[nfbwdane] Draft March 6 Meeting Minutes

[Randy Black]

The meeting began at 12-17 p.m.

Present were Tom Jeraay, Joanne Jeraay, Cari Kness, Rick Canode, Angie
Castro, Michael Huckaby, Sarah Babbler, Randy Black and Charles Buggs.

The February chapter minutes were approved as sent.

The treasurers report was given. Chapter assets after the PAC plan
withdrawal are $248.26. The report was approved as read.

Presidential Release 381 was played.

Tom gave the Wisconsin NFB report. The state board was meeting March 13 at
the convention hotel in Appleton. Michael suggested and the chapter agreed
that preparing box lunches ahead of time would solve the problem of trying
to figure out where to stop on the way to Appleton. Toms facility will
prepare the lunches.

Concerning DVR, John Fritz has filed a grievance that there were problems
with last falls BEP elections. The BEP committee chair has said this problem
will be solved soon enough when new elections are held. Tom doesn't know if
John intends to pursue the grievance or not.

Randy reported on the work of the Madison city commission for People with
Disabilities. Lucia Nunez is willing to come to our May meeting to discuss
the work of the commission. The city is under a hiring freeze so a new
disability coordinator won't be hired at this time. The next commission
meeting will discuss disabled parking and snow removal. Randy promised to
bring up the issue of making bus stop snow removal a bigger city priority.

Chapter development was discussed. Tom met with a representative of Bucky
Book recently. Michael stated we had tried this before without a lot of
success. Part of our problem is figuring out why we need to fundraise
locally. Without a local hook, the chapter members agreed fundraising will
continue to be difficult. Press visibility needs to be improved. Charles and
Michael agreed to work on this problem.

Cari brought up 1 way to help find members. The national office tracks who
requests what locally. This list can be gotten from the national office.
Cari will look into this.

The president appointed a membership recruitment committee: Angie, Sara and
Cari to look into finding ways to recruit new members.

Michael brought up the idea of bringing NFB literature to organizational
shows members participate in. Charles brought up school libraries as being
other places where we can distribute literature.

The press committee will look into this as well.

Fundraising ideas will be discussed at the next meeting.

A general tech update was given. The presentation on the Macintosh was
postponed until the next meeting. At&t is looking into selling touch phones.
Randy reported on the latest Victor Stream update. Version 3.1 allows you to
copy books from a thumb drive to your sd card. And this version allows you
to read books on thumb drives even if those drives aren't formatted for the
stream. Cari said she liked the feature where you are now asked if you
really want to stop recording if you hit the star key for example. This
helps to ensure you don't stop your recording by mistake. Another feature
unrelated to the update is the ability to make bookmarks during recordings.
You won't get any speech feedback but if you hit the bookmark key while
recording, you will be able to go to the bookmarked places when playing the
file back.

Michael reported that Code Factory has released new versions of Mobile Speak
and Mobile Geo. One of the nice features is the ability to license your
phone number rather than just the phone. This means you can switch Mobile
Speak from one phone to another without having to buy a new license. 

Freedom Scientific has chosen to use the Sendaro Group software for GPS on
the Pacmate.

Wayfinder GPS isn't being upgraded any more.  

Mass transit was discussed. The county Regional Transit Authority has met
and an advisory referendum will be on the ballot asking for the authority to
increase the sales tax for rail transportation. It was agreed the chapter
needed to be a part of this process.

A motion was made, seconded and approved to suspend the bylaws so Meghan
could run for vice president even though she wasn't at the meeting.

After that, chapter elections were held. The following people were elected
by acclamation to 1 year terms.

Tom Jeraay President

Meghan Whalen Vice President

Secretary Sarah Babbler

Treasurer Charles Buggs

Board Member Angie Castro

Board Member Michael Huckaby

The meeting adjourned at 2-07 p.m.

Submitted by Randy Black

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.nfbwis.org/pipermail/nfbwdane_nfbwis.org/attachments/20100331/5f561adf/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature
Size: 3162 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.nfbwis.org/pipermail/nfbwdane_nfbwis.org/attachments/20100331/5f561adf/attachment.bin>