Meeting Open: 1:17pmRoll Call:BoD members present: Sarah, Dawn, Age and Trevor. Jonathan, who will arrive 1 hour late.Participants: Mak, Hugs, Rebecca, Jacob, Chw, Jenn, Sage, Dani, Clove, Jim, Hogleg, Karrin, Carly, Adam & Baby Swag + a couple of Freeside personnel.Old BusinessOctober minutes - Ready for approval?Age, Trevor, Sarah, Jonathan & Dawn consent. Jonathan arrives later and lets us know he hasn’t yet read the updates and would like time to review.Note: He approves via email after the meeting.November minutes - Ready for discussion?Timeline - Discuss minutes throughout the week. Goal to have minutes ready for a poll on Friday. Poll to end Sunday. Hopefully we can submit finished minutes to the new BoD by Monday, 12/17.Note: We still do not have a version of the November minutes that are approvable by all 2012 BoD members. This continues to be a work in progress.Alchemy Event Report - Age to provide status and overviewMight not be able to finalize this before elections close on 12/17. Focus on doing it as quickly as possible, online and possible via conference call.Note: The Event Report is currently being reviewed by the 2013 BoD. We expect to make our deadline of 12/31/12.Alchemy FinancialsThe Alchemy 2012 Event Report currently under review contains an Income Statement. More detailed financials will be shown to the BoD for approval and uploaded to the website. We’ll go over financials at the same rate as the Event Report.Status of Reimbursements - AgeAll Team Lead Reimbursements requested have been paid. All Team leads have been notified. No more reimbursements accepted.Some Decomp reimbursements still out, but because Cory hasn’t submitted.Update on Bank Account issuesJonathan lets us know that he and Chw have the passwords for the AAA bank accounts and are monitoring it. They will transfer these passwords once the new BoD sits. Chw clarifies that he doesn’t have control over the money, but monitoring only. Trevor asks them to clarify is they have the ability to move money, not that they would, or view only. They have full privileges, but are only monitoring and printing out accounts. Age is still a signer and Rebecca is still the owner.Trevor states that while he’s happy with the current state of the money, he’s unhappy with how it all happened, without Board notification or consent. This is especially important since we confirmed the RCs don’t just have view only capabilities, but full privileges and could theoretically transfer money. Chw responds that he agrees with Trevor and he doesn’t like how it was handled at all. He didn’t receive notification of the change until 2 weeks in.Age explains that the majority of the money sits in the AAA bank account, rather than the LLC bank account. This was mostly done to avoid some of the risk, as no current BoD members own the LLC.2013 Event Dates - AgeProposed Euphoria date, June 13-16, is open. All targeted September/October dates are currently full. For reference, those dates were:September 26-30 (probably during CounterPoint, if they keep their weekend)We ruled out October 3-7 entirely, because we don’t want to conflict with Flux. Not conflicting did wonderful things for our art this year and we’d like to continue that trend.Also, Cherokee Farms might not be available for our use this year, pending resolution of org issues. General discussion on different potential properties and our storage container which currently lives on Cherokee Farms. The greater concern is Euphoria: where to host, if not Cherokee Farms & who will lead. Trevor states he knows 2 or 3 people who are currently working on applications for ELT.New Business:Jim T, Clove, and ChwThey’re offering to help smooth the transition, to help moderate, to locate resources as they are needed. Resources = talking to other burns, best practices, bylaws, that sort of thing. Not here to direct, but to help when needed. We’ll be receiving an email from them with more details, soon, likely after the election ends.Community Service Opportunities - Jim T and Age
- Do something within gov’t structure and/or parks - long term for some sort of art placement. Finalizing year end would help financial tax obligation. Bureaucracy makes this complicated for this option. A good long term option, but not by 12/31. Sitting with Fulton Art Council at the first of the year.
- Scholarships for Savannah College of Art and Design - Suggests 2 2,000 scholarships, years.
- Atlanta Beltline - Beltline contact is from SCAD, so has those contacts. They’d love to work with Alchemy. A couple of burner artists are already doing work for the Beltline. They would accept the money, prior to 12/31, if approved. Along with that money would come a letter of agreement, containing certain stipulations: they choose a specific focus, materials that can be used. Right now they’re focusing on railroad tiles and steel.
Alchemy would facilitate a call out for artists. They understand the burner community and how it would be involved in what that art would be. Timeline: End of the first quarter. Perhaps we could wrap in voting for the funded Beltline artists to the Art Fundraiser to let the community decide.Alchemy BoD would have to be responsible for all signed off on changes financially. If the artist goes overbudget due to changes we approve, then we’re responsible to cover the overage.Age points out the the LLC end of fiscal year is 3/31. Some discussion about the repercussions of the money in the AAA bank account and what that means legally. We’ll be consulting with professionals soon who can help us clarify this.This is also good in that it leaves plenty of time for community feedback. Keep in mind that this is a great project, but it’s one of many possible projects. Several options in LaFayette, for example. We need to look into these options and present them to the community to see which has the most support.Mak talks about his park in LaFayette idea. He’d like to see us build something to show that we’re artists and craftsman. Hugs comments that regardless of whether or not we continue to hold events there, it would be a nice legacy and possibly an olive branch. Mak talks about how we could build something for the community each year. He’d like to attempt to work with the community members to build, too, so we get to know the community that hosts us.New BoD Agenda Item: Follow up on Beltine project.Age, Sarah, Dawn, Jonathan & Trevor are all interested in this project and would like to move forward with getting more info, via Jim.Age suggests initiating community polling, now, to get ideas for what they’d like to see as far as community projects.Action Item: Sarah and/or Trevor to work on the community poll this week.Note: This didn’t happen due to lack of time and information on a few topics. It will be taken up by the 2013 BoD.Status of talks with GA LawyerDawn, Age, Sarah, Jonathan & Trevor can do Friday afternoon at 3:30pm. Jacob suggests talking to the lawyer and discerning who she’d like to have available for this conference call. We’d also like to schedule another conference call directly after the new BoD sits.Note: The meeting did happen, but as the lawyer was running late, only Sarah and Trevor were still available. We asked many questions and provided information. Her first order of business is to investigate the status of the LLC and recommend several options moving forward. We should hear back from her after the holidays.Motion to hire a bookeeper?Several community recommendations. Age missed that email. I’ll re-bump it for him. We’d like to get a list ready for the new BoD to review.Long Term Storage options discussion - TrevorThe unit down from Charlie’s is available for 20,000K/year for 5800 sq feet. Trevor thinks it might be too big or too expensive. Age says it’s not a great price, but might not be too big at all. It has a bathroom & sprinklers. No central heat or air, but the last renter had computers in there with no problem.
- Pros of Met: Secure. Artists community
- Cons: Expensive. Is it big enough to build an effigy.
Table Met decision for new BoD. Perhaps they’d like to see and assess themselves. Also looking into other properties referred from Charlie Smith and Alan Fay.Action Item: Trevor to follow up on leads and report back.Other comments from those observingFire Safety and Burn Bans - Patrick F.If we lose Cherokee Farms, we could begin to have significant burn ban problems. It hasn’t been an issue while we worked with Smokey, the owner of Cherokee Farms, because he’s well connected. The EPA Ordinance is in effect: May 1st - September 30th in a county with less than 65,000. Anything smaller might have burn ordinance issues and the fire department would likely not approve an event like ours. From a fire standpoint, Northeast, Northwest North & North Central Georgia are our best bets. Here’s a website with more info.Jacob asks about the legality of fire performance and fire art and whether or not marshalls be required? Would it mean more regulations and organization throughout the burn?Patrick F. says the more rural areas are going to be the easiest to work around this sort of thing. He said that when he went in to talk to the local FD this year, he learned no one from Alchemy had talked to them in 3 years. He had to build that relationship from scratch. Obviously the fire incidents complicated things in future.Jim T. reminds us that our regional status was contingent on getting all financials resolved by 12/31. Age said that shouldn’t be a problem.Board meeting ends at 2:30pm.Setting up Tech for the Town Hall begins.Decision made online between the November and December 2012 Meeting:
- Approved the "Incidents at Alchemy" statement including Karrin's one sentence edit.
- Approved Shawman as moderator of the November 2012 Town Hall.
- Approved Shawman as the moderator for the "Meet the Candidates" community-submitted questions for the 2012 BOD candidates.
- Approved Georgia RC's Jim Taflinger and Chw Joiner as moderators of the December 2012 Town Hall.
- Approved a procedure for allowing participants that hadn't created accounts on the Alchemy website prior to Alchemy 2012 to create an account in order to vote in the 2012 BOD election.
- Approved the sending of 2 issues of The Alchemist.
- All of these decisions were consensus based, though Age abstained from decisions related to the Elections, as he was running.