3. March .07

Stewart: reads agenda from the wiki

Erok: explains methods for check in, proposals, etc.

Stewart: encourages step up step back, round robins and “the stack”

Erok: direct responses.

Jessica: encourages new to comment on old business “what’s interesting”

Jess: last bike Pittsburgh board meeting Amy and financial policies came up. 2 of three were passed. If large money checks are signed two or more people. Want to have us talk about the new BP policies.

Two things general discussion of making commitments and cash register Sean seconds talking about BP meeting.

Agenda:

No FR words review

Retreat review 30 min

Meeting time 15 min

Talking points for greeters 15 min scratched out

Draft of CJ letter 15 min

Eroks Idea: 1 min

Discussion of Cash Register: 10 min

Bike Pittsburgh finance introduced by Jess: 15 min or more

Jess major objective is to create a time line for dealing with the dots.

Discussing collective council:

Erok: reads collective council from the FR words 2007

Stewart: is the C.C. people who don’t come to meetings if they put in work, and does that mean we have to consult them? Is it the individual’s responsibility to make themselves in the collective council.

Erok: let people know that they have the option but if they don’t care they don’t care

Stew: make explicit who doesn’t care and who isn’t informed

Stew: proposal: membership … when volunteer expresses interests to the existing collective council. not voted on

EroK filling out the hours sheet implies interests, although it is our responsibility to let them know that they can join the council

Matt: make this more explicit

Mike:

Andalusia: it is volunteers responsibility:

Jess: logs put a paragraph explaining the council and the reason for the logs

Erok: made those sheets

Mike: where is Andalusia’s quotes?… now tell members that if they don’t maintain logs they cannot participate

Stewart: meetings are open to the public, but consensus and voting is limited to CC.

Erok: it might be in the words already

Andalusia: its outlined

Andalusia: do people feel that the 24 hours is confusing? Is it 8 hours in addition to 24 hours?

Erok:

Jess:

Alan:

Andalusia: propose to clarify the hours in the words if one misses 24 hours in one season, then to be reinstated in the cc you have to to 8 hours in the following season before you have cc privileges. The 8 hours is included in the total 24 hours for that season.

EroK: if person is a member and they reinstated in the next season they must do the full 24, not just the 8 hours.

Matt:

Stewart: mostly for friends who may leave in the winter. I think its fine the way it is.

Jess: if you don’t do your hours then you do your 8 but you voted. If you do your 8 hours your voting rights are intact, but if you do not complete your 24 that season then your voting rights are cut.

Alan: does the 24 need to be in the equinox or can

Jess: addition to words anyone with 24 hours in a contiguous 3 month period can join the collective council on petition. Voted on and accepted

Collective council is defined by vote

Andalusia: redefining coordinator roles would be important

Jess: Decision-making process would be important

Matt:

Andalusia: proposes: discuss decision making next meeting and in between month put mikes decision-making process on the wiki for discussion not voted on

Jess: talk about in reach coordinator

Andalusia: coordinator roles voted on mostly ambivalent it could be talked about or scratched out.

Erok: talks about in the words meetings are defined as coordinators having meetings and then collective council meetings are about

Andalusia: certain things would be discussed in coordinator meetings would be discussed in greater lengths ex. CJ letter and then at collective council meting the letter would be read with a little background and then voted on.

Stew: I’m not sure that it makes sense to define meetings now. I see benefits of the idea but this might exacerbate the feeling that coordinator know what is going on and I the volunteer don’t

Jess: I thought that you Erok were making a proposal. So, do you want to have two meeting s a month. When do you want them?

Andalusia: last meeting general consensus was no two meetings. I propose we move forward that we have one meeting a month, until we revise the words. Voted adopted

Mike: I like the idea of actual coordinator meetings

Alan: I think it would be good to broaden definition

Andalusia: I propose meetings be moved to Sunday night voted adopted

Johny: I want to move to 2nd Sunday because 1st Sunday is big idea

Alan: can you make it clearer to people in order to get people to?

Andalusia: I propose second Sunday voted adopted.

Andalusia: I propose Sunday, second Sunday at 5:30 pm voted adopted.

Erok: idea volunteer coordinator is not getting done because it is split between two people. The only thing getting done is what has to be done: the calendar. The calendar needs to be streamlined and it needs to happen sooner rather than later.

Andalusia: I thought you are talking about staffing which is a diff subject

Jess: I think people who volunteered for staffing calendar only volunteered for the calendar. But I would be willing to take on the volunteer coordinator position, as long as other people can have first dibs

Andalusia: Read words about volunteer coordinator position.

Jess: I don’t think it applies to what I want to do and it hasn’t been a part of the role as it is now

EroK that’s what Scott did.

Andalu: But it doesn’t make sense for what a volunteer coordinator should do.

What should we do? We’re not discussing coordinator positions right now. Perhaps hear what jess is willing to do and then.

Stew: it would be nice to have coordinators write down what they are actually doing for next

Jess: I would like to coordinate volunteers. Organizing what volunteers in the shop do what they want to get out of the experience and what they are getting out of the experience and recruiting more people. I’m not interested in calling people and staffing calendar

Johny: I know we’re not discussing jobs right now, but does it make sense that we split the job to get things done right now. How do we propose to fix the staffing calendar right now? DO we need to assign the job to someone else?

Erok: one problem is that it is split between two people. All of the jobs need to get done. Jess would be creating a new position if we adopted that

Andalu: The positions are what the people do but not what is in the written role. We should find a way to get the things done in the next two months.

Johny: I could take those six things on in the next month. And doing the staffing calendar would be something I could do. In lieu of what jess wants to do. We can break things up.

Andalusia: proposes that johny will be volunteer coordinator position as defined in the words. Voted adopted.

Jess: proposal: what if I started a volunteer advancement sub-committee. I feel that this is iterative. Check in: is this a good way to advance the position: yes would other people be interested in contributing not voted on

Discussion

Andalusia:

Erok: nothing to vote on

Stewart:

CJ letter approval:

Stewart: reads letter

Stewart: I propose that we send the letter to Deb Elliot and Mike Gable

Andalu: just that the letter is signed “Stewart and free ride”

Sean: Stewart for free ride

Andalu: I propose that it is signed Stewart Anderson for free ride collective council

Stewart: for the collective council

Voted adopted

Sean: talk about why it hasn’t been sent out yet?

Stewart: we had a page on the wiki that was supposed to be for the approval process, but people didn’t participate

Andalu: when was it supposed to pass?

Stewart:

Sean: it seemed that the retreat we decided to get stuff out as soon as possible. But this was delayed by the wiki and the non-inclusion. This is problematic because it will be mirrored in other actions:

Jessica: This is a good topic to discuss in the next meeting. People were not very responsive to the wiki. This is also happening for the BP fiscal sponsorship.

Stewart: there was a column to decide when to consent and whether that applied to future consent.

Jess: we should have a time that people should submit revisions and then vote

Andalu: did you put this on the meeting agenda because people didn’t consensus

Stewart: yes

Sean: it might be helpful to put a “if your not at the meeting then your vote isn’t counting” for this. Post a letter for response and no one responses

Andalu: we should discuss this next month because its part of the decision making process

Stew: what Sean says is a good guideline not a policy. “We need to send a letter that goes out this month and if we don’t have

Jess: agree but I’ll add, why didn’t the fiscal sponsorship go out?

Andalu:

Matt: I didn’t have time

Jess:

Sean: this is more important so I have to get to it later, but it doesn’t get done. Seems like more of a monster to people than it actually is.

Stewart: the stuff BP sent was in a different direction than what I thought it should be so I was reluctant to do that without more input.

Jess: I can see that, but when you look at the other examples I’ve sent then it becomes clearer. If there hasn’t been enough time, what’s an appropriate deadline?

Sean: I propose a one-week deadline to give input on this.

Stewart: two weeks

Voted adopted.

Somewhere people voted on sending the letter and it was adopted.

Eroks Idea:

Someone from belvadires may buy a building and may ask us if we want in.

Andalusia: on CJ steel city biofuels refused to pay rent because they didn’t get a rent and they’re moving out.

Jessica: at the last budget meeting (for bp?) discussed independence. So BP thought about buying a building so we could do that as well.

Andalu: discussion about time limits and budgeting time.

Stewart: what are the right things to discuss when we are going to commit to a project and do other people have a commitment to that project if others who implemented that

Andalu: table commitments discussion for next month.

Jackson blocked

Jackson: what does the time budget mean?

Andalu: 20 minutes for discussion?

Ok

Stewart: when do we drop programs we should decide that up front. What if someone drops the ball, who picks it up? How big projects do we undertake?

Andalu: in the example of youth works is a huge commitment but for youth-works is more flexible but not youth-works. I think the required commitment for programs like youth-works should be very committed by the earn-a-bike could be more flexible.

Erok: a process might be: if someone wants to do something additionally to open shop, a written proposal should be submitted to the collective, what it is why free ride should participate and then written backup plans in case someone says if I back out these people will take on this project or I will need free ride to back me up

Stewart: should have a question process (sounds like grants to me…matt)

Jessica: I like that idea it’s important to address capacity explicitly and this is a good way to do that. I also like the idea because it requires advanced planning to do that. And that would be a trial run. If you can execute the FR trial process than you can do it.

Sean: a good question will you be traveling extensively during the commitment. Youth-works represents an extreme scenario that something happened where other people weren’t prepared for and FR had to back it up. Look at it in terms of personal commitment for those involved. YW has complicated my job so much. I feel I got signed on without my consent. I see this though and see that if I back out two people will be having that much more work. Isn’t it better to do fundamental free ride activities before stretching ourselves really thin?

Andalu: those are issues we need to consider, but the discussion is about what are the things ones need to consider for future programs

Erok: one thing I like about FR is you can use it to experiment with other things, and I feel like if it’s something that won’t detract from other peoples work go for it. But clear proposals should be made, to outline if others would be involved who wouldn’t realize it (ex. Sean in YW)

Sean: don’t want to make conversation about me, but that’s the example right now.

Andalu: to clarify: we are talking about YW and it makes me want to respond, but we need to be on topic.

Jess: it is important to include this in the conversation because we will avoid elephant in room syndrome

Jess: we can talk about it if we can use it to drive the discussion on commitments.

Andalu: this is something that we didn’t originally think about this when we wrote the grant. W thought it would be the BP accountant and it was vague. But it wasn’t clearly defined. We should explicitly state who we can use in treasury questions when forming proposals.

Jess: we didn’t ask enough questions about the requirements of this project and this was complicated by BP reaction to the program.

Sean: the three of us ME andalu kitty have been discussing the issues of YW over email. The questions are: is this a part of free ride, how does it affect free ride, does this further free ride. Others in the room don’t know this

Jess: as a collective we were either railroaded or we were not looking at this closely enough. We should think about these questions in the future.

Stewart: fundamental quest. Asked implicitly: its great that FR can allow exploration freedom, the other side, because the start of the program we as a collective all take responsibility then we must constrain ourselves.

Andalu: sometimes when we do other programs instead of focusing on core FR programs: for some it may seem that I may have gone to open shop less, but I wanted something new to do. It’s a way to eliminate burn out. In fundamental programs.

Matt: I propose we use the new structure that Stewart is creating on the earn-a-bike discussion: adopted

Erok: to move on we should look at the questions right now and edit this now.

Stewart: reads wiki list

Matt: have a question on a scale of 1 to 10 what is the impact of this program on FR

Sean: I think that the opposite is true because making the shop run more smoothly is an essential part of this

Jess:

Matt: I was thinking of it as an impact if the person proposing is flubbed

Jackson: I agree with Sean because signage and accessibility is huge

Stewart: worst case scenario risk

Andalusia: payment and job opportunities is how I thought of this

Jessica: include: “how will this impact other programs. “ as a way to put into perspective what things we can do.

Andalu: proposes we use this and have further discussion on the wiki voted adopted.

Jess: we need to think of programs in long term

Cash register:

Sean: I was waiting on Dan to make a manual, but he hasn’t finished yet. I need input on two things: figuring out what makes the most sense for physically protecting the cash register from being destroyed. I think that picking two days and four times to conduct training.

Andalu: it makes more sense for it to happen at free ride.

Sean: the pre-rec for that is to physically take care of the register.

Jess: box with hinges

Sean: that’s table space

It’s going to happen with it anyway.

Stew: we should look into a way to protect against greasy fingers.

Sean: I think people can take precautions.

EroK cant’ you put a piece of plastic over it.

BP finance:

Jess: brought up drafts for the

Stuart: Couldn’t FR folks countersign?

Shaun: the additional burden of countersigning checks in unneeded.

Jessica: Pragmatic reality is that they need this for auditors. Not having a policy is not tenable.

Shaun: How serious is this policy, can we just ignore it?

Andalu: What’s minimum QBP order for free shipping?

Erok: $600 minimum.

Andalu: Policies are important, but let’s just go for highest number possible?

Erok: Let’s propose our own policy?

Jess: Can take proposals back and ask whether procedures should be separate for FR or for both FR and BP?

Erok: Let’s get a sign!

Shaun: Ok!

Andalu: Log is to the right of the toolbox – we need to read it. Binders are now organized by the milk crates.

Jessica: Keep things organized, do what the signs say

Andalusia: Stuff on the second floor of the old shop needs moved. We need a workday at the shop this month. Possibly the 25th. We have FFS bikes that need fixed.

Jess: Need more staffers to work on FFS, need a build for shop day.

Andalusia: Prefers having 3 or 4.