Board of Directors ~ Agenda Committee

Wed., Jan. 14  – 7.30 - 9.30pm

The Co-op: 18 Putnam Ave, Brooklyn

Facilitator:  Renée

Note-taker: William

Timekeeper: Keith

Present: DK, Renee, Hillary, Sean, Keith, Joe Holtz, Jeannie, William

Absent: Allison (notified), Rachelle

• Updates on Action items from previous Working Session (All, 10-15 min)

• POS installation, what’s status?

• money is being wired to our account TODAY... will purchase system from Revel by Fri. Goal is to have in store and ready for Shift Leader mtg on Jan. 24rth.

• ACTION ITEM: Membership will update Orientation video script

• William sent this to a Eileen Ragsdale, a membership committee member at large, with instructions to review for policy and logistical errors, and to send me her notes. Once done I’ll forward them to Mary Brown Lee. Waiting to hear back that she will be able to do it, but she reached out to me for tasks to do from home, so should be good.

• ACTION ITEM: Three month provisional membership starting in Jan.

• pushed back to Feb 1

• There was a fruitful discussion about allowing all PSFC members to freely shop at GHFC as a way to increase sales in the interest of financial survival. Board was in favor of the idea, will be “temporary”

• ACTION Item: DK will write a letter to the PSFC Linewaiters Gazette announcing that PSFC can freely shop at GHFC

• ACTION ITEM: DK and Sean working on updated moratorium letter

• letter mostly done; here’s govs response on legalities of alternative equity returns:

  • The bylaws say (not super descriptive, but it shows that the board has the right to reimburse investments at their discretion): "Investment and Patronage Refunds: Refunds of member investments are available by request and subject to availability. The Board retains discretionary authority to allocate net savings at the end of the fiscal year to reserve funds or issue patronage refunds that shall not exceed the proportion of refund permitted under the applicable provisions of the Internal Revenue Code."

  • Reimbursing equity with $150 worth of product might be OK, but it doesn't set a very clear policy, and we would want to ensure that people were acknowledging after the fact that they'd been repaid in this way, and were no longer owed any money (preferably in a written statement).

  • We're wary of the Option 2 "you choose" repayment plan, and think the best plan of action would be to ask departing members to sign a statement that either A) waives their right to a refund or B) acknowledges that the co-op cannot pay them at this time, but will repay investments (in order of which they were requested) when revenues/savings return to X (agreed upon amount). This would also give us some time to look deeper into tax law as it applies to co-ops and patronage refunds.

• ACTION ITEM: Letter will go out by end of Jan.

• Joe recommends careful accounting of the conversion on member investments to donations

• Moratorium on routine investments is upheld and a small provision made, equal to $150 per month on a rolling basis, for extreme emergency situations, to be evaluated by the redemption group

• ACTION ITEM:Sean working with marketing to develop a campaign to shop more in the store. This will be done by end of Jan.

• HIRING Team: What’s current status of things?

• they have settled on a timeline, have the email address set up and will be posting the Job Description in the next week or so

• Finance Report* (Sean, 5 min) *Sean will be giving bigger financial picture at GM’s and smaller progress updates at ACs

  • Sean: need a $10k “bridge loan”

• Sean asks permission from board to ask refrigeration lenders to defer principal repayments: board agrees

• Joe: PSFC revolving loan committee is a not possible option

• Jeannie: board reach out to committee chairs for ideas to raise money

• *Sean requested Pres be made additional signatory….didn’t vote on it, should vote on it next month.

• Store Coordinator check in. (SC liaisons, 10 min): briefly discuss here PSFC schedule/weekend holes

  • Should we just offer the SC job to Lauryl?

• VOTE: motion carries but could be reviewed if Allison has any strong objection (she was not present for the discussion or vote)

• Committee Presentation: Ops (Ops, 15 min)

  • Canceled due to no show by Michael

• Why are we a member only Co-op? Should we consider opening to the public? (All, 10 min)

• Continuation of PSFC discussion with Ann and Joe: Financial Support: (All, 20 min)

  • Can we get a loan from PSFC? What need to do to make that happen?

    • Joe: PSFC revolving loan committee is NOT a possible option, unless we get our taxes done and it will go towards something that will bring us in money

• Can we share deliveries with them to help keep costs down and expand our stock?

  • Cannot be done per Joe

• Does finance committee need more ppl and if so, can PSFC send FTOP folks our way to help?

  • Joe will talk to Ann about this

• Discussion: Opening store for 5 or 6 days a week with consistent hours by Summer 2015, what steps do we need to do to make this happen? (All, 40-45 min)

  • Consistent hours

  • Keith proposes opening on Fridays beginning in 2 weeks

• ACTION Item: Renee survey to the membership asking for preference on consistent hour time-frame options

• Proposed: 6 hours on weekday MWF, 8 hours on SS

• GM agenda creation (All, 5 min)

  • Committee Presentation: Governance (20 min)

  • Committee Presentation: Design Build (15 min)

  • Shift leader training update (Matthew, 15 min)

  • 20 more min to fill or have open discussion time

*Note: Minute/note-takers - please see link for secretary responsibilities

Pls don’t forget to SHARE this doc with completed notes with Board after mtg