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Monday, August 30, 2004 (7pm) MINUTES APPROVED
Board
Present: Graeme Hussey (President/Board Chair, Human Resources Committee Liaison), Andy Summers (Vice President, Promotions Committee Liaison), Geoff Webb (Treasurer, Finance Committee Liaison), Christie Stephenson (Secretary), Jason Diceman (Annual General Meeting Committee Liaison), Justin McNabb (Food Issues Committee Liaison), Lachlan Story (Member Labour Committee Co-Liaison), Grif Cunningham (Property Management and Planning Committee Liaison), and Aysa September (Web Committee Liaison, Member Labour Committee Co-Liaison).
Regrets: Anil Reddi (Chronicle Committee Liaison, Orientation Committee Liaison).
Staff
Regrets: Sarah Fairley (General Manager)
1. Approval of Agenda
Agreement by consensus to approve the agenda with the addition of an in-camera item.
2. Correspondence and Announcements
Graeme reported there had been no correspondence from members. Christie added there had been no email messages sent to the board.
3. Minutes
Agreement by consensus to approve the June 2004 minutes.
4. General Manager's Report
Payments to the receiver general are up to date.
Retail sales tax and WSIB payments are up to date.
Sales:
- The sales appear to be on or below target for the month of August.
- The expenses appear to be on target for the month of August.
Staff:
- Paul Dixon is on an extended vacation through most of the month of August so that he can be home with his newborn son.
- Sheila Banerjee will resign from Karma on September 4th so that she may return to school.
- Michel Sauve will resign from her position as shift manager on September 4th so that she may travel.
- Lisa McLean will be promoted to the position of Shift Manager on September 4th.
- Christine Delay, originally hired on a summer contract, has been offered a permanent Grocery Clerk Position starting September 4th.
- The numerous changes to our staff make up are well timed and will have no detrimental effect on co-op operation.
Capital Changes
- New office equipment, a multipurpose phone-fax-copy-scanner machine was purchased when our photocopier broke down. Total cost including extended warrantee was $1000.00.
Operational Changes
- Karma began accepting debit on August 23rd. Cheques payments will likely be phased out in October or November (depending upon the degree to which members use the direct-debit payment option).
Member Labour:
- Karma needs a new clean-up co-ordinator due to a resignation. The Member Labour Co-ordinator has several strong candidates.
- I met with the Chair and the Liaison to the Member Labour Committee to discuss the future role of the committee and the tasks currently assumed by the committee. Several areas were identified in which the committee is completing tasks that either do or could fall within the job description of the Member Labour Co-ordinator. I identified this as an area of concern due to the difficult in determining accountability for Karma staffing such a situation. Discussions are ongoing and positive.
Miscellaneous Items:
- Karma’s audit will take place on August 26 and 27.
- The annual membership survey is on schedule to be launched in mid-September. Various committees have been consulted about what questions to include.
Announcements and Questions to the board and committees:
- Past practice at Karma has been to award Karma members who are
- Karma staff 2hrs work credit for every month worked upon their resignation from paid work at Karma
- ONFC staff 2hrs auto credit every month as long as they are employed at ONFC (I believe this practice was adopted as a way of supporting other co-ops)
- The Member Labour Committee has alerted me to the need to formalize this practice.
- Does the board support continuing to offer Karma’s staff the “work credit” benefit?
- Does the board wish to continue offering the auto credit to ONFC staff?
Action Items:
- None to report
Discussion
Justin noted that he had received feedback that the staff appreciated the new multipurpose phone-fax-copy-scanner machine.
Justin noted that no one on the ONFC staff was receiving autocredit at present.
Lachlan noted that we needed a policy on whether staff should receive work credit. Christie suggested that if we decided not to extend work credit that we could consider covering the annual cost of membership as a benefit. Graeme suggested asking Sarah to make a policy recommendation to the board on this issue.
Agreement by consensus to have Sarah to make a policy recommendation on the issue of whether staff should receive autocredit.
5. Executive Reports
5A. President (Graeme)
Report submitted:
Action Items Not Completed:
- Continue to work on finalizing GM contract
Discussion
Graeme noted he had been in Malaysia for most of the month.
5B. Vice President (Andy)
No Report Submitted
5C. Treasurer (Geoff)
No Report Submitted
Discussion
Geoff noted that approximately 40 members had switched to paying the flat fee.
Andy asked about the issue of shopping lists and Lachlan reported Sarah was addressing this to tighten up their use.
Geoff noted that the previous fiscal year will reflect a loss but not a loss as great as anticipated.
5D. Secretary (Christie)
Report submitted:
Action Items Completed:
- Draft June 2004 board meeting minutes and distributed to directors for review
- Amended May 2004 board meeting minutes and submitted for website posting
- Checked board@karmacoop.org account for messages intended for the board
6. Committee Reports
6A. Annual General Meeting Committee (Christie)
Report submitted:
Date of last meeting: August 9th
Date of next meeting: August 24th
Action Items Completed:
- Palmerston Library - Booked
- Agenda Drafted
- Essential Info posted on bulletin board and in Chronicle
- Initiated by-law review process
- Refined AGM committee terms of reference
- Initiated plan for Distribution of meeting notices via E-mail
Action Items Not Completed:
- Palmerston Library - $200 to pay
- Plan Food and Drink
- Plan child care
- Plan and produce AGM Notice
- Plan and produce Pre-AGM Package
- Book information session for prospective board candidates
- Conduct short Member Questionnaires seeking insight on issues.
Announcements to the board and committees:
- Request proposed resolutions for the AGM (from board, committees and members) be sent to agm2004@karmacoop.org
- We will be distributing guidance for report submission format.
- Howard Kaplan is willing to make graphic charts for Financial info.
- Start pushing good members to apply for board elections. They need to send a letter to agm2004@karmacoop.org
Questions for the board:
- Who has authority to send email to all the members?
- Should the email list collected for the AGM notice be considered for only this one off use, or does the board plan to send bulk emails to this list in the future?
- Who will conduct information session for prospective board candidates? When and where?
Other Notes:
- All detailed notes can be found at http://karma.1coop.ca/tiki-index.php?page=2004+AGM+Committee
Discussion
Christie noted that Karma’s lawyer had approved the committee’s proposed email notification process.
Graeme indicated it may be more effective for someone other than him to chair the AGM, Jason said he would look into the feasibility of getting a facilitator.
Agreement by consensus that the AGM committee use the email lists to contact members but that a general decision about the use of lists be determined as a future policy.
Several board members indicated they would be willing to participate in the prospective board member information session. Jason said he would contact board members to finalize. Feeling that one session would be adequate and board members could be available to speak to anyone interested but unable to attend the session.
6B. Business Planning Committee (Graeme)
Report Submitted
Date of last meeting: August 24, 2004
Date of next meeting: September 14, 2004
Action Items Completed:
- Developed mission
- Developed process
Action Items Not Completed:
- Recruiting new members
Announcements to the board and committees:
- Interested board members are welcome to join
Discussion
Graeme noted that he and Geoff are now members of this committee and that other board members may join if interested and other members maybe be asked to participate.
Lachlan advocated for the committee to present some sort of plan to the AGM to reassure members that the board and committee are addressing financial recovery.
6C. Chronicle Committee (Anil)
Report Submitted
Date of Last Meeting: 11 August 2004 - 7 p.m. at the Store
Date of Next meeting: TBA
Announcements to the board and committees:
- Veronica Rossos (editing, proofreading, writing skills) has joined the Chronicle Committee, and proofread the current issue.
- Jennifer Hunt (graphic designer with writing, editing and proofreading skills) attended this meeting to see if she would be interested in joining the committee and has agreed to do so.
- The Committee still has 2.5 boxes of 8 1/2 x 11 paper at JT printing - they can keep it for us or we can have it delivered to the store for other uses. This is a total of about 12,000-13,000 sheets. The Chronicle committee may want to sell this paper to other committees or to sell it in the store. We need to find out the cost of the old paper first.
- The new partners at JT printing - Jonathan and Tai were extremely helpful and accommodating and were happy to know about the 80% recycled paper for their own uses. It was agreed that the larger format of the newsletter worked well and that the newsletter was easier to read and to design in this format.
- The printers will put the recycled and union logo on the newsletter and will deliver the finished newsletter to the store. They have a website where final digital files can be uploaded when sent to them - they also provide a proof to the editor before they print.
- We might want to apply for an ISBN # so that the Chronicle can be filed with the national archives. People thought this might be a good idea.
- Another discussion point involved the use of the editorial space in the Chronicle. Members wondered if the space should be used as an impartial platform for the issue (introducing or linking the articles in the issue or talking about Chronicle committee business) If editors have opinion pieces they could submit under their byline. This to be further discussed by the committee.
- Finally, the issue was praised for its look and as first time editor Linda said - she definitely learned a lot- thanks to Suzanne, Terry and Ian.
6D. Finance Committee (Geoff)
No Report Submitted
6E. Food Issues Committee (Justin)
Report submitted:
Date of last meeting: 23 August 2004
Date of next meeting: 13 September 2004
Action Items Completed:
- Questionnaire drafted and sent to Rowe Farms. We need to know more about the naturally raised turkeys. ‘Naturally raised’ is believed to be an unregulated term. It may be more appropriate to sell certified organic turkeys, but the cost is prohibitive. Also, the questionnaire will serve as a template when contacting other suppliers.
Action Items Not Completed:
- Discussed updating and reprinting “Harvest Time” this fall with the inclusion of additional recipes.
- Product Rating System requires more fine-tuning before distribution to Board & Staff.
- Complaint received about conventional laundry powder. Product information to be researched.
Other Notes:
- Several new members to be recruited in September.
6F. Member Labour Committee (Aysa & Lachlan)
Report Submitted
Dates of last meetings: August 10 and August 19, 2004
Date of next meeting: TBA
Action Items Completed:
- ML Committee's portion of the July member card reconciliation completed -- Aug 03 and Aug. 04.
- Overview meeting on Aug. 19th with GM, ML chair, and Board Liaison on ML administration: division of labour between staff and membership, and authority/responsibility for the process.
- Committee on-going discussion and evaluation on resources needed for monthly reconciliations. Ironing out the wrinkles in the process.
Action Items Not Completed:
- Non-reconciliation related projects of the committee remain unclear, due to time constraints on the committee over last 2 months.
Announcements to the board and committees:
- The committee is currently doing a lot of monthly member labour reconciliation work, evaluating exactly how many hours this takes, and evaluating if the resources of the current committee are adequate to do this task. Doing this work means that other potential projects are not getting done -- four possible directions are:
- Work on gathering data on patterns and trends of member labour, to better understand our ML problems and better evaluate if our regulation changes are actually having a positive effect.
- More work on possible regulation and policy changes to member labour related issues.
- Other projects related to member labour that has been identified in our initial "ML Committee Objectives" document.
- Work/projects that are more explicitly under the supervision and vision of the ML Co-ordinator.
- The task of setting up written training material for the reconciliation process is in progress -- a document that describes the step-by-step process of the manual reconciliation process, and a series of phone scripts for people calling our members about various ML situations.
Questions for the board:
- If the Board wants to get more involved in shaping the direction that the ML committee takes over the next year, now is the time! Without this, we will be establishing our own internal agenda over the next couple of months on the above tasks.
6G. Orientation Committee (Anil)
No Report Submitted
6H. Promotions Committee (Andy)
No Report Submitted
6I. Property Management and Planning Committee (Grif)
Report Submitted
Nothing to report.
6J. Web Committee (Aysa)
Report submitted:
Date of last meeting: August 24, 2004
Date of next meeting: September 21, 2004
Action Items Completed:
- Tested new email account set-up to ensure that it works with commonly used email software
- Set up a new email list for the Web Committee and verified that the new system works well
Action Items Not Completed:
- Reconfigure email set-up on staff computers and for other karmacoop.org email users, and provide training as required
- Split News and Events into two separate pages on the site, and provide interface to Promotions Committee for updating the Events page (in progress)
Announcements to the board and committees:
- We will be creating additional email lists for other committees and the board, starting with the Chronicle. If a committee does not already have a karmacoop.org group email list and would like one, please contact postmaster@karmacoop.org.
6K. Supervisory Committee (Graeme)
Report submitted:
Nothing to report.
7. Business Arising
7A. Board Governance Policy Approval Discussion
Graeme led a brainstorming on board members expectations and requirements. General feeling that it took about 12 hours per month for a non-executive board member to carry out his/her duties.
8. In-Camera Session
9. Adjournment
Agreement by consensus to adjourn.