July 7, 2005 Minutes

Draft Minutes

PERC BOARD MEETING – Thursday July 7, 2005 @ 7:30 PM

Board Members Present: Randal Marlin, Joe Parchelo, Jason Lawrence, Steve Gurman, Mike Kaulbars, Margaret Jensen.

Regrets: Celina Tuttle, Adrienne Armstrong

1.	Check-in

2.	Adoption of Agenda

Steve suggested that item 4. iii on the proposed Agenda (Renewal of Pen Editor’s Contract) be shifted to 5. ii (PEN Editor’s Report).

The Agenda was adopted with this change. Moved: Steve. Seconded: Randal. Carried.

3.	Approval of Minutes of June 9, 2005 Board Meeting

Correction: Under Item 5.i, Coordinator’s Report, the name of the person who had worked on fundraising with Earthroots is Tom Wysom.

Clarification: Margaret asked for clarification of the last sentence of the first paragraph of Item 5. iii, the PEN Editor’s Report.

This should be changed from the following: Margaret is still prepared to defer her PEN salary if needed to pay the Coordinator’s salary since the PEN could not be produced without PERC office support.

This sentence should be replaced by: ''Margaret noted that the PEN cannot be produced without the administrative support of the PEN office. Since the office cannot function without the Coordinator, Margaret is therefore prepared to defer her PEN salary, in the short term, in order to ensure that the Coordinator receives his salary and continues working.''

With these changes, the Minutes were approved. Moved: Steve. Seconded: Randal. Carried.

4.	Business arising from Minutes

i.	Follow-up: Sneezy Waters concert

Steve reported that he had spoken to the person responsible for bookings at the Glebe Community Centre and that the Centre was booked on Saturday nights through to the end of 2005. Also, Steve had met with Liz McDermott and Kristen Miller to discuss the concert.

While Liz was initially enthusiastic, she did some number crunching and realized that the up-front costs for the concert ($1000 in payment to Sneeezy, booking the hall, renting dishes, buying beer and wine, etc.), balanced against what the PERC has earned in the past from its concerts made it seem unlikely that we could make any money on this one.

Mike also noted that Sneezy’s music would probably not attract the PERC’s regular volunteers (or their friends) and that it was difficult to say how many others a concert would attract if the tickets were priced in the $20-25 dollar range.

Mike will contact the owner of Compact Disc (who knows the music scene in Ottawa very well) to see if he could provide some idea of how many people a Sneezy Water’s concert might attract. If this estimate was high enough we might consider going ahead with the concert, otherwise we will have to drop it.

ii. Follow-up: Canvassing to raise money

Steve met with Liz and Kristen and discussed canvassing with them, Mike noted that neither is Chair of the Membership Committee which would normally coordinate a canvas. Mike has already spoken to Tom Wysom, the person who coordinated canvassing for Earthroots and who has said that he will do a training session for PERC that Mike wants to film.

Mike suggested that we should start off with a street corner canvas rather than going house-to-house. This would give canvassers some expertise and build up their self-confidence. Mike mentioned that organizations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty contract out their canvassing to an agency which is specialized in this area.

Mike suggested having a training session and a canvas on the same day to provide a sense of momentum and thought that a Saturday in late July or early August would be good.

Mike will check back with Tom regarding his availability to do some training and get back to the Board with some potential dates. We also need to update the PERC’s canvas support materials. Mike will also try to contact Jody (who is now in Toronto) to get her input as she ran a canvas in Ottawa.

5.	Reports

i.	Financial

Joe discussed the issue of the cash flow statement not being consistent with the amount of money we have in our bank account. The cash flow indicates much less and Joe is trying to find the cause of the discrepancy. There seemed to be some confusion about how to account for the $2000 that PERC agreed to put into the Bread and Puppet Theatre performance. We pledged this amount but never actually took it from our account as we used money from ticket sales. It is possible that we owe other B&P investors money if the performance generated more profits than we originally believed. Joe, Bob and Mike will continue their investigations.

Randal moved that the Financial Report be accepted as Presented. Seconded: Margaret. Carried.

ii. PEN Editor

Re: PEN Editor’s Contract: Steve and Margaret met after the June Board meeting to revise the existing PEN Editor’s Contract in order to clarify the roles of the Editor and the PERC. Steve passed around the contract and suggested that it be approved by the Board at this meeting but signed only when we know that the PERC has enough money to pay both Margaret and Mike’s salaries.

Steve will post the contracts of the PEN Editor and Coordinator on the wiki, under Board.

Steve put forward a motion to approve the PEN Editor’s Contract. Seconded: Randal. Carried.

PEN Editor’s Report:

Margaret has received good feedback on the latest PEN from Inter Pares.

The deadline for the next issue is August 15th.

There is a new volunteer, named Richard, who is working out well.

Margaret noted that radio Station CKCU which often highlights articles from the PEN on its Morning Blend show has changed the format of the show.

Steve contributed an article on Board news to the July PEN under the heading Board Corner and hopes to make this a regular feature.

Steve mentioned that he had spoken to the principal at the Ottawa Montessori School (his sons’ school) about making the PEN available there and that the principal was in agreement. This suggestion was made since the junior high students at the school proclaimed it an International Peace Site and seem to be interested in peace and environment issues. Steve will also speak to the junior high teacher in September to see if she would be interested in using the PEN as a discussion aid in her class.

iii. Committees

Administration
 * Finance: Rolling along.  Has a new member. Mike is working with Eric to help reduce Joe’s workload.


 * General Admin: No working committee at the moment.


 * IT: Committee has lost Lakshmi but has a couple of promising people.  The hard drive of one computer was lost and its contents had to be re-constituted.  Had trouble with the printer.  Everything fixed thanks to the new committee members.


 * Communications: Kristen is burned out. Someone new is needed to motivate the rest of the committee.


 * Membership/Fundraising: Connie is off on sabbatical for 6 months.  Chris is gone back home, so there is no real committee. Dave is maintaining the database.


 * Special Events: Committee needs to be rebuilt.


 * Library: Elise Legault is taking on management of the library.


 * Outreach: Mike is closing down some of the lower priority projects (e.g. Street Legal) to reallocate resources to higher priorities.


 * Participation: Good PERCShop recently but committee is losing Sigrid.  However Elise Skinner has returned.


 * PVN: James is doing a good job.


 * Web/IT:  New programs and technical people but there are some technical problems with the wiki and Dot Project.  Mailman has been set up to allow committees to better manage their communications.


 * Leadership Support: Jo Wood has joined the leadership support team.  She will help build up PERC’s leadership capacity.

iv. Coordinator

There are concerns about the PERC’s current weakness in the fundraising area. On the whole, however, Mike is feeling positive about people taking on leadership roles. He will try to get the Management Committee working again (it has been moribund since July 2004).

6.	New Business

There was no new business to report.

7.	Next Meeting

The next meeting was scheduled for August 18th.

8.	Check-out

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