Board Meeting 2020-10-15

AGENDA

Roll Call

Board Members

• JaiPal Chauhan, President
• Paula Pankratz, Vice-President
• Patrick Hutchison, Secretary
• Scott Sullivan, At Large
• Terrence Laurendine, At Large
• Kate Goad, Treasurer
• Tom Bloom, At Large
• Doug Wilson, At Large
• David Springs, Immediate Past President

Members

• Joe Pajor
• June Huie
• Mike Barushok
• Steve Owens
• Malissa Long
• Anna DeSilva
• Rustin Atkeisson
• Kris Griffith
• Gary Calvert, Ray Chipman, John Nicholas
• Jeremiah Burian
• John Nichols
• Marti Secondine
• Jason S
• Cathy Bowman
• James Lancaster
• Daniel
• Christian Kindel

Standing Items

• Thanks & Recognition
  • Our many members who have been showing up. We’ve had great numbers and have executed a lot of work.
  • Garrett Pike and Brad Ward, our engineers, have done a great job getting contracts for our bids.
  • Doug Wilson for putting together the Indiegogo campaign.
  • To our many committees that have been meeting over the past couple weeks, including Finance, Communications, and xx
  • Marti Secondine for helping Kate with QuickBooks.
  • Endless thanks to all of the email test emails we’ve been getting as IT works to fix up our forum email routing.

Old Business

• Update on Request to City About Ham Radio Tower Permissions
  • Joe Pajor heard back from the city on 10/6. We need to make one minor adjustment to the PUD then it will be stamped and moved forward. He confirmed today that as soon as we get the drawing it will be approved. Will hopefully have the drawing update this weekend. This means we have cleared the zoning requirement. This means we can have a tower. Next we’ll need to work with MABCD on the ins and outs of actually putting in a tower.

• South Kansas Woodturners Partnership Agreement
  • John Nicholas has a revised agreement for us to review. We voted to approve this partnership at the January 2020 board meeting.
  • Revised agreement includes three changes requested by Jai:
    • Change in Wood Shop Safety Class from only SKW members using equipment to all SKW members;
    • A dispute resolution method;
    • An exit strategy for either or both organizations.
  • Terrence, Scott, and Doug will meet together with Gary Calvert, Ray Chipman, and John Nicholas from SKW to iron out the last few bits of the contract and bring it to the November board meeting for final approval.

• Crowd Funding Campaign
  • Kickstarter denied the campaign that Doug designed because they only do ‘new’ things. Doug re-worked the campaign on Indiegogo. A group met before the board meeting to review and make some final recommendations before go-live.
  • Doug has a stretch goal for a ‘cool’ t-shirt that can come in if we get enough backers.
  • Once it goes live, EVERYONE needs to share on social media so we can get our membership back.
  • Campaign will end at midnight on halloween.
  • https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/re-building-makeict#/

New Business

• Treasurer’s Report
  • Checking Account Balance: $28,894.47, as of 10/11/20
  • TDAmeritrade: $5,800 ish (not included in Checking Account Balance)
  • PayPal income is $5,770 from dues, and $356 of donations. Total $5,931.83 (included in Checking Account Balance)
  • Need email to access Bento. David will get to Kate.
  • Reconciliation/QuickBooks cleanup in process (significant re-coding effort of expenditures to make it possible to run usual sorts of financial reports reliably). Marti and Kate are working to finish this up. Should be able to run some good reports at next month's meeting.
  • Dan from the Finance committee is working to set up a budgeting tool to help with planning. It looks great.

• Membership
  • Currently at 281 active members.
  • 291 at the September meeting.
  • Membership Committee has been looking at the onboarding process and building orientation process. They are working to have those up and running for re-opening. All current members will have to do a building orientation. It will be short, not onerous. We will be scheduling time slots once we open. Currently paying members will be allowed to sign-up first. After orientation is completed their key will be updated and they’ll have access to the building again. Also looking at updating the type of information we have on hand about our members, like address and other stuff that we need in order to apply for grants and be in compliance with other requirements. There will be a new member information sheet that will need to be filed out at orientation. Also working on some forms for problems with building, equipment, and members to track and manage. Are discussing as well the onboarding process for brand new members to make that process easier for folks and more efficient.

• Building Renovation Update
  • Heating - Rivercity Mechanical contract was signed yesterday. They dropped off the new unit heaters this afternoon. They will hang them up in the rooms tomorrow. Next week they’ll be installing the gas piping. Definitely on track!!
  • Plumbing - South hall plumbing is substantially complete. West hall is moving along quickly. Trying for two good evenings of work next week and maybe Saturday to finish. Sam, Joe, and Wess under Rick’s direction spent some quality time down in the tunnels running line and drilling holes. Ed and Steve spent a lot of time in the tunnel as well. It’s going well.
  • Electrical - Garret Pike put together the electrical design. We came in under budget on the amount of electricity provided by our transformer so it doesn’t need changed now. We also can use the existing switching equipment, and new switches that fit those panels which is a significant savings.
    • We sent out 8 requests for bids. 3 looked. 2 felt it was in scope. Ziegler Electric and Shelly Electric. Both do a lot of commercial / industrial work around town. Their bids were very close. Shelly was $56,331 and Ziegler was $56,480. They appear comparable in almost every way. Both felt if we signed a contract early next week substantial completion by November 15th was possible. Both understand our primary concern is the switching equipment, the secondary is electrical for the heaters so we can pass inspection / co, then they would work on the remaining hookups for equipment. Jai doesn’t expect there’s any wiggle room. There is no bid bond on these quotes. Both include insurance and permitting costs.
    • Jai moves, Tom seconds, that we table this till the end of the meeting and discuss in Executive Session. 7 in favor, David abstains. Motion carries.

@DECISION: Board moves to finish discussing details of electrical bids in executive session

• Halloween Competition Funding Request - Malissa Long
  • Will be done online via our Facebook page.
  • 1st place $75 gift card to MakeICT (Malissa has, unused due to COVID from prior event). Stipulation in rules that membership is only available to adults if a child wins.
  • 2nd place approx. $35 total 2 AMC Tickets and $20 concession credit donated by Frank Mitchell.
  • 3rd place MakeICT T-shirt from inventory on-hand.
  • Malissa Long and Frank Mitchell have volunteered to judge, need 1 more judge.
  • Malissa will work into the rules something to verify authenticity of the image.
  • Malissa can cross-post about the Indiegogo with this event.
  • Jai moves to approve the funding request as presented by Malissa and approve the halloween pumpkin-like competition. Terrence seconds. 7 in favor, David abstains. Passes.

@DECISION: Board approves funding for Online Halloween Contest

Upcoming Events

• ReMakeICT Tuesdays work nights at booth, every Tuesday from 6:00PM - 9:00PM
  • The list of tasks to work on getting our CO is long and there are lots of tasks that need to be completed.
• Monday / Tuesday plumbing nights.
• Painting to do Tuesday.
• Area leads have stuff that needs done. Reach out to them!
• Saturday at 8AM is the mowing crew.
• LaDeanna will be in on Saturday for folks who want to come in and work on projects as well. There’s a list out on the forum in the most recent ‘This week at Booth’ update.

Committee Reports

Awards Committee - Kim Burton

• none

Scholarships - Kim Burton

• none

Communications (and Wikibrarian)

• Malissa reports that the committee has met. Have reached out to Heather who can start updates on the website. Need access to Twitter to direct post, cross-posting through Instagram for now.

Facilities Committee

• Haven’t met yet, but have a solid group of people signed up. Paula will work on a kick-off meeting for the committee. Some of them are also the folks who are doing the yard work, and a bit of the plumbing crew as well.

Finance Committee - Kate Goad

• Committee met on Monday. Reviewed a new future cash flow and budgeting tool. Figuring out fixed costs. We are solvent!! and paying all of our bills at our current membership level for the time being. Dan, Marti, June have done a lot of work. Committee focus is on long-term funding goals and staying solvent.

Fundraising - x

• Paula reports that work is being done, grant applications are happening, working on identifying foundations to reach out to.

IT - Tom Bloom

• Recently met. Working on the Master Control System to expand beyond just the one door that is now being controlled. Development under way.
• Reviewing the laptops to see which ones are working, etc., to be sure things are ready to go for classes in November.
• Tom has been emailing everyone all the time with really special test emails while he is working on committee setup and email routing between Google and the forum and cleaning those up.

Membership (and Community outreach)

• See above.

Classroom Management Committee - LaDean Dockery (interim)

• Paula reports that LaDeana has been working recently on computers and projectors. The committee is meeting regularly. Working on getting rooms set up. They have reached out to folks who have taught classes previously to see if they want to teach.

Security (and Safety) - Ken Steadman

• Tom reports that Ken has been working together with IT on the badge system. Paula/Jai reports that the new lighting on the north side of the building is great. Terrence reports that Ken sends thanks to the folks who did that work.

Special Projects (and Makerfaire) - Nicole Kirkhart

• none

Other Items Discussed

• Malissa took the FEMA OPEN class this week. Takes about 2 hours. Reports that there are some good things in there we should consider, like: displaying fire exit strategy in each room, fire drills, reach out to the county to see if there is stuff we can do to coordinate during disaster, etc., incident reporting process within the organization, and others. There are lots of resources in the materials provided that are good. She committed to teach the class twice to 10 participants over the next six months which gave her access to the teaching materials. Malissa and David both have taken the class and have certificates.

Board went into Executive Session to discuss electrical bids