Minutes of Genesee Free-Net Board of Directors Meeting September 26, 2002

PRESENT

C. Cramer, G. Viele, L. Griffin, L. LeMieux, V. Lotfi, G. Kitchen, K. Schwartz

Also in attendance:  Kenny Thomas.

The meeting was called to order at 5:20pm

OFFICERS' REPORTS:

Board Chair:

Mary Ann Chick Whiteside will forward any information she finds relevant to the GFN to the board.

Vice Chair:

Nominating committee has sent out an e-mail to all GFN members requesting for nominations for open board positions.  The committee includes board members Lotfi, Viele, Lemieux, and Val McNiff, Marilyn Sage, and Mary Ann Chick Whiteside.  There are currently 6 openings for board positions, 4 are for current members.  The nominating committee will sent out a second e-mail request for nominations before the annual meeting in October.

Secretary:

No report.

Treasurer:

Paid the $34,000 merit bill for 75% of the GFN modems.  It was noted that there are few expenses for the remainder of 2002.  There are 3 remaining CDs that are all due on 9/28. 

 Kay made a motion to move the money from the CDs upon expiration into an interest bearing checking account with CB financial services.  The checking account would require 2 signatures to write checks.  The authorized signatories will be the same as the checking account:  Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, and Chair of the Office Committee (Viele, Lotfi, Peterson, Schwartz, and LeMieux).  Vahid seconded the motion and it passed unanimously.

Old Business:

New Plan Implementation:

Les is acquainting himself with Microsoft Access.  Les, Chad, Larry Porn, and Kenny Thomas met to work out details for moving the office staff to the new database.  Larry is finalizing the front-end and will get the office staff using a read-only version in October so that they can familiarize themselves with Access.

Web Site Committee:

Chad reported that a script to check the links database for bad links is almost complete.  A license for an upgrade to the Wusage program used on the GFN web server was ordered and should arrive in early October.

Marketing & Outreach:

 Scott contacted the resource center to get the GFN listed in their next newsletter that is expected in February or March 2003.  Request for marketing plan sent by Lynette to the board, Garry request that Mary Ann Chick-Whiteside also be contacted for her input.

Office Operations Committee:

Les to send a new online registration form to Chad for creating new accounts.  There is not currently a form for organizational accounts.

Technical Committee:

Kenny has reconfigured the mail server to throttle bandwidth for sending mail.  This should prevent GFN users from saturating Falcon’s T-1 line during peak hours.

Cable and DSL users cannot use the GFN mail server as a relay for sending mail.  Kenny proposed the purchase of a certificate so that users can use SSL to send mail.  The cost is expected to be around $100 per year.  Vahid made a motion that the Board authorize up to $150 for Kenny to purchase the certificate.  The motion was supported by Les and passed unanimously.

New Business:

Educational Partnerships:

There was board discussion about whether this is part of the GFN mission.  Vahid will get a proposal from UM-Flint for a simple website design course and present it at the next board meeting.

Policy Discussion:

Les noted that users outside of Genesee County are charged a triple fee, but that the rule is not enforced.  Les made a motion to remove the policy requiring a triple charge for users outside of Genesee County.  Kay supported the motion and a vote will be taken by the board electronically.

Added:  Electronic vote results: 5 yes, 0 no (October 12, 2002)

Other Business

Managing GFN historical documents:

Many early documents are no longer available.  They were either thrown out or they were lost during the several moves that the office has made.  Current records are stored in the locked file cabinet at the office.  This discussion was tabled until the next board meeting.

The meeting adjourned at 6:37 pm.