Corporate Records

Meeting Minutes: January 2014

I believe the following matters are within the realm of what we have already discussed so I don't think we need a vote unless someone objects and asks for one.  Let me know if you have a different opinion:

1.  I consulted with the accounting firm of Leslie Shaus regarding the tax exemption and told her that I thought we would hire her to do LSI's tax return.  I have an engagement letter from her that I am planning on signing unless someone else wants to review it first. The tax return is due May 1 or May 15.

2.  My son in law was going to upgrade our web site and never did get around to it.  He is now interviewing with Google and my be moving to California.  I found a company that does drupal programming called New Media.  They have bid the work at $90/hr because we are a non-profit and estimate that the work will cost between $540 and $810.  This will include the new theme with Margaret Emerson's images, a listserv and a way to register people for classes.  I am planning on hiring them unless someone objects.

3.  We had talked about discussing our fund raising further but there have been no further comments.  I am comfortable with the 10 basic classes being free.  Perhaps we can think of them as the marketing effort promoting food cells and additional classes for which we will charge in the future.  If there is anyone who wants to pursue this topic further at this time, feel free to speak up.

We have some interesting conversations going on.  We are in contact with the Open Source Collaborative and the new Denver Permaculture Guild.  I have offered to do the Principles of Community Design workshop for both groups.  The OSC guys are interested in taking the Bee Safe Neighborhood program into the schools and I am talking to them regarding making plastics to reduce the cost of our food cells.  I met with three young people from the neighborhood, who worked with me this past summer and fall.  They want to continue their involvement and we talked about bee safe neighborhoods, documenting what it takes to maintain the systems in our food cells, finding others in the neighborhood who might what to help, propagating plants for the bees and probably other things.  They will be getting back to me with the things they want to do and how much time they can spend.

On a less positive note, I just killed a bunch of the little tilapia we had.  It looks like I overfed them.  The best I can tell, the original 25-30 are now 4-5.  Our aquaponics system has yet to balance and that may be that we are understocked on the fish.  I bought some gold fish today and added them.  All we can do is keep working at it

All and all these are exciting times,
Thanks for improving our habitat
David B

PS.  Comcast tells me that Dana's e-mail is "unavailable".  Has she changed e-mails?