Submitted by Hadiyah Carlyle

Attendees: David Lynch, Elisha Gullixson, Hadijah and Sherwin O’Bar, Marston and Hadidjah Gregory, Insiah Caspers, Halstein Stralberg, Abideen Gunatilaka, Maryka Ford, Paul Nelson,Salamah O’Brien, Ramon, Rachman Cantrell, Lambert Rochfort, Evan and Annie Padilla, Lucinda and Jim O’Halloran, Insiah Caspers, Hadiyah Carlyle and Regional and National Members: Marius Hubbard, Benedict Hermann, Sofia Nicoletti.

The meeting was called to order by chair David Lynch. The minutes of the previous annual meeting were read and accepted.

Financial Report
Sherwin O’Bar gave the proposed 2015 budget. It was approved by the membership. In 2014 inflow or money coming in was $70,174, outflows or money going out was $63,640 resulting in inflows of $6,544 greater than outflows. The 2015 adopted budget: inflows of $80,000, outflows of $79,000, resulting in inflows of $1,000 greater than outflows.

Helper Report
Jim O’Halloran reported that the meeting yesterday for helpers was exceptionally helpful and good. The men have been doing latihans for harmony every week and it’s paying off. The quality of the helpers group has a huge impact on new members. Hadijah O’Bar reported for the women that there were breakthroughs for the helpers yesterday also. The women have also been doing latihans for harmony after the regular latihan. The women also have a Thursday 12:30 latihan which Lorraine Tedrow has organized.

Spring Street Center

This past year, 2014 was a record year for the rental enterprise with revenue 256% over projections, due mainly to listing four bedrooms on Airbnb.com which generated significant revenue. We projected $20,000 in revenue for 2014. This additional revenue allowed the center to make some upgrades to the building, most notably to the bedrooms, which sorely needed painting and new furnishing. The upstairs bathroom also had significant work done in 2014. We also purchased new beds for each of the four rooms, new linens, a new washer and dryer to handle much increased linen service to the bedrooms. We added two part time staff members to our team, Rachel Hug who lives one block south and can walk over and turn rooms as needed. She also does all the washing and drying of linens. She has been a great addition to our team. Another important new team member has been adding Paul Truitt, a local Subud member, who has been able to do many small handy jobs including painting, repairing our upstairs deck and many other important small jobs. The center also was able to give a $1200 gift to the Region supporting regional helper travel. Over $5000 in repairs were paid from proceeds of the enterprise.

Paul Nelson, our rental agent, spends time dealing with constant requests via the web for Airbnb clients from all parts of the world visiting Seattle and meeting room rentals. The summer was our highest occupancy on bedrooms running 2 months, August and September, at almost 95-100 % occupancy. Due to his quickly turn around on responding, we get very high ratings plus guests give us great reviews due to great location, clean, well appointed rooms and a home-life feel including kitchen make us a great value: $50 to $79 per night. This is 1/4 what a normal hotel room costs downtown.

Marston Gregory, Facilities Manager, helps stay on top of repairs and maintenance issues which due to the age of the building are numerous. This past year saw many upgrades as additional revenue has been available. Please see list of upgrades made in 2014 (attached). The key emphasis has been on making our bedrooms as nice as possible. Marston works closely with Paul Truitt and also Rachel Hug to be sure that the rooms are clean and ready for clients. We also have a cleaning service that comes in once or twice a month and do an extensive cleaning of the facilities, managed by a Woman named Rosie assisted by her daughters. Her husband has a lawn service and has come and cleaned up the gutters and raked leaves and cleaned the beds.

We have a winning combo and a great location, build and most of all a great team who make it all happen. It is a good example of what has now been called a: “centerprise”.

We expect that 2015 will be even better as we now are more prepared for Airbnb now and have the routines down.

What’s Ahead for 2015:

We hope to continue upgrading our facilities. With the $10,000 grant from MSF we can move forward with addition of a disabled ramp to the north side of the chapel and a new chapel exit door that will bring that room up to code with a crash bar exit. We may have funds to permit a chair lift down to
the living room floor. We are hoping to paint and upgrade the garage and reorganize the storage room and do upgrades to the basement kitchen. Through more aggressive marketing we hope to also bring up our event rental business.

For a list of possible upgrades and estimated costs see attached list. An open house is planned for February to show off our facilities to the neighbors. We hope to make this a regular event. Paul is planning more SICA events as an outreach to the community. In 2014 cultural event highlights included the Cascadia Poetry Festival (in partnership with Seattle University), Poems for Peace (the 2nd year of an international SICA-created event, a reading by Sam Hamill with Shakuhachi flute master Christopher Blasdel, memorial services for beloved poets Marion Kimes and Bill Shively and many other events.

PROJECTS COMPLETED IN 2014 at Spring Street Center:

Due to the efforts of Paul Truitt and others here is a list of repairs we completed in 2014.
Huge thanks to Paul for his good work for us:

1. Repaired broken railing on stairwell.
2. Painted Room 3 and 4 and the upstairs bathroom.
3. Sealed the deck roof and laid new flooring plus added railings.
4. Repairs screens that had holes in them.
5. Repaired water damaged wall in Room 3 and repainted.
6. Bought new larger washer and dryer for laundry room and cleaned out drain so water now flows well from that area into drain.
7. Purchased all new beds for all rooms.
8. Re-plumbed kitchen sink so drains better.
9. Gutters all cleaned for winter.
10. Garage door repainted on outside.
11. Replaced toilet with low flow dual flush toilet in upstair bathroom.
12. Upgraded shower head in upstairs bath.
13. Installed 3 prong plugs in all upstairs rooms and added surge protectors.
14. Bought new linens for beds as needed due to high volume of use.
15. Added compost trash can to kitchen.
16. Added new paper towel dispenser to main bath to save paper towel usage.

Nominations
Chair: Ramon and Abideen Gunatilaka. Ramon was votes unanimously chair with no abstentions.
Vice Chair: Abideen was voted unanimously with no abstentions as vice-chair
Hadidjah Gregory will be a member at large coordinating the east side group with Seattle
Hadiyah Carlyle will continue as secretary with Paul Nelson’s support.