Event:2015/09/03 Delegates Meeting

jWeekly Omni Delegates' Meeting - September 3 , 2015

Who's Here?

ben was here virtually

Meeting Roles

• Facilitator/s: Libbie
• Explanation of hand signals: "deaf applause", "raised hand", "point of process", "directresponse"(wildcard), etc.
• Stacktaker: Sadie
• Timekeeper: Ben
• Notetaker/s: Libbie, Laura, Matt, jenny, sigma, Alex
  • URL of this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/omninom
• Vibe Reader: Sadie
• Next weeks facilitator(s): Lori & Libbie

Delegates

• BAPS: Sadie
• CCL: Cere
• FNB: Helen
• MPM: no delegate (inactive)
• OpAl: no delegate (inactive)
• Sudo: Matt Senate
• TIL: no delegate
• GWS: Lori
• Quorum: YES ;)

Introductions

Introduce yourself: Name; Prefered Pronoun; Affiliation

• Libbie, she/her/ they, BAPS, Becoming Omni
• Sadie, she/her, BAPs
• Lori, she/her, GWS
• Matt, he/him/ Sudo
• Benji, he/him
• Helen, she her, FNB
• Alex, she/her, BAPS, Becoming Omni
• Cere, she/her, ccl / sudo / whatevah
• Sigma, they/them, Sudo ruum
• Laura, she/her, BAPS, Becoming Omni
• Max, he/him, Phat beets
• Robb, he/him, LulzLux
• Troy, he/him, Omnibrarian
• Jeremy, he/him, Sudo
• Jenny, she/her, Sudo
• remote yar, she/her, sudoroom
• Steve, he/him, La Commune
• jeremy

Announcements

• La Commune: we're going to be open every saturday
• Cere: CCL is hoping to do a once a month art and science thing, and it can be Omni arts and science thing, to support the Omni. On the last Monday of the month.
• Laura: the Ligure Club is having their monthly meeting here -- on Tuesday, around 7:30pm, Tuesday the 8th.
• Max: Plant Sale at Dover Park from 11-2pm -- Phat Beets.
• Libbie: Been to the last few delegates meetings -- want to make an appeal that we start on time at 7pm! Would be great if we can do that. If any delegate has an issue at getting here at 7, we should talk about it and deal with it.

• • We [sudo room] are going to hold a rent party for Omni Commons on the 13th, TBD time -- rummage sale, food, and cleaning ;) . And bring music and hang out, and we can do it to support our shortfall. We might do another one at the end of the month.

Bans

• Max: for last three months, has been working on the Kwik ban, and I can bring something next week
• Also working on the conversation with Ranette, and we may be making some progress.
• Steve: Quickness was in the building on Tuesday morning, not sure how he got in.
• Libbie: Any update on the ian moon / james moon conflict?
  • Rob: yar is acting as conflict mediator--she has talked to matt stewart, brendan and rob> I just gave my account, which was just the end of it.

Working Group Report-Backs

Finance

Meetings: Every other Thursday at 7pm

• see announcements for info on Omni rent party
• Matt: Matt Griffin, our OOC Treasurer on the finance working group -- talked about our shortfall which will prevent us from paying our rent on time, whether or not . Please pay rent early this month. We will find out from Matt Griffin what the shortfall will be, so that we can make it up. If your collective can pay rent for several months upfront, if you are going to be here for more than a month, then think of it as a rent credit.

Building & permits

Meetings: Mondays at 8pm

• This group needs help; https://omnicommons.org/lists/listinfo/building

* This Saturday, we will be having a work party! Starting at Noon. 

Becoming Omni

• Updates on what's happening! WOrking groups within the Design Team have been meeting. A list of the groups and who to contact will be sent out for anyone to join. Doodle will also be coming out about the next full design team meeting
  • First week of October will kick off the visioning / planning process, will send out a Doodle shortly to plan the exact schedule (full weekend, vs 2 weekends, vs 3 sundays) It will start the 1st weekend in October
• We are reviewing the feedback form the first 2 design team meetings
• Libbie will be holding a series of caucuses to discuss racism at the Omni over the next couple of Sundays

Commons

Meetings: Sundays at 7pm Ben reports:

• Sunday morning during the time from 9-11ish am when Liberation Ministries would have service has seen six events since last november 2014 when the omni global calender started being used.
  • This info is from there and may be inaccurate.
  • Two of these were all day sort of things, Capoeira stuff and a "Fundraiser for Legal Fees".
  • Of the other four, three were short two hour rehearsals and one was something called "Love Chapel"
  • Three of the six events actually started at 11am.
  • There were a few more events that were in the ballroom starting at noon on sundays.
  • This would conflict with an event currently planned, Bicycle Music Festival which wants to set up saturday and then play on sunday.

Other news: Is the OMNI global calendar syncing? I am offering to take whoever fixes it sailing on lake merrit, if they want. I can't promise that you will stay dry.

• Jenny: New wordpress update doesn't work for update syncing, and this is a problem with the BAPS calendar as well. yar, Matt and myself are working on it. Not sure when! We need to fix the bug in the plug-in

• Final thing: The SPAZ party tomorrow night (Friday 9/4?) in the basement is likely to Laura: Commons wg had a serious discussion with the SPAZ people about alcohol, so as much as possible they are keeping it as a private event and people are bringing their own, so it's a little bit of a gray area, but considering they are a related oragnization, that's what we agreed with them. They are not selling alcohol.
• Matt: As a private event, they are only inviting members of their group?
• Laura: i don't know how they are inviting people, but we explained it should be an invitation only event.

Rob: they are good at handing out invitiation cards.

• Helen: has there been a problem?
• Steve: one time after a SPAZ party, our space was pretty messed up.
• Laura: and then we have
• Max: do they have raves in the basement?
• Semi-Permenant Autonomous Zone -- they've donated a lot of equipemtn annd they've donated a lot, and we have shared members between so that's the conneciton with that group.

Buy the Building

Meetings: Mondays at 6:30pm

• Met this week with BACLT and our lawyer
  • BACLT
• proposal to give the land to BACLT specifically(see below)
• preparing to take on debt - a proposal with details will come soon
• Libby, Matt And Yar met with Rick from BACLT.
• BACLT held their annual board of directors meeting here, and several times since we moved in, we discussed explicitly with them the possibility of working with them.
• They are willing to work on our timescale of 10/1 timeline (which is quick for them) to close the purchase by then.
• We are hauling ass to dot i's and cross-t's
• There aren't that many options to choose from when looking at land trusts.
• BACLT has their monthly board meeting next week, so we want to try to get things ready for them. We have to agree on terms of the ground lease.
• Can engage in a contract as a ground lease, can take out loans and risk it, but with two organizations, as long as can come to an agreement with the other party, it can be changed in the future.
• Option on the table is move forward with something more basic and boilerplate and then augment it later over time.
• Cere: what do you mean by the terms and conditions of the lease?
  • One section of the contract would be how the land trust would enforce the contract and evaluate whether Omni was upholding its values. Basically a support relationship
• Cere: it seems that would be hard to do without for example, someone attending our meetings
  • Matt: There is a boilerplate in place, but it comes down to what we want and what terms should be in place.
• Not that many land trusts, so while there are some alternatives, there aren't many other options and the fundraising / buy-the-building working group is establishing a strong relationship with BACLT so far.

• Extensive notes on the wiki, if you're interested you are encouraged to read them.
• Jesse is also the lawyer for the Community Land Trust so we have signed a conflict of interest waiver.
• Meeting with lawyer -- mainly talked about 501(c)3 tax-exempt application & purchase of 4799 Shattuck.
• Getting our 501c3 tax exempt stuff in-- hopefully before October 1.
• Next steps: figuring out the terms of the ground lease.
  • If you're on the Board of directors email your physical address to tunabananas@gmail.com (Jenny Ryan).
  • Need to maintain that 33% of income is (publicly) charitable based on IRS standards, precedence (court cases), etc.
  • Way we hold events might be the perfect way of ensuring we bring in donations to Omni Commons rather than requiring rental fees. Basically through co-sponsorship.
• Addresses for the board of directors: we need your addresses, please email Jenny directly.
• How do we maintain that our 33% of our income, as the Omni, is considered chartiable income.
• One option is to fiscally sponsor organizations that are part of the Omni, like BAPA.
• Biggest challenge is getting a firm commitment from the lender who has been a bit hard to pin down- has been out of town recently.
• Haven't yet figured out whether are actually under or over the 33% threshold currently.

New Lawyer Liaison

• Proposal that Helen Finkelstein and Libbie Cohn be allowed to talk to our lawyer(s)
• Helen: My reason for wishing to do that is becasue I'm interested in working on the 501c3 application. But it seems like Jesse is covering it, so I guess i don't need to do it.
• Matt: It would also be relevant considering the previous financial sponsorship from Food Not Bombs.
• Vote passed: 4 in favor, 0 opposed, 1 abstain (Sudo)

Giving Land To BACLT

PROPOSAL: give land beneath Omni to Bay Area Community Land Trust

This proposal is from the Fundraising working group, aka the "Buy the Building" wg, aka "Buy the Land", aka "Until the Revolution". Our meetings are Mondays at 6:30pm and open to everybody! Notes are posted here: https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Calendar

After buying the building, and the land beneath it, we propose giving the land to the Bay Area Community Land Trust, pending negotiation of acceptable terms in a ground lease. Omni would then lease the land back for a small fee(ex. $1 + minor expenses /99 years perhaps). We'd still own the building, but the land lease would have specific terms designed to ensure the use of the building into the future. Those are TBD, will be part of a future proposal (not this one). They can also be renegotiated at any point.

BACLT has many community ties with us. They held their annual meeting at Omni last fall. Their mission is to steward properties and take them off the speculative market. We feel this path best represents our values, and is also a great opportunity for our work to dovetail with regional affordable housing activism.

discussion

• Laura: This relationship has alot of possibilities for us. They have relationships with affordible housing, which many of us have been interested in. They have 3 openings on their board, so people should consider whether they are interested in participating. They are especially interested in younger people participating.
• Cere: What does that mean for us in the context of affordible housing.
  • When there is an opportunity to buy for a low price, it gets split into the land and the property on the land and residents pay a low monthly rent to live in these places, which are often co-ops. Unsure how involvement would go, but an opportunity to shape that.
• Are there practical reasons for involvement with affordible housing?
  • Strong preference from lender was for Omni to make relationship with another organization to prevent future takeover by gentrifiers or other distortion of values.
• somthing that came up when talking to Rick from BALT is that they already have thier 5013cp? status so this organization has worked withthe same title company and has gone through the same process as we will need to do to gain this status.
• There is also the benefit of having another organization that at some point in the future can offer assistence so this project keeps going.
• Area of research is in the scale of the Omni around affordible housing, providing community, (missed others?) and perform a sort of hack to counter the housing and real estate issues that are arising.
• Cere: I was wondering about strategic advantages because the BACLT has credibility. We have people here who are really interested in the gill track and was wondering about using our relationship with BACLT to leverage our values/perspectives.
  • Existing organizations are around affordible housing and farmland, so this is an opportunity to also focus on community and business-ish communal projects.
• Has anyone read the fine print?
  • We have to write the fine print ourselves
  • (Missed Matt's cogent-sounding response)
• Will be more than $1/99 years, will be monthly fee but should be fine
• Robb: Weird to agree to this without terms, don't even know what they are yet.
• Jeremy: How does this change the autonomy of the collectives?
• Robb: it gives the BACLT the power to take the land from us if we do not meet the terms of our lease... it's kind of like a landlord.
• Jeremy: What are the terms associated with other groups working with BACLT?
• It is up to us to define terms, we can empower them to be able to take corrective actions or we can set them up to be hands-off.
• Jeremy: Does the donor have any other requirements?
• Laura: It's the lender who prefers having a contract with another non-profit org to ensure we don't go off the rails.
• Troy: Can we get this in writing?
• Matt: Yes, it's a process. Their board will be meeting next week and deciding how they want to proceed. Rick can't make that decision himself.
• Jenny: Unique scenario, doing the research now.
• Cere: Change the proposal to be less binding, more around intention (missed exact phrasings)
• Unanimous consensus (5/5), passes

Liberation Ministries

• ongoing discussion of concerns? - Stephen Novotny is the point-person for a working group to discuss alternative partnerships with Liberation Ministries. We are awaiting an update.

End of Meeting

• please archive these meeting notes by copying the entirepad contents onto the omni wiki
• then please erase the contents of this pad
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• previous notes are archived here:https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Calendar