Finance & Legal minutes: 2011-10-24

Minutes:

Minutes of F&L Meeting

10-24-11



Present: Mary, Aaron, Becky, Amy, Kathy


*Agenda*

1. Rebate Follow Up

2. Refine External Bookkeeper Job Description/Answering CPA’s questions

3. 2012 F&L Budget

4. Next steps re: ~$11,000 balance

5. Master Deed

6. Minutes

7. Tabled until 11/14 meeting


*Monkeys*

- Kathy will send out an e-mail with the final details of how the 2008-09-10
rebates were calculated so this can be found in the e-mail archives in the
future.

- Amy will revise the job descriptions for Internal and External
Bookkeepers, and send to Kathy for review. Then Amy will send this to Len
Pytlak and Scott Bogard for bids, and Aaron will send to Melissa Speicher
for a re-bid now that the job description is more streamlined and clear.

- Kathy will contact Carl to get detailed information about GO's loans. We
will pay him for his time at $20/hr.

- Becky will e-mail Process to ask for their thoughts on using Skills &
Thrills money for community financial training in 2012, and cc Rod.

- Becky will talk with Elph and Tammy (facilitators) and Rod (budget
coordinator) before the Nov. 2 meeting if possible before she goes out of
town to discuss how to handle the subject of the ~$11,000 balance if it
comes up at the community meeting.

- Aaron will send his remaining questions about the GCE/LCE spreadsheet to
Mary.


1. Rebate Follow Up



MONKEY: Kathy will send out an e-mail with the final details of how the
2008-09-10 rebates were calculated so this can be found in the e-mail
archives in the future.





2. Refine External Bookkeeper Job Description/Answering CPA’s questions



We compared the existing GO Bookkeeper’s job description with some notes
Kathy made. We also reviewed CPA Len Pytlak’s questions. We concluded that
we need to keep some tasks internally, that don’t make sense to outsource,
in an Internal Bookkeeper/Checkwriter job. We’ll also keep the Check
Depositor job.



MONKEY: Amy will revise the job descriptions for Internal and External
Bookkeepers, and send to Kathy for review. Then Amy will send this to Len
Pytlak and Scott Bogard for bids, and Aaron will send to Melissa Speicher
for a re-bid now that the job description is more streamlined and clear.



What are we doing for the rest of the current year? Carl Hanna has
announced that he is no longer willing to continue to work for Great Oak.



We need to get some documentation from Carl about loans.



MONKEY: Kathy will contact Carl to get detailed information about GO's
loans. We will pay him for his time at $20/hr.



Kathy will continue to do GOCA books and check-writing for the time being.





3. 2012 F&L Budget



We forgot to include funds in the proposed 2012 F&L budget for a community
financial training session. What if we petition Process to use Skills &
Thrills funding to do this for us, and do it in the spring?



MONKEY: Becky will e-mail Process to ask for their thoughts on using Skills
& Thrills money for community financial training in 2012, and cc Rod.



This could be discussed at the November 2 community meeting. If Process is
not on board, we’ll need to build it into the F&L budget.



How much should we put into the budget for the external bookkeeper?



We’ll do our best to get three bids by Nov. 2:

- Scott Bogard, “professional amateur” who has been doing Sunward’s
books for 10 years or more

- Melissa Speicher, professional bookkeeper

- Len Pytlak, CPA firm with on-staff bookkeepers



4. Next steps re: ~$11,000 balance



At the brainstorm last week, people most wanted a combination of putting
some funds into in the reserve and spending some. Ideas for spending
included more exterior lights (Grounds is getting a bid), the community
garden plumbing, and steps adjacent to the sledding hill. Becky told the
community at the meeting that F&L would come back with a proposal and go
through a two-meeting process.



If this comes up on the floor during the budget meeting on November 2, we
need to remind people that we don’t have community agreement on how to use
the money. There was some agreement that the operating budget should be
approved separately from this money, because they are really two separate
things.


If we keep the decision about how to use the funds separate from the
operating budget decision, then when F&L brings it back, the community
could, if it chooses, decide to apply funds to operating expenses, which
would result in a rebate at the end of 2012.



This is something to be discussed with the facilitators for Nov. 2. It
seems like it would be bad process to mesh together the operating budget
with a decision about this money. It seems like it is most responsible to
decide whether our expenses are important going forward, and not decide
based on a one-time extra amount of money.



MONKEY: Becky will talk with Elph and Tammy (facilitators) and Rod (budget
coordinator) before the Nov. 2 meeting to discuss how to handle the subject
of the ~$11,000 balance if it comes up.



5. Master Deed



Today Aaron looked at the spreadsheet he obtained from Adi, and will get
verification from Elph that it is the most recent spreadsheet. He has a
couple of questions remaining to work out.


MONKEY: Aaron will send his remaining questions about the GCE/LCE
spreadsheet to Mary.



5. 6. Minutes

We decided to do minutes in rotation, as Amy is getting tired of doing them
while also trying to track the agenda in her role as convener.


7. Tabled until 11/14 meeting



• Jobs for Next Season – there is time to post these before the work survey
goes live on 11/18.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gocoho.org/pipermail/finance-minutes_gocoho.org/attachments/20111029/b78c4803/attachment.html>