Council 2008 04

When: 16 Apr 2008
Place: FG Meeting room
Facilitator: Seamus
Scribe: Laurel
Minutes Checker:
Attendance: Seamus (facilitator), Cliff, Eugene, Nick Jacobson, Martin, Marie, Luiz, Laurel (scribing), Matteo, rfs, Robert West, Paul, Steve (late)
Last meeting: Mar 21 2008

CONSENSUS TRAINING

Martin - how to prepare for a meeting. See Doing stuff before meetings.

COMMITMENTS

• martin and matteo will set up a secure wiki for the building group - CARRYOVER
• Dave and Oso will write up something about the (financial) value of our work in the community - CARRYOVER

Marie commits to interviewing dave since she was going to do it in the first place

• Oso will research the new BAN pledge - CARRYOVER
• Oso will write down his conflicts of interest to provide as an example - CARRYOVER
• laurel will write instructions in the "Meeting Tips" and "Council Orientation" wiki pages about the conflict of interest policy and agreement form. - DONE

REPORTS

State of the Onion

The document on which we track the current state of things

• Printer Archipelago is going great
• Space has moved around
• HR is working on hiring process for production and recycling coordinators
• Adoption classes are 3x/wk, and there are "beyond adoption" classes weekly

Board meeting

• Discussed staff signing policy in light of truck purchase; decided that current policy (as set up in Free Geek Bylaws and board meeting minutes: Board20060111) is fine. Staff will be doing further education to make sure they all know what's up.
• Budget was not totally finished by the time the meeting started; still not finalized but should be in the next day or 2. Board will probably approve expanding the staff budget.

Building committee

Marie, Laurel, Luiz met. Created a draft flowchart for project and fundraising timelines. Will need to gather more information next; we don't have much experience with fundraising campaigns and need to build those skills and bases. Working out the dependencies/prerequisites for this process. We're planning a meeting with 2 other organizations that have gone through capital campaigns and have similar missions to ours.

q - reasons for building search/goals. more space?

a - main goal is control over space; development to area threatens our ability to stay in this space

q - timeline for this project - when can we be forced out?

a - we have a 3 year lease with an opt-out [clarify]

q - did we talk to maguire about right of first refusal when they sell?

a - yes, but when they're gonna sell it, they're gonna want to sell for much more than we'll want to pay

BUSINESS

Hiring, revisited

See last meeting's minutes for last month's discussion. The current budget (likely to be approved very soon) includes:

• Martin will be leaving at the end of May; his hours will be broken out into a couple of different roles. Lantz and Vagrant will be doing Sysadmin and Coding. Does not need council decision because it does not add cost.

1. Adding a (4th) production coordinator and rolling printer stuff into production (replacing printer contractor). Small increase in costs because it's adding staff benefits. Approved by council last month.
2. Replace recycling intern with recycling coordinator. Small increase in costs because of staff benefits.
3. Increase staff hours cap to 37 hours/week. Approved by council last month.

There was some lack of agreement from last month. There are three further potential staff adds that may be on the table:

• hire a prebuild intern - there is currently not full coverage in prebuild, and this exposes us to liabilities with respect to volunteer safety and data security, as well as shorting volunteers on educational opportunities
• add hours (to current staff) for outreach and marketing
• hire a new recycling intern

And one that's sort of bracketed to the side because it it contingent on other stuff happening: help for the building/fundraising processes. At the last meeting, we decided that this position should only be hired for if it can be paid for from money specific to the building project.

Other proposed adds:

• more tech support hours
• more store hours
• more propagation hours
• more facility maintenance hours

PROPOSAL: The prebuild intern is the next priority. Outreach and marketing hours, being less expensive are second to that, and the other positions should be handed off to the priorities group and the future. APPROVED.

Robert's suggestions

• some volunteers may be trained to handle money in receiving in order to ease pressure

martin - there is a money handling policy. Staff can approve volunteers as moneyhandlers. See Volunteer Cashiers Policy. This requires more staff discussion.

• can volunteers take care of coming in early to clean up illegal dumping and prepare for opening

martin - there are some volunteers who can come in early to work on things like opening and preparation. See Earlybirds. Talk to staff.

NEW COMMITMENTS

• martin and matteo - set up a secure wiki for the building group - CARRYOVER
• Dave and Oso - write up something about the (financial) value of our work in the community - CARRYOVER

Marie commits to interviewing dave

• Oso - research the new BAN pledge - CARRYOVER
• Oso - write down his conflicts of interest to provide as an example - CARRYOVER
• martin - put the "doing stuff before meetings" training on the wiki
• Dave and/or Ali - report on the status of e-waste (Luiz emailed)
• laurel - work on the Council Orientation document
• staff - discuss the money handling policy w/r/t taking money on the street
• martin and RFS - poke matteo with ideas for consensus training

Next Meeting

• Facilitator: martin
• Scribe: Seamus
• Consensus trainer: matteo
• Reporters to other meetings?
• Date and time: May 21, 7:15 pm
• Place: FG meeting rooms
• List of unfinished business for the next meeting:
  • staff report about money handling policy changes