GEARs Board and General Meeting 4.20.09, Keystone Café

Board Members Present: Richard Hughes, Jay Klein, Paul Adkins, Gary Cook
Members Present: Heidi Beierle, Gabrielle Hobbs, Kent Fleming

Meeting called to order by Paul at 7 pm.

Jay moves to approve March minutes as amended by Richard. Gary seconds. Passes unanimously 4-0.

Treasurer’s Report Discussion of newsletter printing costs. Paul and Michal to synch up about newsletter printing and digital copies. Need to update the mailing list to reflect digital preference and minimize unnecessary printing.

Richard moved money from a CD into the GEARs Century checking account for the Blackberry events (reflected on the treasurer’s report). Total in the accounts is a little less than $11,000.

Nonprofit Status GEARs is a 501(c)7 and can only take in up to 35% of gross receipts outside of membership. Membership revenue is currently about $3,000 and the ratio is seriously out of balance. The Jamboree and bRamble generate anywhere from $10 to $12K, including donations.

Brian Thompson is a club member and attorney who has been advising Richard. His recommendation is to form a 501(c)3 so that GEARs operates both the 501(c)3 and 501(c)7 entities and brings revenues into compliance with IRS Regulations.

Donations made to 501(c)3 entities are tax-deductible where donations made to 501(c)7 are not. Grant applications require 501(c)3 status but political campaign contributions cannot run through these orgs. 501(c)7 status does allow fundraising for political campaigns.

Jay motions to move forward to add a 501(c)3 entity to GEARs existing 501(c)7 status as per recommendation and guidance of Brian Thompson. Paul seconds. 4-0, unanimously approved.

Oregon Bike Summit
Kent Fleming and Jim Wilcox will be attending the Bike Summit so will 2 women from TraveLane. Paul is able to go.
Gary moves that GEARs should send Paul to the 2009 Bike Summit and pay his registration and per diem. Jay seconds. 4-0, unanimously approved.

GEARs updates
April Kidical Mass went very well with over 40 people.
Business Commute Challenge going well.
Shane’s coordinating Bike Day, and that’s going well.

Jamboree & bRamble Updates
Posters, cards, and brochures are printed and look great. Printing done by the City, event co-sponsors. Printed materials are already in bike shops and digital copies posted on the website. Over 12 cycling sites have confirmed posting ads for the bRamble & Jamboree. GEARs is currently taking web orders for t-shirts. Registration for the events is up and running.

Leaves
Gary sent a letter out in email and feedback has come in. During discussion, there was a suggestion to have the Leaf Program director come to a GEARs meeting to be part of the discussion. Generally, feedback on the letter is that the tone conflicts with the tone and activity related to the Stop Law. There is interest in maintaining strategic consistency in relation to how the entire organization approaches advocacy. BPAC is addressing leaf program issues at each meeting.

Resolved to make sure Gary received all the feedback generated and at the next GEARs meeting the letter will be discussed again so other people can weigh in. We do want to establish what we’re working toward and to keep things moving (instead of letting the issue settle without any action taken).

Meet in the Street
We met as a planning group right before the GEARs meeting and gave some updates on community partnerships and budget. Most of the meeting focused on selecting a date for the event so we can move ahead with fundraising.

We have two positive responses from 501(c)3 orgs to serve as fiscal sponsor: BikeLane Coalition and Downtown Events Management Inc (the Eugene Celebration group).

We also received endorsement from Eugene’s Sustainability Commission.

Paul Adkins and Kent Fleming have been elected to the Whiteaker Community Council board. Paul gave a presentation to the WCC board about Meet in the Street, and it received incredibly favorable response. The board voted unanimously to write a letter of support for the event. They are eager to help in other ways, like the idea of making Blair part of the route, and are also pleased that police don’t have to be involved.

We are still waiting for several groups from the city to give us some budget numbers.

Since the City gave us approval to host the event without needing police, we have some more flexibility with the route than we had at our March meeting. We are still interested in including Blair.

We thought it best to go ahead and set a date for the event so we can begin promotion. Businesses will need to know when the event is happening, particularly the ones along Blair. We can’t officially change our route to include Blair until we talk to the businesses. We also need a date to begin outreach and promotion.

We are giving a lot of consideration to involving the University and students. The tradeoff with setting a date to capture this potential participant pool is increasing uncertainty about having a good weather day.

We settled our discussion by sending Price and Heidi out to make some contacts with University folk and neighborhood connections in the next week. We have three dates to test: 8/30, 9/27, and 10/4. We’ll regroup (electronically) in a week with the intent of officially settling the date.

Steve Poizat-Newcomb also came to the meeting. He’s interested in doing a documentary style film of the event and how it comes to be. Perhaps it also becomes an advocacy tool for making our needed connections to the bikeways.

Meeting Adjourned by Paul at 8 pm.