Free Ride! Meeting Minutes, Sunday December 9, 2007, 1pm at the Thomas Merton Center

{Scribe's comments marked with {these} curly things, "FR"=Free Ride, "CJ"=Construction Junction}

 

Getting Started

We began with a brief yet lively discussion of the procedure for taking and posting meeting minutes. The discussion expaned to include who would cover email answering and QBP ordering for Erok while he is traveling in the near future. The results:

- Will is going to take the minutes as usual this month

- Next month Matt, Stuart, and George will become the "scribe committee" and begin a tag team approach to taking and posting the minutes

- Will is going to do the QBP ordering for Erok

- Morgan is going to answer the emails {I think... somebody correct this if I got it wrong}

 

We reviewed the agenda and decided to aim for ending the meeting at 4pm

Johnny wanted to talk about the sexual harassment policy stuff at the beginning of the meeting since he couldn't stay for the whole thing.

 

Our next general meeting will be 1 pm Sunday January 13, 2007, probably at the Thomas Merton Center. However, we have to check with them first. Jessica is going to follow up on having the meeting at the Merton Center.

 

Reportbacks

 

Shop (Erok & Will):

- got a vise (which is ok to use for freewheel remover tools)

- got a heater

- got a nice floor pump (which needs to stay locked up, including whenever it is not being used during open shop)

 

Things that need to be ordered or otherwise obtained:

- A new blade for the pipe cutter

- An FRW-1 freewheel remover wrench

 

Heater:

- Will is going to document safe handling and operation procedures for getting propane and using the heater

- People should use the heater log (hanging with the tags) to keep track of how many hours the heater is on (so we know when the tank will run out)

 

Proposal: buy a second propane tank... Approved

 

Sexual Harassment Policy (Johnny & Diane):

Johnny showed us a brightly colored draft of the "How do I know if what I'm doing is OK?" page that he wrote with Diane and we discussed it.

 

{Johnny, feel free to add your text here, I don't have a copy of it}

 

Comments and results:

- the bit about "tool taking" could use some clarification

- Jessica: I think we ought to have agreeing to a code of conduct be a part of joining the collective (in light of horror stories from other collectives about people joining and causing severe problems)

- Agenda item: talk about having a meeting for "assertiveness" training

- Perhaps the text should include an explanation of why this new sign is going up

- Perhaps it should include a "check yourself" section

- Perhaps it should include something about talking to people in a belittling manner (making fun of people who don't know tool names, etc)

- Andalusia: doesn't like the phrase "see something, say something"

 

Assertiveness Training (Diane & Johnny):

We are going to have an "assertivness" training session at 1 pm on Sunday January 6, 2008, probably at the Merton Center. {I think Diane is going to confirm the location.} Things that will be included:

- How to say something when everybody thinks something ought to be said but nobody's sure of what to say or how to say it

- How to productively articulate problems

- Probably some role playing

 

Interlude on stocking things in the shop:

Morgan suggested that we should do a better job of stocking things in the shop and having spares on hand for stuff that could break (such as floor pumps). We had some lively discussion of the status of our transition to a committee structure, committee budgets, "micromanagement", discussing things as a group or in committees, etc. Results:

- Informal consensus that our current practice of holding off on QBP orders until we hit the $600-ish threshold for free shipping is probably not necessary as we can afford to pay the shipping charges.

 

Kids Bike Days (Andalusia & Erok):

- Went really well, about 30 people plus a film crew came on Sunday. Got about 40 bikes ready to go.

- Wednesday the Trib PM came. It was snowing so the turnout was smaller. Got about 15 bikes ready

- Bikes will get picked up by the housing authority people in a truck on Tuesday (Dec 11, 2007)

- Quality control on bikes with the "done" stickers (from recent open shops) was not good enough, lots of problems slipped through.

 

Program Committee (Scott):

- Will meet tomorrow (Monday Dec 10, 2007) noon at the Quiet Storm

- Center for Creative Learning {or something with a name sort of like that} wants to have kids play with bikes

- Starting to plan for Spring and Summer classes

- Jessica: should program committee include non youth classes? (some on program committee are mostly just interested in youth stuff)

- Matt: is interested in an advanced mechanics class (and a bunch of other people said they were also interested)

 

Inreach (Morgan):

- No inreach committee yet

- Going to have a meeting soon

 

CJ (several people):

- Andalusia relayed Jake's update to the CJ wiki page: basically CJ has another mystery tennant that wants to sublet, CJ's lawyers are working on a sublease agreement, and CJ doesn't plan to sign our letter of agreement.

 

Interlude on our response CJ's likely demands for rent payments so they can close their books for 2007

We had a very lively and contentious discussion about how to respond if CJ again demands rent payments without providing a lease.

{This was pretty fast and intense. I didn't catch all the details, so I will summarize.}

 

What happened last year:

- Free Ride started a rent strike because CJ wouldn't give us a written lease

- In December 2006 CJ demanded that FR pay up on rent so they could close their books for the year. At a minimum, there was not good communication on CJ's end: apparently Deb didn't remember we were on rent strike, and nobody else at CJ understood what was going on or why we hadn't paid.

- In the last couple weeks of December, with the collective mostly scattered all over the place, there was a frenzied email exchange resulting in the decision to pay CJ the money they wanted.

- After that, there was a decision that FR would not pay CJ again without a lease, regardless of any further demands by CJ

 

What we expect to happen this year:

- CJ is not likely to give us a lease by the end of the year, even if they do, we won't have enough time to review and sign it

- CJ is likely to demand rent payments again like they did last year

- CJ will probably notify Jake of their demands at the last minute

 

Proposals that we voted on:

1) Send a letter to CJ now, anticipating their demand for rent, reminding them of our rent strike, and re-stating that we are not going to pay the escrowed rent without a lease... Blocked

2) Prepare a letter as above but don't send it... Blocked

3) Don't do anything about it... Blocked

4) Let Jake decide what to say to CJ (give a letter, etc)... Blocked (because a. Jake's not here, and b. it's not the liason's job to decide what to say, it's the liason's job to relay decisions made by the collective)

 

Other things:

- Matt volunteered to draft a letter

- There was a general but informal consensus that the collective's previous decision to not pay rent without a lease is pretty clear and has not changed

- By the end of the discussion things were getting really tense and not at all productive

- It was suggested that our process might be improved by coming up with a way to switch facilitators if the facilitator becomes too invested in the conversation

 

Conclusion:

- We agreed to stop the discussion, drop the topic, and take a break

- Other than reaffirming our position on continuing the rent strike until we have a lease, we reached no decisions

{scribe says: Also keep in mind that the last letter we sent to CJ about negotiating the lease said we would pay if they agreed to the letter (which is not a lease) and signed it. However, it seems they are unlikely to sign the letter, so perhaps that's irrelevant. One other thing... we still haven't figured out who or what would sign a lease for Free Ride.}

 

Resuming with reportbacks... Wildcats (referred to by some as "accounting" or "finance committee", Will):

- Wildcats had a meeting this week with Kitty and started getting into some Quickbooks stuff. More such meetings to come in the future.

- We've got a lot of money in the bank

- Eventually the Wildcats would like to provide a monthly breakdown of how much money we made and where it came from, but that will require some more work with Quickbooks. Depending on how that goes, we may also need to change the way that sales are tracked in the shop.

- There was a general, if somewhat restrained, enthusiasm for the idea of knowing how much we make, what we make it on, etc. with the idea that such knowledge might allow us to take such radical steps as making budgets, potentially paying ourselves, and other things of that nature.

- Matt: would like to charge more for bikes and have volunteer hours be valued at more than $5 an hour. The point would be to encourage people to volunteer more rather than just paying for bikes.

 

Open Shop (several people):

- Status of open shop committee is unclear

- Matt and Stuart are interested

- Stuart will follow up with Erland about having a meeting

 

Retreat (Morgan):

- There are now some wiki pages for planning things about the retreat.

- Please go fill out the pages about dates that will work, location ideas, and goals/agenda items

 

Discussions

 

Keys:

Will asked about what the process is for getting keys (he wants them for the purpose of delivering propane during non-open shop hours). Matt also does not have keys and would like them. Some discussion of updating the key list, has Will been volunteering for 6 months yet {scribe's note: Will put in his 23rd volunteer hour on June 9, 2007}. Results:

- General agreement that Will should have keys {I think the same for Matt}

- Key holder list needs to be updated

- No decision on how/when to proceed or who will take care of it

 

Bikes for Zimbabwe:

 

Rather than sticking around we decided to have a subcommittee break off to plan buildathon days for Zimbabwe bikes. After the end of the general meeting they stuck around and presumably made some plans and decided some stuff.

 

The end.