Event:2021/08/19 Delegates

From Omni Commons
Jump to navigation Jump to search
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Omni Delegates' Meeting - August 19, 2021 7pm-9pm

Meeting Roles

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

Delegates

  • ANV: inactive
  • CCL: patrik
  • CSC: roberto
  • FNB: helen
  • FYE: active but nobody here
  • GWS: rachel
  • LL: Inactive
  • Sudo Room: yar
  • Sudo Mesh: marc
  • Quorum (2/3 of active groups):

intros

  • We are front-loading most of the meeting into these intros! Now is the time to put forward any of the following things, many of which used to have their own meeting sections
    • introduce yourself: name, pronoun, affiliation, if you're a delegate
    • do you have any unmet access needs at this meeting?
    • what meeting roles you'd like to help with
    • discussion topics or proposals you'd like to put on tonight's agenda
    • report-backs from any of your working groups
    • updates from your collective
    • any brief announcements
    • updates on any conflict mediation
    • if you've asked anybody to leave the building due to safe space issues
  • please be BRIEF! Less than 4 minutes per person! Anything that might take longer must be put on the agenda as a discussion item
  • Sarah she/her bookkeeper, finance/commons/building
    • very productive work party Sunday. got rid of a lot of stuff. basement emptier, ballroom on its way. bad panels got fixed, documentation submitted to insurance. fire paint on shattuck doors is done. in fairly decent shape for inspection (Thu 9/2 2pm)
  • yar she/her sudoroom delegate, resigning now. this will be my last meeting as sudoroom delegate. still want to schedule times for people to talk face to face.
  • Roberto he/him
    • csc delaying comparte. scared of delta. hard decision, was gonna be 1st physical program in 1.5y
    • zapatistas still in europe. 500y after technoctitlan
  • Rachel she/her. i like the idea of making the collectives more visible. you go into the womens building, and all these groups are up in their offices. kinda alienating. hard to meet the people, get to know what they do. making our work and ourselves more visible to people once they're able to.
    • our policies are not really enforced in a good way, or at all. there's stuff written down that doesn't get followed through on. even the safe space policy. they need to be looked at / revised / made more concrete so there's no room for ambiguity and huge disagreements. we're divided, it's been divisive. if we need a grievance committee or however we want to work it, something is needed urgently to work out the problems that happen inevitably in a situation where a bunch of people are trying to work together. we don't want it to go to the extremes that it's going to.
  • Marc he/him, mesh delegate, sudoroom/ccl member. mesh has been fairly dormant. not much to report.
  • Patrik he/him
    • i think the land trust proposal holds a lot of promise
    • CCL is slowly whittling away at our funds in the bank. gonna try and fundraise. santa clara group got 15k pandemic relief. we'd rather not do rent forgiveness cuz omni could use the money also.
    • don't want to get bogged down in nitpicky back-and-forth around conflicts. don't mind talking about policy. but if we get in the he-said-she-said i'll likely leave the meeting
  • MaryAnn she/her. csc member, not a delegate. fundraising wg
    • i'd like an update on where things stand in terms of mediation
    • interested in talking about
  • Helen she/her, fnb delegate
    • peoples park situation is not so great. we'll see how that all plays out
    • do people want to think about internal dissention? a lot of that went out on the discuss list. i think that's not appropriate. does the list have a moderator? is there a policy on what should or shouldn't be posted?
  • David
    • i'd understood discuss list to be intended for high-volume broad traffic when it was set up, has that changed? i disliked that exchange too. i thought it was preferable to blocking someone out of the building. to me it was less escalating to cajole someone to follow policies than to physically gather them and walk them out which we've done in the past. i wanted to avoid that.

conflict

  • David K volunteered to act as conflict steward between Rob, Jenny and other parties
    • Rob also suggested Toan. David reached out to Toan
  • yar: briefly, the SEEDS mediator had a family emergency and had to be replaced. the new mediator is in a scheduling process now. Hopefully by end of September. Including Silver as well as some observers.
  • David: plan was to focus on conflict between Rob and Silver
    • Patrik is Jenny OK with this?
    • AB also banned Jenny - shouldn't he be involved as well
    • Sarah: don't feel that if conflict with Silver is resolved, my conflict with Rob is resolved as well
  • yar doesn't know how to address these questions without getting into the weeds. i've been trying to get in touch with asaad for 2 weeks and our schedules still haven't lined up.
  • david: robb needed to borrow a drill, i walked in with him to get it and let him borrow it. in retrospect idk if that was the right thing to do. if he's stewarded that'd be fine? i didn't ask silver or sarah, who were both there. next time i'd probably say no. i just happened to be there.
    • patrik: or just get it yourself
  • sarah: it felt like pushing boundaries. but i understand what david did. i sorta hid in the basement, had a fight or flight response. really felt violated after all that effort about calling for the ban, explaining it, enforcing it, and he still doesn't accept it.

Officer Elections

  • Sarah: we're down to 1 officer (president john torok). Maybe set a timeline and have people volunteer who are going to handle the process? and leave it at that
  • maryann: we could replace the people who resigned. or we could start all over since we didn't do regular officer elections a couple months ago, and do all 3 at once. what do people wanna do?
  • david: maybe i'm archaic, but i thought that officers were supposed to be ceremonial/titular positions only, and effort should be made to limit the overhead they have to deal with. i'm not understanding why it's so fraught. at other nonprofits they'll often just appoint outsiders as officers/board members so power doesn't accumulate in a hierarchical way. i just hope it won't be too fraught.
  • yar: i think the primary issue is not any particular election process, but about recruiting candidates. this work needs to be done by everybody.
  • patrik: agree w/david, a lot of orgs have no problem getting outsiders in those positions. i think we're hindering ourselves only recruiting from inside the org.
  • david: it could be good for omni to have folks from outside. i'm on board of other nonprofits and my obligations are so small. it really is just a kind of sanity check role for a lot of net-zero nonprofits. it could be good to have outside voices in the mix.
  • rachel: i have to go. bad ear ache. not sure about opening up treasurer to anybody - where you're dealing with money and stuff.
  • sarah: i feel like one of the differences with omni is, a lot of other orgs have staff people, mostly paid or volunteer, who regularly perform the obligations/tasks of officers. for example, the duties of treasurer as laid out in bylaws, currently are mostly things i'm doing as bookkeeper. in the past i think the treasurer maybe performed some of these rather than just overseeing/delegating that it got performed by somebody. based on how things are currently organized i share rachel's hesitancy about bringing in outsider unless it's a fairly ceremonial role.
  • patrik: just mentioning, bylaws do say "Any person may serve as officer of this corporation."
    • david: And more than the Treasurer can sign checks, it doesn’t all have to be on the treasurer
  • maryann: why don't we say elections are open and somebody needs to take responsibility for that and announce it and see what we come up with? let's just open it up and see if we get anybody. everybody should be out there recruiting. if we're gonna go through a refinance or whatever, we have to have officers. hopefully they'd be people who know something about omni that'd be able to help us make good decisions, cuz we're gonna have to make some big ones within the next year.
  • patrik: who should we send people to?
    • yar: the finance mailing list!
    • website lists info@omnicommons.org
      • yar: I'm the only person who receives those - decision fatigue! Could use help managing those incoming emails.
      • David: create a new officers@ mailing list?
  • david: [redacted names]
  • yar has made officers@omnicommons.org forward to the finance@ list

Basement

Storage/activity proposal from 8/5 meeting

  • 1. For the near term: to dedicate common areas of basement primarily to organized storage of various items and associated work activities that became staged in the ballroom during the pandemic, and some of the pre-sorted items from the free store / entrance hall that would fail an inspection.
    • The motivation is to lessen stress and prep work around re-starting gatherings and lawful assembly in the ballroom and/or entrance hall. To preserve our maximum occupant load and legally accommodate assembly, the ballroom cannot be full of stored items that had sensible uses during the ballroom's closure. The ballroom needs to be basically empty of everything except tables & chairs, a/v equipment, & the moveable walls.
  • 2. Removal of couches & related furniture from the common areas of the basement, as well as any abandoned / archaic items still stored in basement common areas, to allow for organized storage and modest associated work areas.
  • 3. Donation / procurement of a great number of large clear plastic totes to store all material that can be labelled with the owning group member.
  • 4. Impacted community member groups are primarily: ANV, NOMA, & Free store:
    • Free store: Specifically, for the free store, my proposal is that pre-sorted donated items that are presently staged in the rear of the entrance hall, now be stored in basement on ingest to be sorted, and that sorting of donated materials also occur in basement, rather than in the entrance hall (sorted / organized items can stay in entrance hall). I talked with Dane about this today.
    • NOMA: I understand that this week NOMA has already moved most of its items out of the ballroom and created an organized storage area in the basement along the CCL-adjacent side of the basement wall. IMO it looks great and should continue as a model for the other items being proposed as staged in the basement.
    • ANV: ANV items / ANV use areas in presently in ballroom, to be staged in basement. Optionally, as with proposal for Free Store, tables used by ANV could be staged near their stored items to facilitate their work. My understanding is ANV has about ~4 ppl working around the tables, if so, my proposal is that ample space for such work be provided in the basement for that to continue in the basement rather than in the ballroom.

discussion

  • maryann: is it related to the inspection?
    • sarah: yes
    • maryann: it kinda seems like a no-brainer, if it's necessary for the inspection
    • patrik: i don't think it's technically necessary but it'd greatly facilitate the necessary organization
  • sarah: i thought the issue was ANV still packing in the ballroom
  • david: i wanted to give people notice so they didn't wonder "hey where's my stuff". a lot of work on sunday was towards this. my goal is it stays that way. bring omni into a persistent inspection-ready state so we don't need to make a huge effort every time. as things re-open there's spot inspections. it's hard to refuse one at a public event. reducing that stress is my goal. i wrote anv directly to suggest they can prep in basement too. that's why i want to fix the lighting.
  • sarah: are they voting on having anv move ops to basement? or are we ok with anv in ballroom when there's no event? that's my confusion
  • maryann: the only time anv used the ballroom was during the pandemic, but it can't stay that way. it needs to be cleaned up and ready for people to look at. if there's moving going on now, this would be the time to do it. we need to put things downstairs or wherever they belong in time for 9/2. it isn't up to them whether they stay in the ballroom. they know they can't be there permanently, everyone's told them that from the beginning. seems like what needs to go down should go down. do what we need to do.
  • roberto: agreed. anv was using the entrance hall before pandemic, 2/3 times a week. ballroom needs to be in good shape, cleared up
    • yar notes it was phat beets before summer 2020
  • david: i didn't hear any objection from silver. i think they would have raised it. if it doesn't work out, we can approach that later. for the time being maybe we just do this so we can get a clear ballroom.
  • patrik: i feel like anv has been so disconnected from decisionmaking, somebody's gonna have to go there saturday and say "ok we need to schedule when you all will take everything down, and next week all the packing will be happening in the basement". otherwise seems like they're not listening or not giving any feedback.
  • roberto: agree. we should encourage an anv rep to join delegates assembly. no one's been present in a long time. we've reached out. they need to be here.
  • maryann: i could be wrong, but i seem to remember when robb did the anv lease, it says what they can or can't do. whoever has access should look at it.
    • yar: but it's a question of what to enforce. we need to use our judgement.
  • rachel: lack of representation is a problem. somebody should come sometimes. we agree ballroom needs to be cleared. agree w/patrik's idea of just letting them know
  • yar: silver has been an anv delegate
  • david: we can gather volunteers to respectfully move those items, that's why we got plastic totes. to carefully place things in there and neatfully stack in basement. silver did move a lot of things already, so they're not totally ignoring it. getting it down there isn't a problem, just want to make sure nobody feels like their toes got stepped on. just wanna give them time to weigh in.
  • CONSENSUS
    • YES (CCL, CSC, GWS, FNB)
    • ABSTAIN (sudoroom, mesh)
    • BLOCK (none)
    • passes
  • text from ANV's original proposal:
    • "Acta Non Verba will use Phat Beets’ previous office space, similarly as an office space. The space may be used for storage, and as a quiet working place where ANV employees would be able to get away from the noise of their very public office in East Oakland. ANV will also need to use either the main entrance or the ballroom as a packing space on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 8am-5pm, just as Phat Beets has been doing for the years preceding this change."

Electrical/lighting proposal discussion

  • patrik: need consensus?
  • david: may cost money to get the lights back on. just wanna pay electrician to knock it out. jake pointed out volunteers could learn how to do it, but it's been a bunch of years. let's just get the lighting working, especially if anv/free store are gonna be down there. ok for omni to spend on this? $400 or less?
  • marc: this is just getting old stuff working or buying new things?
    • david: a number of T12 & T8 flourescents that are new/unused (purchased some time ago) that'll work in fixtures with functioning ballasts. but a lot of fixtures don't have functioning ballasts. we'd simply disconnect those and get cheap $6 LED bulbs.
    • marc: i'd like to be looped in on bulb purchases. i'm opposed to cheap bulbs, feel like lighting is important enough to spend extra on. i've researched this before.
  • patrik: so we use up the flourescents we have in the fixtures that are still working?
    • david: yes, i originally wanted to just replace them all, but jake said maybe that'd be wasteful. so i modified my proposal to only apply to nonfunctioning/broken fixtures
  • yar: the question isn't yes or no, but what budget?
  • sarah: maybe $750?
    • david: sure, it'll probably be less
  • no opposition. passes

Entrance Hall

  • moving library
  • Roberto: showcasing to public what we are about. Welcoming space to all of Omni. Show who the collectives are, how to get involved.
  • Rachel: i like the idea of making the collectives more visible
  • david: i don't think it'd impact the free store
  • yar: is this something to do by september or more long term?
    • david: not necessary by inspection
    • yar: then we have time to kick the tires, and i'd love to do that
  • roberto: i'd like entrance hall at some point to be more clean. library is a mess right now. more stuff. can we actually put those bookshelves up in the entrance hall mezzanine? maybe rethink that space to be more of a library. moving some of those computers maybe too, they're so noisy. merits more thought.
  • sarah: maybe that weird platform with a bunch of boxes - if we got rid of that, we could put bookshelves there. that'd be a nicer use of space. it'd be good to visualize in whole rather than in parts.
  • helen: i'm with roberto. i think bookshelves require some tables & chairs for people to look at them. mezzanine above entrance hall would be a great place for that. i'm with yar that we need to think more as a whole.
  • david: yeah i'm open to any of those things. my intent tbh is just focusing on the ballroom and cleaning that space up. i realize moving books into another place is going to impact there. mezzanine would also be ok. ... if you have a library without staff or intention you'll get less engagement. tamarack free library is actively engaged, really curated, refreshed. people want to check it out. troy put a lot of effort into omni's library, but i don't think moving it into the mezzanine is gonna solve the engagement problem. if no one's using the library, the question becomes should we even have one? it's not about book storage, but about having a resource.
  • maryann: agreed with yar/roberto/helen, we need to take a look at how we want the lobby to look as a welcoming-type place, and what we want there, what use we want to make of it. i think it requires more thought and more input possibly, into what we want to do with it. there are different possibilities.
  • sarah: so i'm hearing we should table authoritative action, and keep exploring.
    • all agree
  • david: most welcoming it's ever been IMO was when it was full of books
    • yar: that was niki

Plan B/ Land Trust

  • Sarah Lockhart email:
    • Several issues from different parts of the meeting made me think that it would be better sooner rather than later to begin discussing and exploring Plan B, which is selling the Omni building to an aligned non-profit. Developing a Plan B is something required of us by our current lender, Mulberry Trust, and at a meeting a few months ago, we established an official committee, for which I volunteered. Selling the building, after all the work that went into buying it, is a super fraught issue, and would be a tough choice to make, if it comes to that. Thus, I feel that a "last minute" decision to sell would most likely lead to intense conflict and would be harder to reconcile/heal from, and because of that, I want to explore the topic slowly and gently.
    • The issues from the meeting that to me are relevant to the Plan B topic are:

anxiety/concern raised by members of Commons WG about booking events and lack of energy/participation among Omni members building management problems around cleanliness, organization of stuff, and repairing things which have led to temporary loss of property insurance and delays in getting the building inspected by the Fire Department to renew our permit to have assembly (50+ people) governance vacuum and internal conflicts that have recently made it such that no one wants to hold officer positions (elections have been postponed twice); and working groups are spending more time navigating internal conflicts than doing the work that the members had joined the WG's in order to do.

    • What I would really like to get at, and to have us collectively think about, is what Plan B would look like, in operation. What would change, and what would remain the same. What we want to keep, and what problems this Plan B could potentially solve.
    • Here are a few potential scenarios of what Plan B would entail:
      • Passive Owner Model: this would consist of the building being owned by another entity, and Omni remaining itself in terms of governance and operations as long as said things don't interfere with the owner's regular collection of rent and complying with legal obligations. There could be required changes due to the latter, as the passive owner will likely be more conservative/cautious.
      • Property Management model: the new owner would actively handle building issues including maintenance, permits, improvements, and would have authority over conflicts regarding use of space. In this model, the common areas (ballroom, etc) would still be run by Omni or an Omni WG or collective. There would be some form of internal governance but many decisions would be made by the owner.
      • Dissolution model: there would be no more Omni Commons as a collective of collectives. Individual collectives would have leases on their spaces, and new uses/groups would be determined by the owner (perhaps with input from existing collectives/tenants). The ballroom (and potentially entrance hall and disco room) would be rented out to a third party (possibly a performing arts non-profit) to program and steward. A variant of this is that the new owner would have Performing Arts as part of its mission and it would manage events and event spaces itself rather than contract that out to a third party.
  • David Keenan email:
    • 2. Stepping into the void created by a delegate body that seems increasingly divisive and self-dissolving, would be a community development nonprofit with a more modest mission of simply permanently holding affordable community space and performing effective property management. I work with such entities all the time to help other projects. Such an entity will in general have far more resources (balance sheet and staff) to easily qualify for the refi we're struggling with, to handle day-to-day operating finances, maintenance and logistics, and improve the building as well. The chances of the basement kitchen actually coming to fruition, or the ballroom being sprinklered in turn massively adding to its potential income stream, are magnitudes higher within such an arrangement.
    • Since literally the day Omni was proposed, Omni as a concept was predicated on at least sharing ownership with a community land trust or similar aligned entity once the option was executed and the building was acquired. (CLTs actually advised me significantly during our planning phase; without them we probably wouldn't have an omni either). Throwing in with a CLT or similar was conceived as a deliberate act of giving up a degree of power and affording oversight to an outside entity charged with upholding omni's own bylaws and values, so the property could never be sold or used for non-community purposes, but also so that self-destructive conflicts (multiple ppl 'resigning', metastasizing multi-party accusations, etc) could be subject to oversight by a third party without a horse in the race except for the preservation of meaningful community space.
    • The question for me is, can Omni bring itself to do that, even to save itself? The last time I brought it up - a few years ago, after we executed the purchase option I had originally negotiated - I was shut down immediately by the delegates and no one wanted to even consider divesting that power.. how about now though?
    • 3. The owning nonprofit would rent out the ballroom to a distinct nonprofit performing arts organization with programming in line with omni's mission. We would likely retain rights to have some of member collectives' events in there but by and large it would be given over to an org dedicated to such programming and fundraisers.
    • 4. All working groups except for conflict resolution and fundraising would no longer need to operate, though we would probably arrange for input or veto power with regards determining any new tenants in the building.
    • 5. All projects with an existing footprint within the building would focus on fulfilling and growing their own missions for a few years, and no longer try to hold space inter-collectively or manage the building. Just focus internally and pay rent.
    • 6. Needless to say the rub here is that omni would no longer 'own' the building, and for the first time since we purchased, we would also likely become accountable to an outside party in terms of adhering to omni's own bylaws and executing on community projects with measurable social impact. To me at least, this tradeoff seems healthy and not a downside at this stage of Omni's suffering: Rents would stay perpetually affordable (additionally enforced by a covenant or other means), and frankly a dispassionate outside nonprofit entity with a governing board that is not comprised of self-interested parties with their own myriad beefs, would I feel only benefit omni in terms of its broader community that it is supposed to serve.
    • 7. Of sarah's three potential options regarding the different degrees of continued self-management, there will likely be only one concrete option if it works out and that will be determined by the entity who is willing to take omni on under its wing.

discussion

  • patrik: i had a kneejerk reaction to calling it Plan B, we always talked about it as this worst-case scenario that we'd avoid at all costs. but i like the idea of getting a land trust involved or similar org, that essentially deals with business of managing the building. none of us did it with a goal of owning the building. we just wanted to do our cool stuff and have a community together. it makes sense to offload logistics to an org that has experience and more financial capabilities and people that do fundraising around these things on a daily basis. i don't see any downsides to this idea.
  • sarah: to clarify, i guess one could hire a property management entity, but this was in the context of selling the building. at finance we met with a woman from restorative justice for oakland youth (https://rjoyoakland.org/). they were under the impression that omni was broke and ready to sell right away. she advised that if they bought omni they'd subdivide the ballroom, they think it's too big. but also refinancing now is a good time, interest rates are low. and reality check that if somebody's gonna buy they might want to do things we don't like.
  • david: thanks to everybody for just seriously considering this. patrik's points are well taken. from a historic view, buying the building was important because i didn't want our orgs to keep chasing low rent out of oakland. i wanted us to have that security. i worked pretty hard on that option! the orgs i'm talking to, are ones SDIY work with a lot. like 23rd ave building (cycles of change, peacock rebellion - see https://www.oaklandmakerspace.org/liberate-23rd-ave) - they don't manage the building, oakCLT does (https://oakclt.org/). they have staff doing a preservation project. they know all about grant opportunities that we'd be scrambling for. people dedicated for that. grants for solar, infrastructure, etc. they're tapped in. they have bandwidth and spoons we don't have. if we can get an entity like that to steward omni the same way they steward cycles of change, we'd be freed up to focus on the core missions of our own projects in the building, and we'd never be facing a ridiculous rent increase or someone subdividing the ballroom or something like that. but we would have to live and operate according to the standards of that entity. but the community standards are much less strict than omni, simply "we want community space to be affordable and off the market", not a lot of direction beyond that. folks i talked to (informally) are open to this. a lot of it will come down to timing with other projects in their org. it may be that only 1 or 2 are able to do it in our timeframe and we won't have a long menu of possible groups. i think we'll probably find 2 of all the ones roughly aligned with our values. i think it'd be really freeing for omni. infra, upgrades, loans, bank relationships, insurance, we won't have to mess with, we can turn our energy inward. proposal is just to engage formally if we find one of those entities that we like.
  • maryann: what entities are we talking about?
    • sarah: i'm guessing oakland CLT, potentially NCCLT and BACLT
    • david: CLTs all roughly have the same mission. sogorea te if they'd be willing (https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/). but it doesn't have to be a CLT. also affordable housing developers, like EBALDC (East Bay Asian Land Development Corporation) that regularly fix and preserve spaces
  • maryann: then the CLT would own the building, not omni?
    • sarah: correct. the issue would be the financing of this. currently the principle on our mortgage is $925k which is a little less than half what we purchased for. omni owns half the building. would they purchase it for the remaining mortgage or would omni receive money for its share of the building? and where would that money go? another takeaway from RJOY convo is that for her group, the amount of deferred maintenance is something a prospective buyer would be very concerned with. one potential scenario would be that a land trust buys the building for amount of mortgage, knowing they'll have to put another $700k to fixing it up, increasing capacity. items on our wishlist like sprinkling, accessibility, kitchen, roof.
  • david: this is typical. community projects don't have a lot of money. safer DIY can produce a property condition report that'd spell out near & long term maintenance.
    • david: we'd have a covenant to ensure that it'd always be populated by community projects. only difference is, when a group resolves and needs to be replaced, it wouldn't just be the delegates deciding. the land trust would probably put people forward. ownership could be split a number of ways - split building/lands, 99 year lease, or outright owning with a contract with omni.
    • david: omni's unusual because it's one contiguous space
  • sarah: other issue is programming of common spaces. land trust does it or omni pays rent?
  • marc: can we just sell shares to community members? $20k each?
    • sarah: that'd be plan A3
    • maryann: one org we contacted does exactly that. if we could find a number of small lenders there's at least a possibility that we could refinance that way.
    • yar: https://www.semble.com/
    • david: crowd equity financed mandela grocery
    • Marc: Would be good to figure out which model to pursue. Most individuals not able to offer a 30y loan, but maybe do shorter loans with a balloon payment? Skeptical that any organization would allow us to do what we have in Omni - genetic engineering and power tools.
    • Sarah: this was a major problem for American Steel when new propertu management came in - conflicts around power tools next to cat rescue etc. Expect issues with liability and risk assessment

Deferred

These topics were considered as agenda items but we did not have time for them:

  • the mailing list. what is allowed on it?
  • Socializing / spending time face-to-face
  • Policies and documentation thereof
    • Rachel: our policies are not really enforced in a good way, or at all. there's stuff written down that doesn't get followed through on. even the safe space policy. they need to be looked at / revised / made more concrete so there's no room for ambiguity and huge disagreements.

End of Meeting