Minutes of the meeting held October 1l, 2007 were approved as
corrected. Moved by Alan Turner, seconded by Kent Murray.
Financial Report
Alan Turner gave the Financial Report. The
revenue for October was $8457 giving a total for year
to date of $90,323. In 2006 these figures were $9884 for the month
of October and $106,719 for the year to date. The revenue for 2007
is approximately $16,000 below than of the end of October 2006.
Expenses for September were $13,431 which included two payments
to Eastlink as no payment had been made in September. Total year
to date expenses stand at $96,885. The total year to date expenses at
the end of October 2006 were $108966. The year to date expenses at
the end of October are approximately $12,000 less than those of 2006.
The bank balance is approximately $6000. A reimbursement is still
to come from Aliant, as Chebucto was charged for services up to August
although the cut off cut date was May 15th. The service charge averaged
about $350 monthly, so the reimbursement should be in the order of
$1500. Thus only about $800 credit as has been transferred through
Dalhousie's account. Alan moved his report be accepted, seconded
by Kent Murray.
Technical Report
Ed Dyer gave the Technical Report. Power outages related to Hurricane Noel
and post storm winds caused minor problems. A software update appears to
be the root problem, the update status varied from server to server and
did not function properly. This should be resolved within a few days so
the situation will not arise next time outages occur.
A couple of reports concerning corrupted email address files have
come in within the last day. This suggests a hardware failure and
the situation will be checked into immediately. The equipment in use
is getting old but replacements are available from inventory.
The wifi project has been plagued with minor problems. All of them are
solvable, but they continue to take up much of Johnathan's time.
The UPS at Fenwick has been replaced as the initial one was unable
to cope with power outages and failed to reboot automatically.
Testing and final installation in the first two nodes should be completed
within the next month. The time for contacting city councillors followed
by announcements and publicity would be January, hopefully early
January. However, once the initial two nodes are functioning a door to
door information drop in the local area, Morris, Queen, and Clyde
Streets etc should be useful.
Andrew noted that once the wifi is in operation Windows Updates will be
included with the Chebucto Wireless free service.
Ken McCracken of the Toronto FreeNet told Andrew that they are
very interested in Chebucto's wireless project. This comment joins the
positive responses regarding this initiative from Vancouver, Victoria,
Ottawa and Montreal. He suggested a source of funding might be
the New Horizons project, which is under the auspices of the Seniors
Secretariat. He gave Andrew the URL and Bernie has looked at it and
believes that the wifi project would fit into their funding criteria.