MEETING MINUTES SRCC AD HOC COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE, MAY 13, 2010 @ 5:30pm, Carol & Sam’s house
 ATTENDING: Carol Martin, Garret Nick, Marc Davis, Sarah CampbellÂ
1a. Carol, as Membership Chair, has set up a ‘srcc memberships’ gmail account (with Marc’s help) for use when she sends out the dues reminders. This makes the process easier to pass along to another Membership Chair, part of our streamlining SRCC processes.
1b. Carol went back 24 months in her records to come up with 77 people whose dues had lapsed by at least a month and sent them our new dues renewal reminder. We were all pleased that after only one week, the Treasury is already $200 richer! She also found that those who did respond to her reminder used the membership form that is part of the reminder. She will report on this success at next monthly meeting.
 2a. A meeting is scheduled at Sarah’s house for Wed, May 26 @ 5:30 to establish an SRCC policy and procedure for variance requests, and also to develop some kind of “Zoning 101” to help members understand our zoning cases. Teresa Griffin is key, as she is doing most of the preliminary work for this meeting.
2b. Carol asked Marc to “box” his information RE: when to call 911/311 so that it can easily be inserted into emails and stand out. Marc said appearance of info in email depends on computers’ readers; he’ll work on it though.
 3a-c. N2 has a new Austin rep named Teresa Rose who is very new and getting up to speed with another neighborhood. She told Carol she wouldn’t be ready to work with us until late summer-early fall (for 90 days), which works perfectly to allow us time to continue to explore this newsletter option for SRCC. She and Carol are in email contact.
We can obtain a mailing list from the Tax Assessor for $60. A problem with this source is that it is property owners only, which will leave out renters.
3d. CM distilled the N2 contract into non-legalise, and we discussed all points of concern.Â
CM made a list of questions to ask Ms. Rose about the contract and will get back to us.
3e. Content can be easy; we don’t have to do anything original if we don’t want to. Our content can come from schools, churches, libraries, other publications. SC wants feature articles! Many of the articles can be prepared in advance; some can even run again after a year – an example would be typical questions/answers on the Land Development Code (Garret). And if we don’t go with N2, we will still have content for our regular newsletter, so no wasted time or energy.
 4a. I think Marc said he and Garret would have the Ning site ready to look at 5/17??
 ACTION ITEMs
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â SEC will begin to get commitments for content from public schools.
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â CM will ask Ms. Rose about options for distributing publication to apartments For example, can we leave a stack of issues in the apartment office for pick up by residents?
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â CM will discuss contract issues with Teresa Rose:
1) rather than approve in advance the content or ads provided by N2 for each issue, SRCC prefers to establish at the beginning the guidelines for publication content and ads.
2) SRCC would like to prioritize the position of lead articles
3) can N2 give an example of what they consider to be ‘newsworthy’ per the terms of contract?
4) is there a minimum number of pages that SRCC must provide each month? No mention of this in contract.
-         5) Will N2 agree to change to the contract clause regarding restriction of SRCC’s ability to produce a publication after contract with N2 ends? SRCC prefers 6-12 months rather than 24.
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â MD & GN will get us a presentation on the Ning site.
 NEXT MEETING: Wednesday, June 2 @ 5:30 at Carol’s home again.
