This meetings blog is meant to keep everyone up to date to what was discussed at Velocipede collective meetings.
Collective Meeting Minutes - October 5th, 2009
October 6, 2009
Present: Boson Au (”President”), Tim Barnett, Anton Schaller, Lars Peterson(”Secretary”), Trey (volunteer), Peter Hegel, Olivia (visitor from MICA bikeshare), unknown ,Zoe (visitor), Tricia (visitor from Yellow Breeches Educational Center), Noah Bers, Dileep Monie (”Treasurer”), Doug Barcleft (co-op, prospective member), Eric Voboril (grace period member), Barbara C., Jacob (co-op), Adam (co-op)
(READ MISSION STATEMENT)
Roles:
Facilitator: Boson Au
Stack-taker: Peter Hegel
Timekeeper: Eric Voboril
Scribe: Tim Barnett
Minutes-taker: Lars Peterson
Reports:
PR:
Bike Safety Day: No one showed up. VBP was there.
Community Involvelment Day: Most students do not know about Velocipede, have no idea where we are. Got the word out. Success!
Education:
Clinics are in full swing. Contact Boson if you want to teach a class. Our clinics are now listed in the Free School calendar.
Discussion about “Bike 101″ issues, basic maintenance and repair. Noah is making the curriculum on our elusive wiki. Ed. committee wants to run youth programs in cooperation with comminity groups.
Budgeting: LAB “LCI” program for certification? (two-day class)
Finance:
Account balances
Sep 1: $5100 in CD, $3600 in checking.
Sep 30:$5100 in CD $2,064 in checking
Revenue: $1,045.46
Expenses: $3,025.71
Net Loss: $1,980.35
Shop:
New stuff has come in. Please! make sure that you charge for cables, housing, etc
Proposals:
Resident Agent:
Beth Wacks is our Resident Agent. Boson will take this role.
(Consensus, Boson will do this.)
Discussions:
MICA Bike Share
Students for a Sustainable Campus. Bike Safety, work study position for maintenance.
If they have a set of tools, what should they be?
Discussion: helmets: cannot be reused.
…
(Lots of advice and past experiences)
Program w/ Yellow Breeches School (Trisha)
Gathering information. Position with Yellow Breeches school near Harrisburg. Runs at-risk youth programs. Has fleet of 15 bikes. Bikes are in bad shape. Looking for help with tools, possible field trips. (handed out mountain biking class syllabus)
Lars: we do not have suppliers
Tim: We can, however, help with training and field-trips.
Ben: work directly with the education committee
Voboril: When? Trisha: this fall.
Boson: contact me!
(discussion of our lack of supplier accounts)
Tim: Can your school get a QBP account or similar.
Noah: will get T. in contact with our committees
Kids!
Noah wanted to help kids with minor repairs outside the shop, unsupervised by their guardians. R. said that he would cease his involvement with the shop if this continued.
Doug: There really are a lot of these kids.
Peter: It’s hard to say no to a kid if they are considerate, often you cannot contact their parents. On the other hand–sometimes you can.
Tim: rules apply inside and out. We’re the same organization even on the sidewalk.
Lars: kids are putting themselves in danger, riding against traffic. Very dangerous.
Noah: Who else is going to help these kids. It hurts Noah to see them riding around without brakes.
Boson: has no problem kicking out kids. Would like a more regulated environment:
Ben: There are lots of social problems that we are not equipped to address. Bringing them into the shop actually makes it harder for us to do the things that we can address successfully. This will hurt us in the long run.
Peter: We decided years ago that we *had* to be in contact with a parent or guardian. We sent home notes, made phone calls, got very little response.
Barbara has a large youth program, in the largest housing project in Boston. EVERY child there has a permission slip. We need that too. They have full-time staff who can handle this.
Tim: Risk is not huge, *but it is real*.
Eric: How do other drop-in programs manage their kids.
Noah: After R. said he would quit, he stopped helping kids on the sidewalk. Noah wants to deal with this in a committee. Does not want to leave people out.
Dileep: should not let R. twist our arm, but the liability situation is unclear. Insurance underwriters did not have anything to say on the subject. We have agreed on on this in the past– one guardian, up to two kids. No reas Lars: We should contact more community organizations and walk-in programs.
Trey: risk management committee is already talking about this.
Dileep: let’s continue to adhere to our programs.
Volunteer/Build-a-Bike
Ben: Eric, Ben met to talk about “levels of membership” Looking for feedback and then come back with a proposal for the November meeting.
Problems: Levels of membership are too restrictive, include too many different motives: some people want to be part of the co-op, others just want to build a bike.
Possible Proposals:
Longer-term membership that required more volunteering. ex: five hours for six months’ membership. This is more like how a lot of other successful shops operate.
Build-a-Bike program would be independent from this program.
Peter: has a LOT to say about this. Have you done any polling?
Lars: B-a-B program is a failure.
Ben: that is not exactly what the levels of membership are trying to address
Peter: (thinks the program has had a measure of success, some of the problems are universal)
Noah: Membership “price” of $30 is too much. maybe $40/year would be more successful?
Boson: Wed/Thu personal bikes/ B-a-B ONLY! Sunday Shop bikes only! Okay!
Ben: Changing rates would relax pace of work for some users.
Peter: Monthly price is reasonable!
Eric: There are a lot of people who are interested in helping more, but there are no open lines of communication for these folks to get more involved. We need to define volunteer roles more clearly. i.e.. communicating with people about expectations, training, scheduling. Goal is to give recognition other than collective status.
Ben: we need to formalize roles that already exist.
Lars: What comes next?
Eric: Come to committee meeting.
Ben: we need further discussion. [see above]
Insurance
Dileep: We have general liability insurance. It covers the shop but not collective members individually. Quote: $595 anually. We decided to do this, wanted to present more information at our meeting. Trey, Dileep have done a lot of research.
Trey: when you buy insurance, you need to ask, “Is this a risk you need to be concerned with?” Our liability insurance is an easy sell– there’s clearly risk involved.
General insurance vs. indemnity insurance. Officers make policy decisions. Example: grant for youth program. Policy would cover directors’ ability to make financial decisions without being held liable. Example: non-profit being sued for misallocating a funding source.
Scenario: VBP sued for physical injury. During discovery, they realize that someone at VBP made the decision to allow people to wear sandals in the shop. Minutes indicate that the group decided, directors may be sued for their misdirection of
Trey: MD caps damages at amount covered by insurance.
Tim: What do other orgs do? Trey: It’s not clear.
Trey: This is much more attractive to foundations that administer grants.
Ben: What about sexual harassment policy? We don’t have one. (See Maryland Commission on Human Relations)
501(c)(3)
Boson: our 501(c)(3) application was accepted. !!! What next?
BBC-sponsored rides out of Velocipede. Everyone seems to like the idea… proposal for November meeting
XX Food
XX Safety Check
Evaluation:
* Looks like meeting was fair, everyone had their say.
* “Hot-Button” topics need more preparation.
* We should be less fearful about putting things up as proposals.
* The structure of the meeting was not gone over for all people involved
* Learned a lot for our own organization
* Seems like monthly meetings are too infrequent. There should be an intermediate meeting.
* We’re not actually late! Also, read email! These proposals were discussed.
* On time! We should have realized how full the schedule was.
* Don’t be afraid to ask for more time for your discussions! Less side-conversations.
* More people are not just agreeing
* These meetings need to be more frequent!
* We could do more polling before discussions.
* Procedure for meetings was not really clear.
Committee Meetings: Monday October 19th unless otherwise scheduled; contact these chairpeople:
Education: Boson Au
PR: Anna Ricklin
Programs: Noah Bers
Shop : Lars Peterson
Next Collective meeting will be Monday, November 2nd at 4 W. Lanvale St. unless otherwise announced.
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