Mechanics Minutes Jan 2010

A note about these minutes: we were caught by surprise without a laptop, so these minutes will be less complete than those that Tim often takes. I am going to focus on things that we discussed and decided, since it's hard from my notes to reproduce the stack completely. Our discussion involved more brainstorming than debate, so we should be able to get away with it this time. --John-Paul

In attendance:

• Jordan (Working the agenda)
• Marshall
• Iga
• Helen
• Ron
• Ben
• Carl
• Genevieve
• John-Paul (Taking minutes)
• Geoff Colburn (Keeping stack)
• Rez
• Jeremiah

We also had one volunteer who is working to become staff arrive late--I'm sorry that I've blanked on your name, but I didn't grab the sign-in sheet before heading out last night.

All who were present plan to continue with the shifts that we have noted on the wiki, with one exception: Geoff C. is planning to move from the Wednesday night shift to helping Alex with the basic tune-up class on Monday evenings. On a related note, we now have three instructors for the February and probably the March advanced maintenance class (Esther, John-Paul and Zac), so we're upping the slots in that class to eight. It was noted that staffing on Saturdays has been better of late, thanks in large part to those mechanics who have committed to regular Saturday shifts, but that we're heading back into the busy season soon and will be needing more one-off commitments from other wrenches.

1. Parts collection Summary: Project is underway; ramping up would require more talk of budget and space

Rez gave an update on the project to increase our parts inflow, on which he, Justin and Jeremiah have taken point. This has been underway for a bit more than a month, and parts have been trickling in. (Puritan New England is also in better condition than it was in November/December.) Thus far, most of this work to get parts has concentrated on local bike shops; the group's next goal is to branch farther afield (Marin, for example) and to look into supplies from other types of organizations. We discussed that we would need some more organization in place in order to ramp up any collection/donation of bikes as opposed to parts. We will for example need to budget for renting or borrow the occasional van or truck, and we have to talk more about space for storage if we go in that direction.

2. Budgets and project proposals Summary: Right now the way you spend money at the BK is unclear. It would help the organization to plan and approve projects, and staff members to carry out projects, if there was some system for budgeting, asking for and receiving money for larger projects.

Jordan explained the Board's thinking regarding how to spend our money. We have a lot in the bank right now and we have a large number of ideas floating around the shop, and one of the things holding us back from moving forward with those ideas is not knowing how much money we have to spend and/or how to spend it. The Board therefore completely backs anyone who wants to work on a project writing up a short plan, with some idea of what it might cost, so that we can try to budget among these ideas.

Ben asked if we wanted some sort of application process for such project money in place, and Jordan agreed that that was the Board's thinking. Genevieve pointed out that it is hard to know how to spend money at the BK: we often tell people that we will reimburse them, but some projects that need doing may require more money than an interested staff member has to spend on it and wait to be paid back. Jeremiah noted that we have done this sort of thing informally in the past, but that some formalization--such as a form that we could give to the Board, who would know how much we have to spend and what's being asked before someone shows up brandishing receipts--would help people commit to such projects. No formal decision was taken on this point other than support for some effort by the Board to formalize this process, especially for larger projects.

2a. Our wiki While discussing how we spend money at the BK, Jordan said that we need a wiki page on it. We agreed, but did so amid a great outpouring of frustration with the current state of the wiki and the difficulty of finding information on it if you don't already know what you're looking for. John-Paul agreed to look over and see about cleaning up the wiki pages--for example, making sure that there are more links to important documents off of the front page.

3. Meeting more frequently Summary: For several reasons, we would like to try monthly staff meetings, probably on the last Sunday of each month. Incidentally, that would mean that the next staff meeting will be Sunday 28 February from 7-9pm.

Jordan noted that attendance at the staff meetings has been "slim" lately and suggested that having a monthly meeting instead of a two-monthly meeting would both help with that and would support other changes we're making in the shop. Some points that were raised on this issue:

• Right now, if you miss a staff meeting, you can go four months between meetings.
• Last-minute scheduling, such as with this particular meeting, probably drives down attendance. If people knew regularly when meetings were, it would be easier to plan for them.
• We have more staff than we've had in a while; more regular staff meetings might be good for getting them up to speed on how things work around the shop.
• Similarly, we're trying a lot of things right now with managing volunteers, gathering parts, and so on--things that work best when we have some coordination among the mechanics on different shifts. Touching base as a group more often than every two months would be useful.

With these points in mind, those present expressed interest in trying monthly meetings and scheduling the next one for the last Sunday in February. (Note that this is when we currently have staff work night scheduled. Doing monthly meetings would pre-empt that evening. It would be useful to hear from the folks running staff development hours as to whether this would have any unintended consequences.)

Rez suggested that it is a warning sign if attendance at staff meetings is down, especially if long-term members are not showing up as often as before. John-Paul and Jeremiah suggested that the short notice for this particular meeting might have been partly responsible (many such members were at the December meeting) and that some rotation is partly a reflection of our recruiting many new mechanics in recent months and longer-term volunteers taking a break for a while.

Helen asked whether we have or should have a quorum rule for making binding decisions at these meetings. Most present agreed that some share of the current staff should be present for a quorum, though what that share should be we didn't determine. (We also need an updated staff list, though the recent update of the Who's Who page helps there.) Jordan suggested that we raise the question of what would be a good quorum on the mailing list, and Jeremiah suggested that we'll need to see what share we actually get at such meetings to decide what's best. John-Paul said that, given some of the difficulty that we had around process when asking a mechanic to leave the BK recently, we should move quickly to decide on an issue like this while we don't have a pressing need for it already to be in place.

Ben suggested calling the meetings "Staff Dinners," which I for one support. Given that everyone reading this is someone we'd be trying to "fool," though, I don't know whether we're just lying to ourselves on that one. ;)

4. Renting space Summary: The Board is committed in the long-term to trying to secure space for well-planned and justified activities, but we do not yet have anything that requires action in the near future.

Jordan updated us on where the Board is regarding potentially renting more space for the BK or other activities. Any such action though would require a detailed plan as to what the space would be used for and how it would fit in with the BK's overall mission. Rez stressed that we don't want to dilute the BK's basic task of teaching people how to maintain and repair their bicycles, a point on which all present agreed.

John-Paul pointed out that in December we had discussed space in particular for receiving bikes or parts if we ramp up our efforts to secure more of them, as per agenda item 1. This would perhaps be a good first test case to put before the staff.

Marshall pointed out that he volunteers at Cellspace's metal shop, which right now is not making its rent every month and would probably be very into any cross-marketing that we might want to do. We agreed that it would probably be useful for a mechanic or two from each shift to check out that shop (which is, I think, a block away) so that we know when and whether it would be useful to refer a patron there for work on their bike. We should coordinate this on the mailing list.

5. Policy for staff scrounging parts Summary: We discussed three actions to take during shifts. (1) An experienced mechanic should spend more time behind the greeter desk, which also relates to agenda item 6. (2) Staff should start signing in on their shifts, if they aren't already. (3) Staff should make a note in Freehub about any parts that they take home during their shift or otherwise.

This was a rambling albeit useful discussion. I will summarize it here. All present agreed that the staff's swarming over new donations sets a bad example for members of the youth program and a confusing example (at best) for patrons. All present also agreed that it's a drag how the best parts often disappear to be hoarded in staff garages leaving less pretty/useful things for patrons. At the same time, virtually all present agreed that they were guilty of said swarming/hoarding at one time or another and that it was one motivation for working at the BK. We agreed that banning the practice was neither practical nor desirable, but rather that it would be useful and set a better example if we could track when staff were working or visiting and what parts tended to be claimed. With this in mind, we proposed having staff sign in when they are on shift, and having staff make a note in Freehub whenever they take parts home (listing what parts they took), whether they are working or visiting. The goal in doing so is not to entrap or punish anyone but to get some idea of the scope or scale of what leaves the shop. These practices would start immediately.

One difficulty particularly with watching for theft of parts or bikes is that the greeter position is often filled by the least experienced person on shift. This is also a long-term problem in that said greeter spends most of his or her time behind the desk rather than learning to become a more experienced member of the staff. For this reason, we agreed that it would be useful for senior mechanics on shift to spend more time working the greeter position and the "greeters" to spend more time shadowing other mechanics and helping patrons with tasks that they were comfortable teaching. Performing triage on arrivals--knowing for example which ones to direct toward a less-experienced mechanic--is something that a more experienced greeter would be good at, and having such a mechanic behind the desk would also help with managing volunteers, per agenda item 6 below.

5a. Securing the youth-program bikes Jeremiah suggested that, if we want a physically separate area for youth-program bikes, we should take additional steps beyond the current writing on the hanging board. For example, we could install a piece of plywood partition between the hooks for the Youth Program and the rest of the hooks. We could also buy a large cable and lock to string the YP bikes together on their hooks during non-youth-program hours. This would help combat the too-frequent disappearance of or interference with the YP bikes. Jeremiah and Jordan said they would discuss such changes off line.

6. Managing volunteers Summary: We should be teaching interns to repair bikes and deal with patrons rather than putting them on larger shop projects. We have made real progress on managing volunteers in recent months, both by capping the number of volunteers on shift and by having one mechanic on shift oversee the volunteers. We discussed several ways to make sure that we share those ideas across shifts, including a log book to record what the volunteers did on each shift.

Genevieve gave us feedback on her one-month internship. She explained that she had had a great month working in the shop, learning mechanics and interacting with patrons, but had considerable difficulty working on projects like re-doing the signage or working on donations, because given our decentralized structure it takes considerable time to figure out enough about how the BK works to make progress on such projects. She also noted that the reputation of a BK internship at Oberlin is mixed, for just this reason: interns are often given tasks that the BK staff themselves have not been coordinated enough to do. She suggested focusing on having interns shadow mechanics, attend staff development hours and meetings, and generally contribute during open hours as their primary responsibility.

John-Paul described the positive results that the Tuesday-night crew had had with capping the night's volunteers at 3 or 4 and detailing one staff mechanic to oversee them during the evening. Ben described similar practices on the Saturday shift. While discussing what had worked and what did not in that practice, we noted that we had already mentioned having a more experienced mechanic man the greeter desk to keep an eye on parts and bikes going out the door. Ron suggested having the person who was doing that also be the mechanic who watched the volunteers, because that way the mechanic would have plenty to do and not feel like he or she was not contributing because they weren't out on the floor constantly making repairs. Mechanics on each of the shifts agreed to talk with the other shift staff about such a practice.

Regarding capping the volunteers: Jordan reiterated that the volunteering option exists in principle for people who have financial hardship and thus we should feel comfortable turning away excess volunteers if we think either that they could pay or if we do not have the capacity to employ them on a given shift.

Ben said that it would be extremely helpful to know what the volunteers had done on each of the prior shifts; Geoff C. agreed, noting for example that it's bad practice to call a patron two or three days in a row about their bike, when we gave them a one-week warning on the first day. Jeremiah suggested keeping a log book at the front counter in which to write what the volunteers did and anything else relevant that happened on each shift. John-Paul agreed to pick up a log by start of the Tuesday shift this week.

Conclusion Productive meeting, overall. All that talk, and we were done by 9pm.

One final note: At the December meeting, we talked for a while about keeping up to three bikes to sell "as-is" if such bikes arrived at the shop, and we agreed to try out such a program for three months. At this point, six weeks into that twelve-week trial, those original "as-is" bikes are still on the racks unsold. We may want to pay more attention to them in the six weeks ahead, but if we have moved none of them by March then we should revisit or discontinue that experiment.