Finance & Legal minutes: 2004-03-21

Minutes:

F&L meeting, March 21st, 2004
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Attendance: Willie, Dale, Kathy B., Jim G., Judith, Dave G., Patti

Dave's "game" for discretionary prioritization:
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We're playing with legos to try out a game similar to a dot storm grab
2x 4, 6x 2, and 2 x 3. We get several rounds to place down a set number
of blocks (any size of our choice) in order to fill up the rectangles.

The board looks like a histogram (or bar graph).

3 types of item-funding:
- whole package
- partially funded
- little of both of the above

When the game is done, how do we distribute the rest of the funds?
- take the least popular item (based on percentage) and move it over the
more popular items

How do we make sure that something gets funded at all? Should we limit the
number of projects available to choose from?

This was easy to understand. A demonstration round would help people
understand, and get accustomed to this quickly. People would understand
quickly, but it would also take a while for people to understand the
ramifications.

Could a vote for "none of the above" be used as a vote to "lower my
association fee"?

At the end of a round, items that have hit their limit would be closed
off. People can still remove their items during a round, but can't
break a whole package that has been funded. People can pull blocks off
if there is partial funding above the funding amount.

"None of the above" could go toward the budget contingency.

Wholly funded items could be suggested as "long-term fund" items. So
this would become a partially funded item that we could save up for.
This would create a "trust-fund" for our swimming pool.

Any proposed project can up-front elect to be a long-term project. They
must get at least 20% of their funding each year, otherwise the project
isn't viable. 5 years is the limitation. If it doesn't get all the
support, then those funds could be available for discretionary funds.

Perhaps we should have a small trial, voluntary test of the game. It
seems that playing the game would be the best way to learn how to play
the game.


Township taxes
-------------------
No update on Scio tax update, Adi will follow up with Nick (and Adi).
(They're taxing us for Touchstone for 2003)


Tax implications of renting office space
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Dave Butler (as part of contingency hours)


Visiting late folks
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All households are up to date, or are catching up.
These households knew, but some were surprised by the late fee.

The community has not ratified this, but it's felt that F&L can just start
abiding by it. We should

#!# insert description, make sure last meeting's minutes go out to
community again


Meals checking account
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The money has been moved, Adi is still working on it


Childcare
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We will continue paying for it through the end of May. If there is no
money, we'll need to find some.

However, only the community can spend money. The community had decided
to spend childcare a long time ago. The community is still trying to work out
the budget, which doesn't presently include an item that we all agree should
have been in there.

The community needs to decide that the annual budget does include
childcare, and where does it come from. Could this be tied into the
6-month review process?

How much came over from the club dues? That was an account that was
paying for childcare. Dale says this was very messy because it wasn't
done cleanly. Someone will have to sit down and go through records to
map out what happened.

F&L should bring forth a proposal that would say that we can pay for
childcare from perhaps leftover club dues, or money that was paid before
we had a common house, or we could eat contingeny, or we go into
deficit.

When we do our review of the budget, this will be one of the first items
included.

Dale will work with Patti and Dave Butler (as part of contingency hours)
for working on resolving this.


Common House Loan
-------------------
The paperwork was signed, and the last paper has been sent in.

We infer that JD got the check. We incurred $1,257 in unanticipated
fees. Many of the fees were expected, but we didn't expect it to be
this much more. We need to figure out where this money is coming from.

We all need to pay more for the loan, and the people who pre-paid aren't
entirely finished paying (about $34). The households who pre-paid were
paying to avoid interest, and not loan origination fees.

This would appear under CH operating in the budget. This item went over
budget, how do we come up with that cash? This could be a one-time
charge, or we could increase association fees for a period of time.
Perhaps we just add it into the budget at the 6-month budget review
process.

We now actually know what the actual cost of this will be, instead of
our estimated guess of when we created the budget.

We need to make clear to the community that this is a budget over-run,
and that the pre-payment was toward just the principal to avoid
interest, and did not cover fees. F&L had initially budgeted to pay
those fees, and that estimate was too low.

This will get cleaned up in the 6-month review.

The actual loan rate is 6.0%, which just happens to be amount that we
had estimated the loan for in the initial budget.


Hardship proposal
--------------------
This is ready to go, but Jim G was absent at the last meeting.

Jim will send out a copy of the initial draft to finance. We had a
discussional item at a previous meeting, but no proposal had been
brought up.


Budgeting process
------------------
Patti is still just figuring this stuff out. She needs to get info from
Kathy B., and will have something to talk about at the next F&L meeting.

Perhaps we should get the tax / accounting person involved now, while
the books are being set up, and not necessarily later when we've got a
lot to clean up.

There has been no consultation yet, so we'll need to schedule and set
that up, we either need to have taxes done by April 15th, or file for an
extension by then.

This job was not listed on the work requirements.

We could file for an extension, and send in an estimate check, and then
recruit someone during the next work cycle to do this properly. The next
cycle starts on June 1st.

Patti will ask Dave B to work with her to get preliminary contact with
her with the tax person, and see what they can work out, perhaps file an
extension.

Jim Birchler (or Dave) at Myler and Associates: 477-9270
Hopefully contact someone who is familiar with Sunward.

MONKEY: Dale will send Patti a summary on what Carol does at Sunward.

Helen will presumably need to write a tax estimate check.


F&L work positions:
------------------------
We want committees to report by April 12th for the number of hours for
the next work season. Will we want to adjust the number of work hours
for F&L.

Aaron thinks it's too redundant to be the check depositor. Could this be
combined with someone else's job. This is a distribution of work hours.

"Collection should be under the control of two people whenever possible".

Kathy didn't think it would significantly increase the amount of work
for that job, once she's up to speed. She's not sure how much time it
will take, as she's only done it once. She feels that 4 hours is a
generous estimate.

Judith is planning to step up on tax & insurance for Kelly while she's
on maternity leave.

Budget overseer requires more than an hour per month, but only does it
once annually (twice in the first year).

Perhaps we could add more contingency hours rather than specific job
titles. OTOH, we need to find people who can & will want to take
specific jobs. Tax (Mar, Apr, May) , budget would be (Sep, Oct, Nov).
Unfortunately, we missed out on the full allocation of work hours for
this. We asked for only 1 hour insead of 3 per month.

We will revisit the work requirements at the next F&L meeting.


Membership would like to collect $$ for a gift to Sunward
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Because this is a voluntary solicitation, and a one-time thing, then
this isn't regular community work. Someone needs to honcho it, and take
care of it from membership.


Next meeting: Monday April 5th at 7pm, at Adi's house.


Stuff that can wait for next mtg:
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- Secure location for storage of financial documents
- CH loan is for 5 years, Dale suggests that we amortize this
over 5 years, and borrow this money from the LTCRF.
- LTCRF calculation - Sarah
- worker's comp - Kelly
- truck insurance - Kelly
- tech billing