CA WORLD SERVICE BOARD OF TRUSTEES REGULAR QUARTERLY
MEETING MINUTES
May 24th – 29th, 2010
APPROVED
Since this report is a confidential CA document, for members only, it may contain members’ full names. This usage to facilitate communication within the fellowship was approved by the 1990 WS Conference. Such confidential use does not, of course, violate in any way our Tradition on anonymity in public communications media (press, radio, TV, etc)
**Sufficient and suitable time was given to review minutes** When there is a __________, that indicates that the transcriber could not understand, or hear the speaker. Opportunity was given to edit those occurrences.
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May 2010
WSBT Quarterly
Meeting Minutes
Trevor: Scheible: The time is 9:20 middle time USA, let’s open the meeting with a moment of silence, followed by the serenity prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Just for the record, we have been here now for roughly an hour and forty minutes doing personal sharing, we are now moving into the agenda portion of our quarterly meeting. The date is May 24th, no it isn’t, yes it is, May 24th. At this time, starting on my left, we are going to go around the room and do roll call.
Willie Bailey, World Service Office Trustee
Randy Groen, Southwest Regional Trustee
Richard Schafer, Trustee at Large, acting World Service Trustee
Nicolas Lynn, European Regional Trustee, Vice Chair
Lawrence Matlock, Atlantic South Regional Trustee
Robert Lyle, Atlantic North Regional Trustee
Joy Hutcheson, Pacific South Regional Trustee
Kim Sherwan, Midwest Regional Trustee, WSBT Secretary
and I am Trevor Scheible, Pacific North Regional Trustee and WSBT Chair.
Trevor: Just a reminder to everybody, before we do anything else, we will, of course be dealing with a new transcriber on these minutes, so maybe for tonight and at least for part of tomorrow we can announce who we are before we speak, so we can help whoever this new transcriber is. Remember to speak up, speak clearly and concisely, and most importantly, remember to review the minutes when our illustrious secretary Kim sends them out; or she will kill you. Because even myself, who usually speaks fairly clearly, there were some things on the last minutes that I had to call my wife in to see if she could figure out what the hell I was saying, and she couldn’t. So anyway…Could I get a volunteer to read the twelve traditions please?
Joy: I’ll do it.
First Tradition: Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on C.A. unity.
Second Tradition: For our group purpose, there is but one ultimate authority – a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
Third Tradition: The only requirement for C.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.
Fourth Tradition: Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or C.A. as a whole.
Fifth Tradition: Each group has but one primary purpose – to carry its message to the addict who still suffers.
Sixth Tradition: A C.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the C.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
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Seventh Tradition: Every C.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
Eighth Tradition: Cocaine Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
Ninth Tradition: C.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
Tenth Tradition: Cocaine Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the C.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
Eleventh Tradition: Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
Twelfth Tradition: Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
Trevor: Thanks Joy. We will discuss Tradition Twelve; Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities. Anybody have anything to say on that tradition?
Nicholas: I’m Nicholas, the European Regional Trustee. I was just looking at my Twelve by Twelve, it’s pretty bashed up and I love it. One of the final bits is that we are sure we would not survive. I was just thinking what Cocaine Anonymous wrote about it. Do I honestly perform service seeking no recognition, do I respect the anonymity of another addict that shares a confidence with me, do I refrain from complaining about another member’s negative behavior, do I refrain from negatively promoting CA. Yeah, it’s all about Cocaine Anonymous and not so much about me. That helps in my home group to read that out and go through it every week, and read that out, I always love it that we count to 12, cause people question what it is., when it will help another addict, am I willing to share I am a member of Cocaine Anonymous, and I turn that around to sponsees, when I am talking to people who are not addicts, do I need to tell them that I’m one, and I’m sure that some of you have done what I’ve done. I just share about my bus driving and other experiences. My sponsor really helped me, he said maybe it’s not so much CA as CIA as need to know business, you need to know and they don’t, I suppose the years give you a little more help and in judging it, I still get it wrong sometimes, knowing when to really stick to that principle. I remember my first sponsor said “Without personalities, Cocaine Anonymous wouldn’t exist, we need the principles, but the personalities help sometimes, but just make sure you get it the right way round. Don’t make yourself so anonymous that people don’t know who you are. You’re Nik the Stitch, you’re Nicolas L., they know who you are in the fellowship, outside be very careful. That’s always stood me in good stead. I’ve reached out sometimes and because of my behavior I’ve had the chance to 12 step three people where I work. I work free-lance because of my behavior, because the boss says we know you to be discreet, someone knows you go to the fellowship and you don’t make a deal about it and they are sober not because of me, but because of Cocaine Anonymous.
Trevor: Thanks Nicholas.
Richard, addict/alcoholic: While they’re all studying, Real briefly, one of my favorite things to say about anonymity is it’s not that I don’t want to be associated with Cocaine Anonymous, it’s that sometimes Cocaine Anonymous might not want to be associated with me in my actions,
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statement, and behaviors. That’s what really keeps me in check. That thought is what keeps me in check. They might now want to be associated with me. This also helps me check my motives. I’m not an advertiser, as you stated in the beginning, it was the theory that everyone knew I was a drunk; they might as well know that I’m a part of a recovery group. Through working through the steps, going through the traditions, that was really where I came to. It’s not about me not wanting to be associated with Cocaine Anonymous; it’s being careful how I associate the Cocaine Anonymous world with me. That’s all I got.
Kim: I’m Kim; I’m an addict, Midwest Regional Trustee, WSBT Secretary, for purposes of the minutes. Real simple for me is that I always remain as humble as I am grateful and that often it’s a bit of a sacrifice for my ego to remain anonymous outside of this program. I’ve always been reminded that we’re anonymous, we don’t need to be anonymous from each other, for that I’m grateful, ironically, we have a certain language, and I have had people in my workplace come up and say “are you a friend of…” and then it’s all good, humble is grateful to maintain a balance between us. That’s all I got.
Joy: I just love this. I underlined this in my Twelve and Twelve. It’s says “AA’s Twelve Traditions repeatedly ask us to give up personal desires for the common good, and that anonymity is the foundation of it all.” I still believe that. I, on the other hand, I don’t care who knows. I’m out there; people ask “Are you a friend of Bill W.” I say yes, I say my last name in meetings now. Bill said we should not be autonomous in our meetings because most of us don’t know other people’s last names when we’re sitting in a meeting, it’s their first name and their initial or sometimes just their first name, so I now say my last name when I start to share, so I’m not so anonymous in Cocaine Anonymous as I am outside Cocaine Anonymous.
Trevor: Thanks Joy. Anyone else? Okay, we will move along. Next item is the rolls of trustees and how we can work together more effectively as a board and with the WSOB. Anybody have anything they want to…Willie?
Willie: I like the last few weeks where I sent out help to a couple of members of this Board, I was having difficulties in contacting the chairs of different committees, one I didn’t have the address, put out the feelers, nobody responded, you know, so I went to Kim and I went to Richard and I said help, can you make contact and remind them or have them get in touch with me, and it worked. I believe the relationship at the office is getting a lot better. I’m working with Tom and Richard, and we’ve been doing some work and I’m getting cooperation on the Board; and the relationship as I see it is getting much better than it has been in the past. I did make a heartfelt amends to the Board for anything I may have been lacking in, in any area that I have caused a rift in the relationship and a vow to better and to better make them feel that we are one Board. That we are working as a team and that we’re not micromanaging or dictating, but that we’re working for the betterment of Cocaine Anonymous as a whole. That’s all I have.
Trevor: Thanks Willie. Richard?
Richard. Two-fold, number one, to be clear, I see my role as the liaison from this Board sitting on the WSOB, the channel of communication __________ to the WSOT. If there is anything that is not communicated, then it is my job to make sure it is communicated. That is what I’ve read,
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that is what I see my role as, if anyone sees anything different, let me know, and I would say that this agenda item really is about you all stating how we can work together, because Willie and I are sitting on both Boards, so I really would like to hear if there are concerns, issues or wants.
Trevor: I will jump in at this point. I think that for me, in my experience, I would like, I know when somebody asks, when somebody on the Board says “hey what’s going on at the office?” we usually have to report right away, which is great, but I know you all need lots, and I think once a month it would be nice to have “we talked about this and that, whatever, major motions, this is what we did, that kind of stuff I would like to see, just a bit more regularly, a brief little outline of a summary report of what’s going on at the office so that, sometimes I try to communicate with Tom without stepping on either one of your two toes, but sometimes there is stuff that I hear about that it’s not through the two of you, and it’s not from Tom, it’s from somebody else, and they’re talking like I should know…It’s like I probably should.
Richard: You probably should.
Trevor: I might not have, not that it’s been anything major, but that would be what I would ask, is that can we get a once a month a brief outline of what we’ve done, in the last month, nothing major, just important motions, anything discussed coming up in the future. One of the other things that I wanted to again talk about again without beating a dead horse that I’m about to slay again. We talked about it last quarterly, I brought it up. Just a reminder, this is our biggest face time with the fellowship, our roll here, as Carl used to tell me, is to shake hands and kiss babies, so, I know you guys know this, but I’m just saying it for the sake of saying it. We need to be out there, we need to be doing whatever is asked, whether it’s manning the booth giving out stickers, doing World Service Office donation whatever, helping Kim, counting money, doing whatever we get asked to do. I know that through Kim we’ve been asked to do some stuff already, we’ve all said ok. So, I know that we’ll do the work again. That’s why we’re here, that’s why they pay us the big bucks, still waiting for my first check, but this is one of the things I really love, we get here, we do the business for two or three days, then we get to go out and have a party with the whole fellowship. So let’s go out and have a party, but remember that primarily we are the WSBT and that’s our roll, to be visible and helpful wherever and however we can be. If we do that it will be a very successful event. I’m happy to be here, in the middle.
Kim: I’ve gotten fairly comfortable either emailing or phoning up most of you when I need you to phone me, I’ll text, and I know that over the past two years, the communication between the two Boards has not gone so well. There was a time when I thought I knew everything that was going on, there were times when I thought that I knew nothing and I had to ask for it. I know that over the last two quarters, some of my concern obviously has been about the communication between the Boards and with CAWS 2010, going forward all I can ask for is as much information that can be provided from the WSOB meetings and that as much as we all like to know, be in the know, there is something a little disheartening when information from the WSOB meetings has not gone through the chain of communication and particularly not to or from me. Information has gone right to CAWS 2010 and I don’t have a clue. My part is to get on the computer, you all know I’m on the computer all day long, maybe invisible, but I’m there. I need to pick up the phone when I need some answers. That’s how I would love to see it go forward from here. I’ve said all along, this has been a year of change and a year of transition, it
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will probably continue to be that way as we move forward. If we can keep each other in the loop with what’s going on, and be a little bit more transparent and forthcoming with information that we have or don’t have, or said or did out of order.
Willie: To respond to that, I dropped the ball on that. Because I started giving brief synopses after every Board meeting while I’m actually in the Board meeting, and I’ve been lackful for that, I will do better at responding at each Board meeting, what’s happening with each of the convention and plus any significant motions that’s been done, do it right there in the meeting, that way I know it gets done and I don’t have to worry about it, because when I get away from the meeting into work, sometimes I lack. I try to put it in my report, but then I have to call Richard sometimes “Richard what was that supposed to be for,” and so if I start back doing it at the meeting then you guys will get it late that night or early in the morning when you get on your Yahoo group.
Kim: That would be great, thank you.
Richard: That’s what I was going to go back to, that’s really the chain of communication; that Willie supplies the report. If there are things you guys don’t feel are being communicated, my understanding is my job is to communicate that to the WSOB and make sure that everything is in the flow. I will speak about anything when anyone brings up the word ‘transparency,’ I’ve said it at the WSOB, I’ve said it here. I will talk about anything that went on, absolutely, because that’s what we need, we need to talk, communicate, regardless of what was said, if it’s a motion, I talk about it. I’ll state what discussion was, I don’t have an issue or concern with that. It’s important for us to have open lines of communication. If at any point in time you guys feel you need a second report from me, request it. I think if we go back to the WSOT, given the brief synopsis that might fulfill this.
Randy: I had similar concerns specifically about the information regarding the Big Book stuff and how that made it to the 2010 Convention Committee and not from who we would have expected that information to come from somewhere down the road that individual received that information incorrectly or at least through the wrong channels. When we talk about, and this is a question for us, and I’m not sure because I don’t know, do we provide the office board minutes of our meetings?
Richard: Not regularly, not more than the minutes that we send out with the Delegate mailing.
Randy: The reason I ask is that I think about a positive relationship of communication we are asking to get either a summary or potentially minutes from the Office board meeting, probably prior to them being approved, because they don’t get approved until the next month’s meeting, so we are actually asking for unapproved minutes or a summary or synopsis of what took place, would it be reasonable to believe that increasing the communication between the two Boards might be enhanced if we were to provide them the same thing?
Kim: I post the minutes to the WSBT Yahoo group, so maybe moving from this point forward, when they are posted, Willie could send a copy to whomever on the WSOB, I would not expect you to send out any unapproved minutes to anyone from this Board. I send out the minutes, you
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guys look at them, you don’t look at them, you revise them, you do whatever it is you do, and then they go on our agenda for approval. Generally, once they are approved, I try to get them on the Yahoo group. At that point, maybe the WSOT, or in this case, Willie, can send them over to the WSOB so they know what’s going on. That’s one option. It was never a part of the secretary’s job to send them to the WSOB; I don’t think it’s a bad idea.
Trevor: What I was thinking is, one person, and then a back-up person, if that is what the Office Board wants then it’s up to the WSOT to jot down, here’s some major stuff we know on the Board of Trustees, I don’t think it’s wrong to ask the secretary for a copy of the motions, because I’m sure, well, I don’t know who you’re going to get next, but I know Kim could do that.
Kim: Summary of motions, not in the WSBT Secretary’s job description. I do wonder why the WSOB minutes are not provided to the Fellowship. They are not included in the Delegate mailing. I haven’t seen them since I was a delegate.
Richard: Were they included then?
Kim: Yes, I remember seeing the WSOB minutes back in my first and second year as a delegate.
Richard: So it’s fallen through the cracks. Willie, do you want to take that?
Willie: Yeah.
Kim: It’s just a thought, I’m surprised that the Fellowship obviously…my first year as secretary we did a lot of catching up to get a year’s worth of minutes out to the Fellowship because they were totally questioning that, yet I cannot recall anyone asking for WSOB minutes. I don’t get it.
Willie: That’s what I usually do, when you post the draft minutes, I do do a summary, my next report after a quarterly or after a conference call, my report is things from the quarterly. All the things reported, I do report to them. But actually minutes, because I believe it was brought up once before in one of the WSOB meetings, why don’t we get minutes from the Trustees? And I try to provide to them just like I try to provide to the WSBT what is significant for them to have right there on the spot. Again, I will from this quarterly, I will jot down summary of what needs to be passed on to the WSOB. Usually I do it on the spot, like if we elect Director at Large or whatever we are pertaining to the WSOB I do it on the spot so I don’t forget.
Nicholas: On the positive side, because of the CAWS thing, I have had to talk more with Yvette, with Tom, with Willie, with Richard, and what a good job you seem to be doing together. There haven’t been so many problems, there have been solutions. We had to have the Chair of the WSOB and Richard on a phone call for CAWS 2012 recently, I had actual proof that when we work together, we can do great. I just wanted to get that down; we are moving forward, it is getting better. Thanks, Willie for admitting that you let it go a little bit, you’ll be back on that. I look forward to the summaries. I feel very positive about things, it’s taken a bit of time, we’re getting there, to close, this week is an opportunity to be serving and talking with the other Board, in front of them, because we really want to. I’m looking forward to it; this is the place, because at conference we sit apart, over here, we need to be together, in front of the Fellowship, doing it,
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whatever we need to do, it’s not the WSBT or the WSOB, it needs to get done by the Boards, and it will get done. We will be out there in force and we will be together and we’re going to make this thing happen.
Lawrence: It was good to see the financials before the quarterly, the reconciliations and bank statement we haven’t been receiving for a while, so we could look at them and see what kind of financial condition we are in.
Joy: I’d still like to see bank statements once a month as opposed to quarterly, and ones that I can actually open. I couldn’t open these. When they send them as compressed ZIP file, this computer doesn’t like them, because the Delegate mailing, the first one that went out, that was wrong, crashed my computer. So my computer doesn’t like condensed ZIP files anymore. So if we could get the bank statements once a month that would be really cool.
Trevor (Chairs Opening Remarks): I think I’ve probably made most of them. Something that struck me when we were just going through this last round of discussion, and it very much just struck me, so I’m not sure I even totally agree with myself or not, but I know that in past years, not always, but usually, this Board has sat together at one or two tables, and I’m almost wondering If we’re going to continue that of if we shouldn’t make it three or four tables and have it be intermingled with Trustees and Office Board members. I don’t know what you all think about that, I guess we’ll…not a motion or anything…it might be a good idea. We’ve got several things to get through on this agenda, we’re going to do the work, one thing that I want to stress is that I want us to be done so that we can get out and enjoy the convention and do all the other things we have to do this week, but I don’t want to leave anything that could and should be done at this quarterly and put off online, especially anything that requires Kim’s time and effort to put together for the Conference. In a lot of cases, I’m not kissing nobody’s ass, but it’s all about you, because you’re the one who’s going to have to put it all together, so I want it done so you have ample opportunity to do that, and we’re not coming to you two weeks before the Conference saying “Kim, can you type this up and put it in the proper format,” I don’t want that. We love you; we want to treat you better than that so we’re going to do it. Remember why we’re here, remember we can and will get through this. We are going to have a really good time this week.
Next item is review of the agenda; it has two things added now: 2010.5.08, new transcriber for WSBT minutes and 2010.05.09 the DRPD position, which Willie asked to go on the agenda.
Joy: Is that the Board to Board or ours?
Trevor: It would have to go on ours first, pending discussion; it could be brought up on the Board to Board meeting. I will also say at this point I do not have the limited Board to Board meeting finalized for a time slot, I wanted to talk to Kim and Joy first and see when the interviews were scheduled, and I am still somewhat unsure as to when Barry is getting here. So that’s going to be…
Richard: Wednesday evening, 6:00.
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Trevor: So then we will plan the meeting for most likely sometime Thursday before everybody’s busy running around doing other stuff, but I will get together as soon as I see Tom, I can actually email Tom today, when I hear back from him I will let you guys know when that’s going to work on Thursday morning.
Randy: Is that when she would be setting up or does that all happen on Wednesday?
Trevor: If Barry doesn’t get in until 6:00 on Wednesday night, I wouldn’t feel right about saying “hey Barry, welcome to Milwaukee, thanks for coming, now come and sit down in the Board meeting for an hour or two.” Let’s give the guy a chance to get in and get settled or whatever, unless…if you guys want to see if they’ll do it…I guess I can ask them. Here’s the thing too. I want to have our one-on-one with Tom before the limited Board to Board.
Joy: And Tom’s coming when?
Trevor: Tom’s coming in on Tuesday, so I’m going to schedule Tom in for Wednesday.
Willie: But Tom’s going up north to golf, right?
Randy: I saw him in Phoenix this weekend and I think he’s going up Kohler to play a little golf.
You may want to touch base with him to find out.
Trevor: So I will have to let you guys know about it for sure.
Randy: The only reason I am concerned is that the Boards, there are going to be members of that Board that are going to be really busy setting up for registration and getting stuff set up.
Richard: Ask them to come up with a day and time that will work for them, they will supply it to us, we will work around it.
Trevor: And if it has to be some time the rest of the program is going on, then it will have to be some time the rest of the program is going on. Is there anything that anyone would like to add to the agenda at this point? Hearing none, this will not be your final opportunity; you can do so later as well. Next item is the review of the Board to Board agenda. Are there any questions or is there anything to add. I know Joy had added a couple of things, the financial, the Trustee budgets, the Trustee request to the WSO, there was the email forwarding process, correspondence to CAWSO and the WSBT secretary and/or WSBT@ca.org. Does anyone have anything they want to discuss now?
Richard: What are those topics regarding?
Trevor: The financials, the Trustee budgets, and the Trustee request to the WSO. I believe…
Joy: I made a couple of regional requests that were totally ignored until like two days ago. I requested a map of Nevada, because Las Vegas has asked to find out where the separation is between the Pacific South and Pacific North. Well, we still don’t really know where the
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separation is, because all I got was a photograph of the Las Vegas area, times four. The first time I made the request, Yvette was out of the office and a message was left for her, the second time I made the request, Yvette and Tom were going over the Delegate mailing and Tom told me that when they were done, he would make sure I got it. It was ignored.
Richard: Or forgotten about.
Joy: One or the other, it’s more an organizational thing, I don’t want to have to call or, I think if I make one request it should be followed through with, not 20 request to get the wrong information. Do you know what I mean?
Richard: I understand what you’re saying and why you want to open up a dialogue…
Joy: That’s why I wanted to bring the dialogue to them, to find out maybe there’s some way, someone to do a to-do list, regional requests, Trustee requests. Even Willie, I talked to Willie about it, he said he requested the same thing, did you ever get it?
Willie: No, but they couldn’t find what I wanted. But I sent an email, I believe I cc’d you.
Joy: So the request was made three times.
Willie: To get the map to you and of course hopefully to find what I needed.
Trevor: What it comes down to, bottom line is that if one of us makes a request, for something we need, whether or not they can do it right then or not, a simple little “we got your request, this is currently number whatever on our agenda, we will get back to you as soon as we possibly can.” I am okay with that, I realize we are understaffed and overworked and whatever.
Joy: That would have been great…
Trevor: Acknowledging, got it, we will get to it as soon as we can. Then if you don’t have it, at least a follow-up saying “we looked and to the best of our knowledge, the information does not exist,”…
Joy: We need to add to this list, the total donation letters for the year for people’s tax returns. If I get audited and I write off the total donations I make to World through the contribution program and we don’t have proof that we made those donations, we can’t write them off. We’ve gotten one every year except this year.
Willie: You haven’t gotten one?
Joy: I don’t think they went out to anyone.
[various people] I didn’t get one…
Trevor: Let’s add that to the agenda then.
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Joy: We can bring that up under financials and trustee budgets if you want.
Willie: They were sending out a bunch of letters was it the last Board meeting? It was the 13th when I came in to the office early, they were doing a bunch of letters for donations and I don’t know if that was for the contribution program.
Joy: The reality is that most people do their tax returns by the end of March, beginning of April, legally; they’re supposed to go out March 1.
Kim: January 31, a 1099, a W-2 or any of that?
Joy: March 1.
Kim: If you’re in the middle, it’s January 31.
Joy: In California, it’s March 1. February 1 is W-2’s, March 1 is 1099’s.
Trevor: Business Item 10, letters regarding contribution program donations for tax purposes.
Joy: The reason I put Trustee budgets on there is because we all need to know where we stand with our budgets because we have three more months left on our budgets, not that we get…
Trevor: I travel for free is what I know, I travel not for free, but on my own dime, because I’m an ass.
Joy: Well, as of March, you’re not.
Trevor: As of last year, when I was over…
Joy: That’s last year. You’re ’09-10, this year.
Trevor: I was over last year, so this year I made the decision to not, whatever.
Joy: You have $17 left supposedly, but this budget only goes until March, so I’d have to look at the full year budget to tell you what you have left.
Trevor: I’m over. I’ll tell you right now, I’m over.
Kim: I keep an excel file.
Joy: yeah.
Trevor: yeah.
Richard: yeah.
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Kim: Whatever.
Joy: It’s also to make sure that everything that is posted in here is what you all have, also.
Trevor: I think it’s a good idea to come up with, and speaking uneducationally, it would be pretty easy to put together an excel spreadsheet where each one of us as a separate sheet saying this is what we start with, this is what we spend, this is what we have left. It seems a matter of data input, I would think.
Robert: Can we include the French translation to the agenda?
Richard: of HFC II?
Robert: Yes. I just want this as a place marker. I know they’ve been working on it; I just want to make sure other people know about it, like the European Region, they probably are interested in what is going on with the French translation.
Kim: On which agenda?
Robert: Board to Board. Or if you want to ours.
Trevor: No, we can report on it in that. Number 5 on the Board to Board, the French Translation status.
Randy: If you’re going to add the DRPD to ours, shouldn’t it be on this Board to Board?
Trevor: If what I think Willie is going to want to talk about on that is what Willie is going to want to talk about, it doesn’t belong on that agenda unless the right outcome comes out of this Board. If need be, we can always add it later. At present, it doesn’t belong there.
Randy: Got it.
Trevor: Are there any other comments regarding either one of the agendas before we move on? The next item on the agenda is the approval of minutes. Kim, please correct me, it was the quarterly minutes you just got some revisions on? You said that one of them wasn’t, you said that…
Kim: Yes.
Joy: Motion to table.
Trevor: This is a procedural thing I would like to see, this is only my wish, is that I think that Kim does a good job of getting them out, once she gets them from the transcriber, and I do know what, being a former secretary for the Board, that’s not just getting them from the transcriber and shipping them out, there’s some work that goes into it. I would like to see us have, I don’t know what you guys would be okay with, a week, ten days, two weeks, something along those lines,
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where we can look at them and make our corrections and revisions, and get them back to Kim so we can get this done in a timely manner. That’s my thoughts, or you do, or if Kim does.
Kim: I know that the Board to Board minutes, got back to me relatively close to this quarterly meeting, so I didn’t really expect everyone to send me their revisions. I have received revisions from three people, Joy, Trevor, and I got Lawrence’s, though I have not been able to merge your revisions. I believe Joy just made a motion to table the quarterly WSBT minutes, and I will second that.
Trevor: We have a motion to table, it is non-debatable. Is there any objection to tabling? Thank you.
Kim: Motion to table the 10-02 quarterly minutes.
Joy: Second.
Trevor: We have a motion to table, is there any objection to tabling? Thank you.
Kim: Motion to table the 10-04 conference call minutes.
Joy: Second.
Trevor: We have a motion to table, is there any objection to tabling? Thank you.
Kim: In reference to the conference call minutes, revisions have been made. Please look them over so that between now and August we can do some online motions and get all of these done, actually I would like all of these approved prior to the delegate mailing…
Willie: So you mean July 1?
Kim: Yes, July 1. I would like to get them to the office by June 15. In the next couple of weeks, once we get back, if I don’t hear from you, and even if it’s a note, Robert will write and say “I have no revisions.” I save all of that until we approve the minutes, and we can send them out. Thanks.
Trevor: There is no reason we cannot get three sets of minutes approved in the next three weeks to get them delivered to the office.
Nicholas: Can we put a deadline?
Trevor: We really can’t until everybody gets their corrections into Kim or a note into Kim saying I have no corrections.
Kim: By June 15 if I haven’t received anything from you…I will put out a motion to approve.
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Trevor: My own personal experience, especially on the quarterly minutes, I went through the last ones, I literally, I said it, and I had no idea what I was talking about. So I know Barbara didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, because I had no idea. So if you don’t want to look like an ass in front of the fellowship, those who actually spend time to read them, we need to read them and get them fixed before we send them off. Sometimes stuff I know I didn’t say will end up, sometimes it’s a mike problem, or whatever it is, and I know sometimes stuff gets changed. If we could please take a look at those and get those in to Kim that would be fantastic.
Next item on the agenda is the approval of record of online business from March, 2010 to May, 2010.
Kim: Motion to approve the record of online business from March, 2010 to May, 2010.
Nicholas: Second.
Trevor: We have a motion to approve the record of online business from March, 2010 to May, 2010. Any discussion? Motion passed unanimously.
Next item on the agenda is the WSBT Officer’s reports.
Richard: Motion to approve the Officer’s reports as submitted.
Robert: Second.
Trevor: Motion by Richard to approve the three WSBT Officer reports as submitted, seconded by Robert. Is there any discussion? Motion passed unanimously. The next item is the Trustee reports.
Richard: Motion to approve the Trustee reports as submitted.
Willie: Second.
Trevor: We have a motion to approve the Trustee reports as submitted. Is there any discussion?
Richard: Did everyone read them all?
Kim: Yes.
Richard: Thank you.
Trevor: Is there anymore discussion? Motion passed unanimously.
Joy: Motion to approve all WSBT subcommittee reports…
Richard: Before you make that motion, can you just make an amendment to the one you want, and then we can approve them all?
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Joy: Yes
Willie: Second.
Trevor: Motion to approve the WSBT subcommittee reports as submitted. Any discussion? Motion passed unanimously.
Joy: Motion to accept the Trustee Conference Committee reports, with the exception of Convention, CAWS 2010, CAWS 2011, and CAWS 2012.
Willie: Second.
Trevor: Any discussion? All in favor? Motion passed unanimously with mild confusion.
Joy: I’m sorry…So would we approve the Conference Convention report with corrections?
Trevor: What you could do…
Randy: Is table it, change it and bring it back?
Trevor: No, it would be to simply the Convention individual years first, have somebody, like Willie or somebody, said he was doing it, make that simple change, then re-email it and say to accept the one that was emailed out two minutes ago.
Joy: Okay, because we’re just changing Long Beach, because Long Beach did not submit the bid, the Pacific South Region submitted the bid.
Trevor: It’s not a major change.
Joy: I’m trying to keep my region unified, that would be one way to keep them unified.
Trevor: We have on the agenda for acceptance, any one of the four of the Convention Conference Committee reports or the three currently awarded.
Joy: Motion to accept the CAWS 2010 Convention report.
Willie: Second.
Trevor: Motion to accept the CAWS 2010 Convention report. Any discussion? Motion passed unanimously.
Randy: Motion to approve the CAWS 2011 Convention report.
Richard: Second.
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Trevor: Motion to accept the CAWS 2011 Convention report. Any discussion? Motion passed unanimously.
Nicholas: Motion to approve the CAWS 2012 Convention report.
Joy: Second.
Trevor: Motion to accept the CAWS 2012 Convention report. Any discussion? Motion passed unanimously.
Trevor: Let the record reflect that gestures and retaliatory gestures were made between Richard and Joy.
Joy: Motion to accept the Trustee Conference Committee report related to the World Service Conference Convention Committee submitted by Willie Bailey, as amended.
Willie: Second.
Trevor: Simplified, motion by Joy to approve the Convention Conference Committee report as submitted by Willie Bailey at 10:25 pm, amended slightly.
Willie: If we never accepted it, we do not have to accept it as amended, do we?
Trevor: Motion by Joy to accept the Convention Conference Committee report, submitted by Willie Bailey. Any discussion? Motion passed unanimously.
Kim: Are you going to delete and repost the new report to the Yahoo group please?
Willie: Actually I just made corrections, but I will resend it. I edited it from what was already on the Yahoo group. So I just went in and edited it. So if you go back in now, you should have the corrections.
Randy: I have a question. In the past we had excluded the CAWS convention reports and actually listened to individual reports from each convention without just blanketedly approving the reports, no? I just cannot see another place in the agenda for those conventions…
Kim: Those are on the Board to Board agenda.
Randy: Okay, then I would request that CAWS 2011 takes a spot on our agenda, because I have a couple of things that I need to ask this group not the Board to Board.
Trevor: We have a new item of business, 2010.05.10, CAWS 2011, requested by Randy Groen.
Trevor: We will take a 10 minute bio break.
End of part one
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Trevor: Welcome back, it is 10:46 pm middle time. We are now moving into the place marker business items. The first item is 2006.02.20 that is the Copyright and Trademark protection to remain on the agenda for quarterly review. As it looks right now, we did not have anything new coming up until September 30 of 2012; that would be the next renewal of anything we currently have.
Joy: We’re still waiting for the actual proof that the April 24, 2010 was done. We’ve been verbally told that it was done, but…
Richard: and via email communication, however, we have not seen it.
Joy: Correct.
Trevor: So that’s something to ask you guys, when you see it, please forward us a copy.
Willie: I made mention in an email and I cc’d Richard and Joy on it, requesting information and I requested from Yvette that yes, we are waiting for the attorney’s, but can we get where they actually submitted it, can we get a copy of the submittal, so that we know there’s no lacking. Because we have documentation in case something was to come up right now we have nothing to say where we did it other than a canceled check.
Joy: Correct. We need to see the proof; it would have been nice to have it to attach to the Legal report.
Trevor: Hopefully for the Conference report, it will be there
Randy: The additional portion of this from Richard, we did get permission or approval to move the ® under the inside of the logo.
Joy: But we don’t have proof yet that they…
Richard: I got an email stating that was confirmed by the attorney, that was within our trademark, the ® could be within the circle. I requested that also.
Randy: That being said, I would request that the Office work with me, I’ve got a couple of people in our fellowship that does publishing to do that. Cause right now when you ask the Office for the logo, you get an email and the ® will be on the outside. So to make sure that when groups take and move that ® to the inside that the ® is not made too small or too big or whatever, I would ask that the Office take responsibility of getting one with the ® moved to the inside that can be sent to the Fellowship when requested. The reason I’m asking, it will open up a lot of neat product ideas for memorabilia, not only for our upcoming convention, but for flyers and all kinds of things. It seems petty, but it will make a big difference as to what we can do with that logo from a memorabilia standpoint. So, it would be cool.
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Trevor: I like that, I think that one step further, we might want to submit a referral to actually get something passed on the conference floor because say it can be placed inside the circle lower right, well does that mean it can be CAR?
Randy: That’s what I’m asking, that the Office produce that acceptable alternative logo, that when the Fellowship requests it, it comes directly from the Office.
Richard: In order to get this, my opinion is, when this goes to the Conference floor, the questions are going to come: Do we have legal authorization to do that? So, we have a legal response that, yes, that does continue to maintain our copyright on the logo, but what we would need, in my opinion, would be a document from the attorney stating that, which is going to cost us money.
Joy: I say we do it.
Richard: Okay, I don’t have an opposition to do that, that’s my…if we’re making that request.
Joy: That was the request we made.
[unknown]: Who?
Joy: You made that request to me; I in turn made that request to you. That was an official request.
Richard: For the expenditure?
Trevor: No, for the information.
Richard: The information we got, and I asked for whatever email communications that were made with the attorney were forwarded to us so we had those…
Joy: Well, if we have the email communications that say that yes, we can do that, from our legal counsel, and then yes, that should be enough for the Conference floor.
Richard: I don’t know; I’m not an attorney.
Joy: It’s a communication from our attorney…
Willie: I don’t think it was an email communication, wasn’t it a phone communication?
Richard: And I asked for an email.
Willie: It was a phone communication originally, then it was something else she replied to you that, yes we can do it, but it was something at the end we could not any longer be protected with the ® outside. Something that she communicated that it would affect.
Nicholas: A friend of mine works as a barrister, he’s the best in the UK, and my suggestion is that you would need to copyright this, and you need to copyright that. You can’t just say the
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words because it’s a visual thing because the UK puts the ® _inside the circle and it looks really fantastic but I think you have to copyright and it must be like this or it must be like that and it must go to S&B and it must be for the members, completely obvious or they will do what they want, it will cost money. That’s going to have to be done, or it will just start turning up all over, and look like a disaster, so our CA logo is protected, it must look like this or it must look like that, end of story.
Trevor: It sounds like there is more investigation needed, just for clarification.
Richard: It still brings us back to Convention 2011 and their interest in being able to utilize the logo as remarked by legal counsel that it may be modified.
Randy: I would like then to have the CA logo with the ® moved under the inside emailed to the legal counsel, in a “per your verbal direction, is the proper use of our logo.” And then we don’t need to necessarily copyright both, we have a legal, basically he gave us verbal permission, all we are doing is taking verbal permission and preparing one shooting it over to him. As soon as he says yes, it’s good.
Nicholas: We just have to make sure that what we send is what we think. Because otherwise he might make it up.
Trevor: If we send something “Per your verbal communication, here’s what it is currently, from the manual with the ® outside, is this, with the ® on the inside, an acceptable alternative, based on correspondence.”
Randy: He will shoot back an email that says yes.
Joy: Then we have the communication.
Nicholas: Someone’s going to have to take responsibility for the graphic.
Randy: I can have that done. Rivkah is just amazing with…
Randy: Just like our chip, essentially our chip has that already, and we’re just asking that the ® be moved inside like it shows on our chip…
Nicholas: as per our chip, then the graphics will bring it up.
Trevor: Any more discussion on this item? The next item is 2006.08.13, the signature of annual corporate documents. That is to be completed at the fall quarterly, and it was, so we don’t have to do anything. The next item is 2009.05.09, the financial status of CAWS Inc. Joy?
Joy: Would you like to know where we stand?
Trevor: Sure.
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Joy: Right now, as of March 31, 2010, we are at a negative $37,178.54. We are still under budget on our expenses by $40,000. I show convention income of 2010 per CAWSO’s books as of March of 2010 of positive$10,769.07. Our admin expenses are over budget by $25,994.08.
Richard: My question pertains to admin.
Joy: Yeah, I’m a little worried about that, to tell you the truth.
Randy: So we are under budget $40,000 overall?
Joy: No, actually, we are within the numbers, it’s just that for some reason, administration expenses are for some reason way over. If you look at the percentage changes on some of these, because I’m looking at previous year over current year, I have some questions related to a lot of things. There are no employee benefits under administrative expenses, there is way too much in this, I understand, we have under spent from last year under employee benefits, the reason behind it is that there is no DRPD. Salary is $23,000 is less than what we were paying last year; WSOB travel is already at $4,800 total. That travel is split between administrative and program services, the total is $4,843.84 total, there are some administrative salary items that need to go into program services, because it is over budget by $17,000. There are probably some incorrect postings. Seventh tradition is $3,000 more than it was last year; royalties are up by almost $500 from last year. Some things are up, chips and literature sales are down by $26,000; book sales are down by almost $20,000. That is where the difference is between this year and last year. I have some different questions on why business taxes are 3,028.27% up from last year. Some of it has to do with the office move. Outside professional is 1500% higher than it was last year under administrative and probably needs to go to program services. There are probably items that need to be moved around, at first glance.
Richard: Is the over budget admin due to the payments to the prior DRPD that were still carried over?
Joy: If I had the QuickBooks file, I could double click on those areas and find out, because I do not have that file…
Richard: My recollection is that is why it is over budget, those prior payments of the DRPD on her departure.
Willie: Well, and we talked about that at the last meeting when I asked, when I went through all of this and got an explanation, a lot of it was mis-postings, and was put in admin when it should have gone into program. I thought they would have been corrected by this one.
Joy: A percentage of our expenses have to be in administrative per nonprofit law. If you don’t know where to put it, putting it into other…there’s a negative $1,285.00 program services “other” which is just there because they didn’t know where to put it and then they left it there.
Richard: I’m going to put down my cigar and point a lot of fingers. These are the same things that we have discussed for a year, and I don’t believe they’re going to be corrected. Part of my
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finger pointing is I thought that was some of what you were going to go into the office and do, and work with them on QuickBooks and setting it up.
Joy: I’ve had many phone conversations…
Richard: Okay. I don’t know. I can read a balance sheet, I can look at plus and minus, I can see obvious money missing, however, I don’t have your background and experience on how to do this. I’m really, really asking.
Joy: In the time that I was supposed to go into the office, the move happened, and now I’ve been dealing with a lot of regional stuff, trying to…
Richard: My concern is with the, what I don’t believe is a savvy bookkeeper…
Joy: And he’s a CPA.
Richard: I believe the Chair and former CFO is heavily taxed. Wow, CFO, how did I come up with that? Our former treasurer is overtaxed and doing a lot of work and I believe he knows in his mind still where things were and where they are and how to explain them, I don’t know that we’re going to get any modifications or changes without a financial expert, whether it be you or whether we make a decision that it has to be someone else that goes in and make the changes so we get the reports that might make sense or have things laid out the way they should be. And again, I don’t know how they should be. I’m just making the comment because we discussed this a year ago.
Randy: I will just kind of piggyback on that as well. We sat as a group and approved and in fact, asked that the individuals responsible for these postings be trained. In fact, we talked about and essentially approved as a Board, the amount of money necessary to have those two or three individuals that would be responsible for this aspect of the accounting procedure formally trained together. All three would get the same information, and everyone would go forward in the same, and we chose not to, because of some of the help we expected to be able to get, if by whatever circumstances the office move, the regional responsibilities, that we couldn’t come through as a Board to provide them the alternative to that training, we either have to make a commitment to get it done, or ask again that the training takes place. I mean, we’re asking someone to do something that they obviously could use some direction on how to do. And I still believe, my concern is that Joy has the ability to assist them in doing that, trustee group 2014 might not have that individual. Why are we continuing to rely on an individual, I know it’s a cost savings thing, but we can’t save enough money not to do our financials correctly. If we have people that are employed and we haven’t trained them yet, it’s not their fault, it’s ours.
Trevor: I agree, but my recollection is slightly different. We have said they need the training, please have them get the training, it was, we need to figure out what training they need first. I think it’s become apparent to me and hopefully everybody on this Board that’s the training they need.
Randy: Well we approved the amount of money to get QuickBooks training.
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Trevor: Yeah, I remember. But I believe it was the WSOB chair that came in and said give me some time to figure out where we’re at so that we can then make those recommendations…
Randy: I think my point being that we have to take some responsibility to either getting them the training they need, whether it be professionally or…
Trevor: I’m going to skip one person, because he’s already gone and go to one person who has not gone, and then I’ll get back to you.
Robert: Concerning the financials, as a nonprofit, aren’t we required to be audited by an outside…Joy said not in California, okay. I know in Rhode Island we’re required to.
Richard: That is part of long-term planning.
Joy: I did submit three bids to long-planning with respect to that.
Joy: Not in California. It’s not required by the Internal Revenue Service to be audited unless they come in and audit you.
Robert: Thank you.
Willie: At our last meeting I did request, because I have not been seeing the bookkeeper, the treasurer and the DOO meeting, at least once a month to kind of reconcile together, so I did request that that meeting starts to take place at least once a month, that those three individuals get together and reconcile the books. The assured me…
Richard: They didn’t assure you.
Willie: Well, they said that they would attempt to put a meeting together at all three’s available times. So that’s what they did, but I strongly put it out there. Because that was a lot of the thing, are we getting a report from the bookkeeper? How is he doing, why are these reports keep coming up like this, where does it fall? I know several times, like Richard said earlier, Tom is really doing the bulk of the financials, and it’s just not working.
Joy: I have spent hours on the phone with Yvette going through how to do things on QuickBooks. She has a lot of reports in her memorized reports section of QuickBooks, but if you look at the file she sends us, one of them was over a year to previous year comparison, and it was the same year. The numbers were the same; the time frame was the same, so I had to go through it with her again on how to do a previous year comparison report; that shows us where we were last year compared to where we are this year. I’ve done that a couple of times. I think it would be really helpful; if Tom doesn’t have the time, and we all know that Yvette and Oliver aren’t really working together, if I got the backup of QuickBooks, I could go in and find out where things are posted correctly and write it out on a list and fax it back to the office and say “these are the changes I think you should make.” Not making them myself, there is a lot of stuff that is clearly undeposited funds. If it hasn’t been deposited, it should not be included in the cash balance, in my opinion. We should know what our cash really is. And is petty cash really always at $300? I don’t think so.
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Richard: Is there an action item, is there a suggestion?
Trevor: I know that it’s on our Board to Board agenda.
Richard: So this is discussion that needs to…
Trevor: This is the training that we see a need for based on what we need to operate and do our job as the principle financial planners of the organization or the company.
Joy: We get the reports one or two weeks before we are supposed to be here. We have reports to write, regional reports. If the financial reports only go through March 31 and we don’t get them until May 15, I think per our policies and guidelines that they approved and we approved, we should be getting them sooner. We require them unaudited. The audited reports took longer. All you do is export the file into excel and send it off. You could do it April 1.
Trevor: So perhaps that is another part of the training is to say this is what we need, this is what you’re supposed to give us, here’s how you do it, do it.
Richard: So it’s clear, I requested that for 2-1/2 months, until we finally got that, the petty cash reports.
Joy: We probably got it at the last quarterly.
Willie: I requested Richard, at our last two board meeting, I took them back to the accounting procedures, this is what was approved, this is what everybody did, we’re not getting it. Oliver should be sending those reports, those unreconciled reports. I should get a copy of them so I can forward them to Joy and this Board. They say they’re going to get them to us, or they’re going to start sending them to us. I’ve been requesting them the last 3 or 4 meetings; we need to have those reports per the accounting procedures and guidelines that was passed.
Trevor: In the future, going forward, what I will request, is that we will make one request, if and however long we feel is necessary as a “here’s the date,” if it doesn’t come, email myself as the chair and the secretary, and I will follow up on it immediately. I will make the phone call that you now have 24 hours to get that to us or I’ll drive down and get it, and I don’t want to come that far.
Joy: And another thing is you know, those accounting policies and procedures, is step-by-step, how to do everything, what the password is in QuickBooks, how, what the flow is, step-by-step, step one, open QuickBooks, step two, go to file, step three, it literally walks you through it.
Trevor: Once again, when stuff doesn’t get done, sometimes you just have to, so yeah, please let me know and I will do what I have to do to get it, to make it happen. It’s 11:20. So we have reached the old business marker’s place on the agenda. It is now 11:20pm middle time. I’ll leave this up to you guys, do you want to go for another hour or six, or do you want to call it a night and reconvene in the morning?
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Joy: Let’s call it a night and reconvene in the morning after breakfast, because I’m irritated right now.
Trevor: We could probably bang through the rest of these pretty quick and get through that.
Richard: Randy has a meeting in the morning, so we could do the late start.
Nicholas: I say we go until midnight.
Trevor: We have reached the old business marker section. The first item is the NADCP, this year held in Boston, Massachusetts. That is Richard, Robert.
Richard: We are confirmed at the hotel, we, being myself and the DOO are confirmed for our floor space. I have been in discussions last week; there was a motion on the WSOB to send three to five cases of books, HFC 2. I spoke with the DOO and four cases are being shipped and I did ask if they were stickered. The answer was yes. Our loose-leaf literature and some PI posters will be sent. I did speak with the DOO regarding the items being shipped; the booth and other items going to the event. Our regional trustee will report on his communications with the local fellowship with respect to who is showing up to support us.
Robert: Communication. I received an e-mail “can I call you?” to try to figure out how many people I needed and wanted, being asking that question for a while. Went to our local fellowship last Friday, sent out emails, there will be people to help out, not as many as we would like, but I don’t know. It’s out there, I am working out there. Have one gal who is available all day Thursday, besides me, my wife, Richard and Yvette. Bruce is available, he has not said when yet. The local fellowship is excited about the opportunity, I felt communication was, we don’t want too many local community involved, so, hence it will be a problem next year because it is in Washington, D.C. in July. This year they are doing something different, there are open C.A. meeting taking place, Richard asked me to make sure especially since he won’t be there, we will work that out. People will be attending from the local fellowship to be there to be at the meetings. Communication has been pretty lax, I will take responsibility, maybe I need to be more assertive with my requests, next year I will. We will be there, it is going to be a successful event, we have booth 302 if anyone wants to come to Boston, Mass.
Richard: We are in between Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. Our booth is smack in the middle. I’d like to revisit our discussion on the four cases of books that are being shipped, it was based on my experience last year in Anaheim when we, in my opinion, were forcing people to take our books, I felt that though we have a large inventory of books, rather than forcing people to take the books, people that show an interest in speaking about our fellowship, giving them a book and being more prudent with our fellowship’s expenditure in the purchase of these books.
Randy: We had our Tucson District report back to our area that in fact a position has been taken with the legal community in Tucson has now been a trend, this is for your information to take to this event, that the legal community at least in Tucson has deemed 12 step fellowships to side on the side of religious organizations and they are no longer court-appointing any of their drug court
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traffic, dui’s, no one is required to attend AA meetings, they are not sending anyone to 12 step fellowships because of this new position. They believe this position is being taken up sporadically in other states as well which would be a huge concern to what would be considered the drug court community if that position is one that is being taken legally, and then becomes a federal position, we are not going to get any of those. We are kind of encouraging judges to take the drug addicts and send them to us kind of scenario that has some legal ramifications that are actually, at least for us in Arizona right now, and should probably be addressed, or asked about by you guys when you’re there.
Richard: TEC…Kim and/or Joy
Kim: As all of you should know, the e-mails were sent out to both the candidates and the TEC members, copied to the outgoing regional trustees. Joy sent some out as well. We did receive most of the responses as to whether or not candidates would be available at either function to interview and/or if the TEC members would be. As a result, we will do two interviews. 1 pm Thursday we will interview Willie Bailey, 2 pm on Friday we will interview Richard Leve. Yvette Holman has withdrawn her name from consideration across the board; we are missing the second name from the Atlantic North Region. Robert and I have had some emails so I am not really clear as to what has occurred there, let me clarify, if a region has voted in a member to be on the slate, we need their information. I don’t necessarily need their resume at this time, unless you are stepping down. I do need the names, if you’re not familiar, the process is to, at the conference, we present each slate, and the slates are ratified. I don’t want to be in the position, Robert, where your region comes back to us and says “we ratified so-and-so to the slate, how come his name wasn’t on the slate at the conference.” I know you sent me something like “he was elected pending him sending his information.” I don’t know how he could have been elected. You can respond to that when I am done. Master copies have been made of the questions, resumes, and procedures; I have made copies for the interviews. Originals are going to go home with Joy, additional copies can be made there as opposed me carrying numerous copies cross-country in my luggage. I do have correspondence with one of the TEC members, I am hoping to hear back from him, he said he probably would not be at the conference, but will be at the convention. I informed him the alternate should step in across the board. I have the tape card ready to go, we are going to do 12 interviews at the conference, and the letter stated we will begin interviews on Monday after lunch. We are expecting to have our TEC members available at that time. That will need to be considered when we plan the start time of our quarterly so we may begin on time. Once we have confirmed that, I will have Joy follow up with scheduling the interviews.
Robert: Basically he was nominated by the New York area based on him getting elected without a resume, once he gives us a resume, his name will go forward. That name has never come from the New York area after repeated emails and phone calls, so I just assumed that he is just not interested.
Kim: Do you have a copy of the minutes that reflect that?
Robert: Yes.
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Kim: Can you send me a copy of those minutes, I do not want this board to be in a position, or the TEC committee to be in a position where we go to ratify a slate and that name is not on there that we have information backing up the reason why his name is not on there. I want to make sure we have all of the appropriate information in the files.
Joy: So that person was never voted at your regional assembly?
Robert: He was voted on a contingency of them getting a resume.
Joy: Contingent on getting a resume?
Robert: Yes.
Joy: Okay.
Richard: Will the TEC be submitting the schedule as to times, dates, so we can plan how busy we will be at conference?
Kim: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we will be scheduling interviews. Hopefully Wednesday night we will go into voting session. God willing we are done Wednesday night, if not we have to schedule around the conference. Thursday is an off-conference floor day. Everything depends upon the voting process goes.
Richard: Thank you.
Trevor: My suggestion is that we will start Friday night or Saturday morning. We have a full board-to board, we have got any special interview meetings, etc.
Joy: No Palm Springs.
Kim: Robert, will you be able to send me minutes or not? Are they available in the event it becomes a question?
Robert: Yes.
Trevor: Next item: Canadian Region. As I stated at the last meeting, I don’t like it, I don’t know too many people that do, but there are some and unless I die or get thrown in jail, I’m going to the Canadian convention in July in Winnipeg. My sincere hope is that the person whose region that is in will be able to attend that convention as well and we will discuss it more. Through some conversations I have had, certain individuals who presented a referral last year fully expect it to be a motion on the conference floor this year to create a Canadian Region immediately and have it take effect at that point. As it is on the long-term planning agenda for this event, we can discuss it more then and maybe get some feedback. I still don’t like it, I may dislike it more.
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Richard: I would request this move off of our agenda and remarked on the Pacific North Regional and Atlantic North, and Midwest Regional Trustees’ agenda. There is no Canadian region, so it should be regional. This should be long-term planning not this forum.
Joy: Motion to remove Canadian Region marker from WSBT Quarterly Agenda.
Richard: Second.
Trevor: Will remain on long-term planning and three trustees’ regional…Motion carries.
Trevor: We will adjourn until tomorrow morning at 9:30 or 9:45 middle time.
Trevor: Good morning everyone it is 10:00 am on Tuesday May 25, 2010, we are back in session in the middle. Help me open the meeting with a moment of silence followed by the “WE” version of the Serenity Prayer. We are at old business. The first item is 2008.04.14 the CA Helpdesk site. We don’t have a web servant yet, a new one. We do have resumes.
Willie: We do have a new web servant.
Richard: Please give everyone the background from the last WSOB meeting.
Willie: It was reported by Richard that a candidate from Denver, Steve B.’s resume was accepted and the transition was taking place with Mike and Steve, the new web servant.
Trevor: Is there a timeline we have in mind as far as how long this transition may take?
Willie: We don’t have that information.
Richard: The assumption is Mike will be in a hurry to transition and the new person will have a lot of questions. It is between the two people that are communicating, the old and new web servants.
Nicholas: Is Mike doing much? I keep sending stuff to Yvette, I’ve sent her about 10 emails and other stuff, she said she is sending it to Mike, but nothing seems to ever get done. I’m wondering if it’s getting lost or Mike’s busy…I’ve sent the Russian helpline, they have 10 meetings in St.
Petersburg. Is he busy or…Monica’s emailed from Holland, I’ve sent this to Mike, nothing seems to happen, we’ve been delinked…
Trevor: Mike has been very taxed with work, besides being in his position for a very long time, a lot of committee stuff hasn’t happened as quickly as we would have liked. Due to circumstances beyond our control…The website, Richard has to sign off on it and instruct the office to re-link it that has nothing to do with Mike.
Nicholas: So have you seen the request for the Russian helpline?
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Richard: No. That goes to the office. That goes to Willie. Willie would have to ask Yvette has communicated with Mike.
Nicholas: To clarify, if I get a list together, you will take action?
Willie: Yes.
Richard: If you copy me, I will know what is happening too.
Joy: What about the paid IT person? Lee R? I got this email…
Willie: Yes, just recently we got a resume. It was decided we would not move forward, the feeling at the WSOB did not have the savvy…
Richard: Lee did not have a broad enough scope to handle the technology, though it was not Lee.
Trevor: Why is the helpdesk site not up?
Kim: It is not online. It is available to the WSBT.
Trevor: I cannot access it.
Group: No one can access.
Richard: Trevor please follow up with Mike re helpdesk.
Trevor: Next item, 2009.12.03 Facebook pages reflecting tradition violations and policy issues regarding the CA logo, the CA website address, etc. Last moved online. Richard and I were going to work on this.
Richard: I filled out the same form that Trevor did, I copied each page as it was filled out, I emailed that to the legal department for Facebook, and used the signature “World Service Trustee and member of Cocaine Anonymous Legal Committee.” With that, it was noted about a 15% drop in the logo use, I did not get a response. I am still hoping for a response so we can have a response – if I don’t get a response I will request one.
Trevor: I just typed Cocaine Anonymous into the Facebook search engine, and it doesn’t come up at all.
Richard: It was restricted within about one week of my communications.
Kim: Robert, what did you pull that one up, did you put in Cocaine Anonymous?
Randy: The site that Robert found was New Mexico site; I will make a commitment to get in touch with the area chair. It recognizes a guy by the name of Mark as being the creator. Sometimes you don’t get an avenue to present our position, I will get with the area chair and see if we can determine who that individual is and reach out to him.
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Richard: This is going to be an ongoing job for every board. We have seen a decline with our work.
Kim: I have contacted our Kentucky individual, he has made some changes to that Facebook page, obviously there needs to be more adjustments made. I have contacted him; he is willing to make adjustments.
Trevor: Do we know anything about MySpace?
Richard: I was waiting to see how Facebook went, I will check into it.
Trevor: Combination of items, 2010.01.02 HFC2 and other printing of literature outside of the U.S. Nicholas was investigating printing costs, working with Willie regarding possible licensing issues and how we were going to go about that. Any update
Nicholas: Not really. The average price Russell found is about $3.00 to print, we found quite a few people who don’t require massive minimums and sought storage as well, we wouldn’t have to have _order so many because they could print a small run , as it were. I have worked around approximately 250 per month that might need a copy, so we would email the guy who would split the orders up and it would be a monthly basis, they could be sent to the districts or countries or wherever. So there’s not demanding thousands, and there is more work to be done on how much royalties would be, how much distribution might be, whether you’d want to build up stock. Definitely the possibility of printing over there. Three people who will print around 200 books for around $3.00. Distribution from an English hub. Much less expensive than shipping from U.S.
Trevor: To the best of my knowledge we do not. I can clarify that with Jeannette or Cynthia, past and current LCF chairs. It’s done, it’s just not totally done.
Joy: How much does the UK pay per book?
Nicholas: I think $15 or $16 depending on the exchange rate. It is always £10 to a member. No discounts, maybe 10% if you buy a box. No H&I or PI discounts.
Randy: Do we have any contractual responsibility to the current publisher as to exclusivity of book? If we are going to order 200 books, shouldn’t we check the shipping costs?
Nicholas: Any area that orders overseas pays 45% to ship, it has to go on a pallet. We need a steady flow of books. People are buying lots of big books, they want the story book, we run out.
Willie: At the last WSOB the treasurer did bring up the idea of a reduction of the book price because of the large inventory that we have, that may help offset some of the shipping costs as well, if we keep the price of the books down, if we finalize the cost of printing overseas.
Nicholas: Again, it’s not the cost of book, it’s the cost of the shipping—that’s the big deal.
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Trevor: We need to ultimately find a long-term solution, we have a big inventory now, we can talk about that, but we need to think long-term. I would love to see this royalty agreement in place by the time Nicholas and Lawrence roll off. It’s a matter of getting the trustee negotiation committee involved and working with Nicholas and Russell and the office board and making it happen. It’s time to start talking. It makes sense. If I can buy something and have it now, I want it. If I can buy something in two months, I might not be so interested. If the UK has the option to get more books cheaper right now, they’re going to do it, they are going to do it.
Nicholas: Russell and I will stay up and Skype into an office board meeting. That can work. We can iron out those problems and get feedback and move this forward.
Richard: I’m wondering if the original order of HFC2 being so large was based on the book purchases of the UK being a large purchaser, do we owe our members some obligation to deplete the stock before we start producing more in the UK. There is nothing wrong with beginning the process. I do not know; I was not part of the decision-making process back then. Was the purchasing quantity by the UK part of the order that we made?
Joy: Yes, I believe that was the thinking was the UK was a large distributor. If the office is talking about discounting book, we probably could do that, my Las Vegas delegate suggests within my region, if we get every person to pledge to buy two books, if I post it on the PSR group, we could deplete a lot of the inventory. We can make a plan in my region to disburse some of that inventory. I will bring it up at my caucus. Maybe everyone could?
Kim: Okay, the Midwest Region is in.
Nicholas: What is the price of the book here?
Randy: $9.95
Nicholas: so that’s $10. And how much are we making on that?
[group]: About $9.07.
Nicholas: So you’re raking it in here. So are we, CA shipping quantity in the US and Canada? Are we shipping volume? Although the UK was quite a big purchaser, it doesn’t warrant 18 pallets or whatever you’ve got. We’ve got thousands of them.
Kim: Let’s remember we ceased sales for a while because of the “How It Works” issue, so I know a lot of backorders went out to the Midwest.
Nicholas: If we are making $7.50, if you knock $5.00 off of it, how much is the will to shift the volume over the revenue that you expect. Do you expect the revenue of the book to favor us if this convention doesn’t make quite as much as we expect it to make. We can’t unprint the books that are there. Is it better to make some profit and shift some stuff or hold out for the $9.00, and let them sit there. We need a cash flow.
Joy: Cash flow is better than letting them sit.
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Nicholas: Is it all profit?
Joy: Yes.
Nicholas: Would you rather have $2.50 in your bank account, or wait for $7.50. Should we shift 2,000 copies and only make $5.00 a book, which we have already paid for, do we want to be greedy or do we want to get the message out there and deplete stock.
Kim: We are not being greedy, we need to make money.
Trevor: The bottom line is we need to make money, ultimately nobody on this board or even the conference is in charge of publication once it’s passed, so to really know the answer to why we ordered so many, we would have to go back to our former DRPD and say “why do you order this many at the time?” I’m pretty sure the answer is going to be “because they were selling like hotcakes.” We got the first order and they were gone before we got them. So we printed a lot, then the recession hit, the “How It Works” issue hit, all of a sudden we have 18 pallets sitting in there in our storage, we need to lower the price, get the money, and get on with things.
Randy: Our obligation is to make the right financial decision with the information we have in front of us that is we can probably generate even more sales if the price prohibitiveness of freight is removed from the European purchases. I love the idea of a reduction in price and a reduction of this inventory immediately in a book drive. This cost isn’t even in last year’s expense. We have sat on this for almost a year and a half. The issue is how much do you lower it, and is there an expectation that it would ever go back up. That would be something the office would have to participate in. To do this, lower it drastically to make it a true book drive.
Willie: Two issues that came up at the office board. First, the shipper Andrew says to sticker every book come in not dealing internationally but in states is going to become cost effective and we’re going to spend another $3,000 to sticker the inventory that we have on top of what we’re not selling. Because they were supposed to have gotten the numbers to me, but they said $250 to sticker 850 books.
Richard: Please note those stickers are being purchased at Staples and not in mass quantities.
Willie: I don’t know, we probably need to look at a mass vendor that would give us a quantity at a wholesale price rather than Staples.
Joy: What size are the stickers?
Willie: One is a page, some are smaller.
Joy: If you will get me the dimensions, I will get you a quote for mass amounts.
Richard: We asked the office to do it.
Kim: Joy, it’s not your job. First of all, AA’s book fluctuates in price depending on how they’re doing in their budget that is in response to Randy’s comment on book price lowering…FYI. The
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sticker, I am fairly sure that didn’t go through a three vendor process, have we considered the possibility, mass quantity and educating our fellowship, we ship you the books with the stickers and your local fellowship does the stickering process when they receive them. Some areas may not be willing, the Illinois area, they would put together a team and get it done. It is just another option; it will cost money, the consequences of past situations. Let’s have a book drive at the conference, allow members to ship a book home, ship a case home.
Randy: Roll in about six pallets, say we need to sell all of these books before you all leave.
Richard: Have the conference chair and vice-chair sitting at a row of pallets instead of tables.
Joy: There are enough people in the Pacific South Region that will volunteer to sticker books at the office. I will put it on my Yahoo group.
Nicholas: Our groups will help.
Kim: We have to educate the fellowship on how to sticker the books. It’s not getting done at the office, books are coming to the Midwest area unstickered.
Joy: West Inland Empire books are also coming out unstickered.
Nicholas: UK books were.
Joy: Legally they have to be.
Randy: It is our responsibility, the office’s responsibility to sticker that book, we don’t know if an area is buying books or an individual is, we cannot ask individuals to bring us to copyright correction. I would feel uncomfortable asking the fellowship to bring us the business of bringing Cocaine Anonymous in line with copyright issues. That is the office’s responsibility.
Richard: There was a misunderstanding or lack of clarity that Willie and I emailed to the office stating that all books are to be stickered. There is now an email documenting, unfortunately it is May, it is now black and white, to the office that all books are to be stickered prior to shipping. Some books have been stickered, some books haven’t. Willie and I have made sure this is clear now, going forward.
Trevor: I really like the idea of the book drive, we need to get a three vendor process so we can cover cost all at once, then organize the Pacific South Region to get volunteers to do it. I hear what Randy’s saying as far as not wanting to make members libel for stickering. There are also areas, for example, my area, there is no chance. For consistency, if the books were done prior to leaving the office, they’re done. Who are the members of the trustee negotiating committee? I would like to see the TNC get involved in this process and start trying to make it happen. I love Nicholas’ idea of the Skype joining…
Joy: It’s Richard, Lawrence, Joy, Kim and Willie.
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Trevor: Well, I want to be…
Kim: We all want to be…
Richard: Why aren’t we all on TNC?
Trevor: We should be, put us all on there. We’re done.
Nicholas: Are we going to still go ahead with the idea of getting the book printed in Europe, so when we’re ready to go, we can start printing? But before…
Trevor: I don’t want to hold back on the investigation process…obviously when we have the limited board to board, we are going to talk about this to Tom, Yvette and Barry and say this is what we’re proposing. Can we drop the price drastically, blast out the inventory, make the smaller profit, but its cash in hand…
Joy: And get the royalty agreement.
Trevor: So that it’s all ready, so when we’re down to say three pallets, because that’s what we’re comfortable with as a stock, 3, 4, 5, then we can cover North America, let’s get the UK thing going right now so you can get what you need to do to get going.
Richard: This has been discussed at the WSOB, Barry has wanted to drop the price; we have discussed different options. There won’t be opposition or concern, moving the inventory out of the office is of interest and generating income is of interest to the WSOB, the chair, the treasurer, and one of the directors.
Trevor: Is there anything else on these two items of business? Please look at literature and pamphlets as well in UK as far as investigation.
Nicholas: That is already done with licensing.
Trevor: To recap combined items 2010.01.01 and .02 which were licensed printing of literature outside the United States, we will discuss with limited board to board at this event discussing an action plan regarding possible reduction in price to deplete our inventory as well as getting our Trustee Negotiating Committee on board as well as to start putting together a royalty agreement for such printing in the UK. We will leave that on the agenda for further updates. 2010.02.02
Online conference software.
Randy: Permission to write a referral to S&B and IT to explore the issue surrounding online conference software, internet meetings and draft potential guidelines to the application of that technology for regularly scheduled meetings. Basically it’s just writing a referring.
Richard: Could you change that to conferencing; it is different.
Randy: I was using your words.
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Richard: I was wrong.
Kim: Could I get that in writing?
Trevor: I am taking that as a motion to submit a referral to S&B and IT committees for inclusion of a meeting format involving online conferencing software
Willie: Second.
Kim: Point of Order – A referral can only go to one committee.
Randy: We talked about the referral going to S&B because it’s a meeting-type. We have a lot of meeting types that are not in our manual whether that be men’s meetings, whether that be gay and lesbian meetings, I mean there are a lot of types that are not recognized there, nor do they have guidelines as to the production of that meeting. In Structures and Bylaws in the manual, I believe it probably is best served to be sent to IT because of the issues regarding the internet. I don’t know if S&B is where this should go.
Trevor: My gut reaction is that you’re probably right. If it later goes into the manual, it will go to S&B; I would leave it up to the two committees to work out. As long as IT goes and starts to do the work to get it ready, then takes it to S&B and says “this is what we’ve done, can you piggyback with us so it goes in the manual?” I don’t see a problem with that.
Randy: Why is it important to go in the manual?
Trevor: I think it would become part of general guidelines to be used, the manual is a lot more…more people use the World Service Manual than the IT guidelines.
Randy: I would like to remove S&B from motion.
Trevor: Any objection? None; so amended. Kim, can you please re-read the motion?
Kim: Motion to send referral to IT to explore the issues surrounding online conferencing software, internet meetings and draft potential guidelines to application of that technology for regularly scheduled meetings.
Trevor: Motion passes unanimously.
Kim: Will we be removing this matter from the agenda at this point?
Trevor: Yes. The next item of business is 2010.04.01, 2010.04.02, and 2010.04.03, which are combined with regard to the DOO. Is the DOO effectiveness, CAWS 2010, and mailings. Where we left off is there was to be a meeting taking place between myself, Willie, Richard, and Tom, the office board chair. I did in fact email Tom, that meeting did take place. Where it was left is that we are expecting during our one-on-one with Tom, which I am trying to schedule before the limited board-to-board that we will get a full recommendation regarding going
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forward with the current staff at the office and the positions people are in. The next item of business is 2010.04.06, the transcriber. Where we left off is our then current transcriber, commonly known as Boo has tendered her resignation, and I have the foot pedal. Joy turned it over to me. This is also an item of new business. We will choose a new transcriber. Two people have expressed an interest and are qualified to do it, so we deal with this item in new business.
Kim: So we will move it? Can’t we just do it?
Trevor: Sure we can. I would need a motion. The names of our two candidates are Mare P.
(Denver) and Nicole D. (California).
Kim: I wrote an email to Beth R. and Anne B., who I thought would both be excellent possibilities, Beth was unable to take the commitment due to personal reasons, however, she gave me the name of this other gal. Anne asked what was involved, I sent her a lengthy email and she’s never written back to me. I suggest that Trevor contact them and ask if they would be interested and give them the particulars, if they’re still interested. We should get a resume and inform them of the full confidentiality of what the job entails and who they would be working with next year.
Trevor: When we break for lunch later, I will send an email to these two candidates and hopefully we can get something back reasonably quickly, we would ideally like to have this taken care of before we leave here. It may have to move online, depending on the response time.
Kim: Unless someone else has a potential candidate, we can contact them as well.
Trevor: This item will remain on the agenda. The next item of business is 2010.04.07, the meeting in a pocket. When we last discussed this item, it was still being distributed, I informed the office to immediately cease and desist. For lack of a better term, we are going to have to destroy the inventory. To sticker it would be difficult. About 3,000 pieces have been removed from inventory. LCF has it on their agenda to revise that piece at conference. Because it is a simple matter to edit the removal of “How It Works” and replace it most likely with “We Can Recover” it most likely won’t have to go through the process unless anybody objects to that. So LCF will do it, submit to the office and it will be reprinted. The change is not substantive, it is a correction. This can be removed from the agenda. Responses to correspondence received from the fellowship: 2010.15.01
Kim: Approved online, see online minutes of 10-03 through 10-05, approved May 16, 2010.
Trevor: 2010.04.11 correspondence from Ken K. through Lawrence, submitted April 11, 2010.
Assuming based on what it was, Lawrence handled that. He will forward his response to Kim.
Trevor: 2010.04.12 correspondence from Barry H., Randy was the lead on that. The proposed response to that was submitted by Randy this morning in an email.
Thank you for expressing your concerns and care for Cocaine Anonymous.
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This response will be addressed as to two separate issues: 1 – the referrals regarding the TEC process – and 2 – the area’s decision to withhold funds from the CAWSO “until the issues that prevent the TEC from appointing Trustees are worked out”.
All of the procedures in C.A.’s World Service Manual have been conference approved, subjected to change over the years and most importantly open to a process of change in the future. It is the premise that C.A.’s World Service Manual, being the resulted document of prior conference approvals, represents the group conscience of the C.A. fellowship. We support C.A.’s World Service Manual as the current group conscience of the fellowship. We also support the process of referrals available to every member of C.A. to continue to strengthen C.A.’s World Service Manual with conference approved adaptations and changes. Your referrals have been passed through to the appropriate committees and were received by the WSO in time to make the SR14 filing deadline.
Concept 7 from C.A.’s World Service Manual – “The Conference recognizes that the Charter and the Bylaws of the World Service Board are legal instruments; that the Trustees are thereby fully empowered to manage and conduct all of the world service affairs of Cocaine Anonymous. It is further understood that the Conference Charter itself is not a legal document; that it relies instead upon the force of tradition and the power of the C.A. purse for its final effectiveness.” – That “power of the C.A. purse” identifies the area, district or group’s right to withhold funding. It is also important to recognize in the Twelve Concepts from World Service on page 29 it states, “And finally, in any great extremity, it would rest upon the undoubted ability of the delegates to deny the General Service Board the monies with which to operate -” This also recognizes the right to withhold funds.
It may be important to recognize the referral to “in any great extremity” as being the baseline of consideration before withholding such funds. We would only ask that an educated group conscience be found that an area’s disapproval over current conference approved guidelines would meet the “great extremity” consideration for withholding funds. If an educated group conscience makes that decision, we stand in their support.
We would also hope that it would be recognized and encouraged at the Area level that each district and each group in the Area be given the same support from their Area to make their own independent decision as to the issue of withholding funds – for “any great extremity” reason. If an educated group conscience makes that decision, we also stand in their support.
Trevor: That is the proposed response.
Randy: I make a motion to approve this response as read.
Joy: I second the motion.
Trevor: Motion carries unanimously. Next item 2010.04.13, correspondence from Barry H., Randy was the lead on that.
Randy: Motion to approve the following response: Thank you for expressing your concerns and care for Cocaine Anonymous. The economic condition of the WSO is always a great concern. Changes needed to be made in our expenses and the DRPD position was suspended until such funds can be secured to make it financially responsible to implement the role again. California state law does not allow any other public discussion or communication regarding
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employees. This was explained from the podium during the presentation of the WSBT report and subsequent debate with the floor.
Joy: Second.
Trevor: Motion carries unanimously. Next item 2010.04.13.1, proposed response to “her” took Barry out of response, gives both the district and area same response.
Randy: so moved.
Joy seconded.
Trevor: Motion carried unanimously. Next item is in-Conference referrals to be addressed.
The first one is referral 6021 from Quin, with Richard, Willie and Kim.
Joy: Still needs work, no motion, will be done before conference, promise. Will probably be referred to convention committee, I will make a response to include in our report, it is in convention guidelines.
Trevor: Referral 6140, from Nick A., Richard was lead with Joy and Nicholas, regarding the creation of a trustee manual.
Richard: I submitted a draft to my fellow committee members in April, we are in process.
Trevor: This is strictly my opinion, that’s probably something that unless you guys are miracle workers I can’t see being done by the conference, as long as we have something we are working on…
Joy: That would be a work in progress…
Trevor: Cause that, to me is something that’s bigger that, you could surprise me and get it done, that would be fantastic…
[group] no…
Richard: Just so everyone knows, part of it is a compilation of the orientation documents I assembled, part of it is what is already in the WSM, part of it is coming from the chair of the S&B committee, so if we present it, they can decide what goes in, what goes out. Thus far, it is a compilation of what is in the WSM, what is in the orientation, and there are a couple of things that are filling in the blanks.
Kim: I have something on the agenda that you don’t, we received another correspondence, we can go back to it.
Richard: I am finished.
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Trevor: Are you interested or in need of new people joining that referral response?
Richard: Always.
Trevor: I would like to be involved in that.
Kim: I would too.
Richard: I will forward that to you.
Trevor: It sounds like a lot of fun.
Kim: Yeah, it sounds like a blast.
Randy: [unintelligible]
Kim: We only need one ying or yang…
Randy: It’s easier to sit back…
Kim: I actually helped with the conference committee internal manual so we’re good.
Joy: I worked on finance…
Richard: I’ve got nothing.
Trevor: New correspondence that our secretary received?
Kim: I added it because it came in last minute; I sent it to Robert, from John B. in Maine.
Kim: “Maine is trying to plan our 2nd Annual CA Unity barbecue. Last year was a great event and over a hundred people showed up from all over. This year we are running into a little trouble acquiring a location to have the event, the park office is requesting an exempt tax code in order to for us to reserve a spot. If we do not have a code, they will charge us a lot of money we do not have. I was hoping you could share your experience around this issue and give suggestions to help us solve this problem. The event is planned for August. Thank you for your time and all your support you have given Maine in the past”. In service, John B.” I forwarded it to Robert, copied Trevor and are you handling that internally?
Robert: yes. I thought you were talking about the one from Montreal.
Kim: You handled that one too. It only went to you though, that didn’t go to the WSBT. You sent me your response so I just forwarded it. This one actually, the only stuff that goes on our agenda is what goes to the WSBT mailbox, if you guys get stuff personally and you want me to put it in the response file, that’s great, if you don’t…the one he’s talking about actually went to the World Service Office, which went to Robert, then Robert copied me on the response, which
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is why it’s on the agenda regarding the process of emails. Can we remove it from the agenda Robert, and can you forward me your response?
Robert: Kim, what is the date on that?
Kim: May 10.
Robert: Thank you.
Trevor: Yes, we can remove it. We have several referrals, we have referral #6045 from David C., Randy was the lead, with Lawrence and Robert.
Randy: That’s the last of my responses were emailed out. Motion to approve…I mean, when we pass something on, do we need to make a statement? Is that traditional that we kind of give a blurb on it before we move it to another committee?
Trevor: No, if we’re sending it to another committee, we just say “forward it to such-and-such,” as long as the proper paperwork is filled out, as far as the conference committee goes, that the chair of that committee that it’s been forwarded to signs off on it, then we’re done. We do not have to respond to something that we are not dealing with.
Randy: This is my concern. The referral isn’t…I guess it’s a referral but it’s more of a question. Um, so I don’t know if this individual through this referral expected an answer, most of the time referrals are that we’d like, I’d like, I’d prefer this is changed. This was an “I’m asking you why.” I was confused as to how to respond.
Richard: That’s why there’s contact information on the referral so you can request the maker of the referral to be clearer.
Randy: Do we know how to contact this person?
Richard: There is contact information on the referral form. You can ask that the maker clarify.
Kim: That is correct, I do not have the original referrals, they are in the possession of our chair.
Nicholas: He is from the UK, he was on the TEC committee, and is concerned.
Trevor: It is my belief, and my belief only, that he is making a statement that it is not transparent and it happens in secrecy, and is asking why that is. I sort of see why it would be referred to S&B, but in looking at your response to the A part, that’s pretty much what S&B would and should tell him anyway, is that if the collective conscience of Cocaine Anonymous is this is the way we do it, so that’s why we do it.
Randy: Well, his question is why can’t we echo the process in AA described in their manual.
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Kim: The second question can basically be responded to, that can be addressed by the conference, fill out a referral form and send it to S&B.
Trevor: It’s not, I don’t see forwarding this to S&B and having them, the response will be the same from them or us regardless.
Richard: Can you find him if he wants a quick answer or?
Nicholas: Well, he doesn’t like it, why are we hiding the truth.
Richard: I would suggest that one of his delegates or his regional trustee help him fill out a referral to achieve what he is looking to get from us.
Nicholas: Refer it back to him, because it will come to S&B again. Certain people will ask certain questions.
Trevor: I think from my experience of four years on S&B and watching the committee since for
3-1/2 years now, you’re going to get the same referrals about the TEC anyway, regardless if they come from the UK, Oklahoma, Texas, or Hong Kong, wherever they come from, they’re going to come, because that process, you’re always going to get some people that don’t like it. In my four years on S&B I worked on it every year. I was on the committee that worked on the TEC process every year whether we changed it or not, we tried tweaking it this way, doing it that way, I still think the direct answer is what we have is the collective conscience of the fellowship. If you have a different way in mind, please detail it and submit it to S&B in a referral or contact your regional trustee or delegates for help in that endeavor.
Nicholas: He was in the TEC process and somebody didn’t get elected. That’s where this comes from. We couldn’t get, he didn’t like the process. Some people want to manipulate and control until they get the right person, but that is in their opinion.
Joy: So he didn’t like the group conscience, and did not go with the collective group conscience?
Nicholas: That’s the one, and he keeps sending this because he didn’t like it. That’s what he told me. he wants a different answer, but it’s the same answer. The conference has said to do it like this at the moment, if you can find another way detailing it, but we don’t just copy things. I’m good with sending this to S&B.
Kim: Can you just revise it, we can approve it after lunch?
Nicholas: Can I help you do that?
Randy: It is disincorporating them both.
Trevor: It is basically saying “If you have further concerns, or if you can devise a more expedient process you’d be happy with, please submit it to S&B for their perusal.”
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Randy: I tweaked a response: “All of the procedures in the CA World Service Manual have been conference approved subjected to change over the years, and most importantly open to a process of change in the future. It is the premise of CA’s World Service Manual, being the resulted document of prior conference approvals represents the group conscience of the CA fellowship. We support CA’s World Service Manual as the conscience of the Fellowship. We also support the process of referrals available to every member of CA to continue strengthen CA’s World Service Manual with conference approval adaptations and changes. The WSBT has passed the referral to S&B and request that the maker of the referral be more specific to the changes to be considered.”
Richard: Second.
Randy: We are going to go back to him and go “you really ought to read instead.” Cause at some point in time that’s a referral. I always consider referrals to be change this to say this, not why. Why is it like this? The question is best served coming through WSBT correspondence and forcing the WSBT to truly answer his question. A referral has to do with…the last sentence? The WSBT has passed the referral to S&B and request that the maker of the referral be more specific to the changes to be considered.
Trevor: Motion by Randy, Seconded by Richard. Any further discussion? I know you’ve all said you like it. I’m not crazy about it. I think, forget the S&B part, we invite you to submit a referral outlining a better process or you know, specific changes you would like to see in the process.
Joy: I offer a friendly amendment as to what Trevor just said.
Randy: Okay, this is going to be presented at the conference in our report. So in that regard, I would like the opportunity to contact the maker of the referral and request that he restate his referral with more specific, because we don’t have to actually have to report on this until September…
Joy: Are you withdrawing your motion?
Kim: I would love to have this well before the beginning of August so I can prepare this report.
Randy: I will get a hold of him right away.
Nicholas: I will give you his email in five minutes.
Joy: Are you withdrawing your motion?
Randy: I will withdraw my motion and contact the maker of the referral.
Trevor: Is there any objection to the withdrawing of that motion? Hearing none, the motion is withdrawn. Referral #6150, #6303, #6305, and Post Conference Referral #6315 were all completed. We are now at new business. It is five minutes until 12 middle time. We will reconvene at 1:30.
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Trevor: The time is 1:36 middle time, we are back online, back in session. We are in the new business portion of the agenda. The first item is 2010.05.01. The date and time for the next WSBT conference call. I should have had my calendar up already, but I didn’t, so I’m getting it up, you guys want to take a look at your and see what we can come up with?
Trevor: Does anyone have anything for the 25th?
Randy: What time would we do it?
Richard: I would like the 25.
Kim: I will be returning from Texas.
Joy: How about the 18th?
Kim: We will be returning from Winnipeg.
Randy: I will be in Kansas.
Joy: June 27?
Richard: Sunday the 11th, we can take a call.
Randy: July 11?
Nicholas: I will be on an airplane.
Richard: So the 11th doesn’t work.
Nicholas: How about an evening call?
Richard: How about July 14?
Trevor: So that’s 5:00 pm my time, 4:00 pm pst, 6:00 middle time, Arizona time never changes, we revolve around Arizona time. Midnight Nicholas’ time. We have July 14, 2010 at 4:00 pst. Please make appropriate adjustments.
Trevor: Next item is 2010.05.02 the date and time for the next WSBT quarterly meeting at the conference. I have that tentatively Friday at 6:00 pm.
Randy: So coming in Friday night so we are ready to rock Saturday morning.
Trevor: Yes.
Joy: I will check in Friday afternoon and get our room.
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Trevor: I would still like to try to do our meal with the ones that our here, Saturday for breakfast, at 8:00, we could go to the green room.
Richard: Kim, will you send me an email with the dates for that so I can make the reservation?
Kim: This is for the quarterly? Yes.
Richard: I need to do the rooms. Thank you Kim.
Trevor: Can we just extra-sure confirm that we’re not going to be ___________ in.
Richard: That’s why I’m having her send it to me now, I am going to make sure it’s handled.
Joy: So we’ll actually get our room rather than a closet this time?
Richard: I don’t know, I would hope so.
Joy: Let’s demand that…
Richard: I’ve actually used that as a negotiating tool, expressed our displeasure when we discussed our next contract. If I am not mistaken, we were not charged for it, is that correct Willie?
Willie: Correct.
Richard: They removed that charge?
Willie: Correct.
Randy: Well, it was a nice room for free.
Joy: You didn’t hear the tape.
Kim: Are we online?
Trevor: Yeah.
Kim: Awesome.
Kim: Joy and I talked about it, we are going to interview Monday, Tuesday, and possibly part of Wednesday, depending on when everybody can come in, and hopefully go into voting Wednesday night.
Joy: By Monday afternoon we will be in TEC after lunch, 1:00 we start.
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Trevor: The next item on our agenda is 2010.05.03, at this point that is the ratification of the WSBT members.
Richard: I meant every word I said.
Trevor: At this point I would like to go offline. Back online, it is 2:00, after the ratification vote of the WSBT members; all trustees have been successfully ratified.
Next item on our agenda is 2010.05.04, trustee budgets. Joy?
Joy: We are coming toward the end of all of our budgets and make sure everyone knows how much they have left because I’m not sure they are correct on the financial statements, okay I am sure, I am just being polite. Next year we have to be ready for the conference, I know we are only allowed five percent, but we are adding Richard, you got added for this year, I think you’ve got to come up some. I just want us to be ready for conference, to take this to the finance committee when we get there.
Kim: We took the third meeting out. My opinion is that as we will have four to five new trustees, we should add it back in. I don’t know what that will involve, how much will need to be added back in.
Trevor: As I recall the motion, it was something along the lines of ____________________, otherwise or something, did it not include some caveat that we could put it back if we need it?
Joy: Yes.
Willie: The, actually in the WSOB’s budget, the office’s budget, it’s already budgeted for 2011-2012.
Richard: That was a statement from Tom?
Willie: Yes.
Trevor: I just had a thought as well, that something that might go in the Trustee Manual we are creating is for each trustee might have that are part of their responsibility, as part of our pass it on, to teach each person who is taking over for us how to teach the person how to enter it onto the excel sheet. I’ve got the shortcut on my desktop anyway.
Joy: If one trustee has extra funds and another trustee needs those funds, they can be shifted to that trustee.
Trevor: The reality is that I don’t care if nobody has it in their budget, if the travel is deemed necessary by this board, we’re damn sure going to do it. If we are needed, we will go.
Joy: Just be mindful we are in our last three months.
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Randy: I think I ask this every year, I get the answer, then I forget. Is our budget from conference to conference?
Joy: No, it is July 1 to June 30. So you have all of June and whatever is left of May. That’s it.
Kim: Is there a way to get the correct amount, presuming it is available?
Joy: Of course.
Randy: What was the budget to start?
Joy: $21,900.
Willie: Everybody is okay with exception of you two are like right on the border.
Trevor: I know I have nothing left.
Willie: They were just about done. Nik, everybody else is okay.
Joy: Kim’s got $503 left.
Kim: The problem is I am fairly sure, because this happened last year, somewhere along the line, someone is taking CAWS 2010 and/or WSBT travel out of my regional budget and WSBT is supposed to come out of the WSBT budget, and 2010 is supposed to come out of their budget. What I have here, is everything I’ve ever sent for reimbursement, I show I have a balance of $503.
Randy: Did they make that change for 2010 for the convention? Cause I known that…
Kim: No, because that is what I was told when I became a trustee, and I started traveling to Wisconsin…
Randy: No I am saying the budget for 2009 did not have any trustee travel in it, though when we became trustees we should have, but there is this lapse because they actually got the convention 3-4 years ahead of time and then the adjustment for the change in trustee travel being part of the budget, I didn’t know if that caught up and was actually part of 2010 budget cause it wasn’t part of 2009’s.
Kim: You have to understand, the travel that I am dispensing to come to Wisconsin is about $27, gas, and maybe a cup of coffee, and maybe if it’s really late, I’ll stop at McDonalds on the way home.
Trevor: May we go offline for a moment? Okay we’re back online. So the other thing to remember is that we will have to be preparing our budgets and I am assuming most of us are probably going to do this 5%. Anything above that we have to have approval.
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Kim: Anything up to 9% we can do without approval.
Trevor: Is it 9%, I thought it was 5%.
Kim: Anything over 10% we have to have approval by the conference.
Joy: So we will get an extra $21. When I was the WSOB treasurer, the trustees literally went through, “okay this is what it is going to cost to go to this area, etc.” and they did so because we budgeted for it.
Randy: That would be $10,000 for my region.
Kim: I really wanted to go to Kentucky this year.
Richard: To the Brown Derby?
Joy: Before they did the two year…
Trevor: I know for me, visiting each of my areas in a year would be well over $10,000.
Joy: I know that. That is how it was. I used to sit with each of the trustees and they said where they wanted to go and what it was going to cost. That is how it was put in the budget. There were two TAL’s at that time. One of these days, we will get back to where we should be. We were running in the red back then.
Trevor: Is there anything else on the trustee budget item? Next item is 2010.05.05, procedure on the WSBT forum when a member has a problem with the regional trustee, why a trustee is not notified.
Joy: Here’s the deal. When Las Vegas had an issue, I guess they didn’t like my response so they sent something to the WSBT forum, and Kim sent it to Richard, I never got a copy of it until Richard actually responded.
Richard: So Kim didn’t notify Joy when she notified Richard?
Joy: No. When something went on in the WST forum, that they had a problem with their regional trustee, me, you sent that to Richard, the only way I knew Richard got it was when Richard cc’d me on the response. I didn’t even know he had a conference call with them until he cc’d me on his written response. I had no problem with him talking to them since he’s the boss of the trustees anyway, I just wanted notification of that. It was three months ago, the end of March.
Kim: The reason I sent it to Richard Is it was addressed to Regional Trustee at Large, please contact me. I wrote to Richard saying “this is addressed to you.” I thought it was TAL. I will be more careful. So you waited three months to bring this up?
Joy: I mentioned something to you about this. You’ve had other things to deal with.
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Kim: I apologize.
Joy: Please let’s include this in the manual for further secretaries that have to deal with, so it’s in writing.
Trevor: 2010.05.06, official language regarding cocaine. I don’t know if this should actually be here, I just wanted to talk about it and get some opinions from this board, because it has become something of a hot-button topic the last few years. What language do we want to use. Really it’s LCF, they have been coming to me a lot and asking me questions, I know there was a problem that I got involved in with the Holland website and some of the language they were using on their opening page regarding CA being a fellowship basically of, for and by cocaine addicts. There was a lot of different stuff. I wanted to discuss informally what everybody thought might be some direction that we would want to maybe see if we could encourage people to go with as far as the language we could use when talking about what and who we are. I know of course it is definitely a conference decision, I think as the board of trustees we should talk about it and have some discussions about it. That way if we’re asked about it in our conference committees we know _________________________________________________.
Richard: Cocaine and all other mind-altering substances. It is what we are, who we are. We are addicts, not just cocaine addicts. That is what I came up in this fellowship with; that is what the conference has agreed upon, cocaine and all other mind-altering substances. I don’t see any other language until that is changed.
Trevor: My experience working with LCF the last couple of years is that there has been more of a swing to make this more inclusive and I know that as a board we have looked at several pieces of literature, some of which we have shot back once or twice, specifically the self-test piece, because the language was wrong, we felt it wasn’t in the best interest, so what they’ve come up with now is cocaine, drugs, and/or alcohol. What should our reaction be when, when Richard asked me to get involved with this issue on IT with the Holland website, I was a little bit alarmed when I read the language on the website, but we really don’t have any way….
Randy: What is alarming about the language?
Trevor: It is extremely exclusive of every substance except cocaine. It is basically saying “if you are a cocaine addict, you are welcome here, if you are not, you might be best served going elsewhere.” There is nothing inclusive about it at all.
Randy: You mean it actually said that or it was perceived to say that?
Richard: It said that.
Nicholas: It said “this is a fellowship of cocaine addicts for cocaine addicts, by cocaine addicts.” It was written a long time ago.
Randy: So it’s been straightened out?
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Nicholas: Not quite.
Richard: They have not modified the language yet.
Trevor: One of the problems is that you’ve got members of the IT committee saying it’s okay, censoring that is censorship, and accused Richard of wanting censorship. As a member of the board of trustees, he is trying to serve a pretty broad-based fellowship out there. What’s our chance when that kind of stuff is going on. I realize its Cocaine Anonymous and I’ve stood on the conference floor and said the same thing, don’t take away ‘cocaine’ cause that’s who we are, but don’t limit us to that, cause that’s not who we are either.
Randy: So this is an education issue.
Trevor: I put it on there because I wanted to have an informal discussion about what you guys all think.
Nicholas: I think Who is a CA Member goes to addressing that. …Some of you may think that Cocaine Anonymous is exclusive, but we wish to assure you…I think we’re going there. I think the Dutch website or any other website goes in one direction is less than helpful when a lot of people really understand They love it, they like the language, it’s being really worked on, when you have a website front page that goes into what goes against “Who is a CA Member,” it irks, and although _some members may view think Richard may be controlling or manipulative or whatever the word, we are the principle planners, and I remember speaking to Patty about it a long time ago, having all of the literature and pamphlets in the same colors wherever she went. Because she went to Holland once and they were different because they didn’t like the orange, they changed it, they liked the Dutch orange and we sat them down and said we’d like to think that every CA meeting is the same. Would you be upset if [reference to color, unintelligible], that should go for the websites as well, as a general thing, if you look at most of the websites, they comply with the CA message. And that’s not the CA message. And it has been like that for about eight years. Russell picked up the error the day he arrived, there were lots of great _big questions on the second and third pages, but it was that first page, and our members have noticed it and didn’t like it. I think it’s good that it’s come to the floor. I think that should go for the pamphlets as well, it was all a bit weird. I always understood that alcohol was a drug by definition, the doctor’s definition not my definition, and I remember what it said in _Conference on the floor about alcohol, and I remember the alcohol reading got changed subtly. I still think there is a bit of work to be done on those and that’s fantastic. We asked Genevieve, can we work on this because you know it seemed to be lacking cocaine and alcohol and all other mind-altering substances. So I think we’re getting it and Holland needs to buckle up. We are asked to make sure that Cocaine Anonymous is the same program everywhere, so everywhere you arrive, and I see that a lot literally in different countries. When I go to Sweden, it complies, Portugal has come alive, Luxembourg, they all have that. I just think it could be a language barrier as well – I’m sure that will all be sorted out.
Randy: I love cocaine and all other mind-altering substances even more than cocaine, drugs and alcohol; maybe that’s just where I came from. But, from the website, if the members are upset, are these members from Holland or are they people in Holland recognizing that this isn’t representing Cocaine Anonymous correctly. At some point in time, the guy that runs the website
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doesn’t run Cocaine Anonymous Holland, CA Holland does. And if the education has to happen at an area level or from the groups…
Nicholas: Monica the delegate is the one to work, willing and able to comply, but she is not a web mistress so she is telling another member, I don’t think he is doing his job. That is what I perceive. I think it is the webmaster. He is supposed to be rotating out.
Randy: We just keep asking them…
Richard: My position is, I have not been willing to re-link CA Holland as this front page stands. CA-Holland.org is the website and I have not been willing to re-link it, what came up was the IT Committee said “looks good” and they were upset that I had a couple of issues. They asked why I didn’t voice them. I responded “because you’re a committee, I’m hoping you will see things come together and it seemed that the IT Committee currently was just following the direction of the chair and maybe not investigating enough on their own, so at this point I’ve asked for a roll call, then we are going to have a conference call. Trevor is going to pop in and assist, hopefully express my opinion and educate on how to look at both sides of an issue using the traditions.
Randy: I wouldn’t re-link them…
Trevor: Just for education as well, apparently there used to be something on the main page as well that said “if you’re from the UK, it’s probably best you skip this page cause you’re going to be pissed…” so to me that’s like saying okay it’s probably not correct, but because we like it we’re going to like it, you know…
Randy: We allow them to come into compliance and until then we…
Richard: I have to educate the IT Committee because the issue is the IT Committee is “well re-link them, it’s been too long, they’ve been requesting it.”
Trevor: Then they started to get somewhat…
Richard: I am not a heavy-handed person, and at the end I started to get, I sent something to the ca.org web servant, Mike, saying, “The trustee of the IT Committee has an issue with this website, please refrain from linking in at this time.”
Nicholas: I’ll be there in five weeks and I’ll fire off an email really quickly, and set up a meeting with the webmaster of Holland if possible, along with the area chair and delegate, we will do some work, and see if we can fix it.
Randy: To speak to the original question, I like ‘cocaine and all other mind-altering substances.’
Kim: Me too.
Richard: That’s my view.
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Trevor: I felt like this could become something of, basically the IT thing is what really concerned me, because it was no longer just business, it was personal too.
Randy: When we approved online, the self-test for tradition violations and all that stuff, it was approved and that’s going to go out cocaine, drugs, or alcohol?
Trevor: I believe so, yes. I could pull the file up now, but I believe so.
Randy: And that wasn’t part of what we sent it back for because we don’t have any say towards that part of the document as long as we were—my understanding is we were just looking for tradition violations.
Trevor: When we initially sent that back two years ago, in October, they had taken out cocaine, it just said drugs and alcohol, this work said “can’t take out cocaine, but specify alcohol and expect us to be okay with it.” So that language can and has been part of a tradition violation, and this board has found sufficient fault in the language to reject the changes based on what’s best for the fellowship as a whole. At the last round when it came in, cocaine, drugs and/or alcohol, it could have been the same thing; it could have been rejected by this board as something we don’t want to see as the official language that is why I put it on the agenda, what’s our official language. We all say cocaine and all other mind-altering substances, that’s what I grew up with in this fellowship, the new people are coming in saying but it doesn’t, it’s exclusive…
Randy: I don’t know, for me, I don’t know if I hear it from new people, I hear it from LCF.
Trevor: We are the ones getting the referrals, LCF is getting referrals saying please make the language more inclusive to all substances, etc., we get five or 10 of those a year, every year. The answer to the question is yes, we could have rejected it based on that, we have before.
Richard: On the other side, we are not “Addicts Anonymous,” we are “Cocaine Anonymous.”
Trevor: Next agenda item, 2010.05.07 email forwarding process. Correspondence to CAWSO.org, the WSBT secretary and/or WSBT@ca.org.
Kim: Apparently some correspondence goes to the office, and it is distributed where they feel fit, for example, to a regional trustee. My understanding is, and I’m okay with that, as long as we are copied on it, so I can follow up to make sure a response is completed by whomever it was sent to. I’m not talking about starter kit stuff, though there is a problem with starter kit information going to the wrong regions.
Robert: For example, there was a problem in Montreal, someone send an email to the World Service Office. Yvette sent it to me, I did the response, and I copied Kim on it, because I knew that when I get mail like that I just do it. It’s just one of those things that I know…when an email goes into the office and we get it, the question was about “How It Works” it was an easy enough email to take care of so I just sent it to Kim, “see what I did.”
Randy: You want to be copied on all of this.
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Kim: Prior to this last year I was always copied on anything that the WSOB or ca.org, if something came in, for example, for your region, and it is something that easily you can respond to, I was always copied when it was sent to you. Just so there is a follow-up.
Trevor: I would think the simplified version of that is just everything goes automatically to the secretary and then it’s their job to distribute it, then it’s all going to the same place, then we will all find out about it when Kim or whoever is in the secretary position. That way there is no confusion, if something comes in for the trustees that’s not a starter kit, the secretary, one key, one solution, any problem, always go in the same spot.
Kim: There is some discretion; everything that comes to WSBT@ca.org will show up in our agendas. I inform Trevor it should be in the agenda. Some stuff comes in, like Lawrence’s mail; I didn’t send it to the WSBT because the request was for Lawrence. If Lawrence wanted help, he knew where to ask. At one point, I sent something to Robert, and he sent it to the WSBT asking for help, some things require my discretion. There are some questions for the WSBT or a particular regional trustee that for some reason are not coming out of our mailbox, those requests are going to the World Service Office. One of those people handling it is sending them off. I want to catalog the mail and make sure there is a follow-up. I also catalogued responses for a long time, eventually they will go on the help desk. It is good to have those things. This Is about WSOB and WSBT that should be catalogued by the WSBT secretary. Not something that gets sent to you or Richard or Nicholas exclusively.
Randy: I get regional mail from the office, for example a disputed credit card. Can I help them get, cause someone called the office saying I need to get reimbursed for my thing I bought in Denver that I found out is worthless, I bought a raffle prize ticket for this…they send that to the office and the office sent it to me, I just dealt with it with Tom…do you want to catalog that kind of stuff too?
Kim: No. This is for specific WSBT issues.
Willie: I don’t know if some of this is because lately there have been questions, you want to respond to this or something was sent to, that I got cc’d on that was sent to Randy but should have went to Robert. I just replied “no this should go to the regional trustee on the WSBT,” and leave it at that point right there and then she forwarded some stuff to Robert. I don’t know if that’s what you’re talking about, being cc’d on that kind of correspondence, when she’s asking me a question re who mail should go to or cc’ing me on correspondence to Randy and I replied back to her “that’s not Randy’s region, this is Robert’s region, or it should go to the WSBT.” So you want to be cc’d…
Kim: It doesn’t have to be copied to me, you can copy the WSBT@ca.org. It doesn’t have to come to me. Issues like credit card, etc. are not necessary, this is more like the How it Works issue, trustee problems.
Trevor: If it’s not a starter kit request, it should automatically go to the secretary and we get to decide how to distribute the mail.
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Kim: And if it’s nothing, I can make up a new folder and put it in there and say “no response needed or I can forward it out to whomever or all of us and say this came, how do we want to handle it, it’s not like I want more, I’m just saying that going forward, anyone in the secretary position should be able to provide information you need, some of you email me during the day and want stuff. If I ever lose my jumpdrive.
Willie: So now, what was sent to the office and I was forwarding to the WSBT, that’s fine?
Kim: Yes, that’s fine.
Willie: Ok.
Trevor: So a lot of time, what happens, as an example out of my own region what happens, somebody will email the office something, they do the right thing and forward it to Kim, send it to me, I respond, Kim responds thank you, forwards it to the trustee, they will contact you within 30 days. Automatically I get an email from the lady “well I contacted the World, they said it was going to take 30 days, what can you tell me…” well I am the one doing it anyway, but see, Kim already knew about it, that’s what we need, it should never need to know as a secretary and doesn’t.
Kim: I am not talking about the Yahoo group, I am talking about WSBT@ca.org. Not posting to the Yahoo group, it’s a separate mailbox…
Willie: I understand that, it’s just, I’m just saying…
Kim: I just want to make sure you understood what I meant, send to the WSBT not to the Yahoo group.
Willie: Yeah. So, even forwarding the question that came to me, forwarding to the Yahoo group, you still want me to use CA.org when I’m asking a question?
Trevor: Well, when you’re asking a question it should go to the Yahoo group, because you’re on the Yahoo group. If it is something that comes into the office that has to be handled by the Board of Trustees that’s not a starter kit, automatically put it into the WSBT@ca.org.
Willie: And I’m just trying to be clear so in my communications back to the office I can make it real clear what needs to go there.
Kim: I certainly trust everyone’s judgment, if you think it’s something that doesn’t need to be catalogued, then don’t send it.
Nicholas: To cover all the bases, it should all be sent and filed. Send everything to the secretary to make sure everything is properly covered, that we have a record—“the trustee said”—18 months later…Everything other than a starter kit should be recorded.
Kim: I have a folder that’s listed “done,” “other,” and one that’s “pending responses.”
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Nicholas: As we haven’t got the helpdesk yet, we cannot point anyone in that direction yet, this is what we have. There are agenda, we need a record.
Trevor: The question in my region was “Can we put Co-Anon information on our website?” I said I would handle this, no one said anything, I handled it, I sent the response to Kim and the lady who inquired, it was a done deal. There was no question of how it was handled, because it was all logged. That to me is part of the transparency is keeping a record of what really happened just in case because you never happened.
Nicholas: This interpretation of what we said.
Trevor: Is there any more discussion on this item of business? Seeing none, I am going to call a 15 minute break and contact the two transcription candidates.
Trevor: It is now 3:25 middle time, we are back online. The next item on the agenda is going to remain there; it is the 2010.05.08, transcriber for the WSBT minutes. I did just send an email out to both of the ladies whose names we were provided, giving a brief outline of what we are looking for as well as the confidentiality expected and required. I have asked that if they are indeed interested to submit a statement of such a fact as well as brief outline of their qualifications. As soon as I hear back I will let you guys know and we will make our decision. The next item of business is 2010.05.09 that is the DRPD position that was asked to be put on by Willie.
Willie: Motion to accept the recommendation of the WSOB to rescind the motion to suspend the DRPD position.
Richard: Second.
Trevor: Motion by Willie to rescind the suspension of the DRPD position, seconded by Richard.
Randy: I can only imagine that the office board is prepared in the Board to Board to bring us financials that would support the request, is it supportable? I am asking the only two people that are part of the motion.
Willie: Yes it is, it is in the budget for the upcoming year, the position is…
Randy: At a salary we can discuss later…
Joy: Which year?
Willie: 2010-2011.
Randy: Because my concern more than anything else, one is financial and I cannot believe they wouldn’t consider bringing the motion they hadn’t gotten an answer for that, I don’t understand any special projects, when I look at that position, in at least what we looked at in the job description or the gist of what that individual is supposed to do, I don’t know of any special projects that the previous one had put forward that we believe were worth exploring if the office
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needs more help to do certain things, then I speak against the motion to reinstate the opportunity for this position, it would be more interested in listening to a motion regarding what they actually need. I think the position itself already has roles, duties, all those things assigned to it that I’m not sure they need a body for. If they need a body for something else, I would be interested in listening to that request.
Richard: I speak against the motion. I seconded the motion because I sit on the World Service Office Board and this was passed with only one opposition, that being me. This is an interest of the World Service Office Board and my opinion is it deserved discussion here, which is why I seconded the motion, so it could be discussed. I speak against the motion based on the discussion around the motion at the WSOB; it was that they need help, need assistance, and the DOO being taxed with things like convention, things like that, and my opposition in discussion at that motion was that if they need an admin or assistant that should be the position they seek and not the DRPD. I don’t believe we should be looking for special projects at this time, but we should be looking to stabilize what we currently have. I speak against the motion, I also believe it’s important that this body discuss the motions brought to it from the WSOB that handles the day-to-day functions.
Willie: I speak in favor of the motion. I speak in favor for several reasons, one being I believe the DRPD position will bring some stability to the office and not just a body. I believe it would also help separate the two paid directors’ position and allow the DOO to function as the DOO and be other critical aspects of the office that falls under the job description of the DRPD would have somebody else in there that actually knows what they’re doing and can be able to get the job done. I fully support the information that was brought that it is in the budget, that there’s money for it and, yes, we do need a body in the office but I just don’t think we need a body. My belief is we need someone who can be effective in the office and going forward.
Joy: Did you know that per the manual the DRPD job description and duties is determined and administered by the WSBT and the CAWSO Board Chair only? In other words, this person doesn’t answer to the DOO?
Willie: Yes.
Joy: Ok, just wanted to make sure. I haven’t seen the budget yet, Denise is the customer service person, and we have a bookkeeper and a shipping clerk. So, I believe I need more financial information before I can make a decision regarding this position. Until we see the budget, can we make a decision? Our budget is down, way down from last year, I don’t know if I can vote for this motion until I have more information.
Richard: The current office board chair, former treasurer is an advocate for the position being brought back, and has stated that financially it can be done. I am just bringing the information. Joy: I’m sorry, I need to see it. Just you telling me is not enough information.
Randy: World Service Manual, page 48. Director of Resources and Project Development; Duties/Job Description of the Director of Resources and Project Development shall be determined and administered by the WSBT and the CAWSO Board Chair. So I again speak
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against the motion as presented, because we have not yet been given any of those duties, the job description, and the only person…is there anything in that job description for this position that needs to be done by someone else?
Joy: World Service events, annual reports, revenue projections…
Randy: So there are some things involved with that role.
Richard: Yes.
Randy: At this time I am still speaking against it until a clearer definition of what the office really needs to be done will be provided.
Kim: I speak against the motion, for the same reasons previously indicated; concerns financially and actual CA events which I don’t know necessarily include the CA convention and conference, but over and above that, project and resource development, I am pretty aware of the fact that the office is overwhelmed and I guess the key words that were used “having someone at the office that knows what they are doing”. So alluding to previous comments I’ve made on the record, overall, we may want to again, as Joy said, get more information at the Board to Board and see what exactly Tom has done to come to this conclusion, where he is with the current position of the DOO, which I guess again I am using your words Willie, doesn’t know what they are doing, and that potentially we need to reexamine the staff, and get someone more knowledgeable and able to multitask, and able to better understand the structure.
Willie: I don’t want it to be implied that the current that the current staff don’t know what they’re doing. I’m speaking in favor of bringing this position back because it would assist the current staff in doing their job more effectively. There are some tasks that the DOO was not hired to do, I believe those tasks fall to the DRPD position, I believe bringing this position operational would allow us to give some more help effective help in the office. Just speaking to this position, and I believe that this position, if in fact it is budgeted for, if in fact we do have the money to sustain this, then I believe this would be a position that would help the office greatly and not just have a body in there. I really support its effectiveness, and I would really like to see the office run up under the two directorship which since its implementation, we have not had a great sense of what that would feel like because it’s always been either the DOO or an assistant filling in for the DRPD. I believe having the two directorship model in there would give us a sense of greater proportion of what are the needs of the office and I’ve looked at that closely over the year, and the need is not just “yes there’s more help needed, but, I keep going back to this, effective help.” I believe would help all the positions in the office.
Kim: Willie, you said something to the effect that the current DOO was hired without, I’m not sure of your exact words, but basically was hired, but was not trained or wasn’t aware of certain DRPD job duties, what would those have been?
Willie: The risk management…
Kim: What is risk management?
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Willie: Looking at the financials situation, going over the budget and yes she does do that, but the DRPD, and I believe it is actually in the job description, does risk management. Works closely with the report. Conventions, the DRPD should do the conventions, it was passed on to the assistant to do and that freed up the DOO to do other tasks in the office, the shipping and receiving and other aspects of the office which a lot of that is getting done. There are some things that are not getting done and now we have one person, new in a position that is doing two positions doing the work of the DRPD and the DOO. That was why I made that comment, not that she was hired for any…and if I can respond to a couple of things Joy said. Yes they hired a person who was hired in as a consultant. Was not an employee. Was hired in as a consultant and I believe that there was no clear direction as to what that consulting was supposed to do.
Joy: So that is the chair’s fault for not giving that proper direction.
Willie: And that has been brought up before, that we actually, I believe it falls on the chair of the WSOB that the chair did not give clear enough instructions to that consultant and we probably squandered a few thousand dollars in that attempt because there was not a clear understand of what the duties were for that consultant.
Joy: If my memory serves correctly, when interviewed for the DOO position, the interviewees were told they would be doing both jobs because we suspended the DRPD position. The person that didn’t get hired we asked a lot of questions about budget, structure, etc. Richard is shaking his head yes.
Richard: It concerned me that it was alluded to that one person is asked to do the job of two people, because our discussion at the time of hiring her was, “we have suspended the DRPD position, you will be doing the DOO, which includes the conference and convention,” that was discussed. The DRPD position of new projects and resources is mainly my opposition; we should have a DOO that should be as they currently are, working the convention and the conference, in addition to the other duties, a huge task. That is one of the reasons I don’t think we need new projects developed at this time. I believe this is a point in time we should review, reflect and stabilize.
Willie: I think it was read by Randy and Joy that the duties, responsibilities in the job description is administered by the WSBT and CAWSO Chair, but saying that, yes we do have a description, but that description, responsibilities given to us, authority given to us or authority given to us, is we can modify and we can administer the modification and the way in conjunction with the chair and revamp that position to receipt the needs of the office. That’s my focus point, the needs of the office. Not even looking at the DOO, just looking at the needs of the office, not just having a body in there, but having someone who has complete effectiveness in the office.
Randy: I went through that much more detailed job description for both positions and neither the DOO nor the DRPD in their job description are responsible for setting up the conference, setting up the convention, setting up the NADCP Drug Court. It’s not in either of them. If we know what she currently has on her plate to do and needs help, I am open to listening to what kind of help she needs. What I am concerned with, as trustees, we went to the fellowship and said “we cannot find this position of director of resources and project development.” In my opinion, if they need my help, there is help to be provided, we can probably do that for a dollar value that
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works inside our budget, and I would be much more in tune with listening to that kind of help than to tell the fellowship that we need projects and special development, the DRPD, neither one of those has responsibilities today. I don’t know how two or three of the most time -consuming efforts of those role never made it onto those job descriptions. Putting together the conference, convention, well, the communication liaison, that’s not putting it on…so again, I am not in favor of this position being reinstated as much as I would be open to listening to any kind of help they may need.
Joy: Some of that is in the assistant DRPD job description.
Randy: Then maybe she needs an assistant.
Kim: Assistant to the DRPD, so if there is no DRPD, it falls to the DOO.
Randy: If we thought an assistant could do it, then we could get one?
Trevor: Is there any more debate on the motion to rescind the suspension of the DRPD position, per the recommendation of the World Service Office Board.
Nicholas: I think there is a need for something at the office, but until I hear something from Tom, I am of the opinion I can’t vote. There is a need, I’m aware because I’ve had a chat with Willie, whether it has to be a DRPD, I do not know. I would feel bad standing on a stage after quite a tough financial year globally saying suddenly we have the money if that was not true. I’m not saying it’s untrue, I would like to hear what Tom says tomorrow morning. Whenever we ask a question, the chair smiles and says “I’m dealing with it.” I would like him to make some sort of statement tomorrow; I think we need to know. He is Yvette’s employer, if she needs help, I would like him to explain that, if it doesn’t fall under the DRPD and the fellowship doesn’t need a DRPD at this time, I just don’t think it would fly, I just can’t support that.
Robert: Motion to table.
Willie: Second.
Trevor: Requires 2/3 majority. Motion fails.
Lawrence: I can see looking at our budget, I need more information, if Tom can show us where it can come from or where we can cut the budget, we need more information.
Kim: I agree with Nicholas, the office needs help with restructuring. I have been extremely patient with a year of transition, as I’ve called it. It’s not operating 100%, I’m sure it wasn’t operating 100% two years ago, it’s not operating at even 70% and there are several concerns, previously in the office there have been more volunteers, assistance, and delegating of work by previous directors was done frequently. I am aware of that, part of that is a concern of the current director of operations. I am not certain that our direction is to unsuspended the DRPD. Again, I continue to speak against the motion.
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Trevor: Just for clarification, I’d like to interject at this time I misspoke when I said it requires a 2/3 majority vote, it requires a simple majority to table, however that was not achieved either, so the ruling stands.
Robert: We don’t have enough information to vote, until we have more information after speaking with Tom tomorrow…We’re talking and the motion is to reinstate the DRPD and yes there are problems with the DOO, but they’re connected but they’re not connected. This is to give more service to our fellowship. I agree that we need help, is this the right way to do it, or is it time to cut bait and let the fish go, bottom line. We are talking about the elephant but we aren’t talking about the elephant.
Trevor: Please prepare yourselves to vote. Motion to rescind motion to suspend the position of the DRPD, per the recommendation of the WSOB., made by Willie, seconded by Richard. Motion clearly fails. The next item on the agenda is 2010.05.10. CAWS 2011.
Randy: The convention committee, members of H&I subcommittee, before they go down the road, they are looking for feedback from the trustees as to the potential hurdles involved with the utilization of online video, audio conferencing to broadcast all of the speaker meetings of the CAWS 2011 convention live online. The points of the date have already taken into consideration that would either be accessed by a link via ca.org or accessed via the ca 2011 convention site, that there would be an initial page of qualification, are you a member of Cocaine Anonymous? There would be a recognition of no recording being made of the event, there would be a seventh tradition opportunity to donate to the expense of the transmission, a small paragraph re the cost of the, set up for credit card, PayPal, whatever. They feel that essentially this takes care of the anonymity issue. We are asking more on this website to qualify the person watching and listening to this event than we do at the door as someone walks into attend the event and we are asking them and giving them the opportunity to participate financially in the seventh tradition to assist in the expense of the event as much as we do for anyone that walks in the front door of any of our events and we would like permission to utilize that conferencing. We would like to know if the trustees can identify any hurdles we should be trying to resolve prior to presenting it.
The committee has not brought this to the office for approval, this has just been recognized as needing some feedback from trustees, then we will go back and plan. This is just fact-finding. The excitement in the group because of the London link will be considered to be a really big event, broadcasting the speaker meeting, that Cocaine Anonymous may be one of the first fellowships that step up to the plate and have the first medium to carry our message to places that we don’t reach, we were one of the first to have online meetings, this opens up an avenue that really speaks to our primary purpose, it drives our opportunity to draw our fellowship worldwide and connect people that might be in small regions, might be in small districts, might be feeling like they’re on their own, to where they just moved, there is a lot of excitement about this opportunity.
Willie: Will this be a protected site?
Randy: Yes, you would only be able to access it through that page.
Willie: But would you be able to record?
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Randy: We cannot stop anybody from recording, we can only recognize there would be a place that you recognize no recording can be made of this event, yes or no. No more than we can stop somebody from recording a speaker meeting with their cell phone while they are in the building. We ask that you don’t.
Trevor: I know certain kinds of websites have a non-recordable feed from them. How difficult is that to do?
Richard: It’s about $5,000 in software, last I looked, about a year ago. That’s not every transmission. There are ways of making it difficult, but if it is coming on your computer, there is always a way to record it.
Nicholas: There used to be some CD’s to be bought at ca.org, and we said no as long as we couldn’t control the output, we didn’t want someone to be the voice of CA. I’m just wondering if this doesn’t fall into the same thing, whether it’s…once it’s done it’s done, we’re not in the business of making money. We don’t own that person’s voice.
Randy: We’re not recording it at all.
Nicholas: So it’s just being screened. So I’m getting charged?
Randy: No if you’d like to make a donation to the seventh tradition, we are self supporting.
Nicholas: Okay. So that will be made clear. I think, research into this, what may more may not be the pitfalls, it would be a good idea, that’s what you’re asking, if we think it’s worth it.
Randy: What are the hurdles that upon gathering of the financial information , gathering of the process in page by page, how you have to qualify to have to even hear and watch it, because you can set that simple process up on that link.
Nicholas: Are they asking us to work that out?
Randy: No, they want to know before they go down the road to get bids and start working it out, whether we have some essence of some traditions in that is going to squelch this after people put six months into the effort and if we don’t see anything that just stands, you know, before we were talking about doing the pictures, there is an anonymity statement that has to be changed first, we recognized and we brought that has to be changed first, we recognize that and we brought that. That’s what they’re looking for. Do we know of anything that right now says no, stop? It will save a lot of time and effort.
Richard: I just wanted to address the comment, what we did a year ago, pulling the cd’s off of ca.org, no one had reviewed them, it was one individual that had reviewed them and posted them, they had not been reviewed. Randy’s picked my brain a little bit, I am one of the believers, we all see technology evolving in each of our lives, same with Cocaine Anonymous several years ago, the use of the internet in creating an online service area, there are online email meetings. This deserves the point-to-point videoconferencing not stated as “Skype,” an online payment
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system rather than endorsing PayPal at this point in time, even though that is what we are going to use. I believe it is a good avenue to explore.
Kim: I like the permission to explore, with the understanding those who are exploring may be the ones that will bring something to us that will have us question it. It is certainly not my expertise and it is not something that I am not opposed to. I am all on board for what is happening this weekend, it’s exciting, however, it may be something brought to us and we will say “we didn’t think of that.”
Randy: They understand this is not permission to do it, it is permission to explore the possibility.
Trevor: I would like to read from page 8 of 12 of the IT workbook, things to be avoided section. Discussion of or reference of outside issues including, but not limited to, religion, politics, or drug policy must be avoided. So if the speaker happens to slip in any of those, which I’ve heard possibly done before is part of my deal, nothing will be posted or linked to by any area or district which breaks the anonymity of any member of CA with or without their permission. Various districts must not post material that brings CA name into public controversy, chat rooms must not be used, non-conference approved audio/video files.
Randy: The issue with what the speaker says is no different streaming when you’re there personally. I don’t know if world—I know our area and for that matter, my home group reads a disclaimer that the opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not represent Cocaine Anonymous and that can easily be put right on the page and you have to read and click through. We continue to look and try to differentiate what the difference between the individual that does this, etc., to get to that part of the site to watch and listen, is there any difference than there is the individual that can walk in the front door and sit down in a chair. This is actually more restrictive to members and a qualification to be a member than what we do to sit down in the front seat.
Richard: It is less likely that someone shows up to an in-person meeting and videotapes it and it ends up on YouTube than it ends up on a video stream that someone linked to and put on YouTube.
Randy: That is why we would absolutely make them recognize and make them answer the question as to their ____________.
Richard: The best protection we can give.
Nicholas: Just audio? Video is very dodgy. There are certain people that might do it because they could.
Randy: 80% of what you see on YouTube comes off of somebody’s cell phone. Put 1400 people in a room…
Nicholas: Not the public, but someone 6,000 miles away might put it on YouTube Italy or Germany.
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Randy: We can only read the anonymity statement at a convention and we can only safeguard and recognize that this person has seen that we’ve made a statement that they answer yes and no to…
Richard: Trevor reminded me of this form that’s in the IT guidelines, we all need to be informed. Nothing will be posted or linked to any area or district which breaks the anonymity of any member of CA with or without their permission. A video representation of us…
Randy: Breaking anonymity is not at the level of press, radio, television and film. We are not breaking anonymity if a member wishes to watch a member share his or her story. That member didn’t break their anonymity.
Richard: Right, it is the opportunity of exposing ourselves and others.
Randy: We are not breaking anonymity unless it is recorded and shared elsewhere.
Trevor: The argument is always going to be, if someone comes in with a cell phone and I am sitting behind them in a meeting, I am going to say “Snappy, you cannot take a picture.” If it’s Joe Blow in Nebraska that says “oh, I’m going to download this,” we have no control over that. We don’t even have the illusion to control that. We are giving up control of the opportunity to even possibly to do anything to stop any individual from doing anything. Once it’s on the internet, it’s on there forever. It’s never going to go away. I still like it.
Randy: I think I’ve gotten great feedback, so thank you.
Nicholas: The more innovative, the more challenging, the better.
Randy: I put the voice of CA, the disclaimer, the recognition and determination of what it is to at least safeguard the record ability if that’s a true dollar value. We just looked at it that, I know this sounds crazy, but if 1,000 people across the world want to view this, and all gave $5 or $10.
Nicholas: So say there are three groups in Afghanistan, no way can they send anyone, or Iran, say, go from point-to-point live, one thing, to put it on the web is one thing, it’s forever. [I couldn’t really figure out what he was trying to say]
Randy: It is point-to-point, it is a broadcast, but is still just point-to-point…
Nicholas: I am saying within the membership. So we already know they’re members. These ten areas already apply to the convention areas. Can we do this? You say yes, but you have to pay the point-to-point fees in wherever. [
Randy: No, you would have to go on the link at ca.org or wherever, click link x, if you click yes, you move on…
Nicholas: I think that’s different that what you do, there’s an established group in Arizona, an established group in London, on a computer it could be anyone. It takes a lot of guts to go to a meeting live, just to go watch a video. Russell sends out an email.
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Randy: Or roll up and park, go in and sit down.
Kim: Except I live in Illinois, and you live in Arizona.
Richard: I like Nicholas’ point, and I believe, we’re still talking about the same thing. My understanding is that this is a point-to-point broadcast, this is not a remote recording that they’re going to be recording, this is just opening up to the point of the broadcast.
Randy: There is no delayed broadcast, there is no delayed broadcast. Payment is not required, donations are accepted. One of the young kids said “fear isn’t the breaking of a tradition.”
Willie: I don’t know, I have a concern with the payment part of it. I believe it should just all stay free. The person who is going to donate if they compelled, I believe their donations are going to come. I just see even requesting a donation without doing the full seventh tradition may…
Randy: We talked about that, the group that came to me, they were very adamant, this effort costs money, they feel it is consistent with the traditions, if you want to participate in watching the Cocaine Anonymous meeting, you are going to be let known the meeting is self-supporting, just as if you were sitting in the chair. Everything about those guys when they presented this to me and I listened, is we want to make sure the experience is as if you were sitting in the chair. You qualify as a member when you walk in the door, somebody read the anonymity statement to you. Somebody told you not to do anything wrong with what you heard or saw, and they pass the basket and ask you to participate financially if you can. That is kind of the premise of what they brought, if you’re going to go here to watch this, it’s not going to be any different than if you walk through the front door, sit down, and grab a chair. We can, we can’t, whatever, that’s how they brought it to me.
Trevor: 4:50 middle time we are adjourned for the evening.
MISSING FROM RECORDED MINUTES: Due to equipment/technical issues, portions of the minutes were either corrupt or not recorded. The following are the notes of the WSBT Secretary reflecting the discussion.
May 28, 2010
Reconvene: 2010.05.08 – vote on transcriber, review of resumes: Robin L. – passed, voted in.
Discussion and status of CAWS 2010: Offset loses of attrition by purchasing $10,000 worth of food…with exposure of a max of $7000.00.
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Discussion regarding WSO:
Willie: Motion to allow the office to hire an admin assistant/bookkeeping type person at a salary of $32,500 with a job description to be determined and administered by the WSOB chair and WSBT chair. Joy: second. Discussion/questions regarding the motion. Friendly amendment: to develop the job description of this position.
Job description will indicate who will fire this person?
Joy: Motion to divide: second by Richard.
Joy: Motion for the WSBT chair and WSOB chair to develop a job description for the position of admin asst/bookkeeper. Randy: second.
Joy: Motion to cap the salary of the admin asst/bookkeeper at $32,500. Willie: second. Motion tied. Motion passed. Trevor breaking the tie. 5th concept by Joy… Motion to reconsider, by Robert. Second by Willie. No debate, motion passes/
Joy: Amend the main motion to remove the word “cap”, and have it say staring salary up to $32,500. Second by Robert.
Motion to have a starting salary of $32,500 for the position of admin/asst bookkeeper.
Passed.
Richard: Motion to request the WSOB chair to replace the DOO. Second Kim. Discussion. Tie, Board is split, question, is it two thirds, or simply majority to pass. Ruling by the chair – does not need 2/3 majority…chair votes against the motion… Motion fails.
Last item of business: Group Inventory (All) – Done
- Close – Serenity Prayer – Motion to close 1201am – Saturday, May 29, 2010 – per Richard, second by Randy.
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For all attached documents and reports see pdf:2010-05-24-29-WSBT-Quarterly-Minutes.pdf