In attendance: Will Wedler, Christopher Black, Mark McCartney, Caroline Savery, Scott Gibson

Agenda:

We did NOT cover: *501c3, *Finance Committee update

Committee Updates

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ag3JpvnzfsttdHhBUUpYdkF1UWZpVkp1dDdwXzRNU1E&hl=en

Proposal: Approve the Programming Committee 2010 budget. Vote: Consensus.

Maybe make a policy for the $15 teacher/$10 administrative pay split? Current policy is: labor amount set by specific need. Let’s keep it that way for now.

* Discussion for raising incentives for volunteer staffers

Issue: Ongoing need for staffers. STILL a struggle to fill staffing calendar. Staffing requires more responsibility, more training than any other way to earn volunteer hours. Thus, it falls between our paid positions and our volunteers, so it deserves more incentives to get people to become staffers and STAY staffers, consistently! Another desire of incentivizing staffing is to build staffer relationships, build the community.

_Proposal: staffing hours to count as double or time and a half. _

Most current staffers don’t need more hours. However, if double hours would be enough to get a new person involved… Will: 40 people on the list since volunteer staffer training has begun in 2010. There is definite initial interest in staffing. How do we retain them? How do we incentivize getting them to sign up on the calendar in advance, when it’s more convenient to just drop in?

Needs further discussion by rest of collective council, review of old policies about how hours are valued.

Proposal: Once a month, have a staffer-only open shop/party. TBD when, possibly on the Friday just before a meeting, so we can encourage everyone to come to the Collective Council meeting on that Sunday. Fun time for staffers, time for them to work on their own bikes instead of always helping others. Builds relationships between people. Make sure door is closed so people don’t wander in and confuse it for regular open shop—if they do, tell them they’d have to become a staffer if they want to be having as much fun as we are. Would have no trouble staffing the staffer-only open shop. Start it out at once a month. Vote: Consensus

Proposal: Hold some kind of raffle, probably of high quality used parts or bikes, at every staffer open shop in which you receive a ticket for each time you staffed in the last month. Needs further brainstorming. Concern about restricting the best parts to the “in” club… but Free Ride is a collective run by its users, those who give more to the organization deserve to get more out of it. Vote: Consensus

Internet in the Shop

Internet Proposal: Approximately $50/month for Verizon DSL internet. Includes phone. Mark will bottom-line it. Upfront cost of router: $60 each. We would drop our existing phone contract once service with Verizon is set up.

Suggestion for covering this cost: post photos on website & on craigslist of the fix-for-sales. No withstanding past objections about getting Internet in the shop.

Modification to Proposal: Free Ride will pay up to $50 more per month than we are currently paying for phone. (We think it will be around $55/month total.) Vote: Consensus

Lease

We didn’t have it in front of us. We did know that action needs to happen on it ASAP.

Proposal: We agree at this meeting that for this special case, we will permit consensus to be achieved by vote of at least six people over the e-mail list on approving the lease. Vote: ???

Some questions to consider:

Even just including a clause saying “Lease could be negotiated prior to the end of the date of termination of this lease” could be good enough. We might agree to it if it’s just until the end of the year, but probably not a good lease if it’s longer term. Good relationships with landlord mean more than lease. Point of action: Everyone in council, please take a question from above, go through the lease and look for concerns relating to that question, and provide your results to the list for voting.

Discussion on reducing EAB requirements

Concern: Members seem to be frustrated with the two class requirement, people would rather opt to buy it as-is or just not enroll. Also, our current calendar is really non-accommodating to people trying to do EAB—classes come before volunteer night, then open shop. Concerns that this discourages low income people—it’s now a 2.5 week deferment since they first wanted a bike before they can ever hope to get started.

Proposal: Reduce the EAB requirement to one class + one hour.

We reached our goal from last year of reducing the red tags in the shop. Definitely an improvement, but possibly too much… now people are just buying as is, bringing it back to work on it. Concerns about affecting the Prog Comm 2010 budget, because some class attendance arises from EAB requirement. Should the one hour requirement be pay-offable like it used to be, like membership is 4 hours OR $$? We all agree that the one hour requirement MUST be volunteer, not pay-offable, so people can get oriented to the shop, its layout and what Free Ride is all about. This just further differentiates the “buy as-is” (non-member) versus “enrolling in EAB program” (member/involvement.) Needs further discussion.

Babes on Bikes Calendar fundraiser

OK’d for Friday, July 9th. Caroline can bottom line, Chris and Rachel can assist.

Keep in mind MBRP needs a party too!

Bike2010

August 12-15, Toronto! Will wants to go. Will take off work. Options: renting vehicle, train, carpool, fly <—need to look at these and compare prices. Next meeting need to vote on $ allotment. Need to: pre-register # of guests on their website, housing, will we offer workshops? Keep in mind we only have effectively ONE meeting left before Bike for planning.

Next meeting: July 11. 10:00 AM. Bike Pittsburgh office (hopefully with a key this time). :)