Board20060111

Basics

• Facilitator: Oso
• Scribe: Laurel
• Time: Jan 11, 2006 19:15 PST
• Place: Free Geek meeting room

Agenda

• Amend bylaws (see dec council minutes)
• Consensus training
• Room scheduling
• New Director Agreement
• Agent of corporation ( RT ticket #2108 ) C7 has nominated Richard.
• Current Budget

In Attendance

Seamus, Dave, Wren, Marie, Bob, laurel (humble scribulator), Oso (some kinda facilitator), Richard

What went down

Amend bylaws

PROPOSAL:

We will strike the clause "elected or appointed by the Board" from Article IV, Section 5 of the bylaws.

Board consents.

Consensus training

Seamus, Marie, and Laurel went to the consensus training. It was good, and Seamus recommends it to anyone who didn't go. The next date is not yet known, but we hope to see it again. See the Lesson Plan for Teaching the Consensus Process if you want to go over the material on your own.

Room scheduling

Please be sure that meetings or events are publicized appropriately. This is currently done on the wiki (Room Use Calendar) and several other places; the procedure will change in the future. Keep your ears open and ask a staff member if you schedule or reschedule a meeting.

New Director Agreement

At the last meeting, Seamus committed to writing a Purpose of this document for the New Director Agreement. We are happy with it in this form, but await Joe's legal lookover (to be sure it's not too official) before making this official.

Additional agent of the corporation/signator

There is not currently a non-board agent. Our previous plan was that Laurel (as Chairman) would act as the signator for the corporation (as described in the Bylaws), but she hasn't been around often enough. The staff asserts that there are enough smallish things that need to be signed that there should be a staff member with that ability.

But how do we know what should be just fine for a non-board Agent to sign? Richard describes three categories of contracts/things that need signing that might come up:

1. things that are just fine for staff to sign, as long as they let the board know,
2. things that should definitely go to the board,
3. things that fall inbetween.

PROPOSAL:

We'd like to authorize an on-staff agent of the corporation to sign items which conform to the limits set in the budget (within a 10% margin on a projected given line item amount or $500, whichever is larger). We would require monthly budget reports, including both projected and actual figures) and an email to the board each time the agent invokes these abilities. The powers of this agent do not extend to signing the lease or grants.

Board consents.

Agent has immunity from red, and cannot invoke the signing ability while tapped.

PROPOSAL:

Dave and Richard are appointed as contract-signing agents as described in article VII, section 2 of the bylaws and the resolution above.

Board consents.

2006 Budget

Oso reported on Free Geek financial history with pretty charts and twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was, to be used as evidence about our current status and future goings-on. Unfortunately, we couldn't read the paragraphs.

Numbers from last year's finances have been extrapolated into a draft budget for 2006 (not yet updated on the wiki page). This is provisional, based on maintaining the status quo, and doesn't include numbers for (for instance) grants. The plan is to update the budget as we go along, as dreams approach realities, and these modifications to the budget will be run by the board at our quarterly meetings. (We'll be adding to the budget each quarter so we always have a year ahead of us.)

Marie: "That part that i want to hear more about is the part that's not here. When do we hear it?" There are some very rough estimates being developed for stuff that we'd like to do, grants, and other more dreamy things that are not included in the budget we're looking at. Some items that are not budgeted for yet, but might be included in that category, are a new forklift, restoring staff salaries (or increasing them beyond former levels), hiring an education coordinator, and (Oso's perennial favorite) renovations.

When we get the end of January report, we can think about whether we need to have another meeting.

Commitments

• Laurel will find out what it will take to make the bylaws amendment official.
• Joe will review and revise the New Director Agreement. (CARRYOVER)

Next meeting

Wednesday, 12 April.

Facilitator: Seamus

Scribe: wren

• Budget review