Garden Club of Windham
Board of Directors Meeting
Thursday, September 4, 2025, 6 pm
Community Room, Willimantic Public Library

Minutes

Attendees: Faith Kenton, Amy Marwood, Ursula Roskoski, Jean de Smet, Debbie
Stoloff, Barbara Wright.

Call to order: Barbara Wright called the meeting to order at 6:08 pm.

Approval of minutes of the July 9 Board meeting and August 20 Special Meeting: Faith moved to approve the minutes of July 9, Ursula seconded, and the minutes were
approved unanimously.

Debbie Stoloff moved to approve the minutes of the August 20 Special Meeting, Amy seconded, and the minutes were approved unanimously.

The meeting turned to appointment of a new president. Jean moved and A
seconded appointment of Ursula Roskoski as our new president. During a brief
discussion Ursula said that she would like to serve until the Annual Meeting in April,
when a new president can be elected. The motion to approve appointment of Ursula
then passed unanimously

The next task was review of committee chairs and appointment of new chairs where
necessary.
-Membership – Debbie agreed to chair Membership but will not be involved in
recruitment or a membership campaign.
-Wildlife – Pam Wright and Jean de Smet will continue as co-chairs of Wildlife, but Jean will now represent the committee on the Board.
-Public Spaces – Faith agreed to take on oversight of Public Spaces from Dan Phipps.
-Garden on the Bridge – Barbara will chair the Friends of the Garden on the Bridge.
-High Street Hillside Garden – Faith continues as chair of the High Street Hillside
Garden.
-Holiday lights – Carole Williamson is unable to continue as chair. Dan Phipps will set up the lights but will not chair the ad hoc committee or serve on the Board.

Next up was appointment of new liaisons:
-Department of Public Works – Jean de Smet will serve but emphasized that any of us
may contact DPW. DPW prefers email. We should use the address
dfascio@windhamct.gov and copy administrative assistant Kathy Worcester:
kworcester@windhamct.gov.
-GROW Windham – Jean will manage the Pageau grant and serve as liaison to GROW
Windham. She will oversee scheduling, locations, payment of invoices, etc. Requests
for workers should go to Jean. Collaboration with GROW Windham will continue in
September.

The next topic was the need for former president Jay Osborne to return Club property. Discussion of next steps followed. A letter will be drafted, circulated for comment, and sent via certified mail as soon as possible.

A letter updating membership on the events of the past two weeks and thanking
everyone for their support was also discussed. It will be revised and circulated as soon possible, and include two letters to the Chronicle signed by Board members.

An outside financial review was briefly discussed. Ursula reported that a professional
outside review would be very expensive and not worth our while for a small organization like the Garden Club. We agreed that preventive measures, like having checks and balances and requiring two people to approve all expenditures, made sense. Barbara thought that we might learn good practices from an outside review and that it was important in terms of public relations to show we were acting transparently.

Faith agreed to pursue new signage for Garden Club gardens. The discussion of cost,
timing, etc. will continue via email.

Time ran out before other topics on the agenda (programming with speaker, an
October social gathering, membership drive, additions to Club policies, High Street
Hillside lighting) could be discussed. They, too, will be addressed via email.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:40 pm.

Respectfully submitted, Barbara Wright, secretary