Item 39. Minutes for the October 1998 Grex Board Meeting 10/28/98 Scott Helmke (scott) Fri, Oct 30, 1998 (15:30). 68 lines, 7 responses. The meeting was held at Zingerman's Next Door, as usual. In attendance were: Scott Helmke (scott, Secretary), Jan Wolter (janc, President), Valerie Mates (valerie), Mark Conger (aruba, Treasurer), Dan Gryniewicz (dang, Board), Charles Mitchell (arthurp), Eric Bassey (other), Steve Gibbard (scg), Misti Tucker (mta, Board) 94 Initial Gavel Pounding - janc The meeting was called to order at 7:41 pm by Jan. 69 Treasurer's Report - aruba Last month about $30 in the hole, will likely break even this month. September finances: Beginning balance $3,424.90. Credits totalled $509.00, debits totalled $542.15, for an ending balance of $3,391.75. No activity in Grex Store. One new member. Currently at 101 members, 90 of which are paid up. 70 Publicity Committee - mta Mista's husband has made some color versions of card flyer, no other action. 57 Technical Committee - staff ssh has been installed on Gryps for staff use. Backtalk default color has been changed. Remmers is doing vote program. Valerie wrote cgi script to list members. IC-Net link is in process of being cut. A web-based passwd changer is being planned for the far future. There may be a problem w/ backups, need to try again w/ different tapes. "aucharch" (auction archive) account got mysteriously nuked. 55 Phone Line Reduction - aruba janc had a sheet of statistics about logins via modem, basically showing that the 13th line gets 1 or less per month. Aruba suggests cutting one line this month, develop criteria for deciding more cuts in future (he's writing a program to help predict usage). Possible criteria: amount of time in use vs. longest busy signals. (the board mulls over stats for a few minutes) General consensus on cutting 2 lines, and using "lines full" time as a future criteria. Mta moves that Grex cut 2 dialin modem lines. Seconded by scg. 7-0-0, the motion passes. 40 New Cfadm - valerie Walter Cramer (i) has been suggested as cfadm. Staff and current cfadm approve, board approval is sought. Valerie moves that Walter Cramer (login i) be approved for cfadm with all rights and responsibilities appertaining thereto, seconded by mta. 7-0-0, the motion passes. 30 Communications Decency Act - valerie Yes, the CDA is back in a slightly different form. It has been suggested that Grex again display the "Blue Ribbon" protesting censorship, but that Board ought to discuss/decide this, or to have users decide. The new version doesn't seem to affect Grex as much as previous version, so we may not have a direct reason to protest. Some discussion about having a link to our conf item(s) discussing issue instead of blue ribbon. Board will defer to Coop (janc will enter an item). 20 New Business - all valerie suggests rescheduling next to meetings to avoid holiday conflict, to general approval. Aruba advises changing bank account to Great Lakes bank to avoid fees. This is Treasurer's prerogative, so Mark can go ahead and to it. Aruba: should Grex consider investing as has been suggested? Nobody is really interested right now (too much hassle). 10 Final Gavel Pounding - jan Meeting closed at 9:02 pm 7 responses total. ---------- (39) #1 Rob Henderson (robh) Fri, Oct 30, 1998 (16:01). 2 lines. For those of us who are still clueless, what was the numbering system this time? ---------- (39) #2 Steve Gibbard (scg) Fri, Oct 30, 1998 (18:08). 1 line. Interstates from Ann Arbor to Los Angeles. ---------- (39) #3 C. Keesan (keesan) Sun, Nov 1, 1998 (12:11). 4 lines. I would like to point out that 5% simple (not even compounded) interest if our $3424 were invested in a Money Market fund would be about $150/year, or $12.50/month, equivalent to two new members. How much hassle is involved? Or $500 or so could be left in a checking account for monthly expenses. ---------- (39) #4 Valerie Mates (valerie) Mon, Nov 2, 1998 (11:08). 29 lines. (Steve Gibbard and I are board members too.) To elaborate on the notes on the CDA II item: The people at the meeting could think of reasons to, and reasons not to, display the blue ribbon banner on Grex's web page. As long as it was a clearcut thing that everybody agreed was good, the board wouldn't have minded if someone put the blue ribbon on the web page. But since there was some difference of opinion about whether or not this was something Grex should do, and since it's not an urgent thing to decide about, people felt it made more sense for the users to make this decision as a group. Instead of putting a blue ribbon on the home page, we would put a link on the home page to this discussion. The link would say something like, "We are discussing putting a blue ribbon here to protest the CDA II. Click here to join the discussion." Re meeting schedule changes: The board agreed that the next two meetings would be held a week early because of the holidays. The next two meetings will be on November 18 and December 16. Re 3: Sindi, there were some concerns about not having enough access to Grex's money if it were in a money market fund. Most funds seem to want a minimum balance of $2000 or $2500. It would be awful to tie up Grex's rainy day fund someplace where Grex couldn't spend it when it was needed. Also, some money market funds require you to write checks at a minimum amount of $500, which is much bigger than Grex's usual monthly expense checks, so Grex would have to transfer money to its regular bank account and then write checks from there, if Grex invested in that kind of fund. The feeling of the board was that a money market fund was a nice idea that might turn out to make sense at some point, but that it would take a lot of research to find one that meets Grex's needs. ---------- (39) #5 C. Keesan (keesan) Tue, Nov 3, 1998 (15:40). 9 lines. You can write a check for $500 or for the full amount in the money market fund to yourself, and deposit in the local bank. Presumably the three or so days it took to clear would be adequate to cover rainy days. Money Market Funds do not 'tie up' money, share prices are fixed so you cannot lose money, all you can do is make more interest than at a bank. I suggest grex reserve whatever it takes to cover monthly expenses in a checking account and if there is $2500 left open a money market account, which can drop to $2000 or probably a bit lower (at Fidelity they said lower was okay in practice). How long does a check take to clear at Great Lakes? I will ask. ---------- (39) #6 Bill Moran (bmoran) Mon, Nov 9, 1998 (10:46). 1 line. And you claim to not be board worthy. ---------- (39) #7 C. Keesan (keesan) Mon, Nov 9, 1998 (15:48). 2 lines. I nominate Bill Moran as a board member. Please decline or accept in the proper item.