January 12, 2006 Minutes

Minutes

PERC Board Meeting, Thursday January 12, 2006 @ 7:30 PM

Present: Joe, Randal, Mike, Margaret, Steve

Regrets: Jason

Minutes by Steve

1. Check-in

2. Adoption of Agenda

The Agenda was adopted as presented. Moved: Joe. Seconded: Steve. Carried

3. Approval of Minutes of November 24th, 2005 Board Meeting

Two corrections were noted in the minutes:

1. The Board did have a quorum, so all Board motions had legal status.

2. Margaret noted, under PEN Report, that radio station CKCU was featuring information about the PEN on its Friday morning show, not Saturday as indicated.

Minutes were approved as amended. Moved: Randal. Seconded: Steve. Carried

4. Business arising from Minutes

i. Board Development:

Steve reported on the most recent progress by the Board Development Sub-Committee. The sub-committee has been working to develop a profile of an “ideal” Board member. This will help design better recruitment materials.

Action Items:

- Joe will email Margaret the text of the recruitment ad that we have developed for inclusion in the next PEN.

- Mike will work with Joe and Steve to post the detailed job description on the PERC wiki.

5. January 19th Members' Meeting


 * Steve reviewed the proposed Agenda for this meeting. Since it will focus on the nomination and election of new board members the meeting will be quite brief.

6. Reports

i. Financial:

Joe noted the following in his report:


 * The illness of a number of key volunteers has resulted in a delay in the formation of the Finance Committee.


 * There is no finance report for December since the donations received in December have not yet all been entered in the books.


 * He has had to make some corrections in the Accounts Payable area of the Financial Statement after reviewing the past few months.


 * There is technically still some money owing to TDFriends of the Environment for a long finished project that they never requested be returned. This remains on our books as a liability.

Regarding the projected cash flow in the 2006-07 budget, Mike noted that since we did not make $3000 on this year's garage sale, this amount should not appear on next year's budget - $2000 would be a more appropriate amount.

Joe noted that the 2006-07 projected budget shows a shortfall of $3000. This implies that another layoff of the Coordinator would be necessary to balance our books. The 2005-06 coordinator layoff resulted in a $3000 reduction in expenses. Margaret stated that she objected to a plan that would see the coordinator laid off again.

There was a discussion about whether monthly projections in the cash flow sheets should be based on an average of the past 3 years (this was how they have been calculated at the present) or should also reflect any obvious trends, e.g. if each of the last 3 years has seen a reduction in an income item compared to the previous year, then next year's projected amount should continue this trend. This method would yield a lower, and presumably more realistic, figure than the averaging model.

Approval of Financial Statements: Moved: Margaret. Seconded: Steve. Carried.

'''ii. PEN Editor'''


 * The deadline for articles for the February PEN issue is January 19th.


 * Margaret is expecting to receive the TDFOE grant for this year's PEN by March.


 * The PEN committee is stable.


 * In thinking about our strategy for applying for TDFOE grants for 2007, Margaret suggested that it might be possible to apply in partnership with another Ottawa group such as the Fair Trade network, for example. The partner group would provide the content and we would provide the exposure.  This might make our application more attractive to TD-FOE.

Margaret noted that the December 2006 issue of the PEN would have a focus on Ethical Small Business. Steve mentioned that one of his cousins and her husband have a small printing business which has recently won a "green award" and that he would approach them to see about contributing an article. Mike suggested the possibility of another PEN issue that looked at the history of a number of local ethical small businesses, i.e. how these businesses got going and managed to survive.

'''iii. Committees'''

Mike reported that not much happened over the Christmas holidays in terms of committee news and that he was also ill during this period which had an additional negative impact on any initiatives.

He did note that a lot of the obsolete computer hardware is being disposed of and that the office, in general, is being cleaned up. The Library Committee is doing its share by getting rid of surplus materials.

Finally, Mike noted that the Athena project seems to be picking up steam again after a long while.

'''iv. Coordinator'''

Mike had nothing to add in this area due to being ill over the past month.

7. New Business

There was no new business.

8. Date of next Meeting

February 16th at 7:30 p.m.

9. Check-out

The meeting ended about 9:45 p.m.

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