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Message |
eeyore
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1-12-00 Board Meeting
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Jan 13 14:27 UTC 2000 |
Well, here are the minutes for the first Board meeting of the year.
The meeting was called to order by John (remmers) Remmers at 7:40 p.m.
Other present board members at the time were Greg (flem) Fleming, Marcus
(mdw) Watts, Eric (other) Bassey & Megan (eeyore) Heberlein. Late
arrivals were STeve (steve) Andre, and Jan (janc) Wolter. Non board
members were Mary (mary) Remmers, Mark (aruba) Conger, Carol (non-grexer
whose last name I have no clue of), Scott (scott) Helmke, and Steve (scg)
Gibbard.
Mos of the committe reports were fairly short and to the point.
Remmers, as acting Chair, had nothing to report
Aruba, giving his last report as treasurer, gave December's numbers. We
did fairly well, as we took in $625.40, and paid out $481.08, making us
$144.32. We also had two new members in December : Odysseus and
Halder.
Nothing to report from the Publicity Committee, as MTA was not there.
Scott spoke for the Technical Committe, saying that at the moment
everybody was pretty busy, but that there was a new disk installed, but at
the moment it is not up and running, due to the fact that it has not yet
been tested to everybody's satisfaction. But STeve did clear out quite a
bit of stuff on the old discs, so Grex is running a bit faster.
The election of officers was supposed to be next, but we decided to be
nice and wait for STeve and Jan to show up before we voted.
The big issue for the night was the lease renewal. The board voted a few
months ago to go ahead and renew our current lease, which expires at the
end of May. However, it came to Mary's attention a few days ago that the
building was under new management, and had been for several months...and
we don't know who's running it. Since the lease stated that we need to
give them 120 days notice if we want to leave, the proposal was made to
"Pay the rent as usual, and take no further action on lease, so that our
option to renew will automatically take." (Approxomite qouting on the
end. Some of the computer taken notes got cut off on the end of the line
instead of rolling to the next line) Board voted: 5 Yea, 1 Nay, 0
Abstentions.
Elections were fairly important to us, and since Jan still hadn't shown
up, Mark called him on Steve's cell phone to threaten him : Either show
up, or risk being elected treasurer. Jan showed up withen 10 minutes.
Chair was elected first. The nominations were
Jan (janc) Wolter
Eric (other) Bassey
Figuring Carol was completely neutral, we made her count the votes. The
talleys were:
Jan : 0
Eric : 5
Other : 2
Much laughter was had by all, and John then passed the Holy Grex Gavel
onto Eric.
Next up was the nominations for Treasurer. Since Greg had mentioned in a
public place that he would not be totally against being treasurer, after a
quick round around the table to make sure that there was absolutely nobody
else that was even remotely willing, there was a vocal vote to nominate
and make him treasurer. With great sighs of relief that none of the rest
of us would have to be Treasurer!
After Treasurer came Secretary. Megan had made a commant earlier in the
meeting that she would not be against it. Once again, table was checked,
nobody else seemed willing, so another vocal vote was made, and dumped her
in to the Secretary's spot.
I forget if it was right here or not, but somewhere around here, Mark
started passing out really yummy cake....Thanks Mark!!!!!
After that, the signature card for the Grex bank account needed to be
signed. Obviously, Greg, as treasurer, needed to be on there. Backups
were Jan and Eric.
After much argument, the next meeting will be on Wednesday, March 1, at 7
p.m., in Zings Next door. We'll be giving February a complete miss due to
Erics work scheduale, and Megan's trip to Florida.
Under new business, Mark said Congratulations to the new board, and we all
thanked Mark for doing such a great job of treasurer for the past four
years.
Discussion was had about the credit card...and whose name should be on it.
It ought to be Greg and Eric as new Treasurer and Chair, but since it
would take some new paperwork and whatnot, for the moment it will be Mark
and John's names on it. Eventually it will be turned over to Greg and
Eric.
For those of you panicking over the whole change in treasurer, you'll be
happy to know that Mark and Greg will be getting together soon so that
they can go over the ropes together.
Meeting was adjurned at 9:20, 20 minutes after Zings closed.
Sorry they're so long and formal...I'll try and work on it a bit. :)
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| 64 responses total. |
gypsi
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response 1 of 64:
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Jan 13 15:53 UTC 2000 |
No, that read very well. I laughed out loud at the bit about Mark threatening
Jan. =)
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mary
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response 2 of 64:
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Jan 13 22:56 UTC 2000 |
Nice minutes, Meg.
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other
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response 3 of 64:
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Jan 14 00:30 UTC 2000 |
Kudos to Meg for so nicely filling out my very sparse notes, and so swiftly
posting the minutes!
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aruba
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response 4 of 64:
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Jan 14 01:24 UTC 2000 |
Thanks Meg, and congrats to the new officers.
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janc
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response 5 of 64:
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Jan 14 06:39 UTC 2000 |
One clarification: The issue was who should sign our application for a
Merchant account that would allow us to accept credit cards. The agenda
makes it sound like we were discussing who's name would go on our credit
card. I think we have a credit card, with "Cyberspace Communications"
on it (I could be wrong about that), but that's a completely separate
thing.
I'd like that congratulate the new officers. I think we have a good
board and a fun board. Eric rather did mow me over in the election -
probably showing up hours late for the meeting, and giving a resounding
endorsement for my opponent before the election wasn't the world's best
campaign strategy. But I was so stunned by his natural qualifications
that I even voted for Eric myself (not Other). It was like hypnotism -
it just seemed obvious that Eric had to be president.
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dpc
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response 6 of 64:
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Jan 14 20:38 UTC 2000 |
Very good minutes!
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other
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response 7 of 64:
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Jan 15 02:05 UTC 2000 |
<other makes a miserable attempt to feign humility>
In actuality, I am very pleased by this turn of events. Considering that I
am the one member of my immediate family in the arts (and non-profit at that)
as opposed to business, I am somewhat thrilled to be able to report to my
family the addition of the title "Chairman of the Board of Directors" to my
list of various and sundry responsibilities and labels. I guess i'm not
completely immune to the impact of greatness in titularity, even if the
position itself is more duty than glory. In fact, I hope that my tenure as
chair is remarkable only in its lack of both glory and inglory.
(and i can make up a few new words while i'm at it, or revive a few old and
mostly dead ones, then even better!)
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scott
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response 8 of 64:
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Jan 15 02:19 UTC 2000 |
Hey, my first year of Board duty I ended up President somehow. So there's
precedent. ;)
Actually, I'm really happy with the way Board turned out. And that the new
members were willing to be officers was a nice suprise.
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eeyore
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response 9 of 64:
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Jan 15 02:45 UTC 2000 |
Aww....ya'all are gonna make me blush!!! :)
Actually, I think that there was a plot to get the new members to become
officers....and it wasn't by the new members!!! :)
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don
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response 10 of 64:
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Jan 15 04:35 UTC 2000 |
One thing that I missed: For the motion about the lease, if it wasn't a vote
by secret ballot, could you post who-voted-what?
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other
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response 11 of 64:
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Jan 15 06:29 UTC 2000 |
jan hadn't arrived, the rest of the info is there.
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gelinas
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response 12 of 64:
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Jan 15 06:38 UTC 2000 |
Umm... Not quite; it says, "5 Yea, 1 Nay, 0 Abstentions." So who was the
'nay', and (more importantly, imv), why were the votes cast as they were?
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scg
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response 13 of 64:
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Jan 15 07:22 UTC 2000 |
eeyore was teh nay vote. I'm pretty sure I know what her reason was, but I
shouldn't presume to be able to speak for her.
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other
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response 14 of 64:
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Jan 16 00:04 UTC 2000 |
oh, sorry. i missed the fact that meg removed the reference to herself from
the minutes she posted. my originalnotes specified her as the nay. since the
vote was by voice and in a public meeting, i assumed no issues with making
that note.
as for why, for that you have to ask the individual parties. i voted the way
i did because,amongother reasons, i made the proposal, so why not.
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eeyore
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response 15 of 64:
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Jan 18 02:51 UTC 2000 |
The nay is because I really think that this is being handled a bit
underhandedly. Every time I've had to deal with a lease renewal, it may not
specifically say in the lease to let us know that you are staying for another
year, but they still want to know...and we'll get a letter reminding us that
our time is coming, will we be staying? I think that it's polite to let the
owner/manager know that we will be staying another year, instead of just
asuming that because we haven't said that we're NOT leaving, we're still going
to be here. Especially since we were asked *specificaly* by the former
management to let them know by February 1 if we were going to stay or going
to leave....asked to send the answer by registered recipt mail. While I
realize that that it was the *former* management, it may very well have been
mentioned to the new management, who could very well be waiting for that note
now.
At first, I know that the woman who kinda owned the place was not too happy
with us moving in there because of the electricity (how much we were going
to be using). The major reason that the vote ended up the way it did was
because people were afraid that if we reminded her that we were here by saying
anything like "Hi, we'd like to renew our lease" or "Hi, we'd like to find
out who our new managent is", we'd be asked to leave instead of renewing our
lease. Basically, if we remind her that we're here, she's going to remember
that she had an initial problem with us, and boot us out. I honestly think
that if she still had a problem at this point, she would have said something.
We've been really good about paying our portion of the electric (more maybe?),
and have had absolutely no complaints from her. I can't imagine that she
could have just *forgotten* that she had an initial major problem with it.
That after talking to Mary, she seemed to be completely over. And took a
handshake on, and said that it wasn't worth putting in the lease.
I'm quite frankly more worried that by not speaking up, we're more likely to
lose our lease than if we just mailed something and reminded her that we still
wanted the place. I really don't like the idea of "If we don't say anything
until after February 1st., they can't kick us out because they haven't given
120 day notice, but if they say that we were supposed to give notice that we
were staying before 120 days, we'll just say oops, we're sorry." That to me
is really just sneaky and underhand, and really grates on me. I realize that
we really don't want to move Grex...it's a big pain in the butt to do. But
I'd rather it happen because we were honest, instead of potentially pissing
off our landlord, in which case we'll be out on our butts next year when they
say that we cannot renew our lease again.
You could not believe just how furious I was walking out of that meeting.
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gull
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response 16 of 64:
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Jan 18 04:18 UTC 2000 |
It worries me, too. What if the new management doesn't know the lease
renewal is supposed to be automatic? It's not like Grex can afford to sue.
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other
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response 17 of 64:
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Jan 18 04:39 UTC 2000 |
the discussion of the lease was a broad and convoluted one, with many
different voices and opinions based very few facts. i don't believe that the
decision finally reached was made for the reasons you suggest, though i think
that they contributed to the thinking.
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aruba
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response 18 of 64:
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Jan 18 14:49 UTC 2000 |
My take on what happened is pretty much the same as Meg's, and I agree with
her reasoning as well. I don't think we're in any real danger of being booted
out either way, but not contacting the landlord just because she might turn
evil on us seems awfully paranoid to me. And this is one of those cases where
paranoia is more harmful than helpful.
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remmers
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response 19 of 64:
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Jan 18 17:06 UTC 2000 |
I think that there's also a danger that in our thinking we could be
making this a bigger deal than it deserves to be. I voted with the
majority and still feel comfortable with that, but in the absence of
more information doubt it's a huge deal either way. (The agent at
the former management company only asked for notification by phone,
not by certified letter.)
If people feel we should act differently, there's time to reconsider
before Feb. 1. As Jan pointed out, we should at least know who to
contact in case of problems.
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janc
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response 20 of 64:
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Jan 18 18:50 UTC 2000 |
If I hadn't been late I would have argued in favor of initiating contact
with the new management. Not doing so seems weird to me.
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krj
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response 21 of 64:
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Jan 18 19:02 UTC 2000 |
My vague and imperfect recollection is that the previous conflict
described by eeyore was with the now-departed management company,
and not with the owner.
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don
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response 22 of 64:
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Jan 18 19:12 UTC 2000 |
The vote was just on renewing the lease, right? Therefore the board has not
made a ruling on contacting the owners. Maybe someone could bring it up next
meeting.
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mary
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response 23 of 64:
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Jan 18 19:26 UTC 2000 |
There really wasn't any "conflict" with either the landlord or the
previous agent. The landlord expressed concern over how our electric bill
was calculated but she seemed okay with the system after hearing the
explanation. I found the previous management agent easy to work with and
she facilitated our getting a very nice lease.
To be picky, there is a minimum of 120 days before June 1 in which either
party can give notice not to renew. So February 1 might not be quite
exact.
Grex has been nothing but honest in our dealings with landlords.
In return we have been extended a whole lot of trust in regards to
our arrangement at the Pumpkin. I'd hate to see anything change
that. We have no intention of doing anything sneaky, I know that.
But in displaying reluctance to contact the new management until
after the deadline passes we risk the appearance of being sneaky.
I'd rather we work toward keeping the relationship open and easy
and if that means our landlord decides they don't want to rent to
us or that the terms need to be changed, so be it.
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gypsi
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response 24 of 64:
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Jan 18 21:03 UTC 2000 |
I'm in agreement with Mary.
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