O/D Meeting 11/19/2019

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Board meeting minutes; November 19, 2019

present: Charles, Danielle, Jim, Andy, Raj, Virgil, Tiffany, Bill Locadoc, David, Jose, Will

We're putting the first item aside until later, which is Locadoc showing officers/board how to enter/activate a new member's badge/keyfob.

Jim going over treasury stuff - I wasn't ready to take notes at the beginning, so I missed some. We're in the black financially.

We've collected monies, we have some people paying cash, no money from amazon smile this month. Some months can reflect end-of-month pmts from CC people. Probably wont get a chunk of Nov dues until December because of Thanksgiving. That will affect calculations for profit and loss. Profit seems to be doing well, but if we slip below zero, then we have to suspend expenditures for a month. Calendar is working against us for late-month dues to be collected in November.

Still good on - go to the next page - recurring expenses. Our utilities continue to be low; thank Kevin and others for that. I budgeted plenty for utilities, which worked out. Avg so far came to be 1,053 per month, which is good. Rent stayed the same thanks to Raj's great negotiating skills and Andy's tenacity with 53 emails. Insurance is staying the same until next July. Other bills, have some reimbursements on PayPal; stuff there is small stuff, such as reimbursing Virgil for welding gas, welding wire.

Paypal charging fee for people who still pay that way. We have CC processing, MeetUp, and have in there $8/mo for V-Carve, which is split up across all 12 months.

Next, we have the new budget, appreciate everyone's input on that. If we go below 73 members, the budget is null and void. We have 89 members, we're dropping two, but we also have a couple new ones.

David asking to define the columns. Are the parentheses in the far right column overspending? Yes, parentheses represent being over budget and regular numbers are what's left to spend. Charles: The right-hand column is what's left in the budget? Yes.

Zeroed out the jewelry line item, it's down at the bottom, using the method agreed upon in committee. If someone wants to spend money in resin, it can be fap'd for until we are under the next budget. Jewelry wasn't being used, so it got zeroed out. If they want to bring jewelry back, then can do it for the 2021 budget. Marketing, the advertising section of the budget, (something, something, I missed it).

For events, we agreed upon 14 events, 12 hackathons and 2 purges, with a budget of $200 each. We came up with a method for things that are used in 5 different areas, so the space will provide those kinds of things, like drill bits and pliers and such, in the budget under "low-cost tools & equipment." We brought down the wood shop and metal shop budget numbers to allow for the new area mentioned above. Consumables, better to lump them together as opposed to charging them to individual events. Repairs.... we still have money in here for the laser in case it needs to be repaired or something needs to be spent on it. We're allowing for a $400 service call for laser if needed. Andy telling David that Rabbit knows to call us to clear a service call in case any member/non-member calls Rabbit and tries to schedule a service call without LVL1 knowing. Rabbit called Andy on one of these, and he set it up so that we never have a service call without him being notified.

Jim: We have a $500 budget for the laser in case of anything. We have a shopbot budget too, in case of need there, also.

David asked if Jim has been seeing his attempts at organizing expenditures by putting budget area/which shop in the PO section of orders. Jim noticed that and appreciated it, said it's helpful.

In the Required to Operate section of the proposed budget, we allowed for the June rent increase. Utilities, we allowed for a more realistic $10,000. Fees, software subscriptions, budget amt is roughly what we've spent on them this year. Pike13, V-carve, MeetUp (something, something; again, I missed some) all in that one big "fees & mgmt expenses" lump.

New person entered the meeting, I don't know him. Locadoc left, but returns soon.

Jose asks about breakdown of this lump. Jim mentions it's on this page [last page of budget, Recurring Expenses]. Pike13 is $149, paypal usually has some charges, meetup is 8.25 spread across months, and CC processing. David asked what is Pike13? Jim answers Pike13 is the door system and membership system, sets up all members' accounts, and it sends out the bills for us, and processes credit card payments. David: Okay, sounds very necessary.

Jose asks how we get this budget to membership to let them know they will be voting on it. We need to get it on the members list Google group by November 30th.

Discussion of the number of members we have to have for the budget to be good. This year it was 64.83.

Danielle, the budget must be submitted to the membership By November 30th for comment and adjustment, and it must be approved or voted upon at the January Gen Mtg.

David asks how we get quorum on a three-option budget, like, what is quorum minimum number of votes is not reached on any of the three options? Getting quorum on a three-option budget may cause there to be no quorum. So an involved discussion ensues about how to get a quorum vote on the budget if there are three votable options. So, in the end, the one that has the most votes is what will win. Perhaps the bylaw wording should be changed? Moving on. Investments for October went from 15 cents to 13.90, because Jim did the three CD investments.

Jose: This budget is what the committee is submitting. Upon posting the budget to the member list google group for discussion, post it WITH a meeting date already set up. Schedule meeting for the first week of January. Tuesday January 7th. When we post the 2020 proposed budget, dis-include the "# of memberships" column.

Andy will do the verbiage for the posting of the budget. Will send it to the board for discussion first, before posting to the group. Then he'll also add it to the calendar, once we have that hashed out and ready to post to the member group.

Andy: We need to take a look at the calendar, there seem to be dates all over the place. We need to change movie night end time. Calendar seems to be wonky on the phones. Also wonder if people are adding strange things to the calendar.

Are we going to continue pay-as-you-use boxes for vinyl and 3D printers? Yes. Should we make them more prominent so we get those payments as people use them? Should there be one for resin? Tif: No, not right now, but yes, after I get some projects set up for people to do/use. Jose: Welding gas? David: The large-format printer? These things should be discussed, and provided for in some way. David: A totalizer is a flowmeter that measures how much welding gas is being used. Discussion of how to meter welding gas, and whether we should.

Charles: Anything else for finance? Who has the authority to charge for things in separate areas? The board issues the authority. If lvl1 is going to charge for something, then it needs to be approved by the board.

Done with finance.

Workshops and events. Had a hackathon, had a resin thing, thank you, thank you :-) We have Thanksgiving event in Nov, it's self-funded, nothing the board has to worry about. Paul is on top of it. Round of applause - no, group hug for Paul, for handling that party and doing it so well. We have White Elephant and a holiday party in December, and no event planned for January yet. Other than that, this goes to the new board. No events planned for January at the current time. Elections.

Danielle is going to push these events on the members list and non-members list. Might do flyers and stuff, will do event pushing on lists.

Whoever has access to our social media accounts - meetup, twitter, fb. David said if we want help with events on FB, he can do that, send him picture and text. Ben does Twitter. We need someone to handle the MeetUp, too. We should be getting the word about our events out there.

Elections. Who's running? Nominations are open. Andy will have that on member list in the morning. Andy: We as the board need to push two things, one, getting people to vote; and whoever is going to suspend their vote, we need that list to be more accurate. We need our good momentum to continue. We need people to not suspend; and whoever does suspend, we need to know who they are so we have an accurate list of people who have suspended their voting rights. Currently, that list is probably not complete.

Space and Equipment. Purge. Andy: Thank you, everyone. We kicked butt and did it quickly. Talked to E-cycle guy, he can't get here until Monday morning. Virgil will be here to meet that. Andy told him he needs to bring people. We can clear out more electronic stuff from the boneyard via ecycle. They have the muscle and can help make the rest of the electronics in the boneyard go away.

Jose: Did we free up any space? Andy: We will after ecycle clears out some more stuff. So, that's us making space for more workstations.

Danielle says Kevin tagged some shelves to be cleared and she's going to talk to him about getting with those people about getting their stuff picked up. The concern here is that we're fulfilling our obligation to provide storage to anyone who wants it, per our rules.

There are members who are using large project storage for personal storage; how do we solve this issue? We could actually put red tags on things and give people a finite amount of time, have members come change their tags and INFORM us what this is and why it's here. Or, the next step may be mapping out who has what, where, and presenting this as stuff to get rid of & make members accountable for the extra storage space they're using.

Discussion about Daniel's container, Raj making sure proper process was followed for notifying him it was going. We all think we did everything reasonable, he has received plenty of notices, it's been abandoned here for years and he's been being contacted for years. For future reference, there is a process that we need to follow, when getting rid of members' belongings, to protect lvl1 legally.

Window coverings, otherwise insulating the space. We need to figure out how we're going to handle windows. Jim: Windows are being handled, it's a work in progress.

Still to do section. We talked about budget during the finance section. The January vote is the only time we do bylaw changes. Three or four things that could be improved about the bylaws have come up during the year, we should look at those before January. Any member can submit bylaw changes. If we're calling for membership to submit bylaws changes, there's a minimum amount of time it must be up for members to suggest. Andy and Raj will discuss via email exchange highlights of bylaws changes & budget changes and the time structure, etc.

At some point, anyone who's interested should organize a get-together to actually determine what bylaw changes we want to submit. We don't have anything hard now, but it has come up, for example how we handle directors who aren't able to resign. We need to add a few words regarding leaving by method other than resignation.

Also an alternative to member count, perhaps a way to make job easier, perhaps making the VP in charge of keeping the member count. It's being handled by Kevin, who is not an officer or member. By member count, that's including function of badges as members join and leave, and also keeping up with clearing out member shelves.

Roundtable. Any new things? Regarding fire extinguishers and a fire exit plan, Virgil thinks we need to have a fire inspector come in and check our space. Everything hanging from ceilings not necessarily safe, our front door is our not our fire exit. We have hearsay, we have secondhand information on which is the right door to use and a fire exit plan. The prior door was not acceptable, it was a garage door, and the ramp was too steep to be a fire exit, so that's why our back door is the exit. No one has done a review to determine if it's acceptable now. Officially, the back door is our official entrance. Virgil is saying let's get someone in here to tell us how things should be and what we've got going on correct and incorrect, he'll contact the fire extinguisher guy, Mike, and have him do a pre-eval. Also, we have no fire exit plan. Mike can maybe guide us on that, too.

We once had someone come in and give us an off-the-record eval, who told us how to do the dust collector with metal tape and knock the static down. He didn't say anything really bad.

Couple issues, if it's a matter of fire exits and such, that has to be coordinated with the landlord. If we get cited for anything wrong, then we have to share that with the landlord and then it's up to the board to make sure it gets handled. Let's budget a consultant, an outside firm, to come in and get us ready for a fire inspection. This would fall under facilities repairs. Virgil will call tomorrow and see if he can get the Simplex fella in here to take a look at these things.

Danielle has been hearing that we need to remind ourselves of the process of creating members, not just badge but also there is a process on a document on the drive how to start a new member. There is a list, it's not current with all processes, but it is current with telling new members how to lock up and other things that new members need to be informed how to do. We should make a checkoff boxes for people to use for new members to sign when they've been instructed in all the methods and ways of using the space and closing it up, etc. Maybe we could add a discussion list to the new member form.

We're done. Locadoc needs to show us how to do the thing.

Meeting ends 10:34 pm.