Event:2022/10/06 Delegates

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Omni Delegates' Meeting - October 6, 2022 7pm-9pm

Meeting Roles

  • Facilitator/s:
  • Stacktaker:
  • Timekeeper:
  • Notetaker/s: Yar, Patrik
  • Next meeting's facilitator(s):

Delegates

  • inactive groups: CSC, GWS
  • ANV: active, silver
  • CCL: active, Patrik
  • CLP: active, billy
  • FNB: active, joe
  • LL: inactive, anka
  • MOP: active, nobody here
  • Sudo Room: active, jake
  • Sudo Mesh: active, camber
  • Quorum (2/3 of active groups): need 5 if both sudos show, 4 otherwise. yes, full quorum.

Agenda

intros

BRIEF INTROS MAY INCLUDE: name, pronouns, groups you're in, land you're on, if you're a delegate, unmet access needs, meeting roles you'd like to help with, discussion topics or proposals to add to agenda, announcements/updates/report-backs from your groups, safe space issues or updates

  • yar she/her
    • fire inspection delayed for now, if they bug us we'll do it, but strapped for energy rn
  • kai they/them, fundraising
    • fundraising group is plotting to send a press release out, about our gofundme, our nov 4th event. going out to 6-10 journalists early next week
  • camber he/they
  • chichi finance
  • silver they/them anv. omni fundraising event november 4th. sleep deprived.
  • joe fnb
  • patrik CCL
  • cere ccl/sudo, pronouns whatever you want
  • princess she/her ebprec
  • phoenix she/her finance
  • max he/him ebdsa
  • les she/they sudomesh
  • billy they/them clp, events chair, cleanliness committee
  • harold clp cleanliness & events
  • jake sudo
  • miliaku she/her, helping with finance & long range planning
  • anka LL, checking in after absence
  • ojan he/him ebprec
  • noni, organized with CDP before. ebprec co-founder & ed.
  • hasan they/she EBDSA. here to support.

repaying diy

  • joe proposes we pay with kitchen fund
  • $7500 that DIY Safety lent us
  • proposal is to pay it and let finance decide which account to draw from
    • CONSENSUS: YES (clp/billy fnb/joe jake/sudo mesh/camber anv/silver ccl/patrik anka/ll) ABSTAIN (none) BLOCK (none)

sudo money

  • jake: sudoroom has decided to raise our contribution to omni from $2k to 3k/month

building room

  • yar: proposal to pay matt ~$8k to build a wall for DSA
    • Let's enclose the den area above the entrance hall to create another lockable room. EBDSA (East Bay Democratic Socialists of America) have floated the idea of paying $1000-$1500/mo for this room. We'd build a single wall flush with the existing wall, the door to GWS/CSC and the mezzanine balcony. The resulting room would be ~530sqft, would have two windows facing 48th st, and a few internal windows facing the entrance hall.
    • CSC has said previously they're concerned about noise from the den. That shared wall is not a real wall, it was built hastily out of very thin material. At some point, they would like us to replace it with a more serious sound-mitigating wall, but after talking to Arnoldo, it looks like they're fine postponing that project until later. Priority right now is to keep the building.
    • Update: we got estimates from Matt for a couple of these jobs:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FiQ1x39Rk7XthgOnYgQrTsfv0NAUXJPE/view It's a little hard to tell from the pdf, but individually these projects would come out to:

$7895 to build the wall for EBDSA upstairs $8625 to build 5 more carts under the stage

discussion of building wall

  • DSA would like to move in Nov 1st - can we get this done by ourselves by then? Book cases can be moved into hallway. Work party this Sunday?
  • maybe 1250, not 1500?
  • maybe omni can DIY it?
  • joe will lead the build. matt's quote was $1780 for materials. delegates can allocation $3k
  • CONSENSUS: YES (billy/clp silver/anv jake/sudo ccl/patrik camber/mesh anka/LL) ABSTAIN (none) BLOCK (none)

discussion of DSA's tenancy

  • billy: dsa has a lot of members. how would that work? would all dsa members have access to the space? would they all use it?
  • hasan: i wouldn't ask for that. we put importance on opsec. omni upholds principles like "no cops". we wouldn't want to compromise security or be a burden like that. if it was me, i'd limit it to a few keys to a few people who you have contact for and can call up for an issue. if we take a room we can't meet in large groups, we'd have to pay for a space elsewhere. we'd want to use some of the other spaces for a discount.
  • joe: you've been an important renter, dsa, and some of your meetings could fit in that room. or maybe not, you usually have snacks or agitprop artwork, separate little venues going on, etc. it'd be reasonable to whittle down your rent a little, but certainly they'd still be in place. we need both incomes.
  • anka: keys go to people who need it, not necessarily everybody
  • silver: dsa meetings are usually during the day. ANV uses entrance hall during operating hours. DSA can do the same. i think it can work. i think rent can go towards that
  • patrik: for member collectives, the deal is you can use common spaces when you need as long as it doesn't overlap with other events going on. do we need to write into the agreement essentially how often they're gonna use which space?
  • yar: we can be flexible with the times you want. Important to have groups that can use the space during off-peak.
  • max: appreciate what hasan said about security. wouldn't ask for just anyone to have keys. quarterly general meetings (DMs?) would be in ballrooms. night schools are 10-30 people getting together for discussion & readings. in our room we'd be doing 15-20 people committee meetings.
  • chichi: sounds like DSA's been in this space in a while. are they also interested in stewarding omni more?
    • patrik: like becoming a member collective?
    • silver: or joining working groups
    • hasan: what does stewarding mean? generally speaking our members would be amenable to that, it's principled, we're friendly comrades. to enter into an agreement we'd need specifics. shifts? honor system? or a thing you already do that we'd be doing?
    • silver: [explains working groups]
    • hasan: i can't make a call from membership, can't guarantee, but i think some members would feel good/excited about that. maybe also a good way to activate new members ... we do asks for the sake of asks sometimes.
  • silver: come help empty room and build wall sunday!

shields

  • joe & patrik say no, don't want to discuss it
  • silver: we could display them in entrance hall!
  • yar: we could offer to display a fraction of them, partially solve their problem and they'd still need to find space for the rest
  • anka: rats would chew them up, against storage
  • silver: entrance hall, wall?
  • jake: at some point we offered to store a portion and they don't want to separate. want to keep together.
  • 3 of us are against any storage or display
  • yar proposes we delay decision

FNB, CCCL, AND SUDO ROOM WERE IN FAVOR OF NOT DOING STORAGE OR DISPLAY.

annual meeting

  • still need names from sudo mesh, sudo room, global women strike + BOGSS
  • send people to bogss congress this sunday!
  • BOGSS is getting organized - meeting this Sunday? People should have gotten an invite last week but date may not have been clear

finance team updates

  • silver: finance team is coming together! we just hired an amazing project manager miliaku, emily from sudo is joining. and phoenix. and ebprec folks helping support. events team predicts 10k for october, still open nights. gofundme made money. collectives please offer incentives/perks for gofundme.
    • patrik: best plan is to meet self help's target? need recap on exactly what those goals are and how close we are.
  • miliaku: we're on track to meet with loan officer late next week. just getting everythign ready. finance wg meeting next wednesday to review materials to present to jeremy. also talking with other potential lenders, floating idea of diversifying the debt. sorry we don't have a robust presentation this week. will have one next time.
  • joe: shout out to new folks on finance! wonderful to see new people helping silver & yar out. right on.
  • finance meeting on wednesday will be at this same meeting address
  • silver: fundraiser party Nov 4th! want every collective to be participating in this so we can really show how we unify together.

possible futures

  • jesse recommends we not "poke the dragon", ie don't reach out to mulberry yet unless it's with at least some good news
  • Greated us with concern - worried he hadn't heard from us sooner. What happens Dec 1st? #1 advice: contact Mulberry with good news and details: proposed lender, targets to meet, time line to meet them. Then ask Mulberry for extension. Mulberry Trust is cover for anonymous lender; already gave us a 1yr extension for Covid, requiring quarterly report. Over $900K. Have sent them 5 reports, last Dec 2021.
  • if mulberry is on top of things, they would file a letter of default right on dec 1. this makes a loan much harder to get. we could ask them to not do this. during the following 3 months we can still legally pay it off to avoid foreclosure, but it's harder to get that money.
  • joe: did you discuss other possible scenarios, like getting money from a group that aligns with us politically, that would somehow share the building and has a lot of money?
  • Folks from EBPREC hasve been helping out, offering advice. Don't have a ton of unallocated funds. Ojan, Noni and Princess present. Coop org, not a 501(c)3; BIPOC serving. Member/co-owners include staff, residents. Looking into whether they can make a loan, become co-owners or something - checking with lawyers. https://ebprec.org/
  • billy: CLP has an interested party talking about maybe offering the 900k. not enough details yet, actively talking. it's on the table. could be very real. if that happens, some potential other folks might throw down money also for renovations, salaries etc. nothing concrete yet. some folks seem interested, aligned, anti-capitalists who happen to have money because of some crypto shit.

cleanliness

  • Proposal: https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/edit/GcTDiTZqA3ao5+6hbaAuobdc/
  • billy: we met one time, are schedulign a recurring meeting slot. also on slack. right now we're just trying to define space and how it's used. helen's getting info on FNB's schedule. getting info from ANV also. making check-out sheet/doc for spaces so that after events it's very clear what needs to get done. (draft checkout list for common spaces: https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/edit/t-tk8xvUbCYPT43aOHgeoFQX/) a lot of time event presenters miss stuff because they don't know. CLP reorg'd the cleaning closet/room at last work party. making clearer rules for the tech room (av closet next to stage). otherwise just talked about process of communicating with folks. eg what happens when a group uses common space but doesn't clean it up. still trying to figure out who'd be good people to hire and pay for cleaning work. getting quotes, etc. welcome any leads folks have on that. initial proposal had a fine system to serve as a deterrant since folks had gotten used to not cleaning up after themselves, invisibilized that labor, especially in common spaces. last meeting there was pushback on that. i think now the only thing we need to discuss is if the committee has the authority to request money from folks who create labor for other people, so we can pay people for that labor. in the original proposal it was just a blanket fine that escalated in cost over time, but at our last meeting folks were ok with the idea of analyzing each case and figuring out how much it cost to remediate, and just charging what that costs. takes some more labor to do case by case. in the end, another thing is if we can find a good cleaning company or people we know, maybe we cna figure out a regular monthly fee that groups pay and then it's just handled automatically without any intervention needed. that'd be the easiest thing, just a new thing to put money up on top of rent for common space cleaning, if they can't do it themselves. still need to start formal negotiations. one idea was that member

collectives only store stuff in their own space, not in common spaces. interested to hear folks' thoughts on that. to me it seems standard. can people permanently store things in common space? delegate proposal would make those conversations easier and resolve issues in holding folks accountable. so 2 main takeaways: if we can find good folks to pay for cleaning, and remediate common space issues, that'd solve most issues. otherwise it'd just be regular maintenance that's not so overwhelming. also want to steward/upgrade fridge outside, redesign it so people don't sleep in it (sadly), formalizing it more.

  • jake: sudoroom discussed this yesterday. our position is we're in favor of the group having authority to recover costs of cleaning. but penalizing costs no.
  • proposal that the committee has ability to submit a line-item invoice for specific labor with specific dollar amounts, to whoever's responsible for messes, when necessary. appeal process to the delegates is implied. groups will be warned and given a reasonable deadline based on common space needs.
  • jake: the factors are, how immediately does it need to be cleaned? if there's a rental and it needs to happen immediately, it does have to be cleaned up. the other direction is, if there's a group messing up common space over and over, but no members are present after you've left, somebody else is gonna clean it up and you're gonna have to pay for that. it's assumed you knew you're supposed to keep entry hall clean.
  • yar: agreed that good faith jibes with my experience. people care what the community thinks of them and try to avoid being publicly called out as a matter of course
  • joe: i think the problem is mainly events ... you can't expect people to just lock the doors when they go. i think we can work it out. in favor of both additions to the proposal.
  • billy: what if it happens every week? that's rotting food half the time. also, can we make decision about common space usage by groups?
    • Joe/FNB and Silver/ANV commit to cleaning up food messes same day
    • We may need to redefine which space FNB is expected to use in basement
  • joe prefers costs are no more than $25/hr
  • PROPOSAL: cleaning committee can bill people that leave common spaces unusable for cleaning work. if time is available before a previously scheduled use of the common space, people should be given a reasonable warning and a deadline. if no time is available, too bad, you pay. committee can decide on fair wage.
  • CONSENSUS: YES (billy/clp ccl/patrik joe/fnb sudo/jake) ABSTAIN (silver/anv les/mesh) BLOCKS (none)


End of Meeting

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