Dear Pacific Central District Friends,
How are you loving yourself, each other, and the world? As we enter into the last quarter of Gregorian calendar year 2021, I hope your connection to what sustains us all is strong. I hope you know and feel that you are loved.
For some time, UUA regional staff and district volunteers in the Pacific West have been actively wrestling with the question of how to be an association together. Volunteer leaders from the Pacific Southwest are now sprinting towards legally merging with the Mountain Desert District by the end of the year, and the Pacific Northwest District is seeking to dissolve early next year.
What do these mergers mean? It means that the Pacific Western Region will continue to exist as it has, as a “doing-business-as” of the Mountain Desert District. The “Pacific Western Region” branding, if you will, will become the primary identity of the merged 501c(3) non-profit corporation. The organization will have new by-laws and a new board, possibly governing, possibly advisory, that regional staff and the four district boards are actively working out.
The Pacific Central District is on a slightly different timeline. There are three reasons. We want to make sure that our youth ministry consultation effort continues to have the support it needs. We want to safeguard the financial gifts that have been bequeathed to the District. And we, your volunteer Board, have discovered that we prefer a slower pace. It is how we make it possible for us to do this work at all.
Just like the other district boards, the Pacific Central District Board is going through a legal due-diligence check-list provided by the Mountain Desert District’s legal counsel, collecting the documents that define and bind us as a 501c(3) non-profit corporation, and updating our bylaws to allow for a variety of institutional futures.
Just like the other district boards, the Pacific Central District Board is also in active conversation with regional UUA staff and the other district boards about the new by-laws and board for the 501c(3) corporation that will soon be called the Pacific Western Region.
If you are called, in any way, to participate in the nitty gritty ministry of UUA governance, here are some pathways:
1) Engage with the UUA board. Board meetings are posted here.
2) Engage with us. The Pacific Central District Board meets on the first Tuesday at 8PM PT of every odd numbered month. The District is transforming into something different, one way or another, and our geographical area will want representation on the new Pacific Western Region Board.
Your PCD Board,
Catherine Ishida
Roger Jones
Bob Klein
Bob Miess
Karen Urbano
(The Rev. Ben Meyers was recently elected to the District Board, but has decided that he is unable to take on this ministry at this time. Thank you for your willingness, and thank you for all the other ways you love the world!)