February 2018 - Board Meeting

2/7/2018 - Area 515 Board Meeting

Attending:

  • President: Tim

  • Vice President: Don

  • Treasurer: Meg

  • Secretary: Brad

  • Director of Education: Bailey

  • Director: Chris

Absent:

  • Director: Tom

State of the Space

New Location at 108 Jefferson St

  • Jerry, owner of the new location, is writing a lease to begin negotiations. Tim emailed him to ask how it's going.

Benevity Checks

  • Benevity distributes matching donations from other companies like John Deere and Microsoft.

  • Benevity will give us 3 physical checks for free but any more than that requires a fee. Tim wants us to do digital payments from them to avoid the fee.

  • There have also been members requesting to pay their dues via Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) which we do not currently have set up.

  • At the end of the meeting Meg said she would look into what the fee structure is for EFTs and would email that information to the board.

Wellmark

  • A guy from Wellmark made a large donation of electronics parts.

  • Bailey has signed us up with Wellmark such that this person could teach classes here and Wellmark will pay him for volunteering his time.

  • This was briefly discussed. It needs to be renewed every 2 years but is not due this year. The document requires names and home addresses of all board members.

  • Some board members expressed concern about making their address publicly available.

=Request to pay Tool fees with member dues

  • One member has started paying an extra $6.25 a month with his membership due to cover tool use fees.

  • Here's the math: $20 (Laser fee) + $15 (3D printer fee) + $20 (Wood shop fee) + $25 (CNC router fee) = $80 (total tool use fees for a year)

  • $6.25 * 12 months = $75

  • The question is how to keep track of tool use fees that are paid this way. This was not resolved.

Don won a Boxing Match in 1951

  • Upon Googling what board members' information was already publicly available it was discovered that Don was in fact a well regarded boxer who won an important match in 1951.

New Savings CD update

  • Formally agreed upon in previous board meeting.

  • This has not happened yet because Meg needs a signed check in order to deposit the money into a CD.

  • A check for the money was written and signed.

Current Rent Payment

  • Our check for January rent (in our current space) has not yet been cashed. There is a new property manager for the building, but we have not been notified of any payment system changes.

  • After signing up online with the new property manager we received an email from them asking who we are. The new managers seemed to not know anything about us or that we exist. Meg emailed back informing them.

  • Board agreed to wait until the next board meeting to take any action.

New Intern and Artist Residency

  • We have a new intern named Lizzie.

  • She and one of our new members have been working on posters and artwork to advertise for the Art Residency program.

  • Lizzie's internship expires May 8, 2018, but she has agreed to stay on to help train our next intern.

  • Bailey plans to ask Apex about collaborating on the Artist Residency Art Show

  • The Artist Residency should be publicly announced by the end of this week. Lizzie's getting the sign up page finished and queuing up all the social media posts.

Classes and Events

  • The "Web Geeks" group is planning to host an "Internet of Things challenge workshop at the space, and possibly some soldering workshops as well.

  • Although Bailey's mother declined to teach a summer art class at the space, Brad affirmed that he would still like to teach a Flying Things summer class.

Metal Shop Steward

  • Brad approached Ben, the Metal Shop steward about possibly appointing a back up Metal Shop steward and who he would suggest. Ben recommended asking Dave C since he has already taken a class in welding.

  • Brad said he would contact Dave C and formally ask him to be backup Metal Shop steward.

Member Directory

  • Several members have approached board members asking if there is any sort of member directory, which there is not.

  • The board generally agreed that any such directory should be opt-in only on the part of members and if put online would need to be only accessible to other members. Many members highly value their privacy.

  • It was suggested that one of the walls in the new location could be set up as a community bulletin board, where members could leave their names or contact info for other members if they wished.

  • We could at least put up names, photos and short bios of the board members so other members could get to know them.

Other Concerns

  • Tim and Bailey still working on Prairie Meadows grant application

End of Meeting

  • The formerly curdled milk sits unattended.

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