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boardmeetingagenda:2017-02-23

Milwaukee Makerspace Board of Directors Meeting - February 23rd, 2017

Held at the Milwaukee Makerspace craft lab

Attendees

Present
  • Keith McMillan
  • Harvey Matyas
  • Dan Jonke
  • Tom Kline
  • Carl Stevens
Absent
  • DL Swanson
Guests
  • Chris Hemmerly
  • Lance Lamont
  • Lexie Natkin
  • Bill Coon
  • Stephanie

Minutes

Meeting was called to order at 7:02 by Keith

Review and approval of the Minutes of the previous meeting

Meeting notes from the previous meeting were approved

Reports of Boards and Standing Committees

Treasurers Report

  • Dan presented the treasurers report. We currently have 279 members. Funds allocated to areas stayed relatively stable for the first time at $6-7,000.
  • The building purchase finally fell off the report.
  • Current surplus over operating costs does not appear to support a second building given the current financial assumptions.
  • Dan will try adding charts of the various figures reported next month to see if it makes the report easier to digest.

Space Equipment Inventory

  • Previous status
    • Inventories from areas coming in, DL has been working with the procedure - will have done by end of year
    • Intends to involve area champions
    • pictures of equipment slowly coming in
  • No update

Building Maintenance/Issues

  • Last status
  • Membrane installed incorrectly on roof
    • Tom Gralewicz reports that when fixing the roof, we found that the membrane had not been installed correctly. He's spoken to the company that did the job and the new owner has offered to fix it for free if we pay for parts. The board accepted this offer.
    • awaiting warmer weather

Reports of Special (Select) Committees

Space Projects Update

Wax sculpting for casting area

  • Last status
    • BoD will allow for wax station to find home on wheeled cart until enough interest is raised for permanent floor space
  • Board discussed if we need another champion.
  • Keith is of the opinion that not enough people can be independent in the area, requires advanced skills and only a few people have them.

Kuka

  • Previous status
    • Keith has gotten two inquiries - will run this down and if it doesn't pan out will look into mounting
    • If this is prohibitive it will be scrapped
  • Kuka has been sold

Wood shop dust collection

  • Previous status
    • Steve is working on the dust collector with Kyle
  • A cyclonic collector has been offered to the space. The board voted unanimously to approve it if the area champions want it.

Unfinished Business

Eye wash stations

  • Previous Status
    • Eye wash stations are here and will be installed on space improvement day
  • Eye wash stations installed

Property tax exemption

  • Previous Status
    • Steph working on paperwork - Keith monitoring
  • Paperwork filed with Assessors office on 2/22

Utility rates

  • Previous Status
    • Paperwork sent to Wisconsin Department of Revenue
    • Keith got a request for more info and has responded
  • No updates

New camera system

  • Previous Status
  • 7 of 8 available cameras online: East Room (2), Vault Hallway (2), Outside Door 4, Wiring closet
  • One exterior camera will be installed after awnings are installed
  • Additional equipment supplied by Scott and on hand
  • Dan has reimbursed Scott
  • Bill would like one additional camera in the wood shop
  • Currently have three camera systems, will be adding a fourth. Do we need or want to consolidate?

Willy's Boat

  • Willy continues to to be seen working on the project.

Signs & Awnings Outside

  • Previous status
    • Awnings came in with a price of $2000, which was higher than membership saw. Board voted prior to the meeting to approve the new expenses - Tom voted no, Kayla abstained
    • Awnings have been ordered
  • Awnings on hand awaiting screen printing and warmer weather

Craft Lab II: Trade Craft!

  • Previous status
    • Move large black rack to impound / scrap to sell area for storage
    • Plan to relocate power sources to better accommodate vacuum former power and jewelry are power
    • Add power strip to the screen printing area and screw to wall
    • DL will be reorganizing the area
  • Area reorganized, vacuum former moved - remove from agenda going forward

Long-term Budgeting

  • Previous Status
    • Create a list of “house projects” to establish funds for
    • Sit down with Tom G about price points that have previously been estimated
    • Call out to 3rd parties for getting estimates
    • Adrian and Dan to work on it
  • No update

Member Free Storage Space

  • Previous Status
    • DL will draft policy and circulate
      • Short list
        • no more duplicate spaces per member ie, members with pallet will not have shelf space ect.
        • reduce storage size per square foot
  • DL not present - no draft available
  • Lance wants to make improvements to his vault but wants the board to know he is hesitant until he knows whether the rates will go up.

Website redesign proposal

  • Last status
    • Carl to continue with his new design ideas and put up a parallel version next to our current site for further feedback.
    • Carl is having issues with some dependencies on the server - Tony will help
  • Tony and Carl resolved problems - Carl working on an update

Second Building

  • Last Status
    • Tom presented an analysis of adding a second space
    • Board discussed alternatives to adding a second space
    • Board to review the proposal and provide approval or not at next meeting or before
  • Tom not present - treasurers report doesn't appear to support rent on a second building
  • Tom and Dan to come up with some proposals to membership
  • Lance suggested a grant to another group to start a second space
  • Chris remarked that other makerspaces only give people a tote for member storage
  • Keith suggested we ask the members if they would pay a higher dues rate to support a second space
  • Lance suggested a sliding scale for rental space, with the rate going up over time
  • A suggestion was made to time limit rental space explicitly when the space is rented.
  • Dan to create a new survey for the membership

New Member Sign-ups

  • Last Status
    • Require Google Groups subscription to match Wild Apricot
    • Board discussed automatically adding members to the members only list as web-only - add link to group to Wild Apricot
    • Film Dan doing The Spiel and play on a loop
    • Announce during meetings that applications need to be in before 8:30
    • Board agreed to ask for address verification on signups
    • Keith will prepare a “how do you become a member” card/sheet to include address stuff, DL says she has one - Keith to check
  • Keith still needs to prepare “how do I join?”
  • Video recording of “the Spiel” scheduled for Tuesday 2/28
  • 8:30 sign up deadline seem to be working better

New Business

  • Access server - Dan to replace during space improvement day, it's been crashing
  • Weld area champion - Dan is primary now because Marc resigned. Keith encouraged him to find another champion]
  • There's been discussion of needing new vacuums, but the board doesn't have a proposal in hand

Good of the Space

Announcements

Close

The meeting was adjourned at 7:51

boardmeetingagenda/2017-02-23.txt · Last modified: 2017/02/27 19:00 by keithm