CFSB Board Meeting Minutes
In attendance: Harrington, Colgate, Burke, Nelson, McCorkle, Bacon, Voss, Selkoe, Baldwin, Maassen, Escobar
Topics covered:
-Oil Rig decommissioning position
-financials and bookkeeping
-starting to set 2020 priorities
Meeting called at 10am by Chris Voss
Oil Rig Decommissioning work
CFSB messaging to date:
- our position focuses on taking a case by case look for each rig and considering the best net benefit to the marine ecosystem that supports our fisheries. Different gear types are impacted differently by different scenarios. Also focusing on making sure our port community benefits from any fund set up with cost savings of partial decommissioning.
Kim spoke as part of a panel at a World Business Academy forum at the El Encanto and did her best to represent what she has heard from fishermen. You can view the video of it here. All feedback on refining or adding to the language is appreciated in advance of a mid January repeat performance at the Long Beach Aquarium’s similar forum.
Mike Nelson spoke on behalf of CFSB at the SB Maritime Museum’s creative reuse forum last week and did great representing us.
- We heard from Chevron they are not interested in rigs to reefs until the program has language to limit future liability.
- In many cases, it would be nice to get the fishing grounds back, but that hinges on complete removal being done well.
- “Complete removal” of the 4 H wasn’t complete. The mussel mounds were left.
- Gordon Cota was paid to drag over removed rig area to see if he gets hung up and almost sank his boat
- Is there a pathway for mitigation money? McCorkle mentioned OCS rule 9c (?) to protect fishing areas – does it apply anymore?
- Grace and Gail were already good habitat, and rigs might be more of an aggregator than a producer of fish.
- Fishermen have adapted to fish around the rigs and there is a lot of public interest in preserving any and all fish habitat, including the rigs.
- David Bacon presented his ideas and position to enhance the rigs with additional structures around them to improve fish habitat, and use the top decks for sea birds, pinnepeds and education. See his writing about this here.
Financial Update
Books needed to be revamped because we crossed a threshold of $50K in revenue. Now need to fill in a 990 and need a higher level of bookkeeping. Kirstin charges $65/hr. Last few months she spent 53.7 hrs with Michael rebuilding the books. They are now technically conforming to generate reports for the 990ez IRS form.
They made decisions in rebuilding the books to deal with redundancies in the Classes. Also reconstructed the memberships so that renting space in the boatyard is now a feature of an ‘enhanced membership’ that comes with access to space rental. Harrington said we have to have 331/3% of tenants be members of the public in order to pass the ‘public support’ test?( Maybe we can meet public support through other cfsb activities like the Saturday Market). We have 3 public members now.
There is still work to be done to sort out how best to represent the 1/3 revenues from public benefit, in terms of making it square with separating Rental income from Membership income.
Harrington proposed a financial committee be set up to facilitate financial issues. Harrington reiterated that CFSB has a dearth of human capital. Harrington noted that the same people are contributing and that more members need to step up. Volunteers to join Harrington on the finance committee were: Chris Voss, John Colgate and Kim Selkoe.
The CFSB boatyard can also count as an educational facility to show nets and gear.
Going forward, make separate line items as subcategories of the Enhanced membership lines that reflect public vs. comm. The Enhanced membership is included in a raised rate of rent.
The 2019 budget looks like the expenditures. It is the first time we’ve generated a budget – it is basic. After it is approved the 2018 Budget be edited. We will rework the framework of the budget for 2020 moving forward. Motion by John Colgate, second by Gary Burke to approve the 2019 budget. Unanimous approval.
We really need a separate framework for a budget that is focused on our programs and goals, but it should crosswalk to the Quickbooks style budget.
Michael will invoice $1000 for bookkeeping services performed over the last six months working with consultant Kirstin Candy-McFarland in addition to his $325 monthly stipend. Voss confirmed that he had given permission to Harrington to invoice CFSB for services beyond his normal duties. Motion by John Colgate, second by Chris Voss. Unanimous approval.
We will attempt to be more proactive and intentional about setting up a budget for 2020.
Kim noted that she has been presenting to the board proactive budgets concerning her activities and hours since she began. For instance, at the July 2019 board meeting, she shared her prediction for how many hours she would spend on projects over the next quarter. Here is an amended table with the actual hours spent indicated. The total is very close (40.75 vs 40 hours per month predicted). Several big tasks described in this table haven’t been completed, such as wrapping up the quota bank project and finding property options for the boatyard. The delay on the boatyard is due to wanting to move in sync with the Waterfront Dept/Harbor Commission, who have not made quick progress, but are nonetheless seeming to be very proactive and engaged in our project. Working to understand the players, positions and facts surrounding oil rig decommissioning was an unanticipated major pursuit under the advocacy category.
Brainstorming on 2020 priorities
We will attempt to be more proactive and intentional about setting up a budget for 2020. These are some other proposed activities we can consider:
1. Find boatyard property, assemble partners/apply for grants, and draft a business plan
a. Private
b. City leased
c. Wright family granted?
2. Engage on oil decommissioning public discussions, possibly engage in shaping new legislation to amend the rigs to reefs program. Comment to keep the budget for this activity quite limited.
3. Get a quota leasing guideline together, and wrap up spending of grant by May 2020.
4. Continue the fillet booth and email promotion of Saturday Market – what does the board want to budget for this?
5. Go to more state and federal fisheries meetings, be more strategic and set specific goals about engaging on certain running topics.
6. Advocacy issues to watch:
a. Whale entanglement, trap marking
i. Prepare a statement about marine mammal entanglements if there is a public event in our area.
ii. Take a position on ITP
iii. Continue Marine debris/lost gear clean ups
b. Urchin fishery
i. Connect with norah eddy at TNC
ii. Take a position on the need for restoration
iii. Jeff Baldwin is interested in outlining an engineering project on repopulating bivalves to restore and clean coastal water.
iv. Get Nathan or other urchin rep on our board
c. Abalone
i. Jeff Baldwin is interested in putting together a plan for doing urchin removal and ab hatchery at the islands with some ab picking
ii. Connect with Derek Stein in SLO behind petition for Abalone fishery
d. Tie our advocacy work into an explicit goal for coastal community resilience under climate change. Make a commitment to pursue projects that address resiliency under environmental challenges we are facing.
7. Step up our membership and donation drive. Is this important? It is a small part of our revenue.
Still need to collect more ideas and build the final list of priorities with time/cost budgets for each.
Meeting was adjourned at 1:15pm