February 10th Meeting Minutes

Committee Reportbacks

Shop Committee

Stuart reports back and also includes Will and Jessica

• They want to improve work flow and clutter in shop. We can lease more space if we want- we can extend in the width of our space.
  • We can get rid of some of the stuff in the shop that we don’t need
  • Smaller tool boxes
  • Cloth bags for caliper brakes (jami can make these) SC is considering purchase from ULine
  • Want to collect information on what takes longest to do at free ride and what is most frustrating to find
  • Buy more new parts- perhaps cotter pins (Andalusia thinks we have them)
  • Increasing stock piles of consumable goods
  • Attempting to make the experience at free ride less frustrating.
• How is the committee gonna work and how much money do they need, how to be accountable, how much autonomy?
  • Requesting budget.
    • Stuff for sale- brake cables, locks
    • Consumable goods that we are using but do not sell disposable tools, chain lube, degreaser, etc
    • Larger items, new display cabinet etc.
  • Within the next three months we can request numbers for each of these things
• So far we have kept supplies in stock and if we need to spend more than 100 on something we come back to the group to get permission.

Do these three divisions sound good for a budget approval?

Morgan wants there to be purchasing guidelines- look for union made, locally made, and least destructive environmental impact.

Stuart says this would be best for a shopwide policy.

• Policy consensed on and approved. Stuart will write something about this policy and put it on the best practices wiki FreeRidePolicies.
• Will has been getting propane, we are using about a tank a week.
• We bought some fancy new tools, including new bottom bracket tools and headset reamers. They will be used once there is a training on them.

Andalusia wants to know how the shop committee would be sure that they don’t buy new supplies that we already have (but just don’t realize)

Jessica says that there will be a list at the shop that people can add things that they want bought and also post what they are going to buy on the wiki

How are these going to get done?

How to reduce clutter?

How to make free ride more accessible?

Who is responsible for lighting?

Will points out that shop committee is not responsible for doing all these things, just trying to facilitate making that happen.

• How to reduce clutter- have a de clutter day

Scott: volunteer board works for some things but not for other things- put more things on the list. We need to update it more often.

If the shop committee could have more suggestions for the volunteer board

• We do all want to get together for a shop cleanup.

We have some things to get rid of?

Safe, fax machine, kerosene heater?

• Stuart says he will put these things on the wiki and people can claim those things Clearance
• Scott wants to have a space where we can stash personal things. Cubby system.

Program Committee (P.C.)

• P.C. met with George Germany about continuing programming from the Housing Authority.
• P.C. met with Lou Feinberg from bike Pittsburgh about businesses funding free ride youth programs.

• Zimbabwe bikes – we fixed up 30 or so bikes on two different days. We need to get rid of them and money to do an order of tools .

Jami question: if we are going to continually do this, we should have a space for the zimb. Perhaps, If we continue project we need to streamline stuff, maybe get a shipping container.

General Announcements- Jessica

• If all our planning goes well there are many paid instructor opportunities.
  • If anyone has an interest in teaching, they need to first shadow someone for a class.

What to do if too many people want to teach classes.

People sign up to teach sessions for 6 or 8 weeks.

How does this differ from the current system?

This is codifying the system, saying that if you want to be involved with teaching you have to shadow a whole session – 12 hours.

Should they get paid or get earn a bike hours?

What are the goals of this new proposal?

Transparency and recruitment.

Stuart thinks that the program committee should make a more detailed proposal about the training and move forward till the end of an august session.

Jessica has direct questions for the group.

Who is interested in teaching?

Stuart, jake, shaun, organ, jami and zack, scott, Andalusia and Jessica

Would you be willing to shadow an entire session to become qualified to teach?

Some said yes and some no.

Youth classes and adult classes are different, so you have to shadow each group.

Could there be a training for people to fill in holes?

Maybe. Maybe we can say if you get paid for the training then you have to commit to teaching classes.

Will:How the program committee does its thing.

How does the collective keep track of the program committee,

How does the communication of the program committee happen.

Stuart thinks the p.c. needs to develop quantitative “metrics” to see how we have increased transparency, involvement etc.

Finances: We are trying to track this better, standard independent contractors forms, mini budgets, standard invoices.

Programs that p.c. is doing:

Bike Build-A-Thons/Donations

Zimbabwe bikes/kids bike build a thon

Bikes need to be gone by end of February.

How are we going to do this?

How we do allocate what bikes go to what program? Perhaps this is not programming com material.

Maybe we can say how many bikes we use for our program as part of our qualitative analysis.

Maybe we can have a meeting some day about Zimbabwe.

Adult Mechanics classes.

There is a block of time from 5-9:30 Sundays- for enrollment there is going to be an email address.

The lists of sessions would be posted on the list- there would be an enrollment date.

Classes can be extended if there are more teachers and more students interested.

Participants can volunteer for class- they must volunteer 3 hours by the first date.

So we can conceivably lose money for a class-

P.C. will make sure that no money will be lost for the classes.

Hopefully, P.C. can figure out more of this on their own.

Will has heard people be excited about adult classes because it can help more people be prepared to volunteer and staff free ride.

Shaun says $50 is awfully cheap for the classes.

Youth Earn a bike:

Who is interested in teaching youth?

Jake, morgan (north side), jami and zach, Jessica, scott and Andalusia and morgan.

Shaun concerned that we have too many commitments and not enough teachers.

Jami says worst case scenario, there are many adept mechanics that would work.

Andalusia has been talking with some of the organizations that we partnered with last year as well as other youth orgs. She is working on developing a partnership with the Healthy Black Families Project.

Andalusia wants people to suggest groups/contacts – she will tell people what groups she is already contacting.

Housing Authority Summer Training Porgram

Housing authority wants us to train teenagers from the different communities in bike mechanics so that they can go back to their communities and open up mini free rides in their communities/housing project.

Applying for funding from the Urban Youth Authority. P.C. is waiting to hear from UYA about the application process.

Summer Camp

What if we don’t have access to the building?

What if we don’t have the staff capacity?

What if people put in too much energy to this program and not to free ride in general.

Center for Creative Play-

We’re gonna have some bike classes with them. Just a few hours.

Feedback:

Stuart is concerned about funding from corporate organizations.

What about Lou talking about Free Ride! To corporations.

We need to have a discussion about corporate funding.

Other large discussion need to happen on the proposals for summer camp and housing authority.

Finance Committee aka Wildcats.

What is quickbooks, what’s in it

That is important for our ability to develop budgets.

What do we need to do with kitty to improve our problems?

How can we improve on how we track money?

Checks are written to people and are received and we don’t know how to enter it into quickbooks properly.

Since the committee was created.

All 4 people can enter data- deposit and receipts every month

And people are moving forward on this

Data entry was very confusing.

Free Ride! Is a low priority for Kitty

East End Food Coop Credit Union doesn’t do quarter reports

There are three places where money exists

Eefcu savings account- 16,884

PNC checking account- 18.000 perhaps with some outstanding checks.

Shop First Aid Box- ??

Blue Imac at Bike-Pgh keeps track of the money.

It would be nice to have special accounts, program committee account.

The register is great, the zreports get entered as whole bike, used parts, new parts, donations.

19,000 is from sales of whole bikes

We could know how many bikes are sold, but we don’t know as of yet.

There’s a whole lot of numbers that we are still figuring out.

Some of the register info doesn’t get put into quickbooks.

It seems that what we spent and what we earned match up similar.

Andalusia proposes that people within Wildcats should get paid and the wildcats can discuss ways that could work.

Stuart blocks and says conversation should be postponed for another time.

Stuart: accounting breaks down in two categories- what we need to do to be accountable to bike-pgh and the government

Maybe we should have our own books that have more detail.

Kitty needs to speak with the program committee. How to track classes, the checks that are coming from them.

All checks that go to independent contractors should have been invoiced at some point.

Steel City Biofuels

CJ wants to spend a lot of money improving their space-

SCB is going to have all the front rooms as their office space- there is going to be a new entrance. There is going to be a data destruction hardware company. We may have a hallway to enter through.

Our access to garages may change.

There is gonna be a lot of forklift and foot traffic from cj now.

They may resurface the parking lot.

Who do we need to interface with?

Jessica is concerned that our lease says that we have an entrance, why is it that we are dealing with Nathaniel about this.

Will says that he will become the Steel City Biofuels liason

Bike Bike needs money for this years conference. We are going to send $1000 to them, That is more or less the money we got from last years conference.

Bike Pittsburgh Board Member

Stuart has drafted a letter to say that we want to have a board member that represents from Free Ride.

Morgan has volunteered to be this bike-pgh board member.

Free Ride didn’t open yesterday till 2:30

Jake says he will be try to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Hopes other people would take more initiative.

Next Meeting: February 24th at 1 at stuart, shaun and johnnys house. Edmond St, Bloomfield

Checkout

Shaun: we have very loose facilitation. Things took longer than expected.

Diane: I don’t know what to do about free ride meetings, it’s hard to find balance between what are the things that everyone needs to hear and talk about and find space about it.

Jake: I only come to meetings because I have a job that I have to report back- cj liason. I don’t like meetings.

Jessica: I think we have too many things to discuss as a group. And consensus makes things take longer. We can learn how to use consensus better. Wants to put time into doing things in a more compressed manner.

Will: there are many things about free ride that we ought to do with and don’t know where we are going to get the time to do it. I don’t have that much more time to put in free ride

Scott: I feel really good about the meetings and it is more functional than other groups Ive been involved in. im in favor of having longer meetings. So everyone knows what all these committees do.

Andalusia: I thought the meeting was good. If people want meetings to be shorter, they are going to take advance prep, with people reading agendas, prepared notes etc. before time

Stuart- I thought the meeting was good, people do wander off sometimes. Can people evaluate what they want to say and whether or not its related to conversation. More notes ahead of time. Its been difficult in the past.

Zach- I thought it was good, I didn’t say much.

Jami: I wanna know what’s going on with the committees and hear what’s going on and like hearing it in person. Maybe people who cant stay long for meetings should say what they want to discuss and have that be on the agenda first and then they can go.

Morgan: I only get frustrated at meetings when people get frustrated with meetings. Consensus is a slow process.