![Minutes: Finance & Legal 2003-12-01 [Minutes]](display/images/gocohologo.gif)
Finance & Legal minutes: 2003-12-01
Minutes:
Agenda for 12/1/03 Finance & Legal meeting
7 pm, Jim Graham's house
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Attendance: Willie, Judith, Katie, Jim G., Adi, Dale
Common house / garage / truck loan (Dave, Sarah & Lisa)
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Put recent info on the wiki. We only have the statement generating, but not the money coming in form ready.
We're thinking of getting a truck for hauling and moving things, and not just for snow removal. They will move ahead with a purchase, their budget is $18,600 - part of it will come out of contingency, and rest will come out of a loan.
Progress on LTCRF, including work being done by Buildings (Kelly)
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people at buildings are actively working on that.
contingency modifications (ad-hoc budget committee?)
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There may need to be various cuts made to each item in the contingency allocation. There was talk on how we could save money on the association fees, by saving money by paying off some debt items.
We have a budget that has passed, we'll be looking at the contingency items (such as inserting gutters) but there were also people who thought we could save money by re-allocating contingency funds to reduce debt.
Buildings or someone will need to put some thought into how much the gutters will cost, since our open porches may present a problem.
MONKEY: Kelly will follow-up on potential gutter costs.
Master deed conflict on windows, doors, etc. (Dale, info from Sunward)
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Our insurance covers windows (the master policy), however the master deed has an internal conflict about how windows are covered.
MONKEY: Dale will follow-up with how windows are covered on the master deed.
We've been operating by including windows in our LTCRF estimates, so this isn't really a status change, but somewhat annoying to have this anomaly in our master deed.
Bookkeeping
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- Setting up books (perhaps w/Jim Birchler of Myler & Associates)
How do we know that our books are setup so that things are in line with general accounting principles, and easy to be used for tax purposes and other needs. We could talk with an accounting company to have them help us out in setting things up properly. It would be around $1100 to do a review, this also includes taxes, whereas taxes alone would be about $250.
They do this all the time, and because we already have a lot of this setup, we may be able to save time (and money) on the original startup costs. We have $1500 allocated for professional fees each year.
We agree that we should follow our own proposal, in order to get 3 bids. There is some separation between the club and the association. Kathy Bobblit may have a lot of work to do in order to start bookkeeping with a lot of data entry. However, we've got things setup, and the association is only a few months old, and still not terribly complicated.
F&L should be very supportive of Kathy & how much work she'll need to do.
- transition, operations manuals, & training
We have check-logger, and check-depositor, we still need to writeup the procedure on how to do bookkeeping. All of this info is in the Wiki, and should be written so that anyone can step in at any time to take this over.
We need more development on the procedures. However, Dale doesn't feel that the bookkeeper will get buried by the work.
From the accountant we're considering paying for:
A) verifying Quickbooks setup for future purposes
(hopefully, this shouldn't take long)
B) end of year review (around $850 if taxes also purchased)
C) end of year taxes ($250)
We will also do some shopping around. This is the place that does Sunward's books. Myler & Assoc. normally underbids the place that JD recommended. Should we get a local accountant? Can they do this type of work remotely? We'd like to establish a relationship.
MONKEY: Kelly will get a price from her accountant, and her cousin as well.
MONKEY: Dale will call Carol to see what would have been helpful for her.
MONKEY: Willie will ask his brother for a quick quote, and what can be done.
MONKEY: Katie will call a few places in the yellow pages
- flow of deposits (lock box)
Elph needs a lock-box. Ideally, it would be something on the porch (perhaps on the inside) where people could give him checks. A lockable, petty cash box that could eventually go in the common house.
MONKEY: Dale will get the lock-box.
- statements
They went out. Credit on there, to adjust for the rate that we've adopted that is lower than the temporary fee.
We'll make a transition soon, once we get things flowing properly. There will be an operation manual to assist anyone doing one of these jobs. Their job will also be to keep the manual up to date.
Checking account for empowered committees:
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These committees would get their budget allocation, and they wouldn't have to go through some approval in order to spend it.
This could work really well as a social device to "partition" the budget allocation.
Can we get a professional reccomendation on this? This has been thought out before, by someone else. There may be other organizational tricks that someone may be able to suggest.
MONKEY: Willie will send out an email to co-housing-L in order to gather advice.
Getting people caught up with club (not association) fees
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Some discussion of public disclosure, or privacy.
Many suggestions that we add the delinquent fees to the association fees statement. People can slso contact Elph or Dale, and make a payment straight to them.
MONKEY: Judith will send out an email, we'll be adding late club fees to the next assoc. statement.
Having an insurance presentation at an upcoming community meeting
(what the assoc. policy covers, getting dec pages, etc.)
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We could get the information straight from the horse's mouth.
Kelly was adverse to allowing someone to make a sales pitch to the community, and isn't comfortable with where her boundaries are.
Dale feels that it would be valuable to explain to everyone how they need to compliment their own condo insurance.
Perhaps she should come to an F&L meeting to outline our boundaries with her in person, or she could come to a post-meeting info session.
Association fee policies--getting on the agenda, writing up (Jim G on
late fees)
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Jim is sitting on his duff. We had asked for time to present something at the next meeting.
Are we talking about "late fees"? Jim wasn't clear that he needed to work on this issue, but thought he was focusing on economic hardships, such as being laid-off, etc.
We had discussed earlier that we would offer one rate until the 10th, or another afterwards, around 5% or so. The statement would reflect both prices (like a telephone bill), represented as though we have a discount for paying early.
Should we ask the community to approve this policy, or just enact it ourselves?
Do we have the power to do this? What power do we (and other committees) have?
Others may have strong feelings about how this should happen? Could we invite those people to just attend the next F&L meeting? Willie is frustrated that even with large divisive issues that hit the floor several times, people don't show up for those special-interest meetings.
MONKEY: Jim will write up a late-fee policy for wednesday by tomorrow (tues)
Jim may stick a financial hardship policy clause in there, although that may need to wait for another time.
Items that go over budget
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- We may not get the same interest rate as the CH loan rate that we've budgeted
- We'll need to pay a relatively large deposit for workman's comp
- We may not rent out all 3 of the offices
How do we deal with cost over-runs? We could grab about $2k from the steering contingency fund.
We will be reviewing the operating budget about every 6 months (at least to begin with). Some expenses will come in under, and some will come in over. Periodic review of the budget.
We could ask committees to volunteer giving some back. Until we have a few months of living with the budget, we probably should try to shelve expenses until we "need" them.
Perhaps we could draft a policy that would outline where F&L has authority to make budget-balancing decisions. What things we'd need to bring to the community?
If some budget item goes over by more than 5% or $50 of it's line-item for that expense, then the first line is that it comes out of contingency. Also, steering could ask committees to postpone expenses. If we have large or many items, then the periodic review of the budget can come into play - but only afterwards.
There needs to be an ability to do a "special assessment" if we *need* to raise a certain amount of money (such as if we need to replace a rather expensive item).
Sunward automatically gets taxed if their short-term buffer gets depleted.
Where would the busted windows get assigned? Perhaps it could go into the buildings' budget? Did they account for something like this?
We'll give a heads-up to steering that we're thinking about this. "Here it comes, duck". ;)
MONKEY: Dale will talk with steering about how prioritization items will be handled.
1099 to childcare by 2/04
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Kelly & Sarah are working on this, and then later will work on this with Mary
Insurance regarding childcare, other workers (Kelly)
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Much of this was covered over email. We need this due to the consistency that we employ them. The things this type of insurance covers:
- them suing us
- provides workman's comp for them (some small amt if they're hurt)
Doesn't cover the children. If a child gets hurt, or if they do something to the child. However, they may be covered on our liability insurance. This is covered by our liability insurance (if we're here at GO).
To get the children covered, we'd need to pay for a full-blown child-care service. One way to handle this is to ensure that there are always two CCPs with each child.
MONKEY: Dale will present this at the next meeting.
The $750 is a deposit, and other $250 is the charge. Like any other cost over-run, this will come out of contingency.
Project budget review, annotation, presenting
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Sarah & Dale will work on this tomorrow (tuesday). We need to get this out soon. Some nice simple pie-charts would help people understand it quickly & easily. Anyone else is welcome to join them.
Association budget, posting on website & announcing same on go-talk
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MONKEY: Dale will publicized Wiki'd association budget.
Update list of point people
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Kelly would be willing to be the insurance point-person.
Posting minutes to community
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Should we post our minutes to the community? There may be some "sensitive" items that aren't ready for prime-time. However, the community may want things publicly viewable.
Should go-finance be archived? Yes, it should. However, if we send it to go-talk, it would be archived. Will the minute-taker remember to do this? Should the minutes be fresh?
MONKEY: Katie will try to make sure that the minute-taker remember to send the message to go-talk.
Next F&L meeting:
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Sunday, the 21st of December, at 4pm at Jim Graham's place. Nearly all of us will be able to make it.
Kelly will coordinate a pizza order for that meeting. She'll most likely get all vegetarian. Each of us should
Cooler
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Review/audit CDC books
Review/audit our books
Insurance for truck. Coverage for Bobcat? Accidents removing snow? Tractor?
LTCRF investing policy
When we get a financial consultant, ask them about "partitioning" bank accounts, for budgeting purposes.
Revisit insurance boundary information sometime in January when we have a common house
Billing CDC for units for which they collect rent
Other misc budget/financial policies (see 11/3/03 agenda)
Dale - Status of Comcast agreement, getting it on the agenda at an upcoming meeting
MONKEY: Willie will ask to get a current bank balance from Elph to F&L.