Present:

(Steward) Officer reports

(Steward) Officer Reports

Present:

(Venus) Forgive Venus's February rent due to the ongoing habitability issues with unit 206

Present: Gabriel, Venus, Isobel, Frog (facilitating), Yarrow, Kate, Gardenia, Diana, Lorenzo, Natalie, Reyna, Joy, Echo, Colby, Tif, Richard (minutes), Serenity, Bernard, Russ

• - Natalie H., second meeting
• - Isobel C., second meeting

No objections made by those in attendance, both accepted as prospective members

(Serenity/Steward) Election between Frog and Phoenix for steward

(Frog) Discuss optimal pest control strategy

(Cory) Consider appealing some of Gabe's no-shows

(Labor Czar) Review & vote on whether Gabriel C has violated the terms of his Eviction Hold-off Agreement (labor/behavior contract) in:

1. accruing more than five gross credit hours of no-shows for performance of regularly assigned cooperative labor tasks per month, 2. signing off on cooperative labor tasks which had not, in fact, been completed at that time, and/or 3. failing to make a good-faith effort to ensure assignments were completed by an alternate member whenever unable to complete assigned labor

(Yarrow) I think we should have a neighborhood block party to build community with our Gault Street neighbors. Can we do it? How should we plan it? Do we have the budget for food and drink? etc. etc.

(Gardenia) Wanted permission to paint part of the walkway purple

Present: Paul (minutes), Chinhae, Tif, Lorenzo, Graham, Reyna, Angelia, Jennifer, Joy, Richard, Frog (facilitator), Diana, Leah, Venus

Paul (minutes), Chinhae, Tif, Lorenzo, Graham, Reyna, Angelia, Jennifer, Joy, Richard, Frog (facilitator), Diana, Leah, Venus

Minutes approved.

Frog: I’m stepping down from maintenance and running for Steward. I’m still working on the pest control visit. They’ll be thorough.

Birthday party Friday night, 8:30ish!

Nominations have been posted for maintenance coordinator. Steward has two nominees so there will be an election next week. We’ll post emails about that process.

(cory) Consider appealing some of Gabe's no-shows

Tabled - Cory is not here.

(Labor Czar) Review & vote on whether Gabriel C has violated the terms of his Eviction Hold-off Agreement (labor/behavior contract) in:

1. accruing more than five gross credit hours of no-shows for performance of regularly assigned cooperative labor tasks per month, 2. signing off on cooperative labor tasks which had not, in fact, been completed at that time, and/or 3. failing to make a good-faith effort to ensure assignments were completed by an alternate member whenever unable to complete assigned labor

Tabled - Gabe is not here and we’re not sure he was properly notified.

(Yarrow) I think we should have a neighborhood block party to build community with our Gault Street neighbors. Can we do it? How should we plan it? Do we have the budget for food and drink? etc. etc.

Tabled - Yarrow is not here.

(Venus) Problems with unit

Sink needs to be snaked Mold in bathroom Mold underneath the kitchen sink Rat hole behind fridge

Venus: The bathroom door doesn’t close all the way. I’ve painted a bunch. The electrical outlets break electronics. There’s mold. I want an abatement on rent about the mold.

Point of information: That takes a separate agenda item that calls for that specifically.

Clarifying question: Did officers do an inspection?

POI: A basic inspection - they talked about the electricity and the mold.

CQ: Do you know about the official maintenance email?

Venus: I do now.

Venus: I’m improving the space. I want help doing that.

Tabled.

CQ: If people need help moving out during the pest treatment, can we possibly schedule a bulk second treatment for those folks?

CQ: Can we try to coordinate with each other to keep pets out of units and do required cleaning?

—

POI: I’d like the no-show report to identify exactly which labors I was no-showed for so I can contest them specifically as I did or did not do them.

Joy, labor: Some of those were minutes that didn’t get transferred to the spreadsheet. Some are for no-signatures on some labors.

POI: My partner is disabled and there are some issues where they can’t perform labor and have been no-showed.

POI: We should try to find accommodating labor for them.

—

Can we build a waterslide?

Present: Paul (minutes), Beryl, Corey, Gabe, Tif, Diana, Lorenzo, Venus, Jill, Russ (facilitator), Gardenia, Graham

No one for meet & greet.

Minutes approved.

Thursday meeting to talk about CHEA-wide IT/tech issues, maybe to centralize tech responsibilities at the board level. Our operations manager sent out an email but it’s Thursday, NOT Tuesday.

Beryl, outgoing Steward: We have a rolling nomination for Steward now. Sign up to run! Lots of responsibilities but they’re spread out.

Gardenia: Hi, I’m the other CHEA board representative now! Next meeting is March 9th, and I intend to be fully ready for that meeting by then.

(Frog) I have a few updates about the pest control situation, including bids to look at

Frog is not present and the agenda was not posted in time for us to decide anything.

The office printer needs toner.

—

Corey agrees to post the agenda during the steward interregnum.

—

Jill: I called about the communication lines in the backyard. The one hanging down is Spectrum, and they’re going to make an appointment to deal with that. The other one is AT&T, and if no one here has an AT&T account maybe we can get it taken down.

—

Diana: I called about bulk pickup. Every unit gets 3 bulk pickups.

—

Gabe: I’m still getting on my labor, making things right.

Point of interest: I’ll put contesting your no-show on the agenda.

—

Venus: The electric outlets in my room are destroying my electronics and need to be taken care of. I’m trying to get paint for the bathroom through maintenance.

Present: Paul (minutes), Kate (facilitator), Cory, Tif, Yarrow, Gabe, Graham, Reyna, Quinn, Leah, Bernard, Lyssa, Diana, Beryl

No one for meet & greet.

Minutes approved.

No updates.

(Labor Czar) Review & vote on whether Gabriel C has violated the terms of his Eviction Hold-off Agreement (labor/behavior contract) in:

1. accruing more than five gross credit hours of no-shows for performance of regularly assigned cooperative labor tasks per month, 2. signing off on cooperative labor tasks which had not, in fact, been completed at that time, and/or 3. failing to make a good-faith effort to ensure assignments were completed by an alternate member whenever unable to complete assigned labor

Joy, labor: Lots of no-shows and technical no-shows. A couple people have complained about the tasks not being completed, or half-completed. Gabe didn’t know there were reassignments in February, so he wasn’t doing that for a while.

Clarifying question (CQ): How many has he missed?

Point of information (POI): His threshold is no more than five no-shows a month, and even if we forgive a few months where the labor program was a mess, there hasn’t been a month where he hasn’t been exceeded.

Gabe: I hear loud and clear. I was assigned a labor contract agreement and I wanted to honor it. Some things happened. I’m not always available, and I have two jobs now. I didn’t mean to disrespect the community. I may not be able to be here on the days I’m assigned labor, especially with my second kitchen job. I don’t want to be perceived as a liar, and if there’s anything I can do to make it up please tell me. I fell behind.

Joy: I can assign you other labors, I didn’t know.

POI: The labor agreement includes a line about ensuring assignments are completed by other people if you can’t do it.

Gabe: I didn’t know that.

CQ: But you signed the labor contract? Gabe: Yeah. I wasn’t even aware we had a new labor czar. I do get the co-op email list though.

Joy: The process involves us voting whether you violated the labor agreement.

CQ: Do you know why people said you hadn’t signed off on labor you hadn’t done?

Gabe: No, I don’t.

Beryl: There wasn’t much of a change in the commons before and after some labor sign-offs.

POI: I did write a week of no-shows for people. Those can reasonably be warnings, I think.

CQ: The no-shows in question were in February?

POI: I would like to see a list of no-shows when no-shows are possibly leading to an eviction.

Joy: Reading from the no-show sheet, several weeks of basically all of the assigned labor. I sent multiple notifications to the email list about labor changes.

POI: This feels like a contract break but I don’t want it to be.

CQ: Is 5 months a standard labor contract?

POI: It was 3 months originally but this is his second labor contract.

POI: This behavior’s been happening a long time.

Gabe: I will do whatever it takes to make it right and communicate better going forward.

CQ: Is fridge clean something you’d do for your labor? Gabe: I’m only available two days a week so I tried to do two labor hours each day, which is part of why I assumed that role. I kept doing that for weeks because I didn’t know about the new assignments.

CQ: Could we drop some of the no-shows from the confusion over labor reassignment?

POI: The labor czar could. It’s a little strange because the no-show report isn’t out yet, but labor contracts deal with gross no-shows.

CQ: So he was notified when he exceeded the no-shows? For how many months? Joy: This month I messaged him directly, and other months via the no-show reports. I’ve been onboarding as labor czar for a while before that.

Gabe: I will pay more attention to my labor assignments. I missed the reassignment and that threw me off. I thought I was nailing it but I wasn’t.

Cory: The month isn’t over. Anyone can contest these no-shows.

CQ: Do we want to table this for next week? We straw poll to table until next week, and labor czar tables.

(Yarrow) I think we should have a neighborhood block party to build community with our Gault Street neighbors. Can we do it? How should we plan it? Do we have the budget for food and drink? etc. etc.

Tabled by Yarrow in absentia.

(Steward) Officer reports

Frog, maintenance: I’m working to get pest control out again, for insects and also for rats. Make maintenance requests via the corkboard or email, otherwise I will straight-up ignore it. Too many requests in person or through other digital forms, and also I don’t want to lose your requests.

Reyna, membership: We have a new member in 207, Jenn, who’s not actually moved in yet. 205 and 206 still need maintenance work, 104 is iffy. Contract party Wednesday!

Quinn, food buyer: We’re averaging about half the budget, $300 of $600. I’ve been hesitant to make big purchases until we get locked, kitchen-staffed places to put things.

POI: Past food buyers have hidden stuff around the co-op or in their units. That’s a possibility too.

Beryl, steward: NP Board Rep election happened, Matthias from Sasona is our new representative. We still need a CHEA board representative. At that point I will probably need to take a break from steward.

Lyssa, events: Thank you all for making the last few events really fun. I am planning a Pisces/Aries - Piries - birthday, on I believe 3/15. Pi themed, so make pies, and there will be math games. Once the weather gets nicer I want us to have a group yard sale. That’s events.

Bernard, kitchen manager: I’ve been lower down recently. Even though I haven’t been feeling good I do check in from time to time. One thing I will say is: please do not unplug any insect devices in the commons. We are trying to deal with gnats and bugs in our produce. Rats are getting bad.

Joy, labor: People are still missing labor. It’s getting better. Check your no-shows regularly. Read the wiki descriptions so you know exactly what you’re required to do. I will be reassigning some people who requested alternate labor and getting new members in the system.

Kate, treasurer: We had a finance meeting Thursday. We discussed how many hours to have our bookkeeper do, maintenance reimbursements, and doing vacancy reserve updates. We have three cards now: for me, gardening, and food buyer.

Cory, financial special to the board: Maybe we should bring the due dates in from the 21st. Then the bookkeeper waits to deposit the checks, and it’s all kind of delayed. I want to be assured we have enough to pay the NASCO payment on the 15th every month. There are some backlogged maintenance reimbursement requests that contribute to the cash crunch. There’s a CHEA IT meeting on March 6th.

Tif, bookkeeper, We have 6 members late on payments. We have 4 members on payment plans; those are going fine. I have some food buyer receipts I still need to categorize.

Kate: I can handle the receipts, although as long as you’re scanning them that’s good.

(Venus) Problems with unit

Sink needs to be snaked Mold in bathroom Mold underneath the kitchen sink Rat hole behind fridge

Tabled for now.

CQ: Do we have a Trello or task-tracker for maintenance? Can people submit to that?

POI: There’s form submissions that aren’t being uploaded to the Trello.

Frog: The Trello is filled with a lot of minor requests.

POI: When people are doing urgent maintenance they’ll do the critical work and not update the Trello.

—

Should we discuss required proportions for dinner cooks? It says 8-10 people in the description but that’s very loose.

Present: Venus, Bernard, Bella, Beryl, Paul (minutes), Graham, Reyna, Kate (facilitator), Lorenzo, Leah

No one for meet & greet.

Minutes approved.

Kitchen meeting will be held March 2nd, two Sundays from now. There’ll be an email about it soon.

Beryl: Haven’t corresponded with Sasona for the final tally of the NP board rep position.

—

Kate, treasurer: There were several purchases made through Amazon but not through the co-op Amazon account. Don’t do that.

—

Bella: I’m moving out April 7th.

Present: Paul (minutes), Cory, Kate, Bella, Graham, Frog (facilitator), Russ, Ivy, Beryl, Reyna, Dao, Chinhae, Joy, Leah, Jill, Yarrow

Jenn K. (second meeting, approved)

Minutes approved.

Board meeting this Thursday.

We had a rules meeting workgroup this weekend. It was productive.

Sasona is updating their wiki to match ours and we may need to have technical conversations with them.

(Frog) I was chatting with a member of the board for a local homeless organization (I forget the name as of writing this agenda item, but I might have it by meeting time) and she was interested in having me talk to them about housing cooperatives at one of their meetings. I wanted to see if anyone else would be interested so I can get a group together to share info and coordinate stuff with.

Frog: I still don’t have the name. This was on Friday. Their organization meets on Mondays. She has my number. Regardless if we connect with her, maybe this is something we should do in general. ACBA work supports co-ops but not people in need of housing.

Point of information: You might still reach out to the ACBA. They might want to have that kind of outreach.

POI: The co-op has pre-existing rules that prioritize anyone coming in with housing assistance support. We haven’t been using them recently but they do exist. We also accept Section 8 housing vouchers, although we’d have to reconnect with HACA, the local Austin housing authority.

Dao: I want to help prevent a behavior that’s happened in the past. Back around Halloween, Beryl left a message that threatened me, that yelled and used profanity. Since then we’ve talked about it and resolved it and it’s been great. I just wanted to note the incident.

POI: There have definitely been tensions between Food Not Bombs and La Reunion members. A lot of that comes down to not enough communication. We don’t have good rules for how people should act when they’re here. Better communication is something we need to work on. Non-members are also welcome to come talk to us.

—

Frog, maintenance: We’re trying to get ChemFree to come out for pest control. They’ve been not coming out when scheduled. I need to set up things with the new pest control contractor.

—

Treasurer’s going to get a card for the grounds team. It’s also possible for maintenance to get a card.

—

Point of information: The rats are in another building as well. 110, 206, 207. We need a general inspection to rat them all out.

Point of information: We have a contractor to patch the holes in the commons. They’ve got solid online reviews.

—

Joy, labor: We talked in the kitchen meeting about labor credit for kitchen meeting and workgroup meetings, which I can implement if there are no objections. <There are no objections.> We also want a labor orientation with credit for that.

—

Russ: Requesting labor for quarter duty.

Joy: Granted.

Present: Reyna, Leah, Joy, Kate, Cory, Yarrow, Russ (facilitator), Frog, Beryl, Gardenia, Paul (minutes)

Jenn K. (first meeting)

Minutes approved.

Next Sunday, kitchen meeting before the meeting, 5:30 pm.

Wiki updates sent via email approved.

Cory: Reconciling the books found several people owing more money than thought. They have been notified.

(Yarrow) Neighborhood safety. Our neighbors are at greater risk now, and there are actions that we can take to help them stay safe. We should make plans.

Point of information: We had a conversation about ongoing concerns about safety here. I think we could do a lot of good in the neighborhood.

Sapphire was walking through here recently. They’re banned, but they’ve threatened several people here before. Be aware.

—

Venus has not been able to live in their unit since they moved in, and they were wondering if they can get rent compensation.

POI: I think that takes an agenda item, but it’s something we should discuss further, absolutely.

—

Joy, labor: Quick labor holiday debrief. Some things went well, some things didn’t. The “donation pile” was unplanned. The nice big movie screen got left outside. It’s damaged now. We need more communication during labor holiday. And, don’t leave things outside.

POI: Also, we can’t put whole mattresses in the dumpster. They just won’t take them. Donation piles should go inside or in the laundry room, not outside.

Present: Paul (minutes), Lorenzo, Graham, Robbie, Jessica, Quinn, Katie, Joy, Beryl (minutes), Bernard, Frog, Richard, Reyna, Alyssa, Leah, Cory, Kate

Angelia W. (second meeting, approved)

Minutes approved.

Removed the Bitcoin link. Other updates will be posted by email.

Good labor holiday, good party!

(Steward) Officer reports

Bernard, kitchen manager: We’re moving along, moving spoiled things on, moving stuff to the donation spots, moving to safer spaces food-wise.

Reyna, membership coordinator: We’ve technically got 4 open rooms right now, in maintenance progress. Diana is moving into 108 in February. I’ve got someone else for 207, potentially.

Frog, maintenance: Lots of people have shown up for 109. There’s still a little baseboard painting that needs doing. I’ve called another pest control company, and they’re coming to do an inspection tomorrow. Hopefully our rats will be dealt with soon. The gas will be shut off tomorrow to try to plug in a new stove, but depending on the plumber it might be off shorter or longer. I talked to the operations manager about getting a long-term glass cutter for window replacements.

Lyssa, events: Thanks everyone for coming out to the party! I am happy to be events coordinator. I have two more events coming soon - this next weekend, a clothing swap starting Saturday evening and continuing into Sunday evening. I can also do a donation run if people just don’t want their clothing back at all. There’s also an elementary-school-style Valentine’s Day party, with bags to decorate. Do people here want to do it on the 14th or the 15th? I also plan on doing another more detailed survey with things like food allergies and preferences. Please respond to that at your earliest convenience.

<There’s more support for the 14th.>

Joy, labor: Good labor holiday! <general cheering> We still need maintenance and grounds work. I’ve heard from Nynke, Gabe, & Richard. Robbie was just here. Pickles, Russ, & Venus have not contacted me. There’s a new labor chart! I will be changing labor descriptions, mostly back to what was on the wiki. We’re splitting up commons and courtyard into north and south sides (the birds are the dividing line in the commons). Commons and courtyard clean will be an hour. Bathrooms clean is coming back. Sorry no-show reports are late.

Kate, treasurer: We have money to pay NASCO. I categorized transactions for taxes. Lots of receipts and several security deposit returns. We need to account for maintenance hours. I’ll be getting the food buyer on the bank account Tuesday.

Cory, board finance stuff: I want to get budgets for July-December. I’m waiting for categorizations and I’m going to wait to meet with Matthias and then tackle what’s left myself. Get some reports out there, because it’s been a while. I’m going to be further pushing for a CHEA reserve fund.

Quinn, food buyer: We’ve spent like $100 this month. I stocked the bathroom with soaps & shampoos.

Beryl, steward: Chinhae’s NP board rep statement is written and I got the nomination out to the operations manager and Sasona. Voting for NP board rep hasn’t begun; I haven’t heard from Sasona yet. We still need someone to sign up for CHEA board rep.

Leah, board: We need another member.

Videographers will be here Thursday! It will probably be mostly indoors due to rain.

Anarchist book show this Saturday. We should go.

If you still don’t have a commons key, get with Frog or Cory.

We need to replace the light fixture in the southwest stairwell.

Frog: I’m having a doodle party Tuesday night to make content for the zine. We will play doodle games!