would prefer some type of grituity rather than entring into a specific contractual arrangement. After discussion, motion was made by Marilyn Sanders and seconded by Elaine Boykin to pay Debbie Sanders $50 per month for services provided which would include training and updating the web site. motion passed. The brochure committee has been meeting to update the brochure. A few wording changes have been made to the content and some pictures have been added. Frances has worked diligently to format the brochure. She will send it to the board when completed. the committee recommends we have 500 printed. frances and tom will get some quotes for the printing costs. Motion was made, seconded, and passed to allocate up to $500 for the printing of the new brochures. Vicky reports the list serve guideline committee will meet March 3 to further work on the guidelines. The guidelines have been sent out and it would appear that only a few modifications will need to be made. Kay would like to have these posted the first of each month as a reminder to all of the purposes of our list serve. The final modifications need to be sent to the Board for acceptance prior to posting. Members of this committee are jeanne moderator vicky kay frances jean jeanne, moderator of the list serve, questioned what criteria is there for approving requests for new subscribers. After brief discussion, it was decided to further discuss this on March 3. fund raising jay we have received positive responses from folks who have suggested things like rada sales, amazon smile and mms fund. We have one or 2 new members their designated amout goes to acb and to us. jane reports she has not had opportunity to explore community foundation or other non profit entities as yet. membership Frances reports the certified list of members is due to the National ACB office March15. She has been adding new members and deleting others who are unable to be located or deceased. To date, our current membership is 514. Questions were raised about the procedure that resulted in as many members as we have on the list. As we have to pay $5 for each member, the membership bill is fairly high. We are the only affiliate in ACB that does not charge dues. This has been a long standing issue as many of our numbers have no contact information that is useful which also makes outreach difficult. It was noted that the majority of individuals on the membership list do not participant in any of the affiliates and would seem to be inactive. The question remains what can be done about this, if anything. A bit of history was given in that individuals starting at the League or applying to the inactive credit union, Associated Blind of Oklahoma and Texas, were provided opportunity to become members. This assisted in the growth of membership. Unfortunately in many cases contact information was not kept up to date. Also, when individuals apply for membership in ACB, they become members of OCB as well and may not be in contact with any local affiliate. It was pointed out that the active status is not nesseessarily the measure for membership. Whenever legislation is introduced that effects Oklahomans who are blind it is beneficial to be able to provide the legislature with solid numbers. No specific action was introduced to resolve this issue. OSB Outreach: Jeanne Meyer provided the report for carolyn Patocka, Chair. She has been in touch with Laci goins (senior sponsor) to discuss gifts for the graduates. It was decided to once again present the $25 gift cards from Wal-Mart to the graduates. There are 10 graduates this year. jeanne will send the letter that we include with the gift card. Kay states we just want them to know they are invited to join oCB. Blind Spot: kay has had a few more folks that have offered to help and questioned if the board wants her to continue to edit it. if anyone has specific articles, she would appreciate them being sent to her. it was noted that for materials to be considered large print it has to be 14 point. we can only include advertisement information if we pay for the mailings. Committee for younger Members: elaine has talked to jennifer since she and Koby moved to Tulsa. She states Jennifer is interested in being active in OCB; perhaps she might be able to generate some activity and enthusiasm among younger indivvvvvvvvviduals to work in OCB. Seems that most younger people are more active with social media. Perhaps contact with the ACB Student affiliate might bring some ideas as well. We need to find someone willing to lead this committee. chapter reports: Due to the lateness of the hour, chapter reports were not given. Unfinished business: No unfinished business was brought forth. new business: The next Board meeting has been scheduled for May 7, and will begin at 9:00 AM. announcements: jane reported that Earl Kessler from Oklahoma City recently wrecked his 15 passenger van. Earl has provided many OCB members with transportation to a variety of meetings. He is planning to initiate a Go Fund me page to seek assistance in purchasing a new vehicle. He plans to explain that he transports individuals who are blind to various meetings and activities. he is hopeful to raise enough funds to purchase a newer vehicle. Although he does get some payment for the transportation, one fact that sets him aside is that he stays for the entire meeting or activity to insure each person is able to get where ever they need to go. She will provide information regarding his Go Fund Me page to the list serve so if anyone is interested they will have the appropriate information. The meeting adjourned at 12:10 Respectfully submitted Marilyn Sanders, Secretary