MINUTES OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL FREENET BOARD MEETING 23 January 1996 held in the Honeywell Room, RMOC Headquarters The following Board members were in attendance: David Blackwood, aa332 Scott Catterill, aa355 Julie Chahal, 2nd Vice President, ab161 Jessica Cohen, aa724 Brett Delmage, aa693 Yvonne Dionne, ao594 Chris Hawley, ah654 Rebecca Last, as006 David Loan, aa112 Andrew Patrick, 1st Vice President, aa118 (Chair) Richard Taylor, Secretary, aa333 Absent: Rosaleen Dickson, ac174 Dave Sutherland, President, aa001 Stephen Toy, aa102 NCF Staff Present: Lisa Donnelly, Executive Director, am412 Ian D. Allen, Technical Director, aa610 Sheila Currie-Alder, Administrative Coordinator, bw306 Roy Hooper, System Administrator, xx016. Members/Volunteers present: Alana Boltwood ad097, Jeff Bossert - Treasurer xx025, Matthew Darwin xx673, Noreen Dertinger aa937, Jim Elder xx456, Jean-Yves Fortin ai772, Garth Graham aa127, Miranda Gray xx717, Mike Jankulak am821, Dave Jones aa457, Andrea Kujala aq880, Yvan Loranger bq434, Mike Mason an956, Russell McOrmond xx302, Andrew Metcalfe, bg691, Andre Ouellette xx766, John Stewart xx104. Andrew Patrick called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. 1. INTRODUCTIONS 2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF 19 DECEMBER 1995 Two changes were noted: Item 6a - "New Information Concerning 1996 Budget:" "News from Bell Canada" should read "indications are that phone line costs may be less than originally expected". Item 7 - Budget - Should read that cash is $45,000 better, not 50,000. With these changes the chair declared the minutes appoved by concensus of the meeting. 3. REVIEW OF THE AGENDA It was decided to move "4. OLD BUSINESS" to follow "6. BUDGET FOR 1996" and within the OLD BUSINESS section to move item e, Exporting Newsgroups, to the beginning of the section. Also, "Planning Committee Report" was added to (original) Section 7, Reports. 4. PLANNING FOR ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING Andrew Patrick reported that the official call for nominations has gone out to fill the five positions open on the Board of Directors. Nominations open on February 9 at 9:00 a.m. Garth Graham is the returning officer. Suggestions for special AGM business from members will be sent to the Secretary (aa333) for inclusion in the next Board meeting agenda. Thank you to Matthew Darwin and Miranda Gray for preparing the on-line menus and information about the AGM. Lisa Donnelly reported that she expects she will have the annual reports from all committees posted online by the end of the week. MOTION Moved by Brett Delmage, seconded by Dave Loan: That the NCF Board immediately appoint a Board Recruitment Committee consisting of 2 or 3 Directors, the Executive Director, and willing chairs of committees, to research and nominate candidates who can fill identified needs on the Board. Brett Delmage distributed a printed sheet of background information supporting the motion. Garth Graham noted that the committee should make clear that people need to be visible on line if they wish to be elected. Carried. RECRUITMENT COMMITTEE MEMBERS APPOINTED: Brett Delmage, Rebecca Last, Jean-Yves Fortin, Lisa Donnelly. 5. BUDGET FOR 1996 Jeff Bossert, the Treasurer, distributed hard copies of the 1996 Budget and Financial Reports. Both will be available online before the end of the week. Jeff noted that some of the budget revisions suggested by the Board at the December meeting had been included while others had been ignored. The Finance Committee carefully considered the Board suggestions but could not agree with their recommendations in every case. It was noted that November and December donations are down - about half the amount projected, and no one is sure why. "Are we in trouble?" "No, because many of the expenditures are scheduled for July and later, and we are in a good cash position at the moment. We can make changes if the donation level continues below projections." Q: Isn't the chance of getting a grant from City Hall pretty remote, considering the times. A: Gordon Pearson suggested this, but in future it may be better to only indicate an expected revenue from all Government grants. Q: Should we not be budgeting to pay rent for the Outreach Centre, rather than budgeting to purchase the furniture and equipment for it. There is a much greater chance that we will get furniture donated than office space, especially downtown. A: General agreement that the chance of getting an office donated is quite remote. Plan was to have an office by day and an outreach centre in the evenings and on the weekends. Perhaps we could look at sharing space with another not-for-profit organization. The annual rental rate downtown seems to be about $20 per square foot. If we want 1500 square feet that would be $30,000. Q: Do we really need to purchase a colour scanner in February? A: No. This budget is just a plan. If we can get a grey-scale scanner donated, as suggested, we may not need to buy a scanner at all. Other points raised in the budget discussions: fund-raising should be tied to specific projects; maybe we need to renew ourselves - the drop in donations may be because we are irrelevant; NCF should be paperless - we should not be buying many file cabinets; we should be able to raise money by offering training; I like the idea of more community and less computer, as reflected by this budget; we are grossly underestimating rent and ISDN; we are getting too much into the discussion of budget details. MOTION Moved by Dave Loan, seconded by Julie Chahal: That the $9,000 for office rent be moved to operating expenses; and that the $6,000 for desks and chairs, $1,000 for a conference table, $3,500 for filingm cabinets and shelves and $4,500 for office furniture be replaced with $5,000 for office furniture. [Note: J. Bossert noted that a mistake had been made in the printed notes, and that the actual budget for all office furniture is $4,500. The second part of this motion is therefore unnecessary.] This change to the budget acknowledges that it will be easier to get furniture donated than to find a landload willing to donate office space. It would probably be possible to get one month of rent donated, but to get a long-term commitment is highly unlikely and packing up and moving is very difficult. Motion carried. MOTION Moved by Brett Delmage, seconded by Rebecca Last: That revenues of $200 per month from training at the outreach centre be added to the budget. The motion was defeated. MOTION Moved by Dave Loan, seconded by Dave Blackwood That the $29,000 for WWW implementation be split evenly between May and October 1996 in the budget. The discussion concerned whether the Finance Committee could come up with a reasonable expenditure schedule or whether they needed a specific direction from the Board as in the motion. Board members were inclined to trust the Finance Committee to make minor changes to the existing budget given that items budgeted for January probably would not be spent. The motion was defeated. MOTION Moved by Andrew Patrick, seconded by Richard Taylor: That the $29,000 allocated to World Wide Web not be spent pending the Board's approval of the Plan for WWW Implementation now being prepared by the WWW Task Force. It was suggested that this motion might not be necessary - the notes to the budget could be changed. Motion Carried. MOTION TO RECONSIDER Moved by Chris Hawley, Seconded by Rebecca last: that the motion above be re-considered. The problem with the motion is that the $29,000 includes a disk unit and a computer which may be needed very soon. The motion to reconsider was carried. REPLACEMENT MOTION Moved by Chris Hawley, seconded by Rebecca Last: That $24,000 allocated to the World Wide Web not be spent pending the Board's approval of a Plan for WWW Implementation to be prepared by the WWW Task Force. Carried. MOTION Moved by Rebecca Last, seconded by Richard Taylor: That the budget be approved. Carried The Board and members unanimously thanked Treasurer Jeff Bossert and the Finance Committee for all the excellent work done on the budget and the financial statements. 6. OLD BUSINESS a. Exporting Newsgroups - Jessica Cohen noted that the final report is posted online. MOTION TO DEFER Moved by Brett Delmage, seconded by Dave Loan: That consideration of the Report of the Exporting Newsgroups Taskforce be deferred until the WWW implementation proposal is ready. Motion was defeated. MOTION Moved by Dave Blackwood, seconded by Rebecca Last: That we accept the Report and the recommendations of the Exporting Newsgroups Taskforce. Q: How are we going to determine if a site has an acceptable use policy acceptable to us? A: Good faith. Q: Will newsgroups be asked if they want to be exported before implementation? A: Yes. Other points raised in the discussion: it seems that almost all groups are being exported; the planning committee is looking at what services should be available to members and what services should be available to others and there are five board members on that committee; we hoped we could get this report dealt with before the new board took office; this raises liability concerns and we do not have ongoing legal advice; I am not opposed to exporting newsgroups but I cannot support the implementation details; some board members may be stalling because they are opposed to exporting newsgroups in principle. At 10:30, when the RMOC was ready to close: MOTION TO DEFER Moved by Rebecca Last, no seconder required (Chair acknowledges that this was an error; a seconder should have been required): to defer motion to next meeting. Adjournment: moved by Richard Taylor, seconded by Chris Hawley.