Board of Directors Meeting Minutes
February 10, 2005

Attending:

• Ed Dyer
• Bernie Hart
• Marilyn MacDonald
• Bill Matheson
• John McKay
• Tanya Moxley
• Jeff Warnica
• Andrew D. Wright

Regrets:

• Mark Alberstat

Minutes of Previous Meeting

Marilyn reminded Tanya that last names should appear in the list of those present. Bernie / Andrew moved approval of last month's minutes. CARRIED

[Budget was moved up on the agenda because Ed has to leave early]

Budget 2005

Bernie provided a three page handout outlining 2004 Budget & Actuals + 2005 proposed Budget, status of Current and Reserve accounts, and a detailed breakdown of income categories.

There was some discussion of:

• Various items on the 2005 budget including the cost for ACORN (Andrew & Ed will bring a report to the next meeting regarding how ACORN access impacts our users)
• A possible need to look for external sources of funding such as HRM grants,
• Likelihood of need for increased funding for equipment maintenance / replacement, e.g. UPS
• Wages will likely go down as we foresee less need for additional technical support this year,
• Should we offer a quarterly-renewal service? Tanya will contact Andrew to try to work out some numbers.

Approval of the Budget was deferred to the March meeting, pending further information to be provided re: quarterly accounts, ACORN, internet service costs, etc…

Board Membership

Marilyn reported that 12 offers to assist with CCN or be on the Board were received. As decided by the Executive and Nominating Committee, Alan Turner was approached regarding serving the remainder of Reg Hody's term. He accepted. John / Ed moved that Alan be appointed as a Director. CARRIED

Marilyn will notify Alan that he is invited to join our March meeting. Andrew will have Johnathan add Alan to the Board mailing list.

Marilyn also plans to respond personally to the other potential volunteers to see if we can 'find something for them to do'. :)

[Bernie and Ed both left at this point]

Chebucto Retreat

As she was unable to attend at the last minute, Marilyn asked for feedback from the group on our day with Naomi. Feedback provided was generally positive. Naomi will be joining us for our March meeting so that we may consider next steps; the business part of the meeting will be short. The intent of the March session will be to put together some 'stuff' to distribute to the membership for feedback.

Committee Reports

Technical Committee

No report as Ed had left. A few comments from Andrew:

• They have been busy with lots of bug fixes.
• He has been working on some questions like how to improve account processing.
• Some work needs to be done on the UPS.
• Some work was done at the South St. wi-fi location as a result of 'improvements' done by a resident which made the installation a public hotspot. The landlord has been billed for Johnathan's time to make repairs. Overall the project has been working out very well.
• Repairs to the webcam on Fenwick Tower are awaiting better weather. Someone has expressed an interest in placing another one on the building behind Maritime Mall. Andrew will be following up.

Finance Committee

No report in addition to the Budget, as Bernie had left.

Policy Committee

Updates to the User Agreement are not done yet. Andrew will try to get them done in time to post to the mailing list prior to March meeting. There was some discussion regarding Jeff's intent last month to submit to the Policy Committee a proposal for streamlining user processing. The document he submitted outlined problems, and received no feedback. He agreed to submit a follow-up proposal with suggestions for improvements.

External Committee

Needs to meet soon to begin planning AGM; date set for April 14th.

• Andrew reported that the Cole Harbour event didn't generate much excitement or interest.
• Herald ads came in under budget; lots of people saw them but only one explicitly said that's why they joined.
• Andrew was on the Maritime Noon phone-in on February 9th. Those who heard it felt it went really well. Andrew will investigate connecting their site to ours so we can point out some of our community activities.
• We should soon be receiving an application for Word on the Street 2005. There was no clear advantage to partnering with HRC@P on this event last year. Given the cost we may not attend this year.
• It might be more effective for us to have a smaller presence at more events than to blow our 'PR' budget on one big event. E.g. Northern Lights festival, buskers, jazz fest, comedy fest, etc…
• We never did hear back from Barb Allen about joining the HRC@P network; our letter was supposed to be considered at their January Board meeting. Tanya will check with someone she knows on the HRC@P Board.

Internal Committee

Bill had no report. He got some good ideas from the Retreat for future projects. Marilyn will send him the e-mail address from someone who might be a good committee member. Andrew will re-send the URL for the Neighbourhood Accounts to Bill.

Other Business

John got a letter back from Infrastructure Canada regarding an idea for a possible CCN project. He will draft a proposal for an upcoming meeting.

John & Bernie are investigating the wi-fi & VoIP arrangements of Victoria Community Net; they will continue to follow-up and report back to us. There may be interest as HRM in working with us on some kind of project like this.

Adjournment

Bill moved that we adjourn at 8:00 PM.

Next Meeting

March 10, 2005. 6:30 PM, Colloquium Room