Minutes for the Grex 1/26/99 Board Meeting

Jan 27 01:51 UTC 1999

The January, 1999 Grex board meeting was held in Zingerman's Next Door 
on Tuesday, January 26.

Attendees:
Jan Wolter (janc, outgoing President), John Remmers (remmers, Board), 
Mark Conger (aruba, Treasurer), Misti Tucker (mta, Board), Mary Remmers 
(mary), Steve Gibbard (scg), Drew (drew), Charles Mitchell, (arthurp), 
STeve Andre' (steve, Board), Scott Helmke (scott, outgoing Secretary)

Absent:
Dan Gryniewicz (dang, Board)

Afteryule     Initial Gavel Pounding - janc, valerie, arlo, STeve
The meeting was gaveled to order by janc at 6:35 pm 

Solmath       Election of 1999 Officers - all
Nominations for President: mta, remmers, steve nominated, nobody 
enthusiastic about serving. votes: mta 1, remmers 3, steve 2 after the 
1st vote tied.  Remmers is President.
Nomination for Treasurer: aruba
Aruba is elected by acclamation.
Nominations for Secretary:  janc
Janc is elected by acclamation.

Rethe         Treasurer's Report - aruba
Dec in black by ~$75, 3 new members.  Jan. doing very well (4 members)
this month 
P.O. Box renewal ($44) is this month.
InterNIC billing strangeness, we just paid $35 to avoid complications.
auction:  total closed $1359, paid so far $747.

Astron        Publicity Committee - mta
nothing to report.

Thrimidge     Technical Committee - staff
new hardware (Sun CPUs and memory, SCSI disks) was donated.
We may be getting a donated modem rack (33.6!)
A flaky terminal server port was causing modem problems
mic's new menu system in testing
staff is trying to push FAQ rather than email for questions from users.

Forelithe     Stupid Landlord Tricks - aruba
Having problems w/ building management about rent, electricity and lease 
conditions.  We recently got a letter saying we owed money, related to 
electricity use changes.  After some discussion w/ management, we have 
been informed that they are dropping our lease and will be offering a 
new lease at a slightly higher rent.  The management person was 
apparently difficult to deal with, and we may get some other weirdness 
(including very little time for us to review new lease).  However, the 
owner (from before the management co. was brought in) has been helpful. 
 We may want to research other locations to strengthen our bargaining 
position.  Aruba will enter a Coop item.

Afterlithe    Ratifying HTTP Access - remmers
HTTP access for nonmembers.  This has been the default, but was never 
actually ratified by board.
Remmers moved that outgoing HTTP access be given to all users.  Misti 
seconded.  Vote is 6-0-0 (dang is absent), motion passes.

Wedmath       UPS Purchase? - all
Purchase a UPS (uninterupptable power source) to replace power 
conditioner, saving electricity $?  STeve estimates ~$120/year savings, 
plus better reliability.   Probably would cost $600 for our needs.  We 
need to research this more, need a proposal to vote on.  

Halimath      Credit Cards - all
Should Grex accept credit cards?  Most people starting to want this, but 
needs research.  Probably need to have a secure way to take card #s (Web 
server?).  Need to find some proposals from banks, etc.

Winterfilth   New Business - all
1.  The person who arranged for our donated Sun hardware has asked for 
outgoing telnet access in return.  This is normally not something we do. 
 However, he paid for shipping, so we could reimburse with money put 
into membership for that person (Grex was planning on paying for 
shipping originally anyway).  No objection about this.
2.  Valerie welcomes the new board.
3.  Are there any better meeting locations (aruba)?  Basically this 
(Zingermans) is about the best for now.

Blotmath      Final Gavel Pounding - remmers
The meeting was closed at 8:10 pm.

response 2 of 75:

Jan 27 11:59 UTC 1999

Ah, that's where those names went.

response 4 of 75:

Jan 29 23:34 UTC 1999

The by-laws don't specify how many votes are needed to elect
the officers of the Board.  The only thing specified is that
a quorum of 5 Board members must be present to conduct official
business, which would include that election.

response 6 of 75:

Jan 30 04:36 UTC 1999

If you follow RRoO, only a majority of *those voting* are required
to adopt a motion, unless the bylaws (or state law) require otherwise.

response 8 of 75:

Jan 31 04:46 UTC 1999

True, which is why no one knows what is the right thing to do.  :)

response 10 of 75:

Feb 1 06:11 UTC 1999

That's just the majority running roughshod over the minority, since no
rule has been adopted to resolve the question. Sounds like the partisan
politics so popular right now, but not based on "rule of law".

response 12 of 75:

Feb 1 16:29 UTC 1999

Concensus functions essentially on intimidation. In order to keep
"harmony", people swallow hard and go along with the majority. Our
national constitution was not founded in concensus, and neither should
those of small clubs, for the same reasons. If concensus really worked,
then you could substitute for it a voting rule that required a unanimous
vote on every motion. An organization would then grind to a halt on
addressing many issues. 

response 14 of 75:

Feb 1 19:59 UTC 1999

Re #12:  I see some pretty big differences between our national government and
the government of Grex.  Size, for starters; Grex has about a hundred members,
which makes it a lot easier to find consensus ehan if we had, say, 260 million
members.  THere is also a lot more at stake in governing the nation, so there
are a lot more strong opinions.  When considering issues of governing Grex
we can afford to be more relaxed.

response 16 of 75:

Feb 2 06:25 UTC 1999

Of course, the Grex board does not act by concensus anyway, since they
conduct votes. However there are no bases for the votes, since there
are no rules that govern them. So it is sort of a crazy system in which
unfounded votes are held and if the board "feels" a decision has been
made, they so declare that. It works, of course, because there isn't enough
at stake to create big arguments, as well as the fact that there is still
a core of leaders that others don't mind following.