Here is the treasurer's report on Cyberspace Communications, Inc. finances 
through April 30th, 2002.

Beginning Balance     $6,106.28

Credits                 $234.00         Member contributions
                         $20.00         Miscellaneous donations
                          $4.14         Interest
                   ------------
                        $258.14

Debits                   $72.93         Pumpkin Rent for May
                         $45.97         Electricity for April
                        $175.02         Phone Bill
                        $135.00         DSL April 15 through May 15
                          $2.86         Paypal fees (income = $78.00)
                   ------------
                        $431.78

Ending Balance        $5,932.64

Our current balance breaks down as follows:

$4,699.78               General Fund
  $148.86               Silly Hat Fund
   $60.00               Spare Parts Fund
$1,024.00               Infrastructure Fund

The money is distributed like this:

$1,618.44   Checking account
  $500.00   8-month 3.00% CD which comes due 5/28/2002
$3,814.20   Savings account earning approximately 1.30% interest annually

There was no activity in the Grex store this month, so the balances remain at:

                         Cash                                    Stock
                     ---------                                ---------
                      $149.40                                  $162.10

We had two new members in April (kintar and mbusse).  We are currently at
89 members, 81 of whom are paid through at least May 15th.  (The others 
expired recently and are in a grace period.)

Notes:

- We didn't get much money in April.  I don't like seeing the member count 
as low as it is.

- We resolved the issue of whether we need a Charitable Solicitation 
License.  We don't, but we did need to register as a charitable trust, 
which we've done.  See coop item 85 for the gory details.

Thanks to everyone who contributed in April:

bmoran, bruin, ckkrish, glenda, jplatt, mbusse, robh, steve, and one 
person who didn't tell me her login ID.

Thanks everyone!

If you or your institution would like to become a member of Grex, it only
costs $6/month or $60/year.  Send money to:

Cyberspace Communications
P. O. Box 4432
Ann Arbor, MI 48106-4432

If you pay by cash or money order, please include a photocopy of some form of
ID.  I can't add you to the rolls without ID.  (If you pay with a personal
check that has your name pre-printed on it, we consider that a good enough
ID.)  Type !support or see http://www.cyberspace.org/member.html for more
info.

53 responses total.

We got a renewal notice from our insurance company today.  Grex first began
having liability insurance back in 1999, when we signed a new lease which
required it.  It pays to repair the building if our equipment burns it down
(and other stuff like that).  Over the last 3 years, our premiums have been:

1999: $300
2000: $300
2001: $375

THis new renewal notice says our premium has gone up to $475/year.  That
seems like a pretty big jump; it's now over half of the total rent we'll pay
all year.

Mary negotiated with the insurance agency when we first got the policy, as
I recall.  Mary, would you be willing to talk with them again?  Time is a
bit short if we want to explore options; we'll need to line something up by
June 1st.

Which company are you using?  The Sailing Club uses Dobson-McOmber, who finds
an underwriter for us.

I'll telephone Aprill (our agency) and Dobson-McOmber next Monday, which
is the first weekday I'll have time during business hours.  But we should
already have a plan on how to proceed if it turns out Aprill is still our
best option.  

Does anyone know what M-net pays and to whom?

I suspect that since M-net is colocated now, they don't need to pay for
insurance.  I think our backup plan has to be to go ahead and pay the $475
to Aprill / Hastings Mutual.

Find out if you can get something with a larger deductible?  I have discovered
that health insurance rates always go up for individual policies, the longer
you stay with a particular plan, as the healthy people leave the plan.  So
every few years we switch plans.  Mine was going to go up from $1300 to $1500
so I got a new plan for $800.  They wait a couple of years to start raising
the rates so you will get hooked.  Perhaps similar things happen with this
sort of insurance.  We found Dobson McComber to be friendly and competent
(also willing to overlook the absence of a lawn which was upsetting our former
house insurance company, they said it was unamerican.).

And that was which company?

re #5: tha sounds SO "homeownerist" of that former insurer  <joke>

French Insurance objected to the lack of a front lawn.  They first complained
about the 'big trees which might fall on the house' (redcedar bushes,
very flexible and incapable of falling on anything) but then revealed their
real objection after Jim trimmed off the bottom halves of the bushes and also
removed the couple of bricks he had under one corner of his Jeep because the
tire was slowly leaking (they claimed the whole car was 'up on blocks').  We
got a cheaper policy with Dobson McComber with better coverage, and they
thought our story about the grass was funny.  We showed a snapshot of the
front yard full of flowers and mentioned that the original plumbing had all
been replaced and the original outlets all converted to the grounded type,
which they seemed to think more important than having grass.  Also that Jim
did home repairs professionally.  (Yesterday Detroit Edison insisted on
talking to me about their electrical appliance repair program.)

   Since 9/11, rental property insurance has gone through the roof and
a number of insurers have gotten out of the field entirely.  

Why?

Presumably because the industry's entire underwriting base is pretty 
concentrated, and it took a huge hit from 9/11 and needs to rebuild its 
bank.

This response has been erased.

My insurance company blamed that for the increase in my *car* insurance
premiums.  (They sell rental and home insurance, too.)  I think it's sort of
like gas prices, they'll grab any excuse they can to raise them.

Dobson-McOmber can't help us - the minimum policy they write, even for a
501(c)3, is more than we're being quoted on our renewal.  The agent
suggested we contact State Farm which may be able to include us on a
budget "office group policy".  I've left a message with an agent there. 

Aprill Agency reviewed our policy and said that we may be able to cut our
premium by getting a policy with fewer bells and whistles, like content
coverage and accidental injury coverage for our staff while they are in
the pumpkin.  At the time we took out our current policy it was the lowest
coverage they offered which met the demands stated in our lease, and it
came bundled with these extras.  But she thinks there *may* be a cheaper,
more basic policy available now.  She's getting back to me tomorrow with
some firm numbers. 

I also asked why the coverage has gone up so much, was it due to the World
Trade Center losses?  She suspects that might account for a small amount
of the increases, industry wide, but mostly it reflects the fact that
insurance companies have a whole lot of their bottom line invested in the
stock market, which has done poorly the last year, so premiums are up to
compensate. 

I expect by Wednesday we'll have some firm numbers to go by and at the
board meeting on Thursday Mark can get some support on how to proceed. 

I'd like to see us stay with Aprill unless we can do a whole lot better at
State Farm. 

Advice from anyone is appreciated.

being in a pumpkin is risky

Thanks a lot for working on this, Mary.  If you could get a list of the
bells and whistles, and how much we'll save by getting rid of them, that
would be great.

And which bells and whistles are required by the lease, too, so we don't 
trim the wrong ones.

Barb Young sells State Farm Insurance and has been very competent and nice.
Can grex get a higher deductible or is that also specified by the lease?

The deductible isn't the problem.  We're trying to find the cheapest
policy that will meet the liability coverage stipulated in our lease,
which is one million dollars.  This sounds like a lot but really isn't
when you're talking commercial space.  Mostly, it's trying to find 
commercial rental insurance with that little coverage.  Our needs fit
in somewhere below the most frugal policies offered.

The State Farm agent I contacted hasn't returned my call.  I'm not 
going to be chasing her down.  She knows what we need and will call
back if she can be of help.

Barb Young is always there - or if she is not, talk to Ben, her son. 
662-0880.  It is in an old house on Ashley St. not far from grex.
They have been incredibly nice about issuing us car insurance which we then
suspend and use only twice a year.  And competent.

I just called Barb.  She says State Farm's 'niche' is insuring small
businesses like dentist offices.  You cannot buy a business insurance package
for liability without also insuring at least $1000 in contents and also paying
for a few other things like non-owned vehicles (covers accidents in cars owned
by employees on business errands).  For a policy with $1 million liability
and minimum contents the annual charge is $61 (no this is not a typo) but they
have a minimum charge for any policy of $150, so we could add in a few more
things for the same $150.  I hope I got this right - I explained that we are
required to insure against grex accidentally burning the building down in
order to be able to rent there and all we needed was liability.  I told her
Mary from Cyberspace might call (or drop by for a brochure - it is on Ashley
not far from Miller).  We could insure, for instance, for money stolen from
the premises (but probably not for a hard disk crash).

Thanks for checking this out.  I'll give her a call.

Ms. Young, at State Farm, was very helpful.  I read her the applicable
part of our lease, she asked a few questions about our organization and
our rental space, then she called back within a few hours with
information. We don't fit under their "office" policy as we don't have
staff in the space on a regular (daily) basis.  Instead we fit under a
"club" policy. For $165 we get the liability coverage we need and no added
benefits.  For $250 we start getting additional coverage for our hardware
and office supplies.

She made it quite clear the insurance industry is a mess right now.  Lots
of companies have singled out Michigan as a high-risk adventure due to
weather related claims, so they are pulling out of homeowners insurance
all together.  She was very clear that next year this policy might come
with a much higher price tag.

Then I got a call from our current agent, at Aprill.  She was looking for 
a way to lower our premium.  Instead she found that Hastings is no longer
interested in insuring any business that acts as an ISP.  The risks are
too high and the laws too flaky.  I asked for specifics and it seems
fears range from pornography and minors to unleashing malicious viruses.
They aren't interested in writing policies for such exposure.  If we
renewed by sending in the bill Mark holds, that we would be insured for
the next 12 months, but we really aren't being grandfathered and next
year we'd most likely not be given the option to renew.  When their office
found out about this they immediately went looking for another policy that
would work for us, and found none. 

So that's where it stands. 

Do we have any "office supplies"?

Yes, but not worth the difference in premium.

The UM Sailing Club faced something similar at the beginning of the year; our
insurer has decided to get out of the business of insuring people like us.
(Interestingly, it was only of our two policies they declined to renew;
liability, if I recall correctly; they were happy to continue insuring our
boats.  I had expected it to be the other way around.)

At the board meeting last night there was some interest in going 
with a slightly upgraded policy that would include loss coverage
for business property and staff injury coverage.  It turns out
the injury coverage would only be for clients (we have none) not
staff or volunteers.  For that we'd need to buy a policy with workman's
compensation coverage.  It's available but at a much higher premium.

So, what we'd gain by paying $250 rather than $165 is loss coverage for
our equipment.  The agent would have to check into the exact amount of
loss coverage we'd get but she thinks it's somewhere in the $10,000 range
if the pumpkin was a total loss and we could document our contents were
worth that much. 

I'm inclined to not go the difference but I'd like to get some 
feeback from others before proceeding.  But time is short here.

For just equipment loss coverage, it doesn't seem worth the extra $85 to me.

We can certainly document what's in the Pumpkin and what it's worth (about
$5000).  I don't feel strongly one way or the other, I guess.

We wouldn't be getting replacement value but what the equipment
was worth, used, when lost.  But maybe that's what Mark's $5,000
means.

Time is short on this one as the policy must be in effect by end of
business a week from today.  And next week is a short week.  So today I
ordered the $165 policy and Mark will be dropping off the check.  If we
decide we want to go with the enhanced policy we can add the coverage and
pay the difference. 

My opinion is to save as much on insurance as we can this year,
anticipating we'll need it next year.

Yes, $5,000 is the approximate value of the equipment in the Pumpkin.  We
have all that documented in the inventory database we use to compute our
personal property tax.

At Mary's request, I stopped by the State Farm office and dropped off a
check for $165.  They will mail us the policy and a receipt.

Thanks for the hard work and the quick decision-making.  

Thanks go to Mary for doing the legwork, and to Sindi for the good tip on
who to call.

You are welcome.  And Sindi's tip was indeed valuable - it saved 
us a whole lot of money and we now have a good contact in the insurance
industry.  Barb Young seemed to really care about Grex getting 
what we needed and could afford.

Go for less, cheaper coverage.  Think about more, expensive coverage for
next round.

The cheaper policy makes the most sense to me at this point, given what 
we would get for the added $85. Thanks Mary for taking the time to get 
this done so quickly. Thanks to Sindi as well for the great tip. :)

Great work.  Thank you!

I agree that the cheaper policy is the right one.

I will tell Barb you are happy with her.  She has been extremely nice to us
for several years and I kept telling her I would try to compensate her by
telling all my friends about her.  We gave up on two insurance agencies before
finding her (they kept making stupid errors which cost us money).  State Farm
also had the lowest auto insurance rates for our purposes (the basic, no
collision, policy).  Mary, thanks for acting so quickly on this.

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