The Stockert Youth and Community Center Board has decided to meet more frequently.
The board discussed its meeting structure during its Aug. 12 quarterly gathering. Board member Don Nestor said there are plenty of projects progressing, and he thought the SYCC board could benefit from meeting more often.
“With everything going on, especially the possible STEM center, it would be nice to meet monthly — we used to meet monthly,” Nestor said. “From the standpoint of Debora [Brockleman, SYCC director], she basically runs the program for a three-month time period before we see each other again, and if there’s something going on, she has to just take care of it.”
Mayor Robbie Skinner cited a city ordinance, which stated the SYCC board must meet at least on a quarterly basis, which is its current meeting schedule.
“I will tell you why we went away from monthly meetings, and Randy can attest to this too: when the minutes were being produced, it was almost the same discussions month in and month out,” Skinner said. “A couple of years ago, we said, ‘Why are we meeting once a month to basically have the same conversation?’”
City recorder Randy Sanders said the board was absorbed in planning for the new multipurpose building, which led to similar discussions each month. That project has since been canceled.
“Each meeting we were going through Debora’s reports and then moving into the building, and now that we have canceled that particular project, we’re digging deeper into programming,” Sanders said. “We’re really focused on the fundamentals of SYCC now, knowing that it’s what we have to work with, so I think with bimonthly meetings, we can achieve a lot more.”
Skinner suggested beginning the new schedule in October.
“We’re meeting in August, we won’t meet in September, we would have had an October meeting anyway, so we’ll meet in October, then December, then February,” Skinner said. “We’ll just do every other month, and if that doesn’t work, then we’ll revisit at one of those meetings, but I’d like for us to try that and see how it goes.”
The board also decided to keep the meetings scheduled for the first Thursday of every month, but changed the start time from 4:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
