Event:2021/03/04 Delegates

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Omni Delegates' Meeting - March 4, 2021 7pm-9pm

intros

  • Name, pronoun, affiliation, if you're a delegate, access needs
  • jane she/her gws, tag-teaming delegate with rachel
  • maryann she/her csc, not delegate, fin/fun
  • michael he/him, ccl co-delegate with patrik
  • aaron he/him, anv delegate
  • roberto he/him, csc delegate alternating with arnoldo
  • rachel gws she/her
  • joe he/him
  • yar she/her, sudoroom delegate
  • vicky they/them, noma
  • marc juul, he/him, sudoroom ccl & mesh
  • les, she/they

Meeting Roles

  • Facilitator/s: jane
  • Stacktaker:
  • Timekeeper:
  • Notetaker/s: yar
  • Next meeting's facilitator(s): rachel, with support from yar

Delegates

  • ANV: aaron
  • CCL: michael & patrik
  • CSC: roberto
  • FNB: joe: I am on pad
  • FYE: inactive, nobody hereCHAT
  • GWS: jane
  • LL: inactive, nobody here
  • Sudo Room: yar
  • Sudo Mesh: les & juul
  • Quorum (2/3 of active groups):

Working Group Report-Backs

Building & permits

  • no regular meetings right now
  • https://omnicommons.org/lists/listinfo/building
  • yar will be bringing roofers through to give quotes for fixing the roof
  • South wall, has been looked at
    • mike tenuto went through building with robb, recommended replacing the west end but only re-sealing the roof versus a more sturdy roof solution to allow solar panels in the next recent years. Yar will bring some roofers through to get some quotes.
  • ccl person collecting paint samples, testing for toxins, coming in sunday march 7th ~10am~12pm. school project.
    • 2-3y ago someone already brought in x-ray flourescent thing to test for lead

Commons

  • no regular meetings right now
  • https://omnicommons.org/lists/listinfo/commons
  • Yar, proposal to hire a staffer will affect commons working group function.
  • yar: proposed idea to create create non-profit composed of all people who are part of event hosting process. would be able to hire people. so far one person won't be able to do it. it will involve multiple people. worried about one person being the boss of many others.

Communications

  • Meetings: Tuesdays 6pm
  • https://omnicommons.org/lists/listinfo/comms
  • yar: Has been meeting weekly. Fourth in a row this week. Working on a new newsletter. Working on a kind of census of people working with omni. Past present and future omninoms. Were invited to give interview with the It's Going Down podcast. Decided we're not ready. Have lots of things to work on before we can present ourselves to a wide audience like that. Maybe later this year. Biggest work is on the survey right now. We need help with facebook. Want to link instagram but not sure who has access to the instagram.
  • les: facebook doesn't have org accounts.
  • roberto: thinking of having a newsletter our by the end of march. sent out a call-out to most of the collectives. didn't have emails for sudo mesh and (forget the other one) but I think Dane might have forwarded. asking collectives for two paragraph update on what's been happening. we haven't had a newsletter in about a year. feel free to share the call-out to ... they might have individual stories/thoughts.
  • michael: heather from ccl has volunteered to write something about ccl for the newsletter
  • roberto: march 21st is deadline for content for newsletter asks collectives for short written updates on collective activities

Finance & Fundraising

  • maryann: we're working on narrative part of the refi application (self help loan). part of that deals with our future plans for managing omni (assuming they give us a loan). the person we're proposing to hire would be an important part of that plan. i took suggestions for the job description, i.e.
    • addressed roberto's concern about visioning, the person implements vision of omni's delegates / executive board
    • interfacing with contractors & insurance agents
    • controversial part is what we call it, if we do hire them
    • not sure if a worker cooperative affects this. intent is not to replace or eliminate the commons wg. it would enhance them to a certain extent. idk where to go with it. but the different proposals for a job title, i sent this to the consensus list. there's some errors in it.
    • executive officer, coordinator, executive director, general manager
    • hoping to submit the refi app at end of march, need answers. duties part of it is flexible, but it'd be a good idea to be able to tell the bank what the job title is.
  • juul: can we call the person two different things internally and outward-facing?
  • joe - inFNB we have a position in each cookhouse called the bottomliner. This person is responsible for watching the clock as per the schedule of preping cooking, then rolling out and serving. They have no additional authority in decision making but the watch and remind and maybe cajole a bit to se that things that we all have agreed to GET DONE. It works. AT OC we might call it coordinator.
  • les: i like the idea of having a very clearly segmented intward-facing & outward-facing kind of thing. maybe even make the outward-facing thing overdone, so it's clear. like CEO sounds like a joke to anybody who's familiar with our culture. creative solutions to a dystopian situation.
  • jane's having trouble getting responses about the $90k Cares Act / EIDL small business loan. they told us we were eligible, then after 4 months jane got something saying we were denied. then jane got messages saying "please resent your drivers license front & back", which she did! trying to get help from barbara lee's office.
  • yar: nationwide is definitely not renewing our property insurance. not even a 30 day extension. it expires on saturday and we do have alternatives. i've been talking to brignole and geary every day. she advised us to wait until friday to make a decision (tomorrow). the 10k up front for 5 months coverage. that's the best she could do. she's been working really hard to find alternatives for us. just this afternoon she sent us more questions. she's been marketing us to several companies. there are so many things about the omni that are dealbreakers for this or that company. some don't like our neighborhood, some don't like our electrical, some don't like that we're political. robb will be available tomorrow and tracy and i have a phone call tomorrow. the situation will be a lot better as soon as we can fix the roof and the electrical panels. we can't change the neighborhood. we cant change who we are but we can change some ...
  • jane: at least we won't be hanging out there with no insurance.
  • john: do we need to say, if need be, that $10k is authorized to be spent?
    • any objection to this expenditure for insurance?
    • joe I don't object but wonder if 5 mo. will look good enough for lenders.
    • yar: it's technically a 12 month policy but we'll be able to cancel after 5 months with no penalty. the quote is for $26,768 for 12 months, with 40% due upfront ($10,709.70) and then 2 more equal payments of 30% after that https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B-AL95NlI75qemp4WWgzUnVKTzg
    • We have no objections to the expenditure of $10k for 5 months of insurance.

Member Collective Updates

What is going on with your collective? What are you working on? What have you accomplished? Any events coming up? Any difficulties you are encountering that you need help with?

ANV

  • Food distributions continue. Concerns/questions around letting people in and letting people stay when you leave. people got rude with new employee Victoria when she had to leave and folks were there who didn't want to leave.
  • juul: we have a list of people approved for emergency access
  • yar is trying to find that list
  • juul: another way is to check if people have a working access card

CCL

  • michael: have a few people in the lab working on open insulin. nothing has really changed. we haven't been talking about re-opening recently because we've been in the purple for so long. supposedly alameda county is moving into the red but at lteast from my point of view it hasn't been clear when that's going to happen. we'd be interested in having a handful of peopple in the lab once that happens but not sure of status right now.

CSC

  • roberto: csc is in planning mode, in the middle of board retreat. figuring out what we wanna do this coming year.

FNB

  • silver was at yesterday's meeting. doing an antiracism trauma program that noma's leading. what to do with our money - fixing the car? FNB is part of CIVIC

LOVE program at People's Park beginning tomorrow at 3pm. Liberated Lens's Anka will show her film 'Homeless First" Lunch at 3 and Dinner Cookout at 6:30.

FYE

  • nobody here

GWS

  • rachel: down to the wire with trying to influence biden's rescue plan, the child tax credit part of it. want to make it better. calling congress people.

LL

  • nobody here
  • LL seems to be in crisis. they owe money. a lot of people who aren't with us anymore. who can contact them?
  • silver is seeing anka tomorrow, will talk to her about how to reach liblens folks

Sudo Room

  • pass

Sudo Mesh

  • les: i've been mostly out of the loop. we've been testing some new hardware. marc has. marc just got new boards from china for disaster.radio.
  • marc juul: we haven't really been meeting for 3 months, but we met this tuesday. will reactivate, coordinating setting up gear at long haul, maybe peoples' park. oakland has set up free public wifi in some areas. trying to get a layman's explanation of their TOS (terms of service). sonic is rolling out fiber, $50/month. get through LMI because they have better terms about sharing. govt giving need-based reimbursement for internet access.
  • who's gonna replace mai on the omni board?
    • juul: i could be, but only if nobody has concerns/issues with that
    • les is also willing to serve, although can't commit a lot of time
  • roberto: does sudomesh meet regularly?
    • les: we did before the pandemic. afterwards we haven't been doing installs or meeting as regularly. but we just rebooted our online meeting, will be doing that going forward, every tuesday at 7pm https://meet.jit.si/sudomesh2021

Conflicts, Mediation & Safe Space

  • Updates for any ongoing issues
  • Has anybody been asked to leave? asked to leave
  • silver talked to alison from seeds, got to know each other, alison also talked to robb, planning more mediated conversations soon

Other Brief Announcements

Proposals & Discussions

bylaws

  • yar: last week we revised the bylaws to reflect current member collectives - what's the latest copy so i can update the wiki?
  • yar: apologize for confusion on this since there's so many things going on. my understanding is that lsat week we updated the bylaws to update the list of member collectives. last meeting i asked for the updated version of that list. three different people sent me things linking to different places. can we just establish now what is our list of our updated bylaws so we can put it on our wiki, the source of truth.
  • the one jane emailed to yar 2 days ago is officially the new copy of our bylaws, yar will copy it to the wiki

board members

  • need to update who's on the omni commons board
  • GWS: Rachel West
  • Sudo Mesh: Les
  • CCL: Patrik D'Haesseler
  • Sudo Room: Jenny Ryan
  • ANV: Aaron de la Cerda
  • FNB: Helen Finkelstein
  • FYE: Asaad Bruno
  • Liberated Lens: Robb is currently but he quit. Silver will ask Anka
  • CSC: Roberto Martinez

hiring someone

  • maryann: people just need to say what they want us to do. we also have to come up with a business plan (john started, jenny did one a while ago, trying to combine them). what's our plan for expansion? we need to expand for sure, because the insurance is going up by $1k+/mo. mortgage is going up by ~$2k/mo. need more money! have to start paying current mortgage may 1. it's really important now that we come together as a collective of collectives and figure out where we want to go. this was presented & discussed before. where we have room to expand (bring in more money) is the ballroom. that's the motive behind placing some emphasis on hiring a person who has some experience doing event rentals. not just waiting for people to come to you to rent it, but also having our own fundraisers, possibly bringing in people on tour who are speakers. not an extensive list because i'm not that person! we need to take advantage of that amazing space to bring more money into omni. that's the palce to do it. it'd be good to bring in someone who has experience doing that. i don't think that interferes with pepole in commons wg continuing to do work. i think in writing a 5-year plan for how we're going to expand, one possibility is to get training for some people in wg to get security certification so we don't have to hire them from outside. the possibility of a beer & wine license. just really upgrading the facilities, like the bar, bathroom, etc. over a 5 year period. i know we can't do everything quickly because it costs money. there's a lot of thinking & planning involved. the idea behind what we're proposing for this employee we're hiring, whatever their title, is to take care of the administrative work (which is a ton & somewhat boring) and also to be involved in the events. but not necessarily, it wouldn't replace the commons wg. that isn't the idea. the idea is to work with all the different wgs to make sure they're functioning in coordination with each other, make sure we ha

ve consistent messages, improve outreach & publicity, make us more visible, attract more people hopefully with some cultural diversity involved. idk what peoples' concerns are. it seems like marc made a proposal that would probably work, which is to have one title when we're dealing with the bank/foundations/formal stuff, and then have our own working title. the two alternatives that were verbalized, i think yar suggested executive officer, rachel said operations coordinator. they could be formal or informal. do people want to vote on marc's proposal to have working title and a title we use for our formal stuff?

  • roberto: maybe we go in a circle? go down the list and maybe 2 minutes each?
    • yar: we have 30 minutes left and i see 14 people
  • roberto:
    • who's executive board? is that the delegates? can it reflect the commons as the commons rather than just the executive board?
    • i agree we should get more money from ballroom. but hiring someone will directly affect commons wg. they could work together but we have to make it very explicit in the description. we could write "expanding ballroom usage, working with commons wg". this is true for organizing work parties. "working with the building wg". we do collective work here, that's where our foundation lies. make it clear this person is not leading the way singlehandedly, which i'm afraid that they can. there's a real need to solve this pressing issue we're in. i just want to see that, make that very explicit.
    • yar: helping with all state and financial paperwork vs managing events seem like two very different people, an introvert vs extrovert? prefers cooperative non-profit structure for managing ballroom. Combining two roles could be difficult.
    • joe: thanks yar. i like your analysis. financial situation seems dire. let's make it a smaller role. somebody to help get people in to work with us in the commons group. to work up the contracts, process them. then maybe this person or maybe another person with a small salary could take on important admin positions. someone to work with the state. someone to work with the state and taxes.
  • jane: i agree with yar that it seems like 2 different jobs, 2 different people. we need somebody to sort of make sure that important deadlines aren't slipping through the cracks, immediate survival stuff. but also i'm really glad we're discussing how we're gonna do it when we open events again, when we have to increase our visibility & income.
  • silver: i resonate with what yar said. i think someone getting in and getting paid as an outside director can change how the collective is designed. but i do love the idea of paying someone to do the bureaucracy & administration work. deadline checker, making sure things are done. i like maybe empowering people - all of us do this work - maybe we can rotate every 3 months that someone gets paid ~$15/hr to complete a task so it's more sustainable, in the culture. i learned that from zapatistas.
  • maryann: i guess i need to respond in terms of just the thinking behind it, responding to what yar said. i agree, i think there's room for 3 different people to be hired. we have the finance/fundraising, commons & building wg. all 3 are different kinds of jobs. we could technically have 3/4/5 people but we can't afford that right now. the way the job description is written - i'll work in roberto's suggestion - this person is not going to "manage" the ballroom. they're gonna work with the commons wg to expand the event rentals and to expand the usage. i see that as offering suggestions, possibly having some contacts that the person can bring in or rely on for help, with building a larger repertoire of events that we do. i don't see it as "managing" all the events. i see it more like roberto described - a person with some outside experience who brings in outside knowledge of how to expand the usage, but doing it together with commons wg. it'll expand their knowledge. it'll give them an opportunity to perhaps get whatever kind of certificate (idk?) to become able to perform certain functions. there could be some pay for the nights they do that. we don't have the money to promise them anything unless they bring in some extra money. i don't think we can hire 2 people. i just think there's gonna be a big learning curve. we're the ones who are gonna teach them to do stuff correctly. they have jesse, now they have sarah (who's amazing). it was hard to find someone to replace jenny, that was difficult. but idk what to say except that the intent of this person would be to look at what people are doing and make sure that it's working. that's all i can say. we can't afford 2 people right now, and while i hear what you're saying about seemingly different personalities, i think people can walk and chew gum at the same time. it's all in the interview process and the experience applicants have. those are things hopefully we can work out in the hiring process. roberto's concern ab

out the executive board... those are the delegates. delegates are the only ones at omni who have the authority to hire & fire, discipline, etc. it'll be a challenge for us (delegates) - we'll become an employer. that's a big step. i know we all have to reconcile the discomfort of realizing we were landlords. i don't think anybody came here to be a landlord or an employer. when you rent and hire, you are. if the delegates are properly representing their collectives, they've discussed this and vote according to how their collectives recommend them. anyone can come and give input. idk what else to say. i don't feel like there's a really clear cut go-ahead for us, and i haven't really heard (not sure?) whether or not people agree with the proposal that marc made, to have one thing on paper when we're dealing with super formal things (banks, foundations, govt)... you can have a "working title" that's internal. that's fine with me. i just need to know. because that can actually be written into the job description. title is ED but working title is operations coordinator. i'd like to hear if people agree with that, if you do. if you don't say that. we need something that's specific as a go-ahead.

  • rachel: i hear what everybody's saying, all the concerns. the ideal situation would be one of us could take on this work so we're doing a collective thing together, not have someone from the outside coming in. but we don't have that. i remember commons wg was trying to keep up with all the requests before pandemic, and having a hard time, not enough people. so that's an issue. but i'm wondering if we could have 2 part time positions. the other concern is having all this expectations dumped on 1 person. maybe 2 part time people? it'd be less of a big position. 1 person handling all paperwork, idk if that's full time. another person handling publicity for the ballroom. for them to be more like organizers than directors, we just need someone who's a good organizer that's good at paperwork. who's highly skilled & organized, can get deadlines met, can do things on time. is there anybody we know... what's the young woman that comes to the meeting? (tasha)
  • roberto: i agree we need all of this. i'm concerned about how our language and our approaches reflects what we represent. we are a collective of collectives, this horizontal organization (we aim to be), we're a commons. i don't see that reflected in this job proposal. i want a proposal that's clear & explicit on that. we're this and we want a person that understands. i think it'd be good if we imagine - i hear people talking how i'm seeing it - a person who kind of helps in coordinating this collectivity among us. how do we jumpstart these collective working groups that are doing the work? with their skills, experience, offer suggestions/advice, but ultimately the work gets done by the working groups, by the people rather than 1 person. i see a lot of emphasis on the need to expand ballroom usage, so perhaps we can put an emphasis on first assuring that admin responsibilities. 2nd helping the commons become more of a collective, to collectivize work. 3rd maybe help outreach.
  • yar: i've tried to get everbody's word verbatim. i encourage people to re-read the notes after the meeting because it helps us all take another look at what we're saying. because i sometimes miss what people are getting at the first time around. my perspective is that we're struggling right now and the primary source of our struggling is the lack of clarity around paperwork. that could just be my perception but what i've been seeing is that not having someone who knows how this stuff works (just the paperwork and insurance and stuff) that makes everything else ?. i'm seeing that's the primary stumbling point for us as a collective because that means we don't know where the boundaries are. i don't have all the relevant laws memorized and i don't want to memorize it. i'm grateful when people like jessie and jenny and mary-ann who have spent a lot of time learning these specialized fields of knowledge that can really save others hours and hours and hours of their time. having someone like that frees up the rest of our time to work at what we're good at. i really feel like having someone will free up the rest of us to <notetaker missed the rest>. that's why i'm proposing a worker coop to take care of the ballroom.
  • mary-ann: i strongly disagree with what yar said. having a worker coop it depends on what it is. if it's a cooperative that has to make money. we can't have that at the omni. if by coop you just mean a collective group. i don't understand cooperative without making money. we can't have a for profit because of the tax laws that oppress us. i don't understand how commons wg folks can suddenly - without some suggestion and resource - all of a sudden begin to do it a whole different way. you'd kinda have to, i think, show me something much more specific. idk what to say. either we hire a person or we don't. it seems like there's differences of opinion over what we're hiring them for, now, which hadn't really come up in the past. before it was more a sense of what do we call them, and now we're talking about a difference in why we're hiring them. i strongly recommend that we hire somebody who's going to coordinate the work. they aren't gonna do all the paperwork. sarah's doing a good portion of the financial paperwork. the treasurer will have the checkbooks, write checks when we need to, tell sarah what to input inquickbooks. other paperwork can be shared by fin/fun members. no one's really talked about fundraising, which should also be something we emphasize from now on, which we haven't done in the past, to have a fundraising wg. the first time i brought this up, this feels like a really old discusison, is that we have a building that's falling apart in some places. it's very old, very out of date in terms of the facilities. i really think it's our responsibility to not only maintain and repair, but to upgrade, to make it more attractive for people who want to rent or use the space. i really feel like it requires a full-time staff person because we haven't done a really godo job of that. i think we've gone as far as we can with an all volunteer work group, but i don't see that model getting us much further than what we are, unless we have someone who is really respon

sible for kind of the overview of the whole place. not telling us what to do or doing things without consultation, but it's important to have an overview in terms of, "if you do this, how does that affect that". what are the implications of making this particular move that's being contemplated? how does that affect the other aspects of the operation? i don't mean management or direction or bossing anybody around - just understanding and comprehending the whole of the operation. i think we need someone like that, and if there's some way that we can get an agreement on this - i don't want to write or send something to a bank or financial institution or govt that doesn't have the support of the delegates. i just don't feel at this point like there's an agreement. i frankly don't know what to do from here on. but i believe that position is very necessary.

  • joe: do you think it's impossible to follow along on rachel's suggestion of having a couple part time people? if our main income is gonna be ballroom, we need somebody to go out and find (like you said) people on tour, musicians, poets, tap into all that. commons wg knows how to process that once we get people online. we sit down with this person, and the paperwork person takes care of the things you said, making sure we have an overall plan and it's getting attended to. is that impossible to split things up?
    • maryann: i don't disagree that the 2 things can be separated, i just have a real question as to whether 2 part-time people can get it done. it's not a part-time job. we could have 3 full-time staff people working on omni. it's a big project when you look at all the different aspects of it. we could try that, but when you're referring to paperwork... there's a lot more to it than paperwork. it isn't filling out paperwork. it's understanding why that paperwork is important, how it affects what, what it's connected to and what that means. we just had a really very disturbing setback. our charitable status has been revoked by the state of california. this is a big deal. paperwork is filling out forms. that isn't what needs to be done. what needs to be done is kind of understanding why we're doing the paperwork, and nobody's mentioning anything about grants or applying to foundations, creating a donor base out of the people who're currently contributing money to omni. there's just a lot that needs to be done in order to bring in more money, which is what we need. i know i sound like some corporate executive... we are a corporation. a nonprofit is still about money wehtehr we like it or not. it takes money to run omni, if we're gonna hold onto this building, which i really hope we do becaues it has such tremendous potential - we need money to take care of it. the obstacles out there are big. it takes a lot of work, thought, learning, to really understand how to do that. if you split the position, then who does the city deal with? who puts their name on a grant or loan application and what is their title? we need to project an image of stability, of just doing things competently. i'm really concerned... it might work if you had the right person. but it sounds like you're talking about an administrative assistant, and that's not gonna cut it. it's too big of a job for an admin assistant. that's just my feeling. i've only been involved in the fin/fun wg since last may. i

'll tell you, the learning curve is a big one.

  • roberto: i'm afraid we're putting a lot fo responsibility and hope on one person. that all of our problems will be solved. i do'nt think that's the case. our issues will be solved when we work collectively to solve them. so how do we jumpstart the work again. being very explicit about our collectivity is important to me. someone needs to take the responsibility to call for a meeting and make that work. we need a person to help us jump start the collectivity rather than have that person be our savior. we need to work collectively.
  • joe: The title Mary Ann is talking about is Administrator and we could bring them on first. We wont be able to do assembly type event for some time. So lets bring Admin on first. The other person is needed later and that person would only be bringing in potential renters.
  • vicky: there are nonprofit cooperatives
  • vicky: if we hire that kind of coordinator role, a major concern is that they will run into many roadblocks caused by omni's organizational dysfunction and participation/inclusion problem. to do their job, they will have to start making directorial decisions and that's a slippery slope. sorry to not raise hand i'm sick, also have no decision making power
  • marc juul:
  • rachel: maybe we should talk about what kind of time & availability people do have. that plays into all the work and how it'll get done. who's around, how much time can they give, what do they want to do, what wgs they'll be in. so that things actually happen. that's 1 thing. the other coop story... i worked in one for 30 years. irs doesn't like it. it's very complicated. doesn't necessarily mean everything is hunky dory ime. i don't see that as a necessary structure. how commons wg works together is the issue. how much work people can take on.
  • yar: i would really recommend that we go back and read all the notes that were taken to understand each others feelings. mary ann you seem frustrated that people aren't responding the way you're wanting them to. but i feel like people are giving you feedback. i'd recommend going back and reading the notes. i haven't heard anyone disagree with hiring somebody. i haven't heard any disagree that hiring an admin is central. the parts i see people being iffy about about: to what extend would they work with working groups. to what extent is that person responsible for bringing in more money. if we say: you need to bring in the money to pay yourself and you need all of these people's help to do that, then that's a boss. there's ways we can do it that would be good and ways we can do it that would be bad. putting it all on one person and saying "earn your keep by pulling money in" inevitably puts htem in a position of bossing people around. i'ts unavoidable
  • maryann: i'm listening to every word. i agree that people want to hire someone. what i hear is that there's not necessarily agreement on the issue of one person having an overall coordinating responsibility. there's actually a part of this that involve the building wg also. there'd be some degree of responsibility, i think, with all the different wgs. we're talking about working with those people to coordinate what's happening. i don't feel there's clarity on whether we hire one person or 2 part-time people, and if so, what those responsibilities are. i'm not close at all. it's not up to me. i don't even have a vote on this. i'm just trying to do the work and bring you something as a draft to work off of. we have to make that decision. i don't feel atm that it's clear how we want us to go forward with this. my frustration is definitely not what yar said. not because i'm not hearing what i want to hear, but because i'm hearing different things and i don't feel that there's a clear path forward. there's different ideas, and i just don't know where we go from here, if we hire 1 or 2 people or if so, what the different duties are. idk about the cooperative stuff. i think that's perhaps another layer of incredible bureaucracy... all i know is you can't do for-profit work in omni.
  • rachel: would there be agreement that we hire a part-time operations manager? and put in the business plan that when we open, we plan to have somebody else, pay somebody else to help expand outreach and all that?
  • vicky: i wanna make a distinction conceptually between personal authority and acting authority in line with ideas that we've consensed on ahead of time. it sounds like at least for tonight, there's going to be an ongoing discussion, but hiring 1 person to do the admin work we need done, that does sound time sensitive and we've consensed on doing that moving forward. the big question is whether that's part or full time. we can talk about that moving forward and whether there'd be an event manager as well. we basically have that decision. we did have one person doing that for a while. it was jenny and it was great.
  • roberto: it'll be helpful for me to see a visual of this. like, an org map, some way to see how relationships are being constructed/imagined, in relationship to this new hire.
  • talk about meeting next week
  • maryann: everything comes through fin/fun these days. we were on conference calls with jesse about issues with property tax, commons wg. we do the fundraising. we worry about the finances. it's really a lot. we meet once a week as it is. to have this also, this is like the 4th or 5th meeting in a row for the delegates, it's really a lot.
  • if we don't refi soon, we need to start listing omni for sale with a commercial real estate person. that's the only pressure. this is gonna be the same issue with all the business plan - there's different ways people look at things. it doesn't get any easier from here on to try to get a consensus. what i understand now is that we kind of have the ok to go ahead and present something that is pretty close to what we'll do but maybe not exactly.
  • yar echoes vicky's suggestion, hire a part time admin assistant now with potential to maybe expand in 6 months to more time or other areas like events
  • maryann: hiring process could take months. circulate the announcement, interview applicants, make decision.
  • main thing fin/fun is doing right now is the refi. jesse & sarah are doing the work to reinstate charitble status with california. they'll get our input on some of it. like we changed the bylaws and needed a current list of collectives.
    • yar: but the things laura did?
    • maryann: the thing laura did was renew the leases. that's not a big problem because the language automaticlaly continues them. the huge job she did was send all that to the county tax assessor for purposes of our county tax liability. that doesn't need to be done right now because we're not doing events. that all had to do with events. stuff like yar is doing getting pricing on building issues, i think that's stuff laura did in the past. so it'd be helpful to bring someone in because there's gonna be a long learning curve. this is a complex organization. it isn't something that's really simple to pick up an understand in a week. we're still learning, all of us.
  • Joe: Has anyone ever asked Laura if she would consider coming back with pay?
  • we'll meet again next thursday march 11th, 7-9 to try and converge on something
  • finally signing off at 9:55pm and everyone's exhausted

Previous Meetings

End of Meeting

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