CA WORLD SERVICE World Service Board of Trustees and World Service Office Board MEETING MINUTES
May 20, 2009
FINAL
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 anyway our Tradition on anonymity in public communications media (press, radio, TV, etc).
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May 20, 2009
FINAL
May 2009
Board to Board
Meeting
Hayward: Hello everybody. My name is Hayward Hunt World Service Trustee, WSBT Chair. Today is May 20, 2009 and it is about 7:03pm. We are at the WSBT-WSOB Board to Board meeting. Would you all please join me in the serenity pray? Opening remarks by both Chairs, I’m just glad to be here at the Convention, it’s going to be a great Convention just like all of them are—Patty reminded me of that the other day—we are always alright even when I think we’re not. It’s good to be here. John is not going to be here and Tom is sitting in as Chair which he’ll be before he knows it. I’ll turn it over and let Tom have his opening comments.
Tom: I not really ready to make opening comments as Chair, but it is a privilege to be here and I’m excited to be in Colorado for our Convention, very cool.
Hayward: Supplemental reports, if any, from WSOB and questions from the WSBT. This is a limited Board to Board meeting. We have the DRPD and the Treasurer report will be given by Tom. Are there any questions about any other WSOB reports that were submitted?
Joy: Under John’s report, which would have been the Chair report—I know John’s not here—did the letter to the AA World Service go out on May 10?
Patty: No.
Joy: It’s not been mailed at all yet?
Patty: No, it just went through our Board. Am I answering?
Tom: I will be happy to respond. No it hasn’t gone out. We haven’t received any comments back. We sent some stuff to John, we haven’t heard back. I would vote that it would not go out at this point until we work on it.
Joy: Because it says at this juncture we have not received a reply but don’t expect to for approximately 10 days or so, according to Mary. We were wondering if the letter actually…
Tom: John gave us the letter, we reviewed it, we provided comments back, and we haven’t heard back from John’s response to our comments.
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Randy: That’s the reply that she is alluding to?
Tom: Right, the reply that would come from her.
Joy: That he’s alluding to.
Willie: No.
Hayward: Hold on a second. When we ask questions would we please state our name for the record so the transcriber won’t have to figure out who that person is. I just wanted to add that in.
Joy: She knows who I am.
Hayward: Randy I think you were stating something.
Randy: It just says at this point and time, then who wrote at this juncture we have not received a reply?
Joy: John.
Randy: That came from John? That’s why when we read it, it almost sounded like he had mailed that letter out and we just hadn’t received a reply.
Patty: I did not mail the letter. I know that for sure.
Randy: So we may not know for sure whether he’s mailed it.
Patty: He didn’t mail it. He put it out on our WSOB board and we gave suggestions. He hasn’t posted a new letter.
Hayward: I saw that one and what changes Tom had posted. Were those incorporated in John’s letter?
Tom: I haven’t seen it.
Patty: He has returned it.
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Willie: He put it in his report, which I believe caused the confusion. He put the letter in the report. The last that we know it was actually still being worked on. The concern was, has the letter been sent out because his report that he sent kind of indicates it has.
Tom: I haven’t seen his report.
Patty: I didn’t read his report. He posted it.
Joy: Did we get Tom’s report?
Hayward: You didn’t get it? It should have been posted on our group under May quarterly. Are there any other questions or comments about any of the WSOB reports? Hearing none, we will move on. Items for discussion number 4-CAWS 2009. We’re here. Does Randy, Richard, or Patty want to say anything about 2009 while we are on it?
Richard: Everything is continued to be worked out. The only issues up until today that I know about have been small and worked out by either the Committee or the Steering committee along with the help of the office. Everything has seemed to be in place. All Steering committee members and General committee Chairs are still in place as of today, the day before the Convention starts and everyone is prepared.
Hayward: Patty do you have anything to add?
Patty: Were going to do fine, we are going to pay our bills.
Hayward: That’s right.
Patty: And we are going to go home.
Hayward: CAWS 2010 that would be Kimberly.
Kim: We are moving along, small stumbling blocks but they seem to be working them out. That’s all I can really think of. Patty, is there something I should be addressing, specifically?
Patty: I would have only one question which is since he surrendered his Chair funding to this is he going to find a way to manipulate out the funding for the upcoming Chair in his budget? No one said anything.
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Kim: Right. Most of the WSBT knows that Quin has opted out of using the funds in the budget for him to come to Denver…Denver’s budget. Wisconsin had taken a vote at their General committee meeting to use those funds for a potential raffle that they wanted to do. Wisconsin wanted to do and Denver said No I don’t think so. I know that my discussions with Beth is that they were working out the particulars and Beth was communicating directly with Quin regarding that, so I’m not sure of the outcome but I know that he pursued that several times with her to get the committee to change their mind. My last knowledge was that it was not approved by Denver. Quin has asked CAWS 2010 sub committees to cut their budgets wherever possible. As to the line item for the chair of 2011 to come to Wisconsin, I have not heard that particular line item being cut. I don’t think that it would be his overseeing to do that. He might approach the General committee or Steering committee about it, and it might come back to the Conference floor because Conference actually approves that budget.
Trevor: I would say that the direct answer to that is oh hell no we have Joy. Joy would see something like that in the budget in about half a second, bring it everyone’s attention and not allow it to happen. They are not going to be able to that, and they won’t.
Joy: Tom will be able to do that too.
Trevor: I know. Joy will catch it and if Joy doesn’t Tom will, but Joy will catch it, guaranteed.
Richard: Just to let everyone know, Denver was aware of the ramifications that could have on future Conventions—manipulating line items for people to travel to the Convention that their supposed to be hosting the following year. That was part of the discussions with the Chair for 2010. They are aware of it and trying to make sure that’s clear, that the ramifications of one year’s Convention doesn’t affect the budget of the following years.
Patty: WSOB is aware of all the line items. They have to send it through spending so they are going to catch it first. I’m giving her heads up because I’m confident that’s going to be one of the things that comes through. If we would say no he would then have the right to go to the Conference but it would have to be the Septembers, so if he wants to have that fight, he should have it now. That’s kind of what I’m trying to say. He also said when he gave up the funding for this trip he said that’s because I don’t want to work. You’re not going to make me work. I said oh that’s good, the Trustee open meeting is Saturday from 10 to whatever so you will be working with me during that period of time. The other issue I have with 2010 is that they have not yet done a fund share; any fundraising outside the region is to be shared with the current Convention. We haven’t bugged them for it, I haven’t asked them it, I do have a full reporting
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from them currently, that will help them in the next month as would closing our books. I’m going to line item move their funds into this Convention. Randy: When you say fund share what does that mean?
Patty: All fundraising done outside of your region…
Tom: Prior to a year before.
Patty: Not your year, you have to share your profits with us, because it’s going to impact this Convention.
Randy: So any pre-Convention fundraising prior to Memorial Day 2010 we share with Chicago?
Tom: Right
Patty: 2011.
Trevor: Outside your region?
Tom: 75-25.
Randy: What does that mean?
Trevor: Fundraising outside of your region. Any in region fundraising you’re allowed to keep. It’s just anything—if you sell shirts in my region then you have to share that with…
Randy: So if you want to do this T-shirt concept that I talked about before it really sold this thing outside of the southwest region we would have to share that?
Tom: Right.
Randy: We don’t care.
Tom: It’s all the same pot.
Joy: You would share it with Milwaukee.
Patty: That’s only for those items that were advertised outside online.
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Randy: And when you say shares or percentage I know…
Patty: It’s in the guidelines.
Tom: 75-25.
Patty: The problem with is—the issue that Milwaukee has already hit is that they have already spent their pre-Convention fundraising money. We will have to line item move in order for them to do any additional pre-Convention fundraising. The good news is they have also already achieved their goal. They could do no more. If they do no more pre-Convention and only 2011 no one’s made a decision whether that’s affecting the other one or not. We can have that argument at a different time but currently they have hit there cap and that is one reason they do need to do their line item changes. They must because they’re not going to stop making that shirt, which I still don’t have a copy of.
Kim: My question—and I’m glad you brought that up was—to clarify for instance, when they sold their pen sets at the Conference—when they bring whatever they’re going to bring this weekend that is the type of fundraising that we are talking about. I guess I’m hoping that the two of you, Tom and Patty, after this whole event raps up, are going to be able to work more closely with Sharon to get a clearer idea of what they are doing. I’m sure you’ve seen, she posts something called a fake check book. I look over all that stuff and it looks like everything is accounted for. Although there does not appear to be any individual budgets for each event…just profits. Also, I want to clarify that we are cutting checks directly to the vendor as opposed to members of the committee. I think that’s important that they are cut to a vendor. Don’t you think so Patty?
Patty: Patty does think so, recorder.
Kim: Thank you.
Nick: Miss Patty could you extrapolate on the word, you said they have already reached their cap. Kim nodded. What’s a cap in fundraising? Why would you ceiling it?
Patty: That’s an excellent question. The budgets currently are more stagnate in our culture than they are fluid.
Nick: How do you do your actually budget?
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Tom: Actual budget.
Patty: What do you mean actual budget?
Nick: I hear you talk about projections and this and that—what I want to know is if they—I’m thinking of 2012—if there’s a cap does it mean you’re only allowed to raise $50,000? I’m just thinking the first ever CAWS 12 T-shirt in Europe will sell as many as we make. If we print 10,000 of them we will sell them. I wondered what this cap was, what it did, who it helped, and why it’s in place because I don’t know the guidelines by heart.
Tom: The actual budget that’s approved on the Conference floor—a line item in the budget is pre-Convention fundraising cost so you spend a certain amount of money to achieve certain amount of revenues. The limited, the amount that was approved at the Conference last year for 2010’s pre-Convention—they have reached their limit. It’s about $4,000 something.
Nick: Is that the limit of the money that you give them?
Tom: That they spent. That’s because they said that want they were going to spend.
Nick: Can it be self perpetuating? Can the 4-7 keep rolling?
Tom: No and that’s the problem. That’s an issue.
Nick: Why not?
Tom: Because we have guidelines in the budget. We have a budget that says that it can’t. We have a system—we can only spend what we are approved by at the Conference floor.
Nick: Isn’t that screws up? We have a potential to make a lot of revenue but you’re not allowing it and we go always going about the Convention must make as much as possible. Miss Patty always says where as we can make $65,000 we won’t accept this—what I’m saying is if CAWS 12 said we can make $100,000 just in T-shirts and sweatshirts in the first two years.
Tom: Then they might want to submit a budget of $100,000 but it better have some logical reasoning with it. Spending is fixed. It’s a spending cap.
Patty: On a budget, here’s my budget, here’s how much money I have to make. I have to make $10,000 and I’m going to spend $5,000 to make it.
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Nick: We are talking about maximum revenue.
Tom: No, maximum spending.
Patty: So here’s how it works in our system right here. All of these lines equal 10 and all of these lines equal 5. One of these lines is fundraising $1,000, right, but I have four other lines. The only…
Nick: I don’t understand that.
Patty: You don’t understand lines?
Trevor: I can clarify this so easy.
Patty: Ok.
Nick: I’m just trying to see the logic of not making money. I don’t understand that.
Hayward: Referral.
Patty: We did a referral.
Nick: I need A to B to C to D to Z.
Patty: It’s broken and I’m bringing it up so we can fix it.
Hayward: I hope we get caught up here, we only have 2 hours.
Nick: Can we talk about this after the meeting?
Patty: I would love to.
Nick: Because I really like to understand that. It just seems strange.
Joy: There’s ways around it Nicholas. I can walk you through that.
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Nick: Ok, thank you. I don’t want to interrupt. I don’t understand it, not making money because we always seem to be short money.
Joy: Not completely, but there are…
Patty: You will see us do it that the…
Hayward: We have until 9 and we are only at 2010. 2011.
Randy: 2011 pre-Convention fundraising we are having similar issues to the conversation you just had, we have 25 people showing up at Terry Murphy’s house twice already with ideas they like out there: Coffee club memberships, worldwide 18 months will make $36,000 all by itself, we are doing when Santa got sober play, having professional actors and actresses—Terry is off the charts, but he is going throw down some serious numbers. As far as the committee itself, we have a lot of experience and they all showed up. We’ve added a couple of subcommittees. We added an H & I subcommittee because of so many things we wanted to do in Phoenix with our H & I, integrate that into World Convention. We added a Volunteer committee. Purely Linda Fisher is doing nothing but just taking a list of names of people from our fellowship that want to help and that way instead of people having to hunt down committees to work for all the committees when they need help just go to Linda and she is maintaining our list of resources, per say. We have a lot of stuff going on. Biltmore is pretty much good to go. I think we got a couple issues—have you talked to Burton recently…
Hayward: I got an email from him.
Randy: They’re still going to try and beat down for some more free coffee but essentially we got most of the concessions that we asked for. Do you have any issues with the Biltmore contractor show stoppers?
Patty: The food minimum, but they reduced it today. He’s more in line and in an appropriate place. Burton is talking to me.
Hayward: I sent an email to him stating after the Convention I would be able to completely go over it and forward the information to the WSOB and TNC, and then we would get that back to him.
Tom: I had a conversation with Terry and I explained to him the spending cap on pre-Convention fundraising and he was caught off guard by it but I think he understands it. He understands that if
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he has 8 major events that each event should have a budget and he should be able to come up with an idea what that total cost will be so that he don’t get stuck with a spending cap.
Randy: A similar question that Nicholas brought up is that if this coffee thing works how do you shut it down?
Patty: 2011’s budget is due for this Conference. Now that we have a good draft on that hotel there is an opportunity and I hit Jenna on it to—you got 30 days to give us some good numbers… Randy: We went over the budget with a fine tooth comb, actually the Sunday before I came here, last Sunday, and I that was still one of the questions and the other question was regarding the budget. Can we submit the 1200 people or will we be required to submit the 900 one?
Hayward: They had 1600 room nights or?
Patty: No he is talking about people.
Hayward: Oh people. Ok.
Patty: I want you to make 1200 people. The mistake we made in 2004 was to limit 2004 because we were in so much trouble in that year. The way to get around all of the budget problems and everything is exactly what we did with this Convention too. They came to us with a budget of $78,000 and we said add in $20,000 well the added in $30,000. If you make sure that you’re bottom line spending—if all of those lines equal the total that’s 20% more than you think you can spend, WSOB has the right to line item move all day long. And we do, don’t we Willie? Even if there not exactly—like if you can’t figure out what they are, you have a sense—let say it makes $36,000, put in that number. I will argue on the floor that they would have a budget of 1200 and 1600. Give them some opportunity.
Randy: My direct question is because we looked at—we throw the 600 out and their like we got basically two that have been presented that we are using as the starting templates. We are using a 900 registration and a 1200 registration. We believe we would like to go forward and continue to tweak, whatever word you want to use for it, the 1200 registration budget. Our concern was to spend all that time, energy, and effort doing that and have the office come back and tell us that they would like to see the 900 budget reworked. Are we are ok with the 1200 registrant budget for Arizona?
Hayward: I don’t know.
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Tom: The concern would be it will get spent, it will be spent in budget, it will be spent in Finance committee and so if it’s done at 1200, estimating $70,000 in net profit it will be spent. From a fiscal planning prospective probably makes more sense to not put $70,000 there to the floor, because it will get spent. And if then it doesn’t happen it already spent. I mean if not, that doesn’t but if other things fall off, it’s still going to get spent.
Patty: Yes, the $1,200 expense budget is—but with very conservative income. You could say 1200 but it in…
Randy: 1200 people.
Tom: Right.
Patty: Yeah. What he’s saying is if it says more than $45,000 in your net gain, the Conference will spend the money, every penny of it.
Tom: And if there is a fall off in revenue somewhere else that money is still spent.
Randy: Why would the Conference spent it?
Tom: Because that’s who spends it.
Patty: The Finance committee.
Tom: That’s who spends it. The Conference spends the money.
Patty: When we come in this year…
Randy: The Conference doesn’t spend anything the Convention doesn’t request to be spent.
Tom: Right.
Patty: We aren’t just talking about Convention expenses at this moment. What we are saying is…
Joy: It’s all about income.
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Patty: Your Convention is going to tell me they are going to make $60,000, most likely, just my estimate of how their budget looks. They are going to come back and go we are going to make $60,000, and I’m going to go yeah they probably are, but I’m going to walk into Finance committee and say don’t make it more than 50.
Tom: And we are going to want them to make 70 or 80.
Patty: So we’re going to decrease your income and not your expenses. We are going to make it look on paper like you’re not going to make that much gain from that much spending, but it’s just a budget so that we can be sure it achieve our goals.
Joy: Correct.
Hayward: Are we through? Let’s move on, CAWS 2012.
Nick: This is all new to me. You can tell I have no clue about money, I pass this and I get this. 2012 had a conversation, Jackie, the allusive Terry, Kathy Joe, and myself had a conversation in the middle of the Convention in the UK, and we managed to ratify all the Steering committee and we talked to every member. I think Terry and Kathy Joe were really impressed. I had all the names and what they did and we then held a meeting so they could consider what the most important thing and that was the hotel, Beachwood Hotel and they were very strange, they have no content of recovering drugs addicts and they said we could do this, this, this, but the rooms will be another 100,000 pounds. The one in London, I don’t is going to happen but they’re still very hope that either Brighton or in Birmingham. They’ve been to Brighton, I haven’t seen the report. They’re going to Birmingham and their hoping to come and confirm that they got hotels so that’s the one they are worried about. The good news is Jackie knows most of the people on CAWS 2011 and has suggested that the Steering committee of CAWS 12 talk to the people in 2011 to get some experience. That seems to be working, so if they have a problem then we get heads up on it. Obviously, there will be some stuff like the banking and the money and everything, so after the hotel they’ve decided that they money thing is the next thing. I think they got it in the right order. That’s where we are at, at the moment. I’ve just been told to put on two PDS on the European Loop to get the next layer of the committee and they felt that they would like to ask some of the European brothers and sisters to come and help. I think that is really good. To get them in to get some experience, I’ve just posted that to the Loop and I’ve already about six hits already. They are still very enthusiastic. I’m looking forward to listening to budget discussions because you can tell I haven’t got a clue but I’m willing to learn and listen and why, because you’ve got lots of experience. It’s very enthusiastic, it’s very committed, it’s very strong, we’ve got 65 years of sobriety there and we got Russell. I’m confident that they are
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talking to each other. There’s a buzz about it in the meetings, they all want to do stuff. Jackie’s doing all the steering just to make sure no one’s running away, so they are focused on getting the venue and then start the filing system. They aren’t thinking of the fundraising or anything at the moment, just getting the venue. It’s the size of the venue which is really difficult and that’s way they want to do it really quickly, because unlike here they don’t have that many choices. They’re very enthusiastic and I know that they want to help and they are asking for it.
Hayward: We are going to move on to item number 2-NADP Conference.
Richard: I have reported—ok let’s just go down the tick list—the preparation, the communications between Patty and myself geared up really February. This last month we discussed—she included me on what the Board was looking at for the booth, new artwork on the booth. I’ve actually seen that here. The booth is here and set up if anyone would like to see it before hand. It is up in the office suite here at the hotel. Who, What, Where—Patty gave me the information that she will not be available on Friday, she will be in the office. It is my task to have the spreadsheet of who is going to be there at what time slots. Susan’s slotted to be there the whole time, I’m slotted to be there the whole time, Willie has volunteered, Hayward has said closer to the event he’ll let me know if he is available, that would be probably by June 1. Tom can do Friday and I believe Patty had mentioned that and I forgot that until Tom just mentioned it. We did have a discussion that—and Joy has also volunteered to be there available also if she’s available—I did get a call from Patty that she was getting offers to volunteer from members of the fellowship and I had said that was nice but at this point I would prefer that it would be individuals that we know since it is Cocaine Anonymous representing ourselves to the public. This is not a meeting and this not us introducing ourselves to one another, but it is the representation of a professional industry to the public. That’s still my opinion and where we are going. Over the last few weeks the artwork was given to me from PI with the cards they were going to make. They were going to be available at the event. Has everyone seen these? We are passing around the P&I artwork that has very dramatic, very eye catching, and a card that is enough that someone can take with them. It’s not a piece of paper that will probably end up in the trash. I think that a lot of thought was put into it. The fantastic thing was Patty had called me when she was working on putting the phone number and what we were going to get on there and she said she wasn’t certain about how—there was so many different phone numbers and that was the last I heard until I saw the artwork just before it went to press. I looked at the page 2 which is the back of it and all the phone numbers were there and I thought that was fantastic. We have the World Wide Web link on there but we have all the phone numbers, it was a great effort by everyone, thank you Susan, it was a lot of work. The coin that we’ve discussed over the—since November when it was first mentioned, there were a couple of ideas thrown out and it was decided just a couple of weeks ago that it would just be the CA Principals Coin which is our coin
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have them and a good representation of us. Probably something else that more people would rather have rather than maybe something that was sobriety specific but it is Cocaine Anonymous with the 12 principal’s means a lot to us, it means everything to us, but it is also something that represents us well in the public eye. I believe that’s everything that I am up-to-date on. Do you recall anything else from my report?
Kim: Would you like me to pull it up?
Richard: No, you can while Hayward’s asking. I believe that’s all I have. Thank you.
Hayward: Patty do you want to add anything?
Patty: Follow-up of the costs, which is the next line, is that the—we’re within the line budgeted. I’m grateful we did not cut it having now a booth that’s actually going to go multiple years, so that doesn’t actually get costed all in the current year. For those who don’t know, just remember that. Assets sit in the balance sheet until we cost out into the current year.
Richard: Wasn’t there an offset cost to briefly to discuss for that?
Patty: There’s plenty offset cost at the moment.
Richard: No, from the previous booth.
Patty: Yes, the sales of previous booths. The hours of it is 2-7, 7-8, and 7-5, for the Wednesday. The set up is on the Wednesday, so we don’t start in the booth until 2:00 on that Wednesday. They have on Saturday the 13th a workshop titled Cocaine; I want us to be there. The badges that we get for registering gives two people access to all of the workshops, so we have emailed to Orieona and to the people doing the workshop to find out if it’s a panel, I want us to sit on it. The progress in the program is that is says AA and NA meetings and in the small print it says us. So that progress.
Hayward: At least we are in small print.
Patty: So that’s progress, because we have trying to get into that group since 2005, so it took us 4 years to finally get into the group. I see that they are recognizing us as a useful tool for their recovery. They give coins, when they graduate someone they give coins, so bringing a coin is part of show that we understand their culture as well they will understand ours. It will be a receptacle situation. We have also printed the Fact File which will be here in a minute. The new
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green tri-fold Fact File. We had a 1,000 of them sent here. We will be using that at the Drug Court too. This is cheaper than our printed—you know the piece of paper that we copy that is called Info thing that has all the phone numbers on it—to print both sides is 4 cents and then the wear and tear to fold it costs some money. I know we have newcomers to do it. This is 4 cents and this is 5 cents. It’s an amazing shift in how our spending is going to give a more useful tool that they will be able to use. They keep asking for posters, so this would maybe their poster, the people there asked for posters, because in their offices they want to have something that they can catch the eye of the clients. It’s available in our cost, that doesn’t mean we haven’t sold them all to the UK.
Hayward: Anymore comments or questions? Ok, we will move on.
Nick: Could that be made available as a downloadable? Posted to people so we won’t have to pay the cost of printing, so they could go if it was a tiff or something of high quality they could download it and print it themselves.
Patty: All our artwork gets loaded to be downloaded, The Celebrate Around the World all of the PI artwork.
Nick: So when will that be on the web site?
Patty: As soon as humanly possible.
Nick: Ok, thanks.
Hayward: We are down to number 3-CAWS Financial statement/financial status. Where do we stand today and how are we looking at end of year? This item would be Joy.
Joy: So how to you think we will look at end of year sir?
Tom: I think we will be 15 to 20 thousand in the whole.
Joy: After Convention. Ok. That’s what I am sort of predicting. If the Convention makes 45, I foresee us being like, the max, 20 in the whole.
Tom: Right, exactly.
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Joy: I know right now that last year we were at $30,000 black and we are at $28,000 red. That’s at the end of March.
Tom: Salt Lake City had a huge pre-Convention fundraising.
Joy: Right.
Tom: It made a big difference.
Joy: I do know that because we don’t have a budget for TAL, WSOT, and WST that we as the Trustees are to make a referral to amend next year’s budget to include those. It’s going to be very small.
Tom: Less than 5 grand.
Joy: It’s actually less than 5 grand. It’s less than 3 grand.
Patty: Is the overall Trustee budget changing? You’re telling me 3 grand but you’re only telling me 3 people.
Joy: That’s it.
Patty: You’re not changing any of the others?
Joy: No.
Patty: Because we have overages. You might have to.
Hayward: Well every time they make a request I tell them to check with the office and if the office says that’s in your budget then they can have it.
Patty: But I’m talking about in your meetings, your meeting number 1-2-3 if the budgets wrong.
Joy: I could pull it from there, I guess. I will have to—no, I can’t pull it from there.
Patty: I’m saying do you have more than a $3,000 problem in your—in overall budget area it’s more like a 5 or 6 thousand dollar increase for travel but I don’t care.
Joy: It’s alright. You know what, you’re right.
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Randy: Why is it over?
Joy: It’s based on the contract. Meeting and travel—travel up and down. I understand.
Patty: We can’t plan for where the Trustees are going to come from specifically. Like we had no idea the Atlantic North Trustee is going to come from as far as over as you can get it so that these two meeting, three meetings were not right. We don’t know that. We make up a number and we don’t always make up a good number.
Joy: We are actually under right now. Meeting three is below what it was budgeted for.
Patty: Because we don’t have the hotel done yet.
Tom: Right.
Joy: See that, you’re right. You’re actually right.
Patty: I don’t mean to make trouble.
Joy: No you’re not. You are making my brain work and that’s really ok and I know…
Tom: We just need accurate information.
Joy: I will have to work with finance.
Patty: And meeting number 4—don’t even trust them.
Joy: I know. We are in meeting number 4
Patty: We are in meeting number 4 but we really have cost in it before you guys even got hired in September because it came on…
Joy: Because it was prior year stuff that shouldn’t be there.
Tom: Last year’s stuff.
Patty: That won’t happen.
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Joy: You’re absolutely right it won’t happen because I will make sure this Board sends their expense report before the quarters over.
Patty: They weren’t that late. That was our fault.
Joy: Ok then you need to…
Patty: I know.
Joy: You need to take the blame on the Conference floor for that.
Patty: For your overages? It’s an explanation. There’s Bruce…
Joy: I just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t going to be the huge amount and we are hoping to make the 45 here and that we will only be 20,000 in the red.
Hayward: We’ll make the 45.
Tom: We’ll make it.
Joy: I know we will. I have confidence.
Patty: While we are on just financial statements and those items, one of my issues, besides we can’t budget appropriately on a regular basis, is that we don’t spend any time considering the balance sheet, that there is never a discussion on the change in the balance.
Joy: I look at it.
Patty: I said there’s never a discussion, and there has been a discussion of the WSOB and several members are aware that I’m saying that there is a very likely proposition that if this Convention only makes $45,000 that in December, January, February, somewhere in there, we are going to be breaking into our prudent reserves, and that would be a balance sheet conversation that we need to—at least start having and having an awareness that—that’s not a bad thing. It’s not Satan biting on your butt; we only had $3,000 in it one day when I worked here in 2001, so breaking into $75,000 in a quality problem in Patty’s world. I would love us to do a conscious, to get it, that’s where we’re going, and that’s ok and we plan it. But we all know that when I make the transfer request in December that nobody says what? We all know where we are going to go, what are the regular transfers and what that is. I have a couple of people that have promised to sit
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with me over the next few days so that we can actually start making a structured plan for that. One of the push backs that I am getting at the WSOB is I’m saying that there are cuts that we should have been doing all during the year that we didn’t do and that there’s cuts that are possible that I’ve offend taking the authority to do because it was in the Director of Operations. In example; at this time if our sales continue to plummet as they are plummeting at the current time I would have a lay off at the office. I would have that in an eight week period that each of the employees would have at least one or two unpaid days, and there’s other cost. I just saying— that’s the most dramatic, the one the most emotional reaction from people. And if that’s just one of the things that we have to understand that that is just what happens, that we can make it, we can create together a system that says if it falls by 10% it’s going to be one day, if it falls by 15% it’s going to be two days. We can figure that out together, but then we need to be looking that far, not just what’s on the budget and what’s on the PO. I think we have matured enough as a fellowship to move into long term planning and that kind of a realm.
Joy: Then I get one of them balance sheets?
Tom: You should.
Patty: You get them.
Joy: No, I got a draft of March, no April.
Tom: I don’t think I sent you April. No, we haven’t done April yet.
Joy: Your April balance sheet you haven’t done yet?
Patty: Well someone has looked in it.
Tom: Yeah. We would normally do it about right now, but we don’t have our second meeting of the month, were here.
Patty: The bank statements don’t come until the 8th.
Tom: Right.
Joy: Trust me, I fully understand that one.
Patty: I know you do.
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Joy: I have a question for you or maybe actually for you. Because I have March, and it actually says it’s a draft, is our accounts payable below $7,000 now?
Tom: Accounts payable as of March 31?
Joy: Yes.
Patty: Well if it is for March we don’t know. This morning it was.
Tom: $7,200 that’s probably about right.
Joy: $7,264…
Tom: We had a bunch of—what did we have on March 31?
Patty: We did the transfer and then we paid all the bills.
Joy: Right. I remember it was an emergency motion that we had.
Tom: Right.
Patty: Generally our bills run around $12,000 to $15,000.
Joy: And we do an accrual basis, yes.
Patty: Currently—I count purchases though. If we have a purchase order out there I’m thinking I owe $15,000, so we are sitting at about $1,500.
Joy: If you want me to question the balance sheet, it’s not a problem. Is our inventory close to the $90,000 we have? Or are we a little below now, because of minus books that have gone out?
Tom: It should be pretty accurate.
Joy: It should be pretty accurate now?
Patty: It’s only off by—we have to figure that out.
Tom: We have to figure that out, because we have to reconcile Taffy’s.
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Patty: I think it has to do with Quick Books more than it actually has to do with us.
Joy: Probably.
Tom: The formula that allocates purchases.
Joy: So, receivables you are keeping down? Have we received the $2,200 that is sitting on the books?
Patty: You were here yesterday, that’s why balance sheets have to be done in the moment.
Joy: Ma’am.
Patty: Yes we have received it. Balance sheets are a moment. It’s a moment at a time.
Tom: It’s a snapshot.
Joy: It’s a snapshot in time. Do you want me to tear it apart, I will.
Tom: Those are good questions. Do you guys get the detail AR and AP’s?
Joy: I have not. The last time I received that was I believe March. When we had the last quarterly, at the hotel in California, was the last time that you and I sat and went through—and that was only through January.
Patty: Bring up your AOL. I forwarded you the GL and stuff today.
Joy: Oh, you did today?
Patty: Yeah.
Joy: Thank you.
Patty: I really didn’t look at it before I sent it to you, unfortunately.
Joy: I will look at it. Then we are ok with where we are supposed to be with the all the bank accounts and the new ones are running up and going good?
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Tom: We had a little issue today but we’ll catch that on the analysis.
Joy: I know you are working with the bank to try to get some of those bank fees back.
Tom: Yes, we are going to do an analysis and get all those back. They want to charge us $5.00 today for cashing the check.
Joy: And we are current on all the sales tax, payables, and all those other taxes? I have another question. We are using Paychecks, how come you’re not posting their charges, the payroll processing fees?
Patty: We do under bank fees—you saw where it is.
Joy: Are you putting it under bank fees or payroll processing fees?
Patty: We don’t have a payroll processing fee in our budget. We put it under bank fees.
Tom: Bank charges. We have under there, credit card…
Patty: We have a lot of things that done belong in there. The email that you got today is all the transaction details on all the things that were outside of any variance on the budget. It goes down each item and I just quoted it and put it in there so we can talk about it.
Joy: Ok, I guess I’ll talk about it later.
Tom: Joy you can get Finance committee here, right.
Joy: Yeah.
Tom: Good, I think we should bring that Finance committee and tell them…
Joy: I can do that.
Patty: It’s the same as the bank—the current checks, the current checks are wrong.
Joy: Somehow we to actually get Finance to follow through…
Tom: They will.
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Hayward: The next item is Office Restructure Project and that’s Willie.
Willie: Patty could you give us an update on the Restructuring project and the Interim plan?
Patty: I would love to have given you that written report that I swore was on my laptop today and it wasn’t that’s why she her reports and you didn’t. I can restructure for the rest of my life. At the moment my fear is driving more of what I—I’m more worrisome that trying to figure out how the other thing is. I absolutely believe in the two Directors, or two departments, or whatever it is. The reason it is two Directors because nobody can get their arms around an Executive Director with two departments. We couldn’t figure out how we could finance that. We did the two Directors. In that the amount of work that exists, I absolutely positive, now that I’m stuck back over here, I’m working 50-55 hours a week in order to do some of both jobs. Susan, thank God, is working also 50 hours a week. To me that proves that that department has 100 or more easy hours of regular work, let alone if any situation or questions come from a committee, that’s just the hard work. We have a f**king good staff, don’t we? The employees—Tony, I reported when they came in that I knew he had no hours available that he could work, is totally working very hard and very excited that all the little pieces—he’s got a fulfillment proposal that. I’m going to be talking to some people about, so that we can do that. He’s excited about he, he’s doing more work, he’s actually like happy at work, that’s a really important thing for me because I hate it. Yvette is on it, even though somebody almost overwhelmed her, she gets overwhelmed really easy because—I’m generally know as a perfectionist. I pale to Yvette’s abilities for figuring out how to do something. She has to have it exactly—you know it has to be perfect which is why the accounting thing was driving her insane in the final days of Taffy’s employment. Now that she is totally in control of that—she can tell you how much the AP was the 15 cent if I needed to know that AP and AR if I needed to know what that is. Her doing that work she is the right staffer for the AP and following up on AR. She has no problem on order entry. Yesterday she had a problem in her first 90 days, she said in my first 90 days there was an order that came in, we couldn’t do the credit correctly because Oliver doesn’t want us to post the credits the way that it appears when Quick Books wants you to do it, and he wants to have a special entry system. Yvette couldn’t do the order the way she wanted to do the order. She knew how she wanted to do the order and she couldn’t produce it the way she wanted to, so they had an ongoing problem. Her ongoing problem was that they gave her a credit but it wasn’t really a credit and then he had to pay shipping on what would have been his credit and so it was compiling and compiling. She emailed me and she called me today and she said I want to give him this credit because that’s what it should be. She went back and calculated what is should have been and how much all the extras stuff. She didn’t say to me what should I do, not that I don’t like people to say that, but she said we need to give him a $78.27 credit, I want to put in on the invoice this way and that an
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acceptable format, right Patty? She’s got the where with all, she understands all of that stuff, she is also a little crazy, because when I was talking about doing cost cuts because of the income referral she goes I can do all the jobs. I like her thinking. She’s totally open to any other way, so when you said restructuring I thought Yvette’s already restructuring it again. She’s going to figure out all of that work, so in Patty’s perfect plan, during these summer months when we are slower, our sales are always slower in June and July, I don’t know but they are, that we can figure out—bring in somebody that is like a student from a college that is off from school that can do just the plain order entries that are coming down online, because those are really basic. There is no thinking; they don’t have to figure anything out, she could do that. During that period time Yvette could see how her ability on any of the other stuff and see if she’s excited as she is about AP, about some of the other reporting that we have to do. But truthfully if you are asking me if we should keep the person who’s doing the order entry also doing AP, I don’t. I don’t think the person doing order entry is the right person to be doing AP, it’s different. The person doing order entry has to be a really positive, like shiny, oh my God you have 90 days and you have literature committee—it’s a very time consuming job. It’s very specific to the people that call in, that come in, it’s a very specific job, and AP and following up on AR and finding out where all that other stuff is, finding out where we are on the balance sheet takes a concentrated quiet space. They don’t really fit with each other. The way we are doing it now is we are separating it from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. before there are any phones, she’s doing this part then she does the other part. Its working, but I don’t see it as a long term good planning. It’s just not the same job.
Hayward: Is she the only one answering the phone?
Patty: No, everybody answers the phone, but she is the point person for answering the phone. Most of the calls are for her. 90% of the phone calls are for her, that’s because all the Conventions call Susan and me on our cell phones.
Hayward: So if we have to cut some of the hours, like we are hearing, or layoffs, or cut some days, that means all three of them will be off a day a week or…
Richard: All three are which ones?
Patty: All of us, not just them.
Hayward: Ok.
Patty: Everybody. The way I have always done it, it’s fair. We don’t really have management we’re just team leaders and it’s not like any Executives sitting in the corner. What we did is it
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was 6 to 8 weeks—the original program that I did a long time ago that I was looking at is basically $150 in a two month period for each person. That’s their first line of defense. It’s a day or two days, depending on whom it is in a two month period. Like Tony it would be two days in a two month period, one day a month.
Hayward: And Yvette would be?
Patty: She makes the most money, she would…
Hayward: Because she doesn’t pay for medical.
Patty: No, she requires more money. She’s the highest hourly employee we’ve ever had. It’s not bad because she’s not making enough money, in the LA area she’s…
Willie: When can we have something to actually look at number wise, salary wise, and all of that to say here is where we are right now?
Patty: We have the where we are right now. That’s hasn’t changed. We haven’t incurred any of the additional overtimes, everybody is going on comp for any of the overtime, so that hasn’t changed. My worry is that if we—I have two worries cause I’ve already told Hayward—I think Yvette is a trainable person. I think Yvette would stay with our company until she retires. My fear is that we will go ahead and hire a Director of Operations, not give her that extra $20 and her insurance and we would lose Yvette, and we would have somebody in there that we would diminish our asset. Yvette is an asset to our company. She wants to work for Cocaine Anonymous, she wants to learn all of this stuff, and while I’m sharing, there was a question about how we costed out something and someone asked her how do we post 4401?, she didn’t know what that meant, so she did know what that meant so she didn’t answer the question. She went and asked Tony—she will investigate all of it, she will figure it out. Today when I was talking to her and I was telling her how it was, if it is an inventory item it would sit on the balance sheet in the130 accounts, she totally got it. If we do anything to diminish her excitement about learning all of this stuff is my fear. We could abuse it at $XXX a week and train her and get her more information from her so that we can balance out the job. The answer to that question is you have my opinion. My opinion right now is that we can’t afford to hire somebody—I won’t hire somebody in at $XX,XXX, the other thing I did was that I sent the Operations Manager resume out to employment agencies and asked them how much can I get an employee for this. They saw that I can get someone for no more than $XX,XXX. We were looking at $XX,XXX. We were paying $XX,XXX to Taffy. We are paying $XX,XXX to Robin. For that job itself is $XX,XXX less than what we were kind of thinking, because we didn’t know
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how much of it was being split. We didn’t know actually how much of the duties and responsibilities were being split so we couldn’t—now that we have actually made those job descriptions it was easier to begin identifying and get outside information about what it would look like out in the real world.
Hayward: Does anybody have anything to ask? No, let’s move on.
Richard: So we are talking about office restructuring and where that is, so are we talking about restructuring the positions in the office? Restructuring individuals?
Willie: Well, when we talked about it we kind of lumped it together. We had a Restructuring project in place and then we came up with the Interim plan. All of this has just been lumped together right now.
Richard: What is the time frame of the Interim plan?
Hayward: Until we hire somebody.
Willie: Right, until we hire a DOO.
Richard: So there is a report we are going to get on what the restructuring is and how it looks?
Willie: We’ve already had a report. It’s for some time lines that the DOO position would go out and that is going to be in our next item, so we are going to talk about that as well. Richard: Ok. Right now I’m ok. Thank you.
Randy: I’m just thinking out loud. I trying to take what I get and—so we are about ready to put out a posted to hire a position that we might be able to get by with spending XX on instead of XX while we got people that are currently working 50 some hours a week in salary and so obviously there is a roll and some need for someone to fill in some of those spots but everyone can’t participate in the pickup when we only have 3 hourly people right?
Patty: We have two hourly people.
Randy: We have two hourly people, so there’s only two hourly people participating in the
pickup.
Patty: No all four of us will participate in the pickup.
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Randy: So you are going to cut their salary for a week?
Patty: Yes.
Randy: Can we legally do that?
Patty: Yes.
Randy: I’m just trying to get my arms around this thing. We got this much work going on that we need another person and we have this much money coming in that we need to cut everybody’s hours. In my business I don’t get permission from the corporate office to hire that position X when those are the conditions that we’re living in.
Patty: I agree.
Randy: So I’m not missing it? We’re not financially sound enough to pay everybody for 40 hours a week but we are going to hire this person—we can’t. We’ve got to find a way to get it done with what we got.
Robert: Just one question, is comp time legal in California.
Joy: Yes.
Robert: Ok, because in Rhode Island it is not. I just wanted to ask that question. You don’t get paid for you worked in Rhode Island.
Patty: On that point, I was just training Yvette because in the state of California its 40 hours worked. If there is a holiday on Monday—I can work you 50 hours, or pay you 8 hours for your holiday and work you 40 hours and not pay overtime on that 40 hours.
Joy: I just got the new 2009 tax book and law.
Kim: Prior to the hiring job description assignment of Susan as the assistant to the DRPD—and basically we had two Directors and two hourly employees.
Hayward: Had or have.
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Kim: Had.
Patty: That was half the time. We have one and a half Directors, one salaried employee, and two hourly.
Kim: I think from where Randy’s coming from is that we’re looking to replace our DOO. We currently have a DRPD. Just suffice that one of those other three has to go, it almost appears to me. Our Conference floor, in Patty’s perfect world at one point, there was two Directors and now we want to have two Directors and an assistant to one of the Directors being paid.
Hayward: It doesn’t make any sense.
Kim: It doesn’t make any sense.
Patty: I’m not trying to understand your question…
Kim: There is no question. The question is at some point is our new DOO going to have an assistant that we are going to pay two grand to? Now we are looking at a much different office model.
Patty: Susan makes $XX,XXX.
Kim: ok.
Patty: There is a huge difference between XX and XX.
Kim: Ok. Well there’s a huge difference if we take XX and put it back into our ability to hire a DOO and not have to cut our hours of our other two employees.
Joy: What does Tony make an hour? I’m so sorry.
Patty: XX. He’s about to get a raise. Here’s where I’m confused too. When we hired Robin and I went over and became Dr. of PD over here, I was told we would have this part time person that was going to help me. That was Rocko. I didn’t get that persons work at all. None of the work that I was getting came from Rocko. He ended up all on operations. So when we hired Taffy I said No way, I need—I cannot produce all of the work that you want me to do over here in 50 hours. So I said I’m willing to go to two days a week if you hire somebody for 40 hours. So my whole department was a $X,XXX a week. My entire department was a $X,XXX a week. Taffy
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made a $X,XXX a week. So Taffy made a $X,XXX, Yvette was making $XXX and Tony’s making $XXX. I’m like ok—where I am is you guys are making no sense to me because unlike Lee, my whole department stayed the same amount of dollars. It wasn’t like we got two people. I kept the dollar amount exactly the same in that department. That’s how I made it work so that Taffy could hire Yvette. She found someone that we could work with that we could maybe stay with the company. I was willing to go to $XXX a week to hire Yvette, because I believe that she is a long term asset for us.
Randy: Is Susan?
Patty: Susan is a long term asset in a short term kind of way. She wants to become a Dentist. We got two years with Susan. That’s I’m opinion, she doesn’t say that. She says she of course she is enrolled and she wants to do and loves CA, but she’s a 21 year old who wants to be a Dentist. We got two years. Yvette, I swear, we got 20 years. You guys know her, am I wrong?
Hayward: I don’t know Yvette that well. I know her from seeing her at meetings and stuff, but I don’t know her.
Patty: She’s a hard working person. I would do anything—that’s what I did, so when you were saying one and a half people now it was really just the same amount of money in that department and the increase—we basically took away my $XXX that I was supposed to get. I was supposed to be $X,XXX in my department, but we moved it back into operations so that we could bring in an employee that we thought was long term good choice for us. I agreed with that choice.
Hayward: Ok so this is my question.
Kim: Let me just finish by saying that I guess I was not aware that when we restructured two Directorships that one or the other of those Directorships would need an assistant. I’m just saying that for my own position, I didn’t understand that Rocko was hired in that respect nor was it really to our knowledge that Susan would be dropped into that until it actually was done, not going to happen or potentially going to happen but until it was done. I think I voicing some of the concerns of the overall Board of Trustees and that is that we are looking at money that we want to spend and obviously we are also looking at money that we don’t have and I understand where that money needs to come from. I have very very long arms but very empty pockets personally so I get that. The long term plan of this is how are we going to be able to do efficiently our work? I remember previously Robin being there as Office manager and putting her through a situation of training that appeared as though at some point—not that she was assuming any type of job description but that she would eventually be working towards one of
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those job descriptions. Now I see Susan’s in a situation where she is being trained yet we only have a two years window with her and I’m getting mixed messages about Yvette who’s being it appears that she has training in certain areas that she works well in but not others is she being trained potentially to apply for one of these other and then—I guess I’m throwing out a lot of questions and I’m not sure that there is a definitive answer to that. I think it really gives us all something to think about.
Hayward: Have we ever gotten the information on how the office was going to get to the 5%?
Did we ever get that?
Joy: Yeah.
Hayward: I’m asking Willie, did we ever get that?
Willie: Yeah.
Hayward: And you brought that in?
Willie: Yeah.
Patty: We aren’t going over budget.
Kim: No that’s where she’s saying she took this amount of money instead of it being one employee it’s being spread out on three.
Patty: Right.
Kim: But there is some overage, we know that.
Patty: We did have to pay vacation time and all the stuff that she approved, but that’s not—it will be the amount of the budget at the end of the year, the same way it always is the amount of the budget at the end of the year, I cut my salary. That’s how we make it to the end of the year.
Kim: Like I said, we got a whole hell of lot of work to do and we are not balancing it properly. I’m not sure what the answer is, I’m not sure that it’s to cut an employee. We always say we can tap ourselves silly on 7th tradition and fundraising, we tap our fellowship as dry as a bone so it gets back to trying to find some new and creative ways of making money, having fun.
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Willie: Hayward to answer your question now that I really understand it. I believe it is no, we didn’t get the first restructuring numbers. What was given the last time was the Interim plan numbers that we came up with of how that was supposed to get up under budget. The numbers that you were speaking of was from the Restructuring project that happened when the move was made with Susan and with Yvette. We never did get those numbers. We got a report from John saying that it was 7 or 8% over. That was provided at the March quarterly, but we didn’t get the actual numbers of how it was came to that percentage. We didn’t those numbers. I numbers that were given was the numbers that we asked for the Interim plan. That was factored into the Restructuring project.
Patty: We have the numbers. I will give to you right now if Joy wants to write it in her little excel sheet so we can make sure what that is. The numbers that we have is Taffy was at a $X,XXX, Shipping is at $XXX, Yvette was at $XXX, Susan was at $XXX, and I was at $XXX. That total is what brought us to the $150,000 a year. That is where we are going to end. I sat with the two of you in the office and went over that it wasn’t going to go over the $150,000.
Willie: But that was the Interim plan.
Patty: No that was with Taffy.
Willie: We are talking about before Taffy. Taffy was there but when you first hired Yvette and then the motion was that it was approved by the WSBT in November that the Restructuring plan was approved providing that the WSOB provides that it falls up under 5%.
Patty: That format that I just gave you we gave to everyone and that format was going to end us less than 5%, it was going to end out of 149.8 or something.
Tom: 3.75%.
Willie: But that’s not the report that John had. Actually John gave a report that said it was 7 point something, that it was going to be over 2 or 3%.
Patty: And I gave you information that said that was not true. Hayward, that report I did give to us. We did have that report. I don’t know if you guys got it but we…
Willie: We got it. They got it too. They got those numbers, and they got the report the last time.
Patty: The Interim plan report was a different one.
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Hayward: Can we look at the checks that are written for the employees?
Tom: Sure.
Patty: We don’t write checks to the employees. Everybody is on debit.
Joy: They are on direct deposit?
Hayward: Aren’t there blue books in the office where we can see?
Patty: Yes. You get the same report in your register.
Willie: So we are hearing we are ready to move on.
Hayward: Let’s move on.
Randy: I have just one more, I would be willing to—managerial restructuring is well received by employees that kept their jobs and sometimes by folks that didn’t. We have this thing called the LDR and it’s this leadership development review and basically it is a requirement of any successful company that I have ever been with to have a—who knows what 10 years looks like but here’s 5 and here’s 3 and here’s next year. Without being able to—we may be a small group, so we may not be able to have all of the names, it might be new hire in that box 3 years from now that we don’t have that person, but my issue I guess is that I see time, effort, energy, and therefore money teaching Susan stuff that we are really going to lose.
Patty: We didn’t know that until…
Randy: Right, but being this is brand new information it’s now information that we have. We have someone that we believe that may be long term employee that we’re teaching how to do stuff that you can teach someone how to do by going this how you do number 1, you do number 2, then you do number 3, that is from an LDR prospective, anyone. If we make a decision on who is doing what it’s based on what is the picture look like a year from now, do we believe it possibly looks like 3 years from now, and what does it look like there. I would be more than happy to help take all that information from you, you all have a wealth of information and it’s all from the inside from whatever angle of perception we have. I don’t have any of that. I don’t any history with any of these people, I don’t have contact with these people, I don’t give jack shit what they do, what their plans are, how they fit, and what they might like to do in the future based on you guys perceptions. I could be of great assistance in coming through and helping and
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I would be more than willing to step up and do some of that, because we need—this doesn’t make sense to me today.
Willie: Actually all of that is in a perfect world, but what we are looking at is this, we have a two Directorship that the Conference approved that we went to, so we are still missing that one. In the Training plan, that Development plan would be nice but we cannot assure those people in development that they will fill those positions if they come open.
Randy: The LDR has never presented to the employees, it’s a managerial tool to direct the progress of the individuals that work for us. It’s not a posted thing that we think you’re going to be here in 3 years, it’s what we believe might happen and then we direct the progress of that, because it’s still the individuals opportunity to succeed that helps them get there.
Hayward: Its 8:36 does anybody need a bio? Ok, let’s move on. AA permissions, recommendations…
Willie: We just recently obtained written permission to use “The Promises” and “How it Works”…
Tom: “A Vision for You”
Willie: Excuse me, “A Vision for You”.
Patty: Received?
Willie: Yeah, we’ve received the written permission to do that.
Randy: I’m going to ask the same question I asked at the WSBT meeting, why doesn’t that written permission give us permission to use “How it Works”.
Willie: I’m in agreement with you, but the request was not for that. In our last communication she said she wants to craft another email that would give us, probably to keep us from going back and asking them about small excerpts or paragraphs, ok…
Patty: Do you mean Darlene?
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Willie: Yeah. She wrote her last response, which I’m going to post to you guys, so that we wouldn’t have to do that but “How it Works” is a separate issue because of some changing of some of the wording.
Randy: It’s a different request.
Willie: Right. “How it Works” is a different request and that’s the one you see the letter in John’s report that now we’re now trying to address “How it Works” separately.
Randy: But we have permission to print “How it Works” if we…
Willie: In its entirety.
Randy: If we use the word alcohol.
Willie: If we use the way it is printed in the Alcohol Anonymous book, we have that permission.
Patty: If we did that we would have to print the steps with alcohol because it would be within the same writing.
Willie: I just wanted to let you know and I’m going to post that so that it can be made a matter of record.
Hayward: Since we don’t have a copy of HFC 2 right now— or do we? I believe we don’t credit AA at the end of “The Promises” and “A Vision for You” in our HFC 2 book. Willie: Do we?
Patty: I don’t have a HFC 2 book.
Tom: We don’t.
Hayward: I don’t think we do and that’s what they want us to do. You can use this, but you have to credit us.
Tom: Why wouldn’t we credit them?
Patty: We didn’t credit them correctly on any of their other stuff.
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Joy: They gave us a new disclaimer; it’s totally different from how we were doing it.
Willie: They gave us new guidelines. If we are comfortable with that then we can use it, but as we have it now, we can’t use it.
Joy: We need to change the World Service Manual.
Patty: The Preamble we did wrong. I told you guys, the Preamble—the letter says you have to go—we say by permission from AA but it’s from permission of the Grapevine.
Hayward: Trevor, sorry.
Trevor: Never mind it was covered.
Hayward: What you wanted to bring up was that on a previous topic?
Trevor: I wanted to say something else then but it doesn’t matter we are moving right along. I’m good.
Hayward: I’m sorry.
Trevor: You know what; I do want to ask a question that I don’t know. When and how was the decision arrived to no longer fill the second Trustee at Large position? Was that the WSBT decision or was the at Conference decision? Does anybody know the history behind it?
Patty: WSBT tells us to have a budget for them or not.
Trevor: I know, but most of the Board them self, when did and how did we arrive at a decision to no longer have a second Trustee at Large? In the manual there are two, but every November we vote not to fill the second one, right? This is a second Trustee at Large, there should be two people doing Richards job, technically according to the manual. We always vote, because we don’t have the money, to not do it. Now what I’m asking is was that a WSBT decision to not do that and if it was—I just thinking, trying to think out of the box here—would that no also be our decision to say if we can’t afford a second DOO it’s our decision to not fill that. That’s basically my question is if we can say do we can do the second Trustee at Large could we also not say currently we can’t do the DOO and we‘re going to suspend that until we are better off financially, that’s what I want to know.
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Hayward: Has there ever been two TAL’s?
Patty: Yes, John B. and Leon were the last ones, 2001 when we went down to only $3,000 in savings account.
Hayward: We were really doing good then.
Richard: No, just spending.
Trevor: I just saying if it’s in our power to do it with the one it should be with the other. I not motioning we do that I’m just saying that that’s maybe an avenue between now and the end of tonight we can…
Hayward: That topic comes up later. So AA permissions, we are through with that?
Willie: Yeah, we are though with that.
Hayward: Anybody else? Next we are at Accounting procedures and policy.
Joy: I just want to know where we stand.
Tom: We forgot to make a motion at the last meeting to set up our subcommittee.
Willie: No, and I already told them that we—the plan is to set up the subcommittee so that we can extract the policies from that and then bring it back to the committee.
Joy: Are you going to set that up as a Yahoo email?
Tom: We were going to just to do it at the office before the meeting, Me, Willie, and Patty.
Joy: Ok. I just want whatever changes you make sent to me, so that I know where I stand with what I wrote.
Tom: What is our goal to get it finished?
Willie: Whatever changes are made is going to be sent to the entire WSBT.
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Joy: Right. I understand so before the Conference?
Willie: Yes.
Joy: It will come back here?
Willie: Actually we talked about either August 1 or mid August that should put it out and then it will come back to you guys to take a look at so it can be rolled out.
Joy: Right since we make policies and the office makes procedures.
Tom: Yes.
Hayward: Ok that’s it on that?
Joy: I’m fine.
Hayward: Next is status of Un-audit financial request in a timely manner.
Joy: Why did we get a no? I understand Oliver works on Saturday’s, I understand bank statements come in on the 8th that’s seven days and entire week once bank statements come in, why can’t we get him to do the bank rec’s for that month and then send us un-audit financial statements by the 15th?
Patty: How about around?
Joy: Around the 15th. It’s the 15th; it’s like the middle of the month. It’s the closest…
Patty: The problem is like let say that they didn’t come in until the 12th and that was Monday, so now you are going to get them on the 20th. You said the 15th. The 15th is not actually…
Joy: Ok, then we can…
Patty: I will make him do it as soon as it comes in.
Joy: Can we get them around the 15th?
Patty: You can get them within a week of the bank statement coming in.
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Joy: That would be better. Our request would be better if within a week of the bank statements coming into the office.
Patty: Yes.
Hayward: When did we originally make that request?
Willie: We made that request on the Conference call, last month. I actually reported that on the 23rd.
Joy: If we can get them within the week of the bank statements coming into the office that would make us very happy. So that request is ok to do it that way?
Patty: Yeah.
Tom: And that is that it will be prior the WSOT having reviewed them?
Patty: Yes, that is what she is asking, un-audited.
Joy: That’s what I’m asking.
Tom: Un-audited tells that it’s a technical term.
Joy: I’m not talking CPA.
Tom: So un-reviewed by the WSOB Board and Treasurer.
Patty: Let’s call them un-reviewed.
Joy: Ok un-reviewed.
Hayward: Straight from Oliver to you.
Tom: I have a problem with that. As a Treasurer I have a problem with that.
Joy: My request was that they get sent to Hayward, to Willie, to you, and to Patty straight from Oliver so that you all got them at the same time.
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Patty: Oliver doesn’t run the financial reports. He only runs the bank reconciliations.
Tom: Right.
Patty: He doesn’t run the financial report. DOO is supposed to run them.
Joy: We don’t have a DOO.
Patty: I’ve been running them for a whole year, Taffy couldn’t run them either.
Hayward: Is that in your financial procedures, who runs those?
Tom: Yeah.
Joy: If it’s not then…
Tom: How it’s normally done now is on the second meeting of the month, I come in early and I sit down with whoever is available and run the reports and then get a chance to review them then and ask the questions and then address the questions so that we can present them to the Board in a reasonably complete manner. That’s the current time frame on it.
Patty: Oliver doesn’t do financial report, if we are trying to be specific…
Joy: He does journal entries, bank rec’s…
Patty: Yes. He answers my questions when I say what the heck is that and what’s that…
Joy: Reconciles the inventory, accounts payable, accounts receivable…
Tom: Exactly. He details out the accounts we need him to do.
Patty: He makes the deposits.
Joy: He does what a CPA does for a bookkeeper.
Tom: For a bookkeeper.
Joy: But for free.
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Hayward: We are moving on? So we are taking number 8 off the list is that right Willie?
Willie: Yeah.
Hayward: Is that ok with you Kimberly?
Kim: I’m good.
Willie: I was going to speak to her directly.
Hayward: Number 9-Circulation of announcements for DOO, DRPD to fellowship.
Tom: How about Treasurer?
Hayward: That’s already out there, right?
Joy: Yes, Treasurer is already out there. I put it out and I’m going to do it again to get the fellowship to keep it in their brains.
Patty: Part of why I put out the DRPD is Yvette’s abilities and possible training her and I’d step in. I’d love that we would have somebody long term. I’m willing to do what it takes to train somebody to do some of the work that we need to get done. So when I asked them to put out both of them part of it was Susan can do my job with me not going far away. I thought we should find out what if there is a perfect DRPD. Let the process be part of—let’s just put it out there. We need these people and see what came to us. That was why I asked them to do both of them, that I was willing over—wherever the f**k you want me I don’t care. Whatever it is that we decide I don’t know—I agreed when you were asking me to not fill the DOO that we would do that later, I would think you would want participation for me to find out what I think that will be and how that will work and what we can do. Putting it out for anything is just like that shot; see if someone answers the flare, because maybe there is someone better qualified for DRPD than there would be for DOO at the moment. I don’t know that. There are some people that would be more drawn to the more creative job as compared to the getting financial reports to Joy. I just want us to put the shout out, I don’t care where I serve, I don’t care, but call me.
Willie: Can we work together in getting a draft announcement for DRPD?
Patty: Yeah, I would like it to be some creative thing to say the office is following concepts of change, so it doesn’t look like there’s a mass exodus.
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Willie: Just the announcement going out, because we never had a DRPD, we do have a DOO, but there are some differences in what we are looking for, correct?
Patty: Oh yeah, there’s totally different…
Willie: I would like to get the DOO announcement with you and actually develop one for the DRPD.
Patty: Or for in this case it would cover—we can make one announcement.
Hayward: We already have an announcement for paid Director, right?
Willie: Yes, DOO.
Joy: You already have one for DOO?
Willie: Yes, we have one for DOO.
Tom: But it’s an old one
Trevor: But it hasn’t went out yet?
Joy: That’s the old one? It doesn’t have the updated job description?
Willie: No.
Patty: No one has the updated copy.
Willie: It doesn’t have the latest job descriptions; there were a few things in there. We want to be able to match that announcement to make sure it has everything in it, that’s all.
Patty: You aren’t going to put a job announcement with all the details of the job description?
Willie: No we’re not. We are going to look at the announcement and we are going to make sure that it reflects what we are looking for.
Joy: So that way when we interview we ask the right questions.
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Willie: Yes.
Hayward: To create the one for the DRPD it shouldn’t be that much, wherever it’s different we just…
Joy: Correct. Cut and Paste.
Hayward: We are going to talk about what Trevor brought up later on too. So we are straight on that? Ok next one is Audit Medias speaker removed from the web site store.
Richard: In looking at the web site store there are individual speakers that are being sold on our web site, no disclaimer or promotion that is an appeared promotion of individuals of CA.
Patty: What you’re saying is the way it looks on there is we are promoting a speaker?
Richard: Yes. There’s a selection on particular speakers…
Patty: I’m sorry, that’s because for five months we’ve given them the whole list. That whole list you saw the speaker—every speaker we’ve had, since the beginning of time, we have all those CD’s and we asked the web servant to put all them on there and we have not be able to get them.
Randy: We have the right to sell them?
Patty: Yes. Those are ours.
Randy: Owning them doesn’t give us the right to sell them.
Patty: No it’s the World Service Convention—we own the copyrights on all the World Service Convention CD’s.
Randy: So when the company that is selling tapes here leaves…
Patty: They give us their master.
Randy: And we own that?
Patty: Yes.
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Randy: They can no longer sell?
Patty: We agreed that they can.
Randy: In my head one of us can’t, but we agree that we both can.
Joy: Is under the contract?
Patty: It’s in the contract, which is brand new next year.
Randy: That’s one of the questions that we had. The next thing is it boils down to CA approved literature. Without the correct disclaimers what’s being said hasn’t went through any 9 step, 18 step, 35 step process to be approved. It hasn’t.
Richard: No approval process.
Patty: There is no approval process, right.
Randy: So without that approval process, we believe there should be one or there is a process that includes the correct disclaimer similar to like a lot of Conventions, similar that we do S&L and the opinioned expressed are those of the speaker and does not represent Cocaine Anonymous as a whole.
Patty: On the CD too? We gave you the disclaimer in our report.
Randy: The disclaimer is not on the web site.
Kim: It’s not on the web site.
Patty: That’s the web servants fault. We have forwarded the web servant. I have another issue with—not on your agenda—we haven’t been able to get web servant. We need a new web servant, because seriously, if Susan asked me one more time—we just them—when did you guys say that about the CD logo, when was that?
Tom: About a month ago.
Patty: It was longer than a month ago. I called them and said if I have to sit in front of the Trustees with that logo on there—I know it’s volunteer and I didn’t quite talk like that…
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Kim: That happened shortly after April 21.
Willie: After the Conference call.
Kim: In the last 10 days you’ve removed the CA logo from the CD.
Patty: We gave them all a disclaimer.
Kim: The disclaimer’s not there and I guess there’s no criteria to have approved CA media…
Patty: The way that we did it, just so anyone knows, that we made up the list of every speaker that we’ve had, we brought that list to the WSOB, we said these are the ones we want to put on the web site, they said ok. Then we started loading them. We didn’t give them artwork, he put up the logo. At the same time when we wrote to him and said change the logo, load the other 69 speakers, we gave him that same disclaimer that is in one of the reports. I think you guys get all of the reports. We gave that all to him and that issue is obviously emotional to me because we can’t get him to load things on the site at a reasonable time. That’s an operations issue whether or not we have an approval process.
Joy: So we need someone we can get that will do his job in a timely manner?
Richard: Our topic right now is the removal of the speakers leaving only the Hope, Faith, and Courage CD set please.
Trevor: I would like to make a motion to suspend the rules to extend the time of this session to cover the list of our agenda items.
Joy: Second.
Hayward: Motion by Trevor, second by Joy to suspend the rule.
Kim: Any discussion?
Hayward: Is there?
Joy: On suspending the rules?
Hayward: Is there? Ok all in favor? All opposed?
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Trevor: I would like to make a motion to continue our agenda until the close.
Joy: Second.
Hayward: Motion by Trevor, second by Joy to extend the time of this meeting until we complete the agenda. Is there any discussion on that? Seeing none, please prepare yourselves to vote, all in favor? Patty? Ok let’s continue.
Patty: Are you guys making a referral for the approval process?
Kim: We will be submitting a referral regarding this. It hasn’t been crafted.
Patty: Ok, I know you’re sending me home to write one, that’s all I asking…
Kim: No
Patty: I just get to remove it which could take the rest of my life with this web master.
Richard: No it won’t. Does anyone have any issue? I’ve had luck following her with a remark to him because he knows I’m in technology. If I follow up on her saying this went through, please make sure it’s done quickly.
Patty: Did the program get done?
Richard: I didn’t beat him over the head; I’m beating him over the head tonight.
Hayward: If we put the disclaimer on that does that change anything for us?
Richard: That’s not about the disclaimer, it’s about the removal. She said she didn’t know how effectively it would get done.
Hayward: I have no problem, does anybody else have a problem with Richard…
Kim: In addition to that they’re to cease selling any speaker media out of the office as well.
Richard: Yes.
Hayward: Ok let’s move forward and the last item is-Ratification of WSOB Director.
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Willie: I’m happy to say a Barry Jacobs has been ratified by this Board as Director at Large.
Hayward: That’s it you all. I’ll entertain a motion.
Everyone: Motion to close.
Richard: Second.
Hayward: All in favor? Let’s close with the Serenity.
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