8 April 2007

Agenda:

Coordinator roles 15 min

In-reach coordinators

Financial policies of BP 20 min

CJ and Deb 20 min

Youth Works 30 min

Updates and announcements 10 min

Bike Bike 5 min

Retreat review 15 min

Shauns financial corner 15 min

----added items----

fix for sale program

greeter belt key

Updates and Announcements 10 min (we took 20)

Andalusia: corporate class to make commercial. Specializing in a cool nonprofit

Mitzvah group wants to volunteer on April 29th. In general volunteer groups want to come and work and we need to set up a more formal way to make these days productive for both groups.

Stuart: for commercial will we have rights to show it? We should review it for factual correctness.

Andalusia: put suicide levers on tire shelf

Jessica: laminated sheet describing volunteer tasks

Stuart: I can do that some examples sorting tubes, scrapping a bike, and sorting tires has a front page describing task, and back page describes, “how can I get more involved in FR”

Andalusia: I will take on updating the volunteer board.

Andalusia: I have put all the fixed for sale up front. The ones all the way to the left are ready to go, then the ones that can be fixed for sale, and then the ones that are for someone specific.

Jessica: no one is bottom lining seeing that the bikes get fixed

Stuart: DO we need to bottom line this? We give people a realistic time line.

Scott: that was always the volunteer coordinator’s role.

Erok: How many have we been selling? I try to discourage people from purchasing fix for sale. Instead I give them the option of fixing it or sell it to them as is and recommend other shops to fix it.

Morgan: we’re at 4 minutes past our time.

Shaun: We should have this be another topic.

Andalusia: I think that its like 2

Scott: we had a lot that were already ready and we’ve been selling them

Andalusia: should we discuss this right now?

Check in: 2 blocks

Andalusia: I want to know if we’re not commited if we should postpone telling people we

Proposes: we do not take people’s orders for fix for sale bikes until we can discuss it

Not finished voted on. Will come back to discuss later

Fiscal sponsorship agreement:

Jess: I am making a draft that people can vote on with anyone who wants to sit down and work on this with me.

Adult classes:

Erok: first class 5-7 second 7:30-9 first class is filled up. In the past we’ve offered this to free ride volunteers and there is six spaces available in the second class. Major Taylor cycling club is an African American cycling club and they want a basic mechanics class in return they will volunteer hours. Aside from don’t schedule stuff once I announce the date, it would be good to have some help.

Andalusiasia: how much are adult classes supposed to be?

Erok: its still 40 dollars

Andalusia: we did discuss the possibility of using adult classes to subsidize youth classes so we should record how many people are in.

Things to do:

Andalusia: Erok should teach theFree Ridevolunteers how to use the specialty tools in a class

Morgan: our barnets manual is out of date, perhaps its time to spend money to update that.

Scott: refilling the parts washer

Andalusiasia: we should have 15 minutes to

Morgan: proposal: after this meeting we will use 20 minutes to talk about shop stuff. Voted. Adopted.

Shauns financial corner (took 19 min)

Shaun: Saturday something happened, jeff was left in the shop not knowing what was going on with the cash register was left and the Z report was not carried out. It can’t happen that people who don’t know what they are doing with the cash register are left to deal with the register and be frustrated. Don’t leave someone there if they’re struggling with it.

Scott:

Sean: then the staffers left someone who was just there to fix their bike to use this

Jess: how can we deal with the problem of staffing people who know how to use the register

Andalusia: we could try to schedule one of the five present who know how to use the register are on the schedule. And they teach other how to use it.

Scott: is it supposed to be by the tool boxes

Shaun: yes explains that the register is there to avoid cash register smashing

Andalusia: we have to have someone there 10 minutes beforeFree Rideopens

Jess: should we say something like “don’t staff until you get register trained”?

Shaun: I think its up to the individual

Erok: I think we should have it as policy that the key is not left in the register

I propose: that the key is not left in the register. Voted adopted

Andalusia: we are careless with keys in general. The locker keys should not be with the cash register key

Jess: how does this fit in with the mechanics handling Ids?

Shaun: I don’t see why anyone other than the greeter is to handle Ids, the money and the keys.

Andalusia: I think it’s the mechanics role to get the IDs

Morgan: we should have this discussion later

Morgan:

Andalusia: do we have a policy on who can handle the money? We shouldn’t let everyone, if its their first time, handle the money. What about a commission bikes? If it’s a 70 buck bike and we have 30 bucks commission how do we

Shaun: its important to count down try to prioritize ones fives and tens and leave only one twenty dollar bill. If you need to break up a batch from earlier to get ones and you need to make change that’s ok on my end its not gonna screw things up. Just make sure that when you are done

Jess: in order for that to work we need to find out if there is a screw up. On Saturday it didn’t match up

Andalusia: I wrote down that it didn’t

Shaun:

Andalusia: What are we supposed to do about change?

Shaun: I don’t know we should have some quarters

Andalusia: should we count down 125 bucks on top of any change?

Shaun:

Stuart: on bundles: if you make change write down when you make change and what you made.

Retreat Review: 20 min

Jessica: We were supposed to have a review of the retreat but it seems like info got lost. How can we

Andalusia: one of the big parts of the meetings that we were supposed

Jessica: how can we move forward so that we are prepared for a meeting?

Morgan: maybe we can at the end of a meeting we can say what we are going to do, what tasks we’ve taken on.

Jess: we also need to coordinate about meeting agenda earlier, perhaps that’s a in-reach coordinator job. Post meeting agenda in advance.

Erok: someone two months ago posted the we need reminders

Andalusia: some of these things take a long time and there is a half an hour cushion. We need to commit to getting here on time.

Morgan: what kind of carrot and sticks can we use to have people make meetings start on time?

Andalusia: if the meetings actually start on time then I’ll be more likely to start on time.

Morgan: where are we at? We need to coordinator roles and

Jess: we should post micheals outline for decision making process on the

Morgan: proposal: at next months meeting we will discuss the decision making process and in the month we will post all the items we need on the wiki. By the 15th we need to post any documents we wanted on the wiki.

Jess: can we stop slamming through things.

Stuart: its important to stick to a schedule so if something is going long we should either extend it formally or delay it

Morgan: we need to be conscious of our process

Stuart: our process doesn’t have a way to recognize being rushed, if we stick to process we shouldn’t have a problem.

Coordinator roles:

Erok: we should kick the coordinator roles in the butt rather than set aside every meeting

Stuart: total list of the jobs that make free ride run. We need that list

Matt: we said that we were going to write down what we as coordinators did.

Erok: I can be the point person for this. I can hound people

Stuart: other people have little jobs that they do

Jess: should everyone populate the wiki? The coordinator ship roles were opaque and not oriented to coordinating. So we shouldn’t re-create more opaque jobs

Stuart: that’s why I think we should make a list

Jess: can we elaborate on the process?

Stuart: it doesn’t seem like we eliminate anything by setting more concrete process

Erok: I’m confused by what your getting at with the structure of this. If we can set a date than we can add it into a list of things to do

Proposal: everyone who is involved with free ride should go on the wiki and list what it is they do with free ride and if they are a coordinator or not. There will also be a list of things that get done at free ride but do not have a specific person who does them and they will do this by the 21st of the month

Matt: amendment there should also be a list of things that don’t get done but should be

Voted on accepted

Andalusiasia: should do it by the 23rd because that’s a Monday.

Accepted

Erok: I can group the tasks into groups

Morgan: I would worry about if Erok groups them than that will take the discussion out of the hands of the collective

Erok: I propose that I create the coordinator position roles, solicit the group to see if anyone wants to help this creation consensus not reached. We will simply discuss roles at the next meeting.

Discussion

In-reach coordinator: (perhaps a 20 minute discussion)

Morgan: I would like to be an in-reach coordinator. But I’d like a mandate, so I would like to have everyone describe what they think an in-reach coordinator will do.

Jess: I thought that the in-reach coordinator would be a person who handled basic communication

Morgan: process we just brain storm what in-reach coordinator does

Brainstorm:

Making sure that meetings are emailed a week in advance and they have a time and a place.

Finding resolution to things ex. This meeting wasn’t explicitly decided

Between meeting logistical decision

Coordinating meetings and work days

Nag

Making an agenda for meetings

Volunteer concept development

Coordinators keeping track of hours/ volunteer binders

Interpersonal mediation

Follow up on things we say we’re going to do.

Reminder of policy change

Jess: propose that we have a basic list of communication issues that need to be made and save other discussion of in-reach coordinator roles for next month.

Voted adopted.

List:

Announce meetings

Compile agenda

Nag about deadlines

Remind of policy changes

Calender schedules etc. update

Youth works: (discussion took overy an hour possibly an hour and a half)

Jess: we are discussing if we are continuing Youth-Works next year.

Scott: grant period starts July this year through june next year.

Shaun: the amount of money we have we would use up in June?

Jess: Yes, we are talking about submitting a grant for next year

Morgan: what happens July 1st?

Scott: Jess and I worked on schedule. In summer 20 hrs a week in fall and spring 10 hrs a week and in winter there wouldn’t be any program while its cold

Jess: what this requires from free ride is to staff program hours and run administration work. 5 kids 1 supervisor.

Scott: elija and scott would be primary supervisors, but would have a pool of subs to draw from. The commitments for filling 10 hours a week is pretty minor for two people. Scott would take on administrative sort of things. 2 hours a week of administration.

Stuart: did you resolve the issue of the hours more than the grant? 250 dollars over budget.

Jess: last year we asked for all the money to fund the program but since minimum wage is raised we could not ask for enough money. 2500 short for a year.

Jess: try to make the program pay for itself one 50 dollar bike a month

Andalusia: what about when the kids don’t complete their attendance

Jess: we budgeted if all the kids made the all the hours and all the coordinators used all the hours.

Erok: I wonder if we are biting off more than we can chew.

Andalusiasia: how other organizations works, almost every other organization subsidizes the students by free-be administration costs.

Erok: brings up a bigger question because SCA’s mission is to create jobs for low income youth to the environment in the city. But that’s not completely our mission so we should consider that.

Stuart: I wonder if we can adapt during the year? Such as cutting back on hours or kids if we are burning money too quick or slowly.

Shaun: we haven’t asked if we want to do this

Shuan: I propose we take a step back and ask about the larger question of if we want to renew this. Voted adopted

Q: does the YOUTH-WORKSfurther the goals of FR?

Scott: those of us at bike-bike thought our shop functions and makes the shop classist racist and ageist. This is a way to have a youth component of FR. This is why we had to have this in the first place because its hard to have a lot of kids in the shop.

Jess: our program doesn’t reach a lot of people in the neighborhood because they don’t have time to hang around the shop and its important to give back to the community and the neighborhood. Other bike programs have a mentoring structure, and this program may be a bridge to that.

Matt: how did we actually do? How well did it work last year? How many bikes got fixed? What did the kids ask about it? How much did they actually learn?

Andalusiasia: its really good having someone in the shop more. I’ve been in the shop more and that allows me to ask questions to CJ and clean the shop and fix bikes for sale.

Erok: Echo what Matt said, but see how the kids like it. Is there a way to bring them more into the shop? If it does create a resource drain that it doesn’t become our mission.

Shaun: The justification of this sound amazing, but using Youth-Works as a way to get youth into the shop, but the reality is consistently troubling to me. The project was stepped into to see if we could do it. I think we have dropped the ball on every single aspect of it except having the kids in the shop. That they don’t know about us such that they don’t have any idea what we do. The on the ground handling of youth works has been poor. Perhaps we could hope that we could take this experience and do it better in the next year. Youth works is not a part of free ride it is a sub project of free ride that some people have. I don’t know if this is worth the time to keep four kids on a pay role.

Stuart: agree with shaun, but personally most of the time that we have heard about Youth-Works it sounds negative. I’m concerned that the kids have never gotten involved with the free ride process. Its not clear what their interest is in FR. Are these kids getting real job experience because we give them slack on coming to work? Is this the best way to address our demographic concerns?

Morgan: great potential for the program. The ability to pay people to be in the shop is a way to bridge the gap between those who have leisure time and those who don’t have it because of economic times. We didn’t get the kids involved in the shop enough. ,because the YOUTH-WORKS grant dictated the policy more than the collective did.

Jess: dropped a lot of balls this year, but I thought hard about this. We know how to do it now. I’m pretty convinced that the treasury administrative nightmare will not repeat itself and we can do this.

Jess: proposes that we address BP financial concerns by the 23rd agreed but not voted on.

Erok: if we could have a email up date or something

Jess: we could have face to face meetings quarterly

Andalusia: the winter was a major killer. At the very least the this employs 4 kids and provides a free ride volunteer an income. In my mind it doesn’t drain resources if most of the on the most basic level it furthers the Free Ride mission without hurting it.

Stuart: focus on the submitting the grant application, assuming that we’re all willing to let the program go forward.

Morgan: proposal: allow the Youth-Works coordinators to submit the grant tomorrow. Voted Adopted.

Stuart: proposal: have a meeting two weeks from now for YOUTH-WORKS and possibly other things. Voted Adopted

Morgan: proposal: Youth Works meeting will be Sunday the 23nd at 7pm at Eroks house. Voted adopted.

Erok: are we changing ideology?

Stuart: find out numbers about the students, the time to train them, the number of bikes that they build. Find out if you can throttle the burn rate.

Deb and CJ relations

Stuart: we need to resolve immediate things- she wants to bill us $25 a week for their bathroom cleaning

She wants us to pay a contractor to install the slop sink.

They will have a planer indefinitely- they are pressed right now to use it. Non negoitatle when they will use it.

Heat: Deb said we can’t help you with installing the heat but you can pay our conractor to install the heater.

She has lied to us and said we only responded with threatened us etc.

Deb has not responded to the letter

We need to have her actually respond to the concerns: - have meetings with minutes.

We should send the letter to the board.

We will say that we are not budging until they give us a yearlong written lease.

Jessica thinks we should keep paying rent and work towards getting a lease.

Andalusia is concerned that Steel City BioFuels doesn’t pay rent because they didn’t have a lease yet we kept paying even though we too didn’t have a lease.

Erok thinks we definitely should not pay the cleaning fee and no capital improvements. Perhaps we can have a utility sink in the bathroom

Morgan doesn’t have faith in a future goodd relationship with Deb. We have two options – not pay rent till we get a lease or not pay any additional fees until we get a lease. Maybe we should start thinking about moving again to our own space.

Jessica wants to go with the letter to try to improve our relationship- set regular meetings, a process for the lease and if everything fails than we have to look at a new space.

Andalusia agrees and also think Deb is the problem, not Construction Junction.

Erok- we need to approach diplomatically and if things don’t work out with deb we have the moral high ground.

Stuart feels he has gone the diplomatic route yet she never calls him back and she never e-mails him. She has never dealt with us in a reasonable fashion.

Morgan: We can put into writing that we will not pay the maintenance fee or other additional fees until we receive a year long lease. It is important to have this in letter form and also request a date to sit down with her to discuss a lease and other space matters. We can record the meeting with a tape recorder.

We need to clean the bathrooms but also acknowledge that they use the bathrooms also.

We will write this in the letter that we recognize the bathroom is dirty due to our usage.

Things we agree on:

We will not pay any additional fees until we negotiate a lease. We were not told about this initially.

Stuart will draft letter tomorrow- Monday the 9th and seek approval from everyone and then send the letter by Friday.

By Thursday night any comments must be in.

Stuart will call and see if Deb received the letter tomorrow Monday.