Minutes, January 18, 2023

 Minutes, January 18, 2023

The meeting was held remotely, using Zoom software provided by Karl.  Attendees were Marguerite, John, Dianne, Fred and Karl.  The meeting itself commenced around 7:20 when it was apparent no one else would be joining.

The first item was the treasurer's report, provided by Dianne.  This took some time as there was a lot to review.  There was extensive discussion of how to account for funds we "would have spent" if we were paying CMFA 20% of our door.  It was agreed that this needed to be accounted for in such a way so as to account for what we actually spent AND for what we would have spent.  We also agreed that Dianne could deal with this issue as she sees fit.

There was also one item that came up that requires further information.  There is a notation in one of the charts that Dianne showed us, which seems to imply that we gave CMFA $80 dollars for our very first dance at the pink room.  It is not clear right now whether that was put down as an expected expenditure, or whether those dollars were actually paid out, and if so, by who, and to whom.  Dianne is going to check with Victor on this.  It may also be possible to determine whether that $80 dollars disappeared out of the cash kitty, out of the bank account or didn't go away at all, by looking at all the funds we had before that dance and comparing it to all the dollars we had after that dance. 

Next, John reported on the status of the installation of equipment in the pink room (equipment slated to be transferred to CMFA ownership to compensate them for allowing us free use of the room until we have recovered those expenditures).  The status is that all equipment we purchased for this transfer has been installed, and all that remains to be done is to test the bluetooth part of the system, and then brief CMFA staff on how to use the gear.  The formal transfer will take place after those things have been done.

Next, Marguerite provided the status of her booking efforts.  We are making good progress, but some slots (bands and or callers) for upcoming dances remain to be filled.  This discussion also covered the next agenda item, which is the status of which dates at CMFA we have been able to reserve for our use.

Next, the status of our social media outreach was discussed.  Dianne and Karl are handling this, and based on recent increases in attendance at dances, these efforts are effective and are bearing fruit.  One important issue we discussed was how to keep control of our branding and continue to use variants of  the text string "contracola" and keep that within our ownership in the online universe.

Next, John reported that he had collected all information that he thinks he needs to correctly identify which persons and entities are covered by our insurance.  John will write up what he thinks are correct identifiers, and negotiate with our insurance agent to correct our insurance documents in a manner acceptable to us and the insurer.

Next we discussed our future plans, basically how far ahead to try and plan dances.  Marguerite pointed out that planning as far ahead as possible makes her job easier (more lead time).  On the other hand, our future plans ought to be somewhat guided by finding out what works and what doesn't.  For now, we seem to be happy with looking ahead about three months, except that, as Karl pointed out, there are some special cases where we have to decide what our plans are way ahead of time, such as during the November and December holidays.

The attendance at our last two dances was the next agenda item, but this had already been covered earlier during the discussion regarding our social media outreach.   

We finished by setting our next board meeting as Wednesday March 1.