Butler Committee Meeting Minutes 9.8.08

Submitted by Jeff Dwoskin, Housing Representative (on behalf of Jane Phillips, Recording Secretary)

Committee members present: David Jorgensen (Chair), Dante Ricci (GSG Rep), Jeffrey Dwoskin (Housing Rep), Patrick Ross (Treasurer), Tao Long (Garden Co-coordinator), Nicole Jui (Garden Co-coordinator), Bronwyn Smith (Community Room Coordinator), Anna Frost (Dolly Coordinator), Andrew Owen (webmaster), Chin Jou (Social Chair).

Committee members not present: , Jane Phillips

Community member present: Olivia Martel (Graduate School - Community Programs Coordinator), Shannon Hughes (Former Chair), Sophia Apgar?, Nancy Jones, Rachel Galvin

Meeting called to order at 9:05 pm.

Bronwyn (Community Room): Calendar for comm room very full - almost every day is getting booked with many recurring events as well, except thursdays are being left open

Olivia (CPC): Butler welcome event will be held Tues Sept 16th, 5:30-7:30pm - Olivia asks the committee to provide desserts. Chin will coordinate this. We have budgeted $300 towards the "Fall Activity". (In some past years we had a separate Fall activity, like the Beer Tasting, and last year we provided beer, a 1/4 keg, to the Welcome Event.) We could spend $100-150 on desserts and save the rest of the money for other events. Olivia will see if the Grad School is okay with us providing beer and will let us know and we can decide over e-mail. Olivia will provide sandwiches, snacks and drinks for the event. Rain location will be in the community room (and then only run until 7pm). Olivia is estimating 180 servings of sandwiches (full subs cut into quarters).

Also GC is holding an extended social hour Friday 8-10pm with a DJ Dance Party. Olivia asks where we'd want a blue-light phone, assuming we are requesting one. The committee things a public safety walk-through might be used to determine where to locate it, and should consider the Sycamore entrance, and other places where people might feel unsafe. Also one near the bus stop, or the other entrance. Olivia is taking signups for the Dean's Dinners -- if you want to be invited to Wynman House to have dinner with the Dean and his wife, please let her know. Also, you can sign up for sports passes for $25 to have access to all Princeton sporting events. Bronwyn asks if that includes children.

Olivia is meeting with Matt Ferry on Sept 22 to get update on all Butler issues.

Jeff (Housing Rep): The grad school will be sending out a survey regarding common spaces, which will give feedback for what common space is needed for the Hibben/Magie renovations and conversion of Stanworth apartments. The parking office has setup zones for grad student residences, so that residents of one grad housing location can park overnight at another, space permitting. Also, from this year onward, all incoming students will only be allowed (free) parking for one car per student (with exceptions being approved by Transportation and Parking Services). Committee members asked if hangtags (from last year) for lot 25 could still be used until the new rules go into effect? Jeff will follow-up. For now, and after the new rules go into effect, call the parking office for one-day passes if you need to park on campus during the day.

Andrew (Webmaster): Everything is good. David found a bug in Gmail with listservs where you don't get a copy of your own posts. He's sorry for spamming the Committee e-mail list with tests to figure this out.

Anna (Bugle): The new Bugles are printed. Committee members and community members are volunteering to distribute them. Anna will provide Jeff a pdf version to give to Housing to give out to any new residents that move in after this point, and a pdf version to Andrew without the Laundry and Computer Cluster codes to put on the website.

Tao and Nicole (Garden): Had a Gardener harvest party yesterday with 6 people in attendence. They had a great time. They moved the broken composter from by the Community Room to the Garden. They met with Jim Consolloy about paving around the composters -- they agreed to put a concrete pad there to keep the area maintained. Hopefully this will be done by mid-September and will address the groundhog problems (by fixing the fence, etc). The composter by the community room was getting bad compost (people would even throw plastic bags of trash into it), and it was hard to transport the compost back to the garden. The composter by the garden was filling up quickly but was getting better material (so more capacity was needed). Maybe later once people are used to composting, we can purchase another new one for near the community room (we don't have the money right now, but should next year).

Patrick (Treasurer): distributed printed budget report, which we will post to the website (without a specific list of expenses and people's names).

Chin (Social Chair): Olivia says we should assume at least 150 people at the Welcome Event. Some committee members will bake desserts which we'll supplement with purchased desserts, based on our budget. We can talk about the Wine & Cheese at the next meeting.

Dante (GSG Rep): No GSG business. Dantes points out that a powerline behind 223 Halsey St is still down. PSE&G was contacted by Jane when it was first noticed (during our July meeting). Public Safety was also notified and put up some caution tape, but it has been down for a few months and is still down.

David (Chair): David asks that if a committee member replies to a resident's email that was sent to the committee list, please reply-all (to the list) so we know you have responded. Other committee members noted that we have a policy (online) regarding what we will send global e-mails about to the community. Excerpt: Examples of issues "of vital importance" to Butler residents include lost keys, wallets, pets, medications, or extremely valuable items. Examples of messages that are not deemed "of vital importance" by the Butler Committee include personal advertisements for sublets, sales, employment, etc. and messages about misdelivered packages or other lost items (unless the item or package itself is of vital importance). Public Safety also maintains a lost & found. We should add a reminder about this fact to the committee bulletin board. Discussion on proposal for ammendments to the Bylaws: David distributed version 1.1 of the proposed amendments via e-mail and printed copies to the Committee. He offers the following amendment: Section 14.1.1 - add "2008" after "December" so it is clear this only happens once, rather than every year. He also gave us a document discussing the differences between the version provided last month and this new version (see attached), which are mostly based on feedback from the committee at last month's meeting.

We are looking for a better name for "Community Coordinator" since it could easily be confused with "Community Room Coordinator". Andrew suggests "Butler Life Coordinator". The committee likes this, and we are changing the name of the position, without objection.

Will Section 14 (Adoption) remain in the document after December? The committee thinks we should leave it in even after it no longer has an effect, and will serve as a record of how these new bylaws were adopted.

Andrew made a motion to approve these by-law amendments and entirely replace the old by-laws. Non-committee members in attendance did not have any comments or discussion. The motion passed unanimously, with the changes above incorporated. The committee thanks the by-law sub-committee for its hard work and many meetings.

David will post a final version of the by-laws on the website and send an e-mail to residents with the link in an announcement.

New Business

Pothole to the side of speedbump on Devereaux (near the corner of King St) that needs to be filled. This is especially dangerous for cyclists. Olivia will follow-up.

Sophia and committee members have noticed non-residents occasionally have been seen dumping trash here in our dumpsters and also taking discarded items. You should call Public Safety or Dwight (the superintendent) if you see anyone doing this -- try to get a license plate number if you can.

Also we have seen some non-residents using our Laundry Room. We don't want to change the code again because we just printed in the Bugle and people get told the new code anyway.

TV in the laundry room is not working anymore. We'll check on that.

Meeting adjourned at 10:18 pm.