Board Minutes December 2009

This appears to be an export from our Google Wave agenda. We are trying to find the actual minutes from the meeting.

Edmonton Bicycle Commuters' Society
Board Meeting Minutes
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Time: 6:30 PM

Minutes

Call Meeting to order

Approval of the Agenda

Introduction of Guests

Approve outstanding minutes

Report from Project Coordinator

Old Business

New Business

EBC Purchases

• Current Request from Alex Hindle
• Current outstanding purchases
• Future needs and planning

Spring Bike sale

• We should do a Bike & Bake sale event.

Update on Dance Party

Update on Bike Racks

Bannerz (company we have used in the past):

For 34 full-colour stickers (full colour is the same as two colour) (17 stands, one sticker per side).

34 Sized 31.5" x 8" - $545.00

34 sized at 31.5" x 3.5" - $240.00

Total quote - 795.00

From Fast signs

31.5" x 8" - $833.00

31.5" x 3.5" - $364.50

With taxes and variable design costs they had the quote at 1283.63.

I am waiting on replies from one other company. However on Wednesday I talked with Mike Roth who is one of the managers at United Cycle. He said that he would probably be able to pass on the industry price to us from the company that they order things through. I am going to follow up more with him in the next week. This is looking like it may be something to be implemented in the spring for a few reason's. First off I am thinking that we could look at selling advertising space on the racks to local bike shops (wanted to get Board's thoughts on this). As well the signs are best applied to hot surfaces and not cold surfaces (which they will not stick to as well).

I am also going to talk to Mike about creating stickers and possibly t-shirts and other things like that and get an idea of some pricing that I can bring to the board. I would really like to see EBC have a variety of cool items to sell (such as stickers, t-shirts maybe even cycling jersies) in the spring.

Advertising in Newsletter

Spin around the clock

Potential for more staff hours

Coreen and Leila are seeking a single honorarium of $15 per hour * 5 hours to be split amongst them any time they are opening the shop

Oy. This is getting into the realm of paying our volunteers to volunteer. If we head down this way, I think that we'll quickly start running out of volunteer mechanics (why volunteer, when you can be paid to do the same work?). And running only on paid mechanics is what we did back in the days with Jason; it wasn't healthy for the shop to rely only on paid staff.

I appreciate the work and dedication Coreen and Leila have been putting in to keep the shop open, and sacking your weekends for the shop especially, but I'd probably sooner that they scale back if it's too much for the two of them, rather than hire them to work Sundays.

Do you have any more details? Perhaps I'll phone Coreen to ask her more about this.

Your summary is accurate. They feel that they should be paid as there is now a paid mechanic on all other shifts. I'd appreciate it if you phoned her and spoke with her.

Alex also wanted to know about potential for more hours. He's at 15 hours a week right now, which is not a significant income.

Okay.

I'm concerned that maybe we've gone too far with relying on the staff mechanics to always be on shift. :( If people don't feel volunteering is valuable or needed (because we're always paying someone else to be there), then it makes it very hard to get volunteers to commit to shifts, which is something we've managed to do for the past few years.

On the other hand, it's very nice to know that the shop will be open, even if no volunteers can make it. And it's good for training/consistency, too, to always have someone there that has memory of what happened yesterday and the day before.

Urgh...

CSL Students

Both applications are going ahead. CSL Orientation on December 4, 9-11am.

Bright Nights Bike Lights Mobile Festival

Monthly public movie nights at BikeWorks

Would like to screen monthly movies at BikeWorks: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time Whisper of the Heart Nanu: Summer in Andalusia Tokyo Godfathers My Neighbour Totoro Wayne's World Karate Kid


Work with Anime Alberta/BAKA/ASAPA to promote.

Committee Reports

Advocacy Committee

Meeting with Natalie St-Denis (article for Alberta View): December 8.

From Michael:

Maybe we could take her to some special locations and show mayor touchpoints? (109th/high level/downtown/rivervalley?)

I think really driving home the cycle 265 point.

Maybe give her copies of the cities bike plan and the cities TMP. Make sure she sees how they are lauding cycling and that they recognize the need for a mode shift.

I think this is our chance to make the big case for investment

• For 1/2 the price of one recreation centre
• For 1/3 the price of one overpass.

I would say get her in touch with Aldo- (the business man who spoke at the cycle hearing) he is an excellent example of someone who rides and isn't a 'radical'. Every edmontonian could be a little more like him.

I'm happy to help out however you would like!

Maybe we could share with her some of our goals and feedback so far with the vision for cycling.

Bikeworks Committee

• Discussion Point: 5th Sundays of the month
  • if volunteers are comfortable, it should be open to everyone (unless we decide otherwise)
  • I would like 5th Sundays to be Women/Trans (if volunteers are available)
  • Question for Erich: were the women mechanics asked about this in the summer time?
  • Answer: No, they were not approached.

Communications Committee

We held the first meeting for the Communications Committee on November 23rd. It went pretty darn well.

Rough minutes: After a round of introductions we had a discussion about the goals of the Communications Committee and some of the differences between it and the Advocacy Committee (and overlap) and any other overlaps within the communications network. We talked about the various routes of communications and essentially broke things down in two main groups:

Newsletter - There was a large discussion about the news letter with Kent McPhee giving some history on the newsletter and it's format (what types of sections have existed in it, how often it has been published and where and how it has been distributed. We then talked about what our goals for the newsletter would be:

We would like to publish a news letter for the spring (April/May) and have been a nicely produced full colour document.

We decided that having a separate group of volunteers strictly for the newsletter would be a good idea. I would like to have a meeting fairly soon but at the same time I am aware that things are getting pretty hard in terms of time in people's schedules - would it be better to wait until January?

The newsletter will be in both print and non print forms and we were wanting to find out about advertising in the newsletter.

I am going to serve as Editor for the Newsletter with Jennifer Sargent serving as Co-Editor.

Virtual Communications - This is referring to our mailing list, our website and our facebook group.

We have decided to have a bi-weekly email covering all upcoming volunteer opportunities, events and announcements. This will be comprised of postings to the website and facebook group. If anyone has something they would like to see in the bi-weekly mailout they need to forward that infomation to Chris Chas he will be in charge of creating the bi-weekly email. I was also supposed to forward a submission for the policy committee to create a policy around this but missed the deadline. I am not sure if Chris brought this forward at the meeting.




• Advertising in Newsletter - Should we take paid advertising? Decide on what kind, if any, and have Communications/Sponsorhip & Fundraising/Policy move forward with details.

Community Events Committee

HR Committee

Membership/Registration Committee

Office Committee

Policy Committee

• Vote: Document Storage Policy

  We should discuss and vote on the document storage policy. Should this be a separate agenda item or part of the policy committee report. Should we just assume from now on that Policy committee report is the time to vote on policy (or, again, should it be an ongoing separate agenda item?)

  I think its fine here as long as we all have a copy ahead of time

Sponsorship & Fundraising Committee

Volunteer Committee

Adjournment

Next Meeting Jan 7, 6:30pm

Announcements

• EBC Board (and anyone else that's interested) Holiday Dinner at Chris' place

  For fun! and getting to know people. Not for discussing policy or organization! Although it'll probably happen anyway.

• Chris got a cell phone.