Council 2005 07

• Date: July 20 2005
• Facilitator: Laurel
• Scribe: Shawn
• Previous Meeting Minutes

Attendance

Laurel (facil), Shawn (scribulator), Bobby Kovacich, Clint, Wren, Oso, Richard, Charno, Dave, Jeff Kane, Matteo, Ian

Commitments

Check in: We're all in varying stages of okayness.

• knowledge bees: recommend envada c/o

• martin and wesley: blind/vi project
  

See the emailed report

• • Matteo moved to move the oversight of this project to the purview of the Distro group and the Technocrats/Knowledge Bees, but mostly distro. All agreed.

• clint: wiki page on truck donors c/o
  • Habitat for Humanity might be able to help us out. Clint's seen some trucks around town. There will be a wiki page and then Clint will alert us to the page.

• clint: boardnetusa in progress
  • Working with Martin to ask questions and maybe get them to present to council.

• oso: pickups for pay in progress

• richard: start Acceptable Use Policy for email lists done
  • Remember we're trying to create a policy that will guide us if someone tries to continually spam email lists, etc. Take a look and comment!

• jeffkane, richard, oso, wren: meet and draw up new bylaws in progress

• oso: will talk to mnr about council's thoughts on bylaws c/o, and MNR is following what we're doing.

Reports

Group reports

• Staff reports: staff, get 'em on-list!

Reuse

• report on email list

Dave wanted to bring up our new ebay relationship with Portland Supported Employment. They pay people to get job experience. They would do ebay sales in exchange for 40% of the profits. PSE isn't a non-profit, although they seem to act like one.

Comments:

• • We should set up a regular audit of this place since they may change in the future and turn evil. This should probably be the case for whoever we set up a relationship like this with.
  • We do lots of business with for-profits. We just need some guidelines.
  • PSE is pretty good. They take their people to the zoo and stuff. The people posting on ebay would be paid.

DECISION: No serious reservations. However, we want to ask outreach to look at criteria for such relations and review these relationships on a regular basis and see that they're still doing good and we still want a relationship with them.

Recycling

• Recycle

Store

• Store

Pre-Build

• Pre-build

Support

• Support

Other reports? None requested.

Old Business

Meeting procedures proposals

laurel: emailed report

• passing off commits that don't get done was accepted with the addition that if the person assigned the commit isn't at the meeting, someone will be assigned to prod them.
• Accepted, and we're already doing these reports over email and calling for them during the meeting if emails weren't sent.

Hiring report

See Laurel's report to core for a more complete report:

• Jhasen resigned, Christen is new recycloord
• Jon resigned
• Clout and Matthew's internships ended
• Matthew is now Flowmaster M - Exploratory Reuse Intern
• Steve Stafford is Exploratory Store Intern: is working to increase sales income

Whew! Lots of changes!

• Paid Printern: Michael and Nathan are getting overwhelmed, and have requested a paid intern for the printer area. They would be paid through printer income.
  • Council tentatively approved this position if we had enough money at a past meeting.

New Business

New ed coord

• Laurel's leaving in September, and we need to start thinking now about what shape we want the position to take.
• Laurel wrote up a report covering the current situation, resources available for the new person, FG goals, potential projects for the new person, and the job description.
• Laurel also noted that she doesn't think that the new person would be able to accomplish all the goals without more admin time than she has now. We'd need more interns. Grantwriting was also added to the job description so that we could add stipended teachers to help teach all the fabulous new classes..
• In order to have the position available for applications long enough to get a good pool of candidates, we need to start the process now. Like, really, now.

Comments:

• Looks like this person would be more specialized than Laurel, and would require hiring another person, which we don't know if we can do. Perhaps she can do some of the non-program stuff like you do for a while until we get it figured out.
• Perhaps we can do a co-coordinator situation to do the job as well as cover on-the-floor shifts.
• To have a more specialized ed coord, staff would probably have to forego getting our pay-cut erased (raise our wages back to what they were a few months ago).
  • Hiring for a 32-hour a week person gives us better candidates, so hiring a 20- and a 32- or two 20-hour people might not give us quality people.
  • The advanced linux classes are good.
  • The printern would solve so many issues.
  • Add another exploratory intern for ed as well as collective member
  • Ed coodinator could do on-the-floor stuff at first, then decide how to proceed next: add paid intern, 20-hour staff, do it all themselves, etc.
  • Hire someone as general coordinator and gather their ideas and move them in ed coord?
  • Dave's proposal: liane's does laurel's current jobs, get printern and receiving intern to take stress off, then hire for specialized ed coord.
  • Overlap is good, but hard to do.
  • Other people beyond HR committee potentially interested in being in on long-term hiring situation (beyond the ed coord discussion)
• DECISION: HR plus Charno, Oso, and Wren plus others who are interested will make a long-term hiring plan to bring to all of council. In light of the time constraints of the ed coord hiring, this group has been empowered to make a decision on hiring priorities and the HR committee will enact the plan after posting the clearly-labeled proposal to the council list and addressing concerns. Council members who have concerns about the plan have 4 days to raise them before the HR committee moves on the plan (if the plan requires them to do so).

Bylaws presentation

(Jeff Kane)

We'll need to approve the new bylaws before September. And then elect new board members before some of them leave in September. We may need to hold an extra council meeting next month to do so.

• http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/New_Bylaws_Project
• The proposed bylaws recognize the board, staff, and the council.
• Rewriting the bylaws is a big deal. Should we go with boiler plate bylaws or write them according to our ideals? We don't quite know the consequences of fully changing the bylaws, as the IRS may have to look at the new bylaws and may nail us for something. They may have to look at the bylaws if we change them at all. This seems like something to figure out: what sorts of changes does the IRS need to look at?
• We could take all the stuff out of the bylaws that we think would throw up red flags with the IRS, and put it into a sort of "Bill of Rights" (standing resolutions) approved by the board later. So, we should look at the new proposed bylaws and a bunch of items to enact later.
• Basic big changes: codify council and staff; council elects board; codify consensus in main bylaws (they're now the first standing resolution).
• Reasons for writing the bylaws the way they're being written: model for new free geeks, we want to express who we are, we want to protect ourselves from a possible un-understanding board by codifying council and staff, we also want to keep things open enough so that the organization can grow and change in the future.
• Lawyer's concerns: some language, putting consensus in a covert way into the bylaws (suggested putting majority rule in 1st, then consensus later).
• All are encouraged to join in the discussion, either by talking to Laurel, Richard, Oso, or Charno, looking at the discussion pages attached to the bylaws wiki pages, reading bylaws email list or directors email list

archives, or commenting on those email lists.

• Bylaws email list archives
• Directors email list archives (relevant discussions happened within the last 2 months)
• Also, please pencil in August 31st as an additional council meeting to talk about/approve bylaws.

Homestreet/Meyer Trust status

(Richard)

• Meyer gave us $37,000 to finish Homestreet (no, it's not over).
• Richard will give a more thorough report on the Homestreet/meyer trust stuff over email.

Financial reports

• Richard/Oso will give a Financial report over email.

Next Meeting

• Facilitator: Dave
• Scribe: Laurel
• Date: August ??

• Stuff:
  • Bylaws
  • Hiring
  • Group reports

New Commitments

• knowledge bees: recommend envada
• clint: wiki page on truck donors
• clint: boardnetusa
• oso: pickups for pay
• Richard will give a more thorough report on the Homestreet/meyer trust stuff over email.
• Richard/Oso will give a Financial report over email.