President Eric called the meeting to order at 1:35 pm on Saturday, 1/29/00, at the Hersey retreat center. He thanked all those present, and expressed regrets that we weren't a larger group.

Secretary's Report. Marilyn moved the minutes from the previous annual meeting; Arwen seconded, and the minutes were PASSED as published.

Marilyn then reported that, in keeping with the By-Laws, she had received census reports from the three member groups of EPN, Watonah Grove, Immanent Grove, and Pancraft. She then reviewed the changes to the By Laws that had been made since the previous Annual meeting: 1) An Officer of the Council may, at his/her discretion, be assisted on a temporary basis by a member of EPN not on the Council in performing any clerical duties necessary, including record keeping, accounting, or any other service required, and 2) affinity groups (defined as three (3) or more adults meeting regularly on a continuing basis in the furtherance of any Pagan objective) may be full member groups of EPN, provided at least 50% of their membership are EPN members. This will allow for wider Council participation by having more groups involved, as each member group appoints a person to sit on the EPN Council.

Treasurer's Report. Aree then presented a financial statement (a copy of which is with the permanent records of the organization). As of 1/29/00, we have a balance of $2045.91 in the account. Our chief sources of income are subscriptions ($885), donations ($523.15, which includes vendor income from booths), and $260 in advertising in the newsletter. Given that revenues at the Common Ground Fair have gone down for most participants in the past 2 years, we are doing very well. She also reported that we have 38 members currently in good standing (i.e. all paid up) with 3 or 4 more slightly in arrears (will likely pay soon). There has been a slow but steady increase in both revenues and subscriptions to the newsletter since the Standards were adopted, so they appear to have had no effect on our membership numbers. At present we have a total of 81 subscribers (which includes the 38+ members who have signed the Standards), which is roughly equal to previous years.

President's Report. Eric then read a prepared statement, a copy of which is with the permanent records of the organization.

Student Groups. Arwen, Lara, and Marilyn expressed interest in helping the various Pagan student groups at colleges and universities in the State to contact one another and possibly organize events jointly.

Newsletter. Aree reported on behalf of the various members of the newsletter staff. She said that they were feeling overwhelmed and in need of help, and noted that an associate member (i.e. one out of state) could certainly be involved in writing the newsletter. We are now using recycled paper for the newsletter, and are receiving an EXCELLENT bargain on our printing costs. The Imbolc issue had a different look due to the fact that several computer files didn't transfer correctly from one staff member to another; on hearing this, several people commented that they preferred the "open" look. Aree observed that the newsletter has great influence on what's said about EPN and how we are seen as a community; she also said that it takes roughly 8 hours per issue to produce *after* the templates have been created. Following up on her comments in Council, Arwen expressed concern that our drop copies are not as effective as in the past. She felt that the extra work should produce a benefit, and suggested that we could query both the EPN list and the MEP list to see if folks had suggestions on where to place drop copies. We figured that the drop copies cost roughly $39.48 per issue; at 8 issues a year, we want to be sure they are being effective. Eric suggested we put a poster containing event information on our Web site and as people to print out the poster and place them in their communities, thus using the power of the Web. We agreed that whoever does the events calendar would be the logical person to make the poster.

Minors Pamphlet. Marilyn distributed the material that had been collected so far to make the leaflet for teens exploring Paganism. We still need a few sections before we have all that we initially planned to put together. We would like to print up leaflets to have available for handouts at our various fair engagements, and to post the material on our Web page.

New Business. Marilyn reported on the Council meeting of 1/29/00.

Fairs. Marilyn is investigating the possibility of participating in the Maine Arts Festival in Brunswick; Lara offered to help. We would like to be able to have a presence at the Cumberland and Fryeborg fairs, but we cannot spread ourselves too thinly. Arwen and Eric offered to organize the volunteers for this year's Common Ground Fair, but hoped that someone else might offer to do it instead. It was felt that the Full Circle Fair was getting smaller each year, so that it was probably not a good idea to try and vend there in a large way, but we would welcome anyone who was interested in organizing a booth with literature, buttons, and bumper stickers. Any kind of earth day/holistic fair that is running would be a good place for an EPN presence, and any member would be welcome to represent us; we would supply the literature and EPN would pay any booth charges at such an event.

Spring Thing will be run by Eric and Arwen on April 21 through 23; it will feature fewer meetings and more fun! Linda also offered to do a workshop using her labyrinth, since she lives just up the road.

T-Shirts. We have about 25 of the gray t-shirts left (Aree has them). We thought a contest to design a new t-shirt would be a useful enterprise. We could also use someone to take on a bumper sticker project so that we could have EPN bumper stickers; Eric pointed out that anyone doing such a design for EPN professionally could write off the expense as a tax deduction to a non-profit organization.

2001 Events. We don't have to decide right away on locations; we might look at Camp Mechuwana again as an alternate location for Spring Thing, given the increase in Hersey's rates this year. Mechuwana provide meals as part of the experience, done by the camp staff.

The meeting was adjourned at 2:55 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Marilyn
Recording Secretary, EPN