Minutes from 12/5/2002 Meeting

Here are the minutes from the meeting this past Thursday evening.

In attendance: Ian, Dave B., Kayla(sp?), Chris (one of many), Shane, Eric W.

Financial report: We have $25 in bills, plus another $5-10 in change (Eric didn't have time to count it before running out the door to the meeting). This translates loosely to mean that we need $$! Some methods of getting money were discussed including getting more donation cans. Some possible locations were discussed including: Mad Market, Coffee Messiah, Bauhaus, Vita, the Roma, Victrola, The Vera Project, 2nd Ave Pizza, Good Morning Healing Earth, The Globe, the Sureshot, and Rainbow Natural Market. Benefit shows might be nice, Eric said he would work on setting up at least one. Tabling at shows is another possible source of revenue. Eric W. has some tabling material, if people are interested, contact him. At smaller shows (basements and diy type venues, etc.) simply announcing that FNB needs moolah and passing a hat might be effective.

Grants- there are lots of smaller ones available, and it would likely be worth our time to start pursuing them. It may be possible to use the CPC tax id for some of them. In particular, Shane mentioned a PCC grant, he has experience getting it for another project, and FNB got much of the money for the old van from a PCC grant.

Clean Up- The CPC has not been getting cleaned on a consistent basis, for this reason there is now a clean up check-list. Every Sunday, someone should take responsibility for signing off on the checklist and leaving their name and a daytime phone # for the next day. The next time we leave the center dirty we WILL be fined $50 (about the coast of labor for them to clean up our mess). CPC asks that we try to consider the following three things while cleaning: Is it clean enough for very small children to crawl around and play in? Is it clean enough to not turn off donors who may stop by to visit (the CPC is dependent on donations for its' existence)? Will members of the community feel comfortable utilizing the space in the state of cleanliness it is in? Eric pointed out that by having one or two people stay behind and clean up while the rest go to the feed, it can hide the actual clean up that needs to happen, and lead to a specialization of knowledge in FNB. He suggested that is would be better to not leave for the feed until the CPC is clean and everyone leave together. Another possibility that was brought up was to have teams that stay to clean, so that it does not fall on one person. No solid decision was made in the matter.

Eco-renovation Party- The CPC is celebrating getting a neighborhood grant to begin the design stage of their eco-renovation. The long term plan is to make the CPC an educational example of green building and sustainable design methods. They are having a kick-off party this coming Wed. 12/11, from 6-8pm. Eric is providing catering to it as a sorta-FNB project. To contact him about specifics of the catering, email him, er, me (bq383@).

Additional feeds- Shane, Chris, and others want to expand to more days of cooking and serving. They may have space to cook. Possible locations include: Reservoir Park, Westlake, Washington Park, Victor Steinbrueck, and more! Stay tuned for further details!

Listserve- get on it to facilitate better communication (send email to majordomo@scn.org with the message subscribe fnb-seattle). Then again, if you are reading these minutes, you probably already know that.

Van- Breaks need work, it could probably use a tune up, etc. Ian said he can help with it, and has some experience working on cars, but is broke like a joke and can't buy parts, etc. In theory if FNB has money, we can pay for it.

Meal Structure- Generally the meals we serve are good, but sometimes we don't prepare the most nutritious meal possible with the ingredients at hand. We also discussed things which aren't necessarily always present in FNB meals which would be nice: Brown Rice should be more prolific, perhaps, Uwajimaya would like to occasionally donate a bag or two. Juice is available from Odwalla (in Kent, or somewhere like that), it just needs to be picked up. Tofu might be a good addition if we can get it donated, maybe from Than Son or Small Planet. These last two items led to a discussion of storage. How do we do it? There are two mini fridges in the garage. With some (maybe a lot) of cleaning, they could store some stuff. Shane said his old work comes across full size refrigerators all the time, which would work better. Eric will talk to the Punkin House and see how they feel about that (it would probably increase the electric bill a lot).

That's about it. If anyone who was at the meeting sees these and feels I misrepresented or forgot something, please chime in!

-Eric