April 2018 - Board Meeting

4/4/2018 - Area 515 Board Meeting

Attending:

• President: Tim

• Vice President: Don

• Treasurer: Meg

• Secretary: Brad

• Director of Education: Bailey

• Director: Tom

• Director: Chris

State of the Space

Reimbursement for new door closer

• Tom paid $33 for a new door closer. Board decided no discussion was necessary and vote was held to reimburse Tom.

   Vote to reimburse Tom $33 for cost of new door closer
   In Favor: 6 
   Opposed: None
   Abstained: 1 (Tom)
   Result: PASSED - Tom will be reimbursed $33 for cost of new door closer

Discussions of Artist in Residency Program

• Last year all applicants not selected for the Artist in Residence program were offered 50% off their membership fees for the three months. Nobody accepted the offer.

• The board discussed offering the same discount to applicants who will be turned down this year. There are 27 applicants to the program and only 5 slots available. The grant funding for the program would not cover the cost of this membership discount if offered.

• The board decided that we will not offer the discount to applicants this year, however we will mention our Starving Hacker reduced rate program that we already offer.

• One of the applicants for the program consists of two people. After discussion it was decided that, if they are chosen, they would only fill 1 slot in the program. They would share the $100 stipend for materials and be given 1 door key to share between them.

Financial Update

• Some money came in and some money went out. We still have some money.

Moving Update

• We have been verbally told that we will have access to the new space on July 1st, 2018.

• We still do not have an actual lease on paper to review. As recorded in previous meetings, we understand that our new landlord has not written a lease before. We have a member meeting coming up later this month and need a lease in writing that everyone can review. In the interest of speeding up the process, the board will try offering our new landlord a basic rough draft of a lease as a starting point. Tim offered to contact the new landlord directly.

• There are no known specific plans for the move yet, although a committee tasked with planning the new space and the move has already met.

• We discussed how to plan for the move a little. A more thorough discussion will take place at the next member meeting. We should compile a list of expected moving expenses, some of which include...

  • purchasing a glass front door for new space

  • money to install the RFID door system at new space

  • new utility sink?

  • money for tearing out the wall and patching up the floor in the back office area

Member Meeting Agenda Items

• We'll need to vote on the lease we don't have yet.

• Announce selections for Artist in Residency program.

• Plan the move. Perhaps we compile list of things that will need to be done and then organize chronologically.

• Discussion then turned to finding rough drafts of commercial leases that we could offer to the new landlord as a starting point.

Misc

• This past month the board voted by email to renew the Starving Hacker rate for one of our members, as is done yearly.

• Brad will continue CC'ing the board on new member welcome letters he sends out.

• Meg suggested printing a physical copy of the welcome letter, laminating it, and hanging it on the wall at the space so everyone can refer to it.

• We were contacted about possibly providing workshop space for scouts building free libraries. A number of board members were interested and we agreed to post an invitation on our Google

group to other members wanting to volunteer to help.

• Facebook reached out to us about attending a Des Moines workshop they're putting together. There was no enthusiasm for the idea from any board members.

End of Meeting

• Paraphrased Quote of the Meeting: "Contracts are for when things go off the rails, not when they're running smoothly." - Tom P