TCT Minutes, June 16, 2014

PRESENT: Vince, John, Neal, Patricia, Alan

AGENDA:

1. Bank account.
2. Business cards
3. Coalition meeting.
4. Mike Coburn and tents
5. John’s report
6. Mail boxes

BANK ACCOUNT: Patricia closed our bank account. TAPCO was charging us $25/month just to keep it open. She now is holding the funds for us. She will open new account at a different institution when we get our fundraising efforts organized.

BUSINESS CARDS: Alan fixed a few things in the business card template. When one enters in one’s name in the first card, all the other cards’ name fields automatically fill out. The font has been fixed so the name is larger.

COALITION MEETING: We missed attending the meeting of the TPCCEH (Tacoma-Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness) last Thursday.

TENTS AND MIKE COBURN: Vince is awaiting the okay from Bethlehem Lutheran to store the tents there. John from Bethlehem Lutheran will know by Wednesday. If we can store them, Vince will contact Mike and coordinate the transfer with Mike, John, and Neal.

WEBSITE REPORT: Alan backed up the website and updated the WordPress software. He also updated the out-of-date plugins. We continue to get numerous spambot registrations, and Alan has been spending some time weeding them out. He looked at various CAPTCHA programs. A CAPTCHA program hinders spambots from doing automatic registration. The CAPTCHA plugin he likes is Sweet CAPTCHA, which is what Occupy Tacoma used to use. However, this plugin has not been tested on the newest WordPress version, and Alan has contacted the plugin authors to see if it works on the latest iteration of WordPress.

TENT STORAGE: John has been discussing with Bethlehem about storing tents. Apparently, there had been some misunderstanding about what John actually requested of Bethlehem, and he is working to rectify that.

MAIL BOXES: We cannot use Aubrey’s address as a mail stop anymore. We will need to find another. John says it is possible we can use Bethlehem’s address for mail stop. He will let us know Wednesday.

VINCE’S REPORT: Tent City 3 will reopen. Vince reports that the Riverton Park United Methodist say they feel safer when they host a tent city, owing to the security the tent city provides. TC3 uses “hold harmless” riders to protect hosting churches for uncovered liabilities. However, church insurance policies usually cover everything they do in pursuit of their mission. The bottom line is that neither the church nor tent city are going to need extra insurance.

DISCUSSION/BRAINSTORMING: WHAT’S NEXT: Neal says he has contact who has tent material to donate. John will be a contact person to arrange storage if Bethlehem gives the okay.

Respectfully submitted: Alan OldStudent