Minnstf board meeting, Feb 25, 6pm, by videochat. Attending board members: Matt Strait (recording), Linda Lounsbury, Scott Raun, Aaron Vander Giessen, Eric Forste. Others attending: Don Stremski and Sharla Stremski. == Minicon 55 == Since Don and Sharla are here now and don't want/need to sit through the whole meeting, we'll start with this. We're 5 weeks out from Minicon weekend now. Aaron talked to Mike from the hotel, who is still working at 50% time. The hotel has accepted that Minicon can't happen, and even if it was legal, would be a bad idea, and would like to roll us over to a new contract for 2022 (or maybe a two year contract). Aaron has told the hotel that they can release our space for 2021. Will we need to change the contract terms? What if it is still not possible to have an in-person con in 2022? It would be nice to have a force majeure clause that more clearly covers the case of a pandemic, or other non-sudden disaster. Have other organizations/lawyers developed wording for this? What about the room block size? Aaron has thought about it, because he'd like it to be smaller. Of course, we don't know whether the 2022 Minicon will be smaller (because people have drifted off) or bigger (because of pent up demand). It's possible that we want to switch to a contract structure where we pay more for function space, but pay the same amount regardless of how many room-nights are sold. Linda asks if there's any chance of running short of rooms if we don't reserve a big enough room block. Aaron: over Easter weekend, no. Should we do a 2-year contract? Yes, we all agree to that. We already have Easter weekend 2022 held for us awaiting our new contract. The chairs will give the hotel an official statement in writing that we will be rolling over to 2022. The next big thing is to inform the membership. The chairs will start with a notice on the website and an e-mail. When we have nailed down more details, we'll send out something on paper. We (chairs and board) have not yet decided how many of those two years Don and Sharla will chair. Don and Sharla sign off of the meeting. == Other conventions == * Decongestant 5 Nothing has happened. (We never had a contract for 2021.) Matt feels that if it was the summer and we became sure we could have a con in October, that would still be enough time to plan one. If it turns out hotels are all booked at that point, he accepts that. * Minneapolis in 2073 Nothing has happened. == Approve last meeting minutes == Approved. == Review TODO list == * (2021-01) Scott will get GPS paid $200 as per our cooperative agreement -- This happened. Check is in the mail. * (2021-01) Aaron will find out more about GPS's finances for our information -- They are funded through April. They pay $6100/month for their space. That includes rent, insurance, internet, power. They don't have a public plan for what happens in April if the financial trajectory continues as is. They say that their scholarship fund/space camp has a separate budget, but we don't know if that means it is separately incorporated (safe from a situation where GPS is in debt) or just a different internal budget. * (2021-01) Scott will query Hershey about PO box pickup frequency -- She said they're only going to be going every two or three months, or when there's a specific request. We want it to be picked up more frequently. Scott will ask for a pickup before the voting meeting, and we'll discuss at our next meeting if we need to find someone who can do more frequent pickups. How many PO box keys do we have? Well, the old keys are irrelevant now. Scott will ask Hershey how many keys she has now to the PO box which is now in the old Kmart. Tangentially, Matt is ready to send out ballots once he gets the full list of voting members. * (2021-01) Aaron will find out how much our investments made in 2020. This happened. See below. * (2021-01) Matt will talk to President Sharon to make sure plans are in the works and Michael to make sure that he's up on his Membership Secretary duties. Maybe double check with Osce as well to make sure the Einblatt says "nominating meeting". Matt sent an e-mail to Sharon and Michael, which started a conversation eventually resulting in two pandemic-normal meetings in February, designated as nominating meetings, along with a plan for how nominations will be taken on Discord. Matt has e-mailed Osce asking him to emphasize the nominating nature of these meetings in the Einblatt. This happened in the addendum to the February Einblatt. Announcements of the nomination meetings also went out via, at least, the Google Calendar, Facebook, Dreamwidth and the natter list. * (2021-01) Matt will send bills for past due accounts. This happened. * (2021-01) Matt will announce our next meeting to our officers. This happened. (And apparently the chairs attended today because of that announcement, which is nice.) == Review recurring task list == It's time to get a report from the quartermaster, which means that we should ask Brother Joe to go see if our stuff is still in the storage locker, and with no nasty notes or extra locks on the door. Matt will do that. == Ratifications == By email, we approved Matt buying boxes of envelopes for board elections. The cost was $75.33 and the #12 and #9 boxes will last us 6 and 12 years, respectively, given our current voter pool. Ratified. == Picnic? == Maybe in September or August? Scott prefers mid-September. Labor day would be acceptable. Matt suggests we authorize Bill to spend money for space and let him pick the time. Should we give him a date range? Yes, August or September. Matt will tell him. == Donate books in 2021 for Toys for Tots/Santa Anonymous/Twin Cities Geek toy drive? == Linda is more interested in high schools. Linda has asked her high school librarian contacts if they have contacts at other high schools. It is noted that Toys for Tots includes teenager-appropriate toys. We kick this to the next board. Put it on the agenda again. == Budget == Aaron looked it up and we netted $3612 from Vanguard in 2020 (including a big crash and recovery in the middle). From March 2019 to December 2020, we averaged a 17% annual return. We're also earning $270/year on our US Bank CD. Our regular annual expenses in pandemic times (no meeting stipends, no meeting rental space fees, no ASCAP) are (copying from the 2019 treasurer report): Storage 12x$140 $1680 GPS cooperative agreement $200 mnstf.org+minicon.org domains $34 PO box $288 (updated for 2020) Memorials/cheer, assume 2@$50: $100 ----- Total $2302 In 2020, we also spent $1300 on books to donate and donated an extra $500 to GPS. So roughly, we took in $3612 + $270 = $3882, and spent $4100. We have a roughly balanced budget, but we're making money in Vanguard and spending from checking. Who is making sure we shift money around as needed? We have about $7k in checking at the moment, so it's not currently an urgent problem. Matt will do a quick check of our checking balance. Several of us are capable of moving money from Vanguard to checking. It takes about 3-4 business days to process a transfer. == Voting qualifications for next year == We anticipate being able to go back to regular meetings around late summer, which splits our voting year in half. At least Matt and a few agreeing grunts think that it would extreme to let people vote in 2022 on the basis of meetings they attended in 2019. But Eric worries that if we use the regular rules, there will be a very small electorate. Scott asks how many voters we'd have this year without the carry-over. Matt parses the attendance spreadsheet: the answer is 26, as compared to 61 actual (maybe 27 vs. 62 after the last qualifying meeting). We could carry over again. We could carry over people who qualified this from this year's attendance, but not double-carry-over from the two cycles ago. We could use the rules as written, and people would have to qualify from 2021-2022 attendance. We table this for the next board. == Next meeting == Upon election of the new board on March 20. => New TODO list <= * (2021-02) Matt will ask Brother Joe to check on the storage locker. * (2021-02) Matt will announce our next regular/public meeting to our officers. (Not the one on March 20.) * (2021-02) Scott will ask Hershey to do PO box pickup before March 20. He'll also ask her how many keys she has. * (2021-02) Matt will talk to Bill about a picnic. * (2021-02) Matt will do a quick check of our checking account balance. => Tabled <= * Book donations. * Voting qualifications for 2022 election.