Event:2023/11/02 Delegates
Omni Delegates' Meeting - 2 November 2023 7pm-9pm
Meeting Details
- Send proposals to consensus@lists.omnicommons.org prior to the meeting
Roles
- Facilitator/s: Philip
- Stacktaker:
- Timekeeper:
- Notetaker/s: Jemma, Patrik
- Next meeting's facilitator(s):
Delegates
- BOGSS: Inactive
- CCL: Patrik
- FNB: Active
- GWS: Inactive
- Sketchboard: Natalie
- LL: John
- SM: Inactive
- SR: Jemma
- Quorum (2/3 of active groups): YES!
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 PROMPT people to share contact info in the chat, so we can stay in touch
- Silver gave tours to two groups
- Pickles - sign and banner painting coop business, interested in Den, 800$ budget.
- Food Shift - does kitchen work, climate justice work around food, were in alameda but land got bought up, so tenants had to leave i believe. need cold storage mainly, not needing functional kitchen. $2000 a month budget. 100 sq sp, 15 sq ft for walk in fridge. for 25 sq ft. for pantry. also more not noted
- Philip - we should do a floorplan meeting at some point
- Patrick * Wants to see Sarah here more often. She is the person with the most knowledge on our finances and she would be able to give them most input. CCL Also is looking at commercial properties, but Patrik is an optimist about saving the building.
AGENDA
1. Urgent funding allocation (Sarah)
Vote: passed
2. Budget for mediation/facilitation/accountability (Paige)
Vote: passed
3. ANV needs to be negotiated with for paying and removing their materials
Vote: passed
4. Update on contract for using the ballroom (Paige)
Paige will forward latest to Sarah
5. Weekly delegates schedule (Patrik)
Yar: have an extra on Nov 9
Skip Thanksgiving
Vote: Passed
6. Draft Collective Statement (Paige/Yar)
Current statement is ready for sharing with potential renters and others asking questions
Vote: Passed
Urgent funding allocation
Sarah (email): Hi there -- as I've mentioned in quite a few communications recently, Omni is in dire need of funds for general operating expenses: mortgage, utilities, insurance. I am humbly proposing that Omni re-allocate $7000 of grant money so that Omni can pay its bills this month. See spreadsheet for details
The Version That Takes Up More Space Omni is currently sitting on about $35k of grant money restricted for "Capacity Building". This money is in the Unify CU Savings Account. I am hoping that Omni can decide to allocate more of the grant to reimburse the general ops account for expenses that weren't paid out of the grant money, but would still be considered Capacity Building expenses.
If Omni were to do the legwork and liquidate the savings accounts at other banks (Self Help CU and Beneficial) -- that would free up about $6000. However, Omni is also looking at having to pay approximately $20k in property taxes in December. I would advise holding these other funds that are in other banks at least until then.
Here is the spreadsheet showing the current state of grant funds and allocations, which has a column for what has already been paid out, and another column for what contractors have billed Omni for but have not been paid yet. This should be considered as "spent" in my humble opinion. The spreadsheet also includes a bit at the bottom showing the detailed expenses the grant could be "re-allocated to cover" - which would thus mean putting more money into the general ops account to be used to pay general operating expenses.
When the $50k grant was received, it was understood (by Omni and the funder) that some of the expenses the grant would cover had already been paid out of general funds.
When Omni approved the grant budget this summer, there were a number of expenses that grant money was allocated to which had already been paid. Thus the money was "returned to the general fund" to "reimburse" the general ops account.
- Jake (email): Tonight at the Delegates meeting I hope that our
delegate will ask Omni's bookkeeper for a clear summary of our situation. My understanding is that after paying our mortgage payment and upcoming property tax bill, we'll be out of money.
- Philip - unsure what the penalties are for property tax
- Yar - We should not be late
- Philip - Changing what is left in the budget from Susan to new person who volunteered to be our new grants person, Pallavi.
- Philip - Events getting planned.
Cleaning, maintenance and getting things serviced throughout the building. Outreach, about half has been spent. The person who was made an offer bowed out after the boycott. Refi with Sarah Webpage - person hired
- Patrik - We need only two pages right now. We can't pay for a webpage that we will have in 2 months if we don't have a building in two months. We should take pictures of the rooms we have available.
- Philip - We need to make it clear who is using what rooms and when/for what. We need to make it clear and do a floor plan of what is being used for what and when.
- Patrik - Sarah may have come up with a list for what is being used a few months ago, and also prices available for rent.
SL: has the stuff been cleared out of all rooms recently vacated?
Sarah - didn't you assemble a list of rooms available for rent at some point? Was just looking for that SL: yes, as I mentioned a few times, there was still stuff in both CSC/GWS office and aNV room ( though perhaps the remaining stuff was phat beets which preceded anv?)
- Philip - ratproofing was not able to be completed.
Main payments are skylight repair, contractors have set up a payment plan Property tax
- Philip - it seems like we have ~7000 to reallocate.
- Philip - if we can generate 4000$ a week in fundraising ...
SL: Only available for 10-15 mins. Question about property taxes if they are paid late - Omni is currently on a payment plan that isn't a formal payment plan, and we cannot currently pay any obligations late or we will have a problem. I know there are a number of new people who were not here when the property tax saga was ongoing, so just here to get people to up to speed.
Patrik - How much is the property tax at the end of the year. SL - It's around 20,000$. Unfortunately this is something Omni wasn't given the most clarity on in the beginning. The county expects you to pay the property tax in full, and they give you a refund or you can apply it to the next year. Omni is at a point where the county can put the building up for auction because Omni hasn't paid property taxes in 5 years. The assessor is not very efficient on this, so we've had to notify our lawyer and trust lawyer, and we are verifying the extension because the assessor has not finished processing the extention at this time.
John - I think we're focused on the reallocation of some of the funds based on Sarah's email to the consensus list. What are the items that add up to 7000$?
SL - There are two parts that add up in the proposal. The first is that we take about that much from the grant. The second part is showing how much of our grant is reallocated across the general fund. This includes reallocating a number of things which includes DEI and some otherthings on the agenda.
John - What do we need to reallocate this evening to reallocate the hellman grant.
SL: The second thing that was sent that has the budget with the approved previous budget of how to move stuff around. So either approving that or
John - I think we have quorom so can we review those changes so we can make it a motion?
SL - Whether we can postpone for fundraising, website, and other funding. The main thing is that we can have the funds reallocate so we can pay the insurance, pay the bills, the mortage payment cleared, but we basically have 600$ left and everyone who is a regular renter/contributor has paid.
Philip - My understanding is that this reallocation is going to operating costs and not to our property taxes.
SL - That's right, we are seeing if there are collectives or groups who can prepay their rent for the property taxes.
SL - Property taxes are due in december, might be the 4th or the 10th
John - Do you have an idea of what things we need to move over in the hellman grant so we can move forward with the motion?
Patrik - Are there any questions we have for Sarah here? SL - There was a question about rooms and rental stuff. Obviously it's in flux because we have people who move in and out, Silver has communicated some of these things about it, there are still groups that have been using the space for their CSA but have not been paying rent for their office space. As well as dealing with the fact that there are still items in the space and whether they belong to anb or fatbeats, and whether it is fair that they don't pay, and both Silver and Sarah have a feeling that they may be acting without backing in Omni and are interested in making sure that they have consensus behind them in making choices in dealing with the anb situations. There are still things in the global womens strike committee office. We can't really rent out a room when there are things inside of it still, so we need ot figure that all out
Yar - When is the deadline for spending all of the Hellman grant? SL - End of this year Philip - I highly doubt we'll have issues spending it by the end of the year. SL - We can't spend it on insurance and property taxes. Patrik - Sarah will you be able to join us weekly for a delegates meeting? Philip - I propose we move this topic for another time. SL - I can make time as needed or meet with people
SL - I know there was an agenda item about the contract in the ballroom. Paige - I heard back from someone SL - Forward that to the events list
Yar - Silver brought up the question of whether hiring Pallavi for the fundraising group would be good. John - I haven't had a chance to look at that yet, but I will talk to Silver about that
John - There's definitely 3k from refi allocation, and 2.8k for ratproofing.
SL - Refi, that's somethign that if we're going to do it then it's not something that we're doing until next year. It would be something for Sarah or David to do, and David has been too busy for it. The total number is 7290$.
Philip - The ratproofing and refi are what we are reallocating?
SL - Do we want to reallocate, and then where do we want to reallocate that fund.
Votes yes from CCL, LL, and SR for reallocation of 7290 for Hellman grant. Quorom is not available at this time.
Patrik - I have a quesiton about something you had earlier about the refi. In my mind that was looking at things like community land trust and other things throughout the year.
SL - Yes, feelers have been put out but in terms of the land trust issue and there are a number of things they'd want to see, but in terms of the property tax issue, it seems like certain things should be planned or moving forward before bringing it forward to them.
Patrik - If we're talking about holding off until next year, do you think there's going to be a next year?
SL - I think it will be about January or February. I spoke with the lender, and they said that they would want to see a timeline and more concrete goals and steps before we bring it forward to them. I feel like Omni as a collective sort of needs to determine what it wants to do and how it wants to move forward.
Philip - I have all confidence that we can make a plan about what we want to do and what we want to put together.
- Natalie joins*
Patrik - Hi Natalie thanks for joining us.
John - We have a decision for which we need to have quorum. We have CCL, LL and SR in favor of reallocating 7293$ from the Hellman grant to the general operating expenses. Which exact expenses is tbd. We would like to know if you favor this. This recommendating is coming from SL on how to keep our budget going forward in the process.
Natalie - Yes. I've been listening and it's a yay for me.
Votes for yes from CCL, LL, SR, and SB in favor. We have quorum.
SL - It's a very good observation that money is being taken from other places. I reduced some of the funding that had been approved for events staffing. When we originally created the budget we thought we would have a little more event staffing costs, and so we're really behind schedule so we have that. We also have the contract for Susan which was terminated early and the total was about 4400$ of 10000$, so proposed that we can use that for a new way to propose that for
Philip - ok so we had quorum and we passed the 7000$.
John - I'm not certain we need to do a line item discussion by the delegates.
- REALLOCATION DETAILS FOR VOTE (These numbers seem incorrect - do not add to $7K)
Save $5000 fundraising for new fundraiser (Silver contact) REALLOCATE (other options): $3000 Refi Coordination & submissions (Safer DIY Spaces: Keenan + Lockhart) $2500 Ratproofing crawlspace/basement/ (get quote?)
$1,071.00 Property tax Legal Help (Oatfield) $4,721.25 Financial Consultant/Bookkeeper (Lockhart) through $1,500.00 OctoberFinancial Consultant/Bookkeeper (Lockhart) estimated through December - includes 990 preparation and filing; property tax documentation preparation & submission $7292 TOTAL
- VOTES IN FAVOR: LL/John, CCL/Patrik, SR/Jemma, Sketch/Natalie
Budget for mediation (Paige)
- Paige: I would like to propose a budget of $6000 for the next 3 months that can be used for hiring mediators and education from restorative justice groups. This idea and $ amount is based off the initial discussion on this thread between Yar, Sarah, Silver, and Natalie here: https://omnicommons.org/lists/private/consensus/2023-October/004190.html I hope having a solid decision/budget and approval from collectives (as opposed to solely a written commitment) will encourage people who've been harmed to speak up, and have some agency in choosing how they want the accountability process to go forward.
Yar - There's also the quesiton of paying for the facilitation and accountability. Which I think is a big enough change.
John - So what is the proposed budget for that?
SL - Paige proposed 6000$, but SL move around 5200$ for this purpose. It was meant to come in spirit for as close to the 6000$ as possible
John - So we need to decide then that what we approve to do with the reallocation of the Hellman grant.
Paige - This proposal was made before before I knew we had to spend the money before the end of the year. This came from the meeting where we had Brie. I'm now a bit more concerned we won't be able to spend all of that before the end of the year.
SL - Added spending to marketing for Brie and community member to attend that meeting.
John - Do we want to say 4000$ or 5700$ for the reallocation.
- $4000
- In FAVOR: CCL/Patrik, LL/John, SB/Natalie
- Abstain: SR/Jemma
ANV continued use of space
Patrik - While we're discussing budget can we discuss ANV? I propose that we authorize someone to negotiate with them and that we discuss getting them to pay for some portion of the rent. 50%?
Yar - 50% is a little high, maybe 25%?
SL - I was going to propose that we offer them to pay closer to 200$/ month. Seeing their use and space, 200$ per month seems fair to me.
Patrik - If we look at it as a weekly daytime event, that's pretty dirt cheap.
John - I move 200$ and that we move for someone to negotiate
SL - They recently merged with __. They basically took over the lease from the space from a previous collective, Fat Beats, but we need to find out if the stuff they have in the office is Fat Beats or ANV. If it becomes Omni's problem do we preserve the relationship, or ask 200$ and be nice.
- ANV rent negotiation - asking someone to negotiate with them for use of space in Omni for grocery distribution, target $200/mo
- In Favor: LL/John, CCL/Patrik, SR/Jemma, SB/Natalie
- Sarah volunteers to negotiate w ANV, possibly with Silver
Weekly delegates schedule (Patrik)
- And invite Sarah (and David) to step up more! We had allocated funding for them to help us out.
Philip - Next up is the draft public statement. Paige/Yar I think you're taking lead on this tonight?
Yar - This should be the last thing on the agenda. If there's anything first we should do that first.
Philip - Patrik had suggested weekly delegates meeting. Can we have the collectives send someone for any one of these meetings every week.
Patrik - Or can we hold off our lender?
Philip - I suggest that if we do want to do weekly we send out the agenda items before hand so the collectives can discuss the meetings topics before.
John - So every Thursday with the exception of Thanksgivng?
Jemma - Agenda being sent our earlier could shorten meeting lengths as current lengths makes it prohibitive and a barrier for entry. I support Philip's idea to send out agneda items earlier.
Philip - Can we make decisions async or over email?
SL - I think that according to our bylaws we can already make decisions electronically and do so via our bylaws already.
Vikran - current laws support this, and our bylaws should already include that as a possibility
Patrik - Meetings include chances for discussion, but email may be difficult to move forward with
Philip - I think the question right now is are we having a delegates meeting on the 9th? Jemma/John - Yes
Roof repairs budget
SL - Pell grant cannot be used for building repairs. If we could there would be lots of things proposed already. That must come out of the general fund.
Philip - How soon is it to get SR leaks taken care of and taking care of property tax, etc.
Yar - Property taxes are the most important right now.
Patrik - My understanding was Jake was going to do the drain. I'm conufsed about what the plan is right now.
Paige - There's something about the contractor disagreeing with Jakes plan. It might be something we could do ourselves, but it might be something to look what might happen there.
Patrik - So we're authorizing SR to go ahead and do it? Cause Jake seems to be under the impression that he's not able to do it. I'm less comfortable with Jakes idea at this moment.
Philip - Yeah, a pipe needs to be installed correctly and we need to take care of our rotting roof.
Patrik - you said there are two drains, but i've only ever seen one
Philip - Yeah, there's another that needs to be maintained/cleaned out every year.
Philip - I would say, because David is open to payment plans, we wait until next meeting to see how we can afford that long term.
Draft collective statement
Paige - SR's talk on it, there's no objection to the content, but the people who book events are the ones looking for a statement, but this statement explicitly says it's not that. I've tried to do some of that, but ...
Yar - Yeah I've been working on that by myself
Philip - So other than racism and zionism, what is a direct response to CLP.
Yar - Other than going line by line through what they said, and I'm working on it.
SL - First it was the medium article, then it was something that may have gotten the medium article taken down
John - Essentially we need a response to the racism statement.
Patrik - CCL members felt offended that the discussion was about how Omni was racist, and that included the BIPOC members
Philip - I think there are poeple who've experienced sexism/racism here, and we should address these things
Patrik - But it does say dear neighbors, are we really talking about our neighbors if we're not going to be putting it on leaflets and putting it in mailboxes.
John - LL is in favor of the statement
SL - The email that _ sent, one of the things that I took from it was that they were really upset was something that they were really upset that it wasn't brought up during the hiring process. They felt really broadsided because it didn't come up while they were being interviewed for the job.
Yar - It didn't exist yet
SL - CLP sent a bunch of things from internal messages that they had sent. So it doesn't seem like the hiring committee couldn't have brought it up during the hiring process. Because like, ok you want me to do this, but you didn't let me know any of what you needed me to do in this position.
Vikram - And also just to be clear Silvia was engineering that from the email threads, and that this was in the works in the weeks leading up to this happening.
Yar - I don't think they were building a tokenism narrative, I don't think they expected to be removed from Omni
In FAVOR: John/LL, SR/Jemma, SB/Natalie Abstain: Patrik/CCL