Our next board meeting is Thursday January 17th.
I would like progress reports from committees, they can be posted as a reply here, we will probably not have time to talk through them though because the main agenda item at this board meeting is getting our 2019 budget approved. Everything else on the agenda is “do this quickly or defer until next month”.
Agenda is posted here:
http://makeict.org/wiki/January_17_2019
Do we have a budget for 2019 in the works? Will we be covering budget or voting on it at this meeting or do we plan to schedule another board meeting to run through and approve our budget?
I just checked our Forum stats with 387 members we had only 58 viewing post this week. I don’t know the answer but I feel we need some way to reach and better communicate with our membership. https://talk.makeict.org/u?order=topics_entered
107 for the month, I feel a little better https://talk.makeict.org/u?order=days_visited&period=monthly
I’m still working on the budget proposal for the meeting. Unfortunately, sometimes Treasurer becomes a full-time commitment for someone with only part-time availability. Such are the realities of an all-volunteer organization. In a nutshell, however, in the absence of input from some of our area leads, I will be proposing that we continue with the ops budget from 2018 for those areas. Ceramics and Metal have both made proposals that are a bit higher than their previous year, but in both cases I believe that their requests are reasonable, based on their costs from 2018. Ceramics in particular has collected quite a following among our members, much as the Wood Shop and Metal Shop have always done. For capital equipment purchases, the plan for the coming year is to refrain from budgeting for new equipment, but allow special fundraisers if we find we really need or want something (and can find a place to put it). Most other budget categories will be either carried over from 2018 or raised slightly to reflect increased costs last year. Overall, our budget should be considerably lower than last year, allowing us more room to save for a new building. This is all subject to changes the Board may wish to make.