Board Meeting Notes 2021-01-05

Board Meeting Minutes
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Agenda

1. Discuss & Approve previous board meeting minutes

- Rob will pull together 12/8/20 meeting minutes as the previous secretary was not available to take notes due to private reasons.

2. Member Count & Financials

- 422 members

- Savings: $114,170.39

- Checking: $21,852.71

- PayPal: $5,147.11

- PEX: $19,652.00 (Outdated)

3. Mail Check

a. ComED overpayment check (made out to the landlord) -- Rob will send follow-up to Treasury

b. Insurance claim reply

c. Insurance renewal notice

d. Illinois COVID poster mailer

e. ULINE purchase receipt

f. Dun & Bradstreet info request ( Rob already left them a voicemail )

4. Votes

- Director at Large Vote will take place on Thursday. Current nominees are Jennie Plasterer and Ed Bennett. This vote will go out on Thursday night (1/7/20) and close the the next Tuesday (1/12/21) at 8:30pm.

5. Officer & Team Lead Updates

- CTO/Tech Team: Getting an electrician to fix server electrical issues. Sky needs access to Quickbooks.

- PR: Sean investigating potential for Advertising campaign in the Chicago Reader. Sean will send details of the campaign, including cost. Sean had budgeted $600 for something like this. https://www.chicagoreader.com/general/mediakit/pdf/Media_Kit_ChicagoReader.pdf. Sean was also concerned with the woodshop and there not being enough woodshop authorizers. Also concerned with cleanliness of shop. Board will bring up with area host during annual area host review, at the latest.

- MMT/Scholarships: Nathan brought to our attention that we had two additional scholarship applicants. Was having issues accessing applications in the old Google form. Sky to look into. Previous Covid scholarship members have expressed that they had trouble getting authorized and their experience wasn't great because covid. Board will revisit this issue on slack to see how we might address this in the future. Nathan wants to send out questioner to scholarship recipients.

- GenOps - Roofer is looking to fix leaks above cold metals tomorrow 1/6. Joe Mertz and Andrew Morris will communicate on slack to have someone at the shop when the roofer shows up. Sean has gotten approval from the area hosts to convert the unused bathroom into a tool cage with RFID door controller.

6. Updates from outside board meetings

a. David Earl, Ed Bennett, Rob German, and Kevin and Kevin Huemann met with a lawyer on 12/23/2020 to review current methods of handling legal-adjacent matters at PS1. Some highlight outcomes:

- it's OK for members to call the police (tell them they can do this)

- reinforce to members: do not let anyone in the space without prior planning (i.e. if you are working with a new or exisiting member to get a new fob)

- fob control on machines will help protect against potential instances of negligence

- ensure all banned persons, whether a current member or not, go through a procedure/process

- PS1 has the freedom to associate with who we want as long as it does not go against official law & policies of the United States government

- when banning someone, send two letters: one certified and one not

b. Some members of the board had concerns about lack of real names on budget vote. Set expectation that real names must be used in the future.

c. Discourse will fully replace Google Groups on 1/31/20. Existing groups threads will remain available read-only. Will send multiple notifications to members.

d. Increasing the members dues to keep pace with inflation (which PS1 has not been doing) was raised. Board generally recognizes this needs to happen, but agreed to leave member rates at current levels ($40/$70 with storage) due to covid. The board will re-evaluate budget every quarter this year.

e. Board has, over a series of votes, agreed to security cameras throughout the space with the expectation that logs containing every instance of camera footage access be programmatically reported to a repository (likely a spreadsheet) automatically/programatically in near real-time - and the repository will be made public for all members to view at any time.

f. Scholarships lead (Nathan Upchurch) concerned last two scholarship recipient cohorts didn't have good experience due to covid. Asked the board what we might do to help rectify this. For further discussion.

g. Board voted to create a Canvas administrator position on 12/15. To be filled by the person that has already effectively been filling that position, Dan ("D") Tan.

7. Discussion Topics (new & existing)

a. roof leak in cold metals - Gen Ops has a roofer coming soon to fix leaks. Joe and Andrew to be available for the roofer at the shop.

b. MMT volunteers needed - The MMT is missing many volunteer positions as three are now currently on the board. The board will reach out to John Papiewski, Max Rashes, Daniel Martinez Olivas, and Lilly Corr

c. Bandsaw left on - Bandsaw in the Woodshop was left on (1/4) around 7pm and a member Brian posted in the google groups letting members know on 1/5. Shortly later, a member used wet sappy wood on the bandsaw causing the blade to be gunged up. Board discussed if we should access cameras for this particular occurrence, and we were in agreement that we will not be accessing cameras to determine who it was. Board will be posting to the communications channels.

d. official policy crafting for volunteers/canvas course - Board will add to Action log to create a volunteer policy per advice from the Lawyer. We will revisit this as a board at a later date.

e. Scholarship policy - Current policy is split up by percentage of budget. David expressed interest in updating this. This has been added to the Boards action log.