July 2022 BOD meeting Minutes

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July 2022 BOD meeting Minutes

Postby Rose » Mon Aug 01, 2022 10:43 pm

BOD meeting Minutes
July 17, 2022 - 2:00 PM

Elected Members:
Amanda Giles, Andy Brown, Ka’a Prouty, Jodie Van Tine, Rose Brown

Not in attendance: Jordan Jameson

Monarchy Members:

David Zucker Christine Stender

1. Attendance & Roll Call:

2. Review and approve June meeting minutes:

Motion to approve meeting minute for June: Motion Passes

3. Platform for future BOD meetings.

Access to the Westmarch youtube login is needed. Raven stated that she has access and can do it. Discussed if we should stream to youtube or facebook. OBS would make it possible to do both at once. Rose Suggests doing live on youtube, then share to facebook. Jodi said she would do a trial run of this for a meeting that is coming up.

Motion to table until Jodi can do a trial run and come back to us on how well this works.

Motion Passes

4. Officer insurance:

Amanda is still getting the run around from the three organizations that we made contact with originally. Ka’a put her in contact with another agency that has gotten back to her twice. In addition she has been talking to a Crystal Groves member who gave her the contact for the agency that they went through. Their kingdom has their BOD insurance bundled with general liability club insurance - might be worth expanding - they pay $6 a head for active members.

Amanda is going to talk to them to see what is considered an “active” member. If this would cover big events it could save money. If it could cover small events, it could also encourage better small events in the lands. The event site for Darkshore and FOO (Kings city) requires an A rating and 1 million insurance. They also require that they be “named in” for the insurance - how would the insurance policy handle that? If we were able to bundle we would be looking at 2 grand. David brings up that would be minus the 600 for fOO and darkshore and midregin ect. Rose brings up that if we bundled it, it would be reasonable to charge events an event tax to help cover it. The Contact (John White) will talk to his BOD and get back to us with the information that he has.



Motion to table till next meeting.

Motion passes


5. Wells Fargo banking Issues: - Adding Ka’a Prouty to Bank account

David went to Wells Fargo and filled out the paperwork, and has sent to Ka’a. Ka’a has not received it yet. It has taken over a week for the post office to deliver it. Had to explain to Wells Fargo several times that he needed to fill out paperwork and send it, so that took a while. Once Ka’a gets it she should be able to go to her local branch fill out the paperwork and then she should be a signer. To change key executives from David to the next - preferably the Person who is Treasurer for BOD however might need to be the next Prime Minister if time doesn’t work out. Because of the time constraint we are likely going to need it to be the new Prime Minister. Dave and Ka’a are going to try and get together again, however both of them are busy on Saturday.

Motion to table until next meeting.

Motion passes.

6. Website move - Unlocking CAAMtgard and moving information to new System/possibly sending Legal letter for Grix

Victoria is willing to help, Grix has said he is going to get it taken care of on Monday. Grix has been paying. Someone says something about Wellsfargo being the issue. Dave, Rose and Ka’a say Wellsfargo has nothing to do about it. Zucker explains that it is through Grix, and that Westmarch is paying for the domain name and explains how everything is working. It was asked “so are we paying for a domain name that we have not been able to use?” Yes, we pay $150 per year to host. We have been working on moving this thing for 2.5 years. We need to get this finalized. We are paid up through next year already. We will see if Grix is able to get this done by Monday, we just need Grix to get ahold of his Webhost, they unlock it, we get the information and transfer it over. What is our contingency if he does not get this done? Victoria writes a sternly worded letter saying this needs to get done. There isn’t really a plan B that isn’t calling up lawyers.

Why are we changing our web address? It is a temporary place to hold stuff until we complete the transfers. We could just give up on CAAmtgard and make a new website with a new name. Westmarch.com is going for around $3000 dollars. Probably because it is a land in Diablo, Andy says.

We could have Grix point a DNS from his website to ours, he can still point it to our host. Domain name server - when you look up a name on the internet, your computer looks up the name it’s supposed to go to - a DNS can point your computer at the address you want it to send to. Then even though we don’t own the domain name, it would be sent to ours. Dave says if Grix is having trouble getting ahold of them, Dave will ask him to do this.

Motion to table this until next meeting:

Motion passes

7. Adding Quixotic Valley final contract to the list of completed land contract on caamtgard

IT’s updated on CA.org, but updates to CAAmgard.com, so once the website move goes through it will be done.

Motion to close:
Motion Passes.

8. Dark Shore - Money status

The parks department claimed to have not received the check, then the parks department realized they got the money but didn’t know what to do with it, so they claimed that it was sent back, in the meantime the parks offered a refund for the security deposit and the showers and covid, after they receive payment - as Etah is at bootcamp and can’t send money Dave sent a check from Westmarch - The parks department is paid off. When Etah is able to verify that the money was sent back to him when he gets back from bootcamp, we will have made about $4 profit. If everything had gone to plan it would have been average profits, but with all the last minute cancellations it was rough. David would like to go over the financials before posting a breakdown.

Motion to table Darkshore and closing out the financials until the breakdown is done and BOD makes a post saying how well Etah and the Crat team did.

Motion passes.

9. Petition for freehold of Valonde to join WM

They will be on the Althing next month - pending vote, we will give the paperwork if they pass.

Motion to table -

Motion passes.

10. Herald/Scribe/New position to be named - Can we create a position to help post BOD stuff across all platforms. The jobs that are described fall under the position of the secretary, especially as we have had difficulty filling scribe and herald with any fall over duties falling on the prime minister. The scribe would not be a BOD position and it is not in the realm of the BOD, so the Monarch feels that it is unneeded.

Motion to close

Motion passes
11. Audits

Raven - Thors refuge PM didn’t need help, Mistyvale didn’t need help, and Clockwork did not need help. Faldare - as of 3 weeks ago they changed prime ministers. The person who is now prime minister has never been a PM. No training or knowledge on what they need to be doing. It sounds like the PM left and went to another park and a lot of members followed them. They are trying to get it up and running again as a land in WM. Sent her Videos and info from the Audit packedge. A lot of their membership and their credits has been in the freehold. For the last audit period they haven’t had attendance. They are a land in trouble.

Christin asks for a list of lands that are needing help as well as a list of lands that we deem inactive. It is not the purview of the BOD to help lands. Do we need to wait for the corpora committee because there is no mechanism for cleaning up defunct lands? The mechanism should be the same, but in reverse.

Jodi says the BOD should be looking for lands that have failed to submit audits for x number of years and should be put to a vote for removal from Westmarch. They are not meeting their contractual obligations to Westmarch, which the BOD should track, and then that information should be used by the Monarchy.

Rose asks if we are intending to re-define inactive lands' definition, as currently the definition of inactive is not having any membership at all, not merely failing to turn in audits.

She answered that we don’t necessarily need to determine if a land is defunct or not, what we need to decide is if Westmarch wishes to hold their contract anymore, and as a kingdom take a vote on whether we want to continue that land's contract. After that they can continue to exist in freehold land, or not.

Amanda states that she would not like them to be listed as freehold if they are inactive because that still gets listed under active, and has people looking for lands that don’t exist.

Rose states that these are two different things. Defunct lands are lands that no one attends anymore, that we wanted removed from the list of lands in westmarch because we don’t want people going there thinking they will find an active park. Shires not submitting audits still have attendance.

Jodi says that as it is a contact we need to have a procedure, like in a business you are given a verbal warning, a written warning, now you're out. She states she is not sure that’s a BOD item.

Rose answers that it is not a BOD item.

Jodi says she is not sure this is a BOD discussion item other than giving a report to the monarch. Here's the lands who once again have done nothing.

Christine answered that was what she was asking for from the BOD.

Rose states that is listed when we do the audit thing, we list which lands did not submit audits.

Jodi states that there is a whole column on the right of the spreadsheet, of “defunct lands” that aren’t doing anything.

Rose states they are not defunct, they are lands that did not turn in any audit.

Ka’a states yes, we want to make sure to keep that different because belial peaks as an example, they didn’t put anything in the last audit, but they are still active. We can’t necessarily go by their audit status.

Rose states, yes, their not defunct. Maybe you guys want to add an audit thing to kick them out of westmarch, but their not defunct. They would still exist as a freehold if they lost their shire status.

Christine states that she is just asking for the BOD to give her a list of recommendations. And that's the end of the BOD involvement.

Jodi asks, recommendations for what?

Christine answered, This land is doing well, no problems. This land is deficient in this area. This land is hopeless. Please deal with it please.

Jodi states that she should get a good idea of that when we go through the audit next month. And we usually make a list, a spreadsheet that Davids made, that tracks that. She confirmed that David would be able to share that with us for next month.

He confirmed it but states Ka’a was the one who made it.

Rose states we also post a list of what lands got excellent, what lands passed and what lands failed, and it’s exactly that. Excellent should be lands without issues, pass should be lands that have some issues and fail should be lands that didn’t submit anything or are not doing well.

Someone states that it isn’t entirely accurate - just because a land scores an excellent in their audit isn’t necessarily a reflection of how well the land is doing. She used her own land as an example, they have two people, they're dying, but they scored an excellent in the last audit. So she’s not sure an excellent rating alone is a good indicator of a healthy land.

Rose answers that she doesn’t disagree, but then we’d need to know what criteria is being looked for. The things in the audit are the things the BOD looks at.

Christine answered, that for example with Jodi’s lands, when they responded to her the land gave a list of the things they were struggling with and the things that they needed help with. She cares about the specific items the lands are showing in the audit more than the rating system. It would be far more helpful to have a land specific “here is the things we want you to look at” instead of this is a list of the ratings. Otherwise she will need to comb through all the information that the BOD combs through.

Rose asked, won’t you be doing that when you also go through the audits? You get a vote on the audits.

Christine answered that she does get a vote but that she wouldn’t be looking at every single detail. She would like more eyes on it and more nuanced information and direct contact would be helpful than just audits in a mass form.

Jodi explains that everyone uses the excel spreadsheet and they have their own tab to go through all the items that are required in the audit and then put their final grade or pass fail or excellent. Then that is put on a final sheet that has a pass fail or excellent. The information for lands that are not doing anything instead of the lands that are trying hard, you’ll be able to see that in the comments form the individual BOD members in that spreadsheet. She looks at what everybody else sees and it’s helped her learn.

The assessments that we post are what we come up with a final grade and then that’s used to reach out to individual lands to find out who's defunct, who’s not active, who’s struggling and needs help and who doesn’t need help.

Christine says that makes sense, but it feels like we are talking at cross purposes. She states that she tends to get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of information, so was hoping for a little more help with getting the information.

Andy states that what will help with that is as we go through the audit, as we discuss that stuff.

Rose states that it will also be posted in the minutes, but also the lands often send in a letter and that is the most likely source for seeing what the land says they're struggling with, so I could take the letters and make a… (struggles to find the right words)

Andy - Notes about what they say

Rose yeah, a breakdown that just says specifically what the letters from the monarch told us. Most of the other information on the audit doesn’t go into what the lands are struggling with, it’s just how their quals went and stuff like that, but that letter is where they usually tell us if there was an issue and what the issue was and what they were doing to try and handle it. So I could do a breakdown of that and send it to you.

Jodi states that's why that letter is so important.

Rose agrees

Jodi says it’s her favorite part and gives you the character and what's going on in the lands.

Rose states that to her it’s the most important part of the audit and one of the few things that’s not required.

Either Ka’a or Amdanda states that the monarchy could also put out a general call asking lands how they are doing, and not just relying on the results of the audit. See what lands actually need, and what lands need help.

Jodi asks, isn’t that what the point of reaching out to the land as BOD members? Seeing what we can do to help them with the audits?

We reached out to help them with the audits, but that doesn’t help them with how they're actually doing.

Andy states: The BOD is a lot of the time the enemy when it comes to the Audit. I know that sounds bad, but it’s true.

Rose agrees and states that most PM’s do not see the BOD as the helping hand who’s trying to get them through the process, the BOD is the Teacher marking them down for every minor mistake that they make, and it can be very frustrating. I don’t think it’s that the BOD tries to be that way, but it comes from having a grading system that focuses in so much on all the minute details. When you have check boxes and your grading them down for anything that doesn’t fulfill the check box, you can have a PM who’s working hard and compiling everything and then their regent doesn’t hold quals so their land fails. The regent doesn’t bare the brunt of that, because the only place it comes out is on the audit. Otherwise no one cares.

Either Amands or Ka’a states: maybe the BOD is not the best source to make a judgment on how healthy the lands are outside the data that we look at in the audit.

Andy: yes definitely

Rose: I don’t feel like we are. We look at very specific things and that's it.

Ka’a, Christine or Amanda says: Our snap shot is so… I know it covers the year but it’s just a slice of what they do. If there’s a desire to help lands, it should be a monarchy issue, and not necessarily a BOD Thing. But we’ve hoped like 12 subjects in this discussion so… Like we started talking about defunct lands and now we’re trying to talk about how to help lands in general.

Jodi - I think they're connected.

Rose - I know there are a few lands that haven’t wanted to submit audits because it’s just such an unpleasant experience, if you know your not going to pass, why go through that? If your going to fail anyway.

Andy (sarcastic tone) What, I’ve never felt that as a prime minister before, no….never.

Christine: I definitely want to change the audit process and make it more user friendly, but that's something I have to do through the Corpora.

Amanda answered We also have to look at legally what we are required to obtain. I know we want to simplify it, but legally there are things that we are required to get from our chapters.

Jodi “Right, as a non profit organization.”

Amands Right so we can simplify it to a degree but when it comes to having someone put down their finances and submit it to us, it’s a required duty.

Rose: As a prime minister I have never complained if the reason I got hit was something to do with the accounting. I have complained when the reason I got hit was someone didn’t mention something in quals correctly, or the marketing was deemed not to be enough, it’s stuff like that. I don’t care about looking into the financials, we should be rigorously looking into the financials, but the prime minister is also the person responsible for tracking the financials, so hitting them for not doing the financials correctly is hitting them for something that is their job and in their control.

Amanda We’re not actually hitting the prime ministers, there has to be some incentive for someone to do things like marketing.

Rose: I feel like building up your land and it’s status is the incentive for marketing. If you don’t do marketing and your land dies, that is the punishment for not doing marketing. If you have a land that is able to get enough new people in without doing any marketing, why did you need to do marketing in the first place?

Ka’a (I think) You need marketing to grow new members.

Rose: if you have enough people coming in that you don’t need new members?

Ka’a (I think) But you always need new members, to replace the members that are decaying and aging.

Jodi - So the advertising and recruiting part has always been contentious. Over the years you had to do a bunch of criteria (lists the old forms.)

The recruiting has been what builds lands, and the audit really objectifies that. How can we make that qualitative information a little more friendly? It’s always been a really difficult part of the audit packedge to evaluate. I see people out in public and at demos and I keep flipping back to 5 years ago when we would have had to be quick to take a picture because I need that for the audit. And that’s kind of silliness.

Rose. Especially because that's also kind of really weird for the person your giving the business card to, and then be like wait I need to take a picture of you taking this business card.

(someone) It shouldn’t require proof of someone handing a business card.

Rose: I agree with you but the BOD has been that strict before. I know I’ve said it before but I got really upset when Baccauses park held an entire like two week demo and they had pictures of people fighting, and pictures of the event and a write up but they didn’t have pictures of people getting signed in and they didn’t have their name on a flier so they got a point deducted that audit period for not doing adequate proof of marketing. They even had a detailed thing about it in their audit, which was read out as well, and they still got hit.

Andy: I think what Rose is saying is, it’s these types of problems for us and others lands, we’ve had these problems before. That's one of the major problems we have with audits. Especially when we're sitting here and we’re talking about every little thing we’re going to require, it’s focusing on those things hurts the audit processes in general, because we’re focusing on things that don’t make a difference.

Amands: I would argue they do make a difference, but can you elaborate on what you mean?

Andy: Well like the example of what happened with Baccuses park… Because they did advertising, but for that specific period the BOD said we’re going to require this, and because we are going to require this, and because they didn’t have that specific thing they got dinged. That’s not how it should work.

Rose: It’s not how it should work, and it didn’t help their land. Dinging their audit did not help them have better recruitment in the future. It just made their current PM feel like there was really no point.

Andy: When we do that kind of thing we’re causing the PM’s to feel like the BOD is the enemy, and when the BOD is the enemy, it doesn’t actually matter if they are or not, that feeling exists.

Christine (I think) All the talk of what the BOD should be, would be better spent in the corpora committee. What would help me make those decisions would be if the BOD could give me information on what exactly is required to maintain our NOP status. Like the financials. And if it’s not on that list, uh, then the corpora should be changed to move it into that area. And make the BOD not have to be the bad guy anymore.

Someone “We’re always going to be the bad guy.”

Jodi “We don’t have to be.”

Rose ``We don’t have to be. I think the way that Westmarch has set up the Audit process and the BOD, it creates an atmosphere where it’s felt that way but it doesn’t have to be. I don’t hate my boss because I sent him work and he corrects me when there's errors, because that’s important for my work to be done correctly. I would feel differently if he dinged me on every single unimportant thing, however.

Christine: So I would like the BOD to come up with a list of specific items that they are required by law to keep track of. Present that to the Monarch.

Rose: does anyone know where that would be?

Jodi: Yes, that’s going to be under our NPO 501C.

Motion to research what is legally required for the audits for our non profit status and present a list for our next BOD meeting for the Monarch:

Motion Passes.

NEW BUSINESS

Texas principality status

Golden City - who is in Austin Texas.

It was Dalos didn’t want to be part of CK so they made this land under Westmarch. As far as we can see they only have 1 active member. As evidenced by yesterday - no one even knew about them. Christine askes to include them in the Audit process.

Andy - do we have a contract with them?

Yes, and it went through the althing process.

Dave can’t find a contract and can’t find a vote, maybe they sent a principality bid?

In 2016 Noah Smith gave an update about a Pre-pre bid.

Jodi will reach out to them.

Monarch is going to put this up for althing


Motion to table until we contact them to find out if they have a valid contract with Westmarch

Motion passes.



SCHEDULE AUGUST MEETING:

Due to the next meeting being for Audits, it was decided to split the next meeting into two sessions:

August 7 5:00pm - This meeting will only be on Audits

August 8 at 7:00pm Normal Meeting for everything else.

ADJOURN MEETING

4:13 pm
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