FairvoteWRC meeting 2019-01-30

Strategy Meeting, Executive Meeting, and Discussion Night

When

Wednesday, 30 January 2019

Where

Community Room, Bread & Roses Cooperative Housing, 307 Queen Street South, Kitchener

Who

Laurel Russwurm, Mary Jackes, Jim Sannes, Jon Cassels, Sharon Sommerville, Cathy Scott, Evan Rosamond, David Dirks, Myron Steinman, Terry Henderson, Stu Chandler, Trevor Pollitt, Bob Jonkman.

Executive Meeting

Agenda Item

Web Site: http://fairvotewrc.ca/

Aden Seaman has been running the hardware and purchasing services out-of-pocket. Now the infrastructure needs to be upgraded, and service providers are increasing service charges. In order to bring the website and services under management of the Executive Board a budget for these services needs to be created, funding established, and vendors retained.

Website hosting: About $60/year for a minimal server (20 GBytes), about $150/year for 70 GBytes storage (unknown how much storage is being used now). https://www.ovh.com/ Note that local (Waterloo Region) providers may have lower prices for community groups.

Domain name registration: About $40/year from https://register4less.com ; maybe $20/year from https://gandi.net/

Phone number: +1–519–279–2990 – Receives little use, but gives professional appearance to our chapter. Transfer (porting): $10.00 + $0.85/month service + $0.01/minute calling. Free voice mail, phone conferencing, IVR (voice mail menus). https://voip.ms/

Total: from $90/year to $200/year

MOTION: To establish funds in order to continue to maintain the website, then purchase required services.

Meeting Notes

• Value of the website is apparent
• But we'll need to do some fundraising
  • Call out to Discussion mailing list?
    • But don't ask repeatedly
  • Pass the hat at meetings?
    • Only at AGM
  • Investigate e-transfers and PayPal (Jon Cassels and Cathy Scott)
  • Can put e-commerce applications on website once we have a permanent web host
  • David Dirks will draft a document for requesting donations

• Defer a vote on this motion until next meeting

Strategy Meeting

Agenda Items

• Summer Festivals: Race Relations (21 March), TriPride (early June), Multicultural (late June), Nonviolence (early July), Kultrun (early July), others?

• Federal Election, 21 October 2019 strategy for Fair Vote Canada, Fair Vote Waterloo?

• Outreach Committee report? (David Dirks)

• Door to door pilot campaign discussion (Sharon Sommerville)

• Other business

Meeting Notes

• Summer Festivals
  • Need someone to take the lead in organizing summer festivals (individual organizers for individual events was not successful)
    • Cathy Scott will assist
  • Literature for info tables?
    • We still have old material; don't need anything new
    • Get some materials from Fair Vote Canada national office (tabloid, infographic postcards)

• Election law?
  • Find out if Fair Vote Canada will be registering as a Third Party Advertiser (Sharon?)

• Federal Election candidate events
  • Will partner with Social Development Centre of Waterloo Region again
  • Also contact the Social Planning Council of Cambridge and North Dumfries (Bob Jonkman)
  • Ensure that Fair Vote Waterloo members are at all the Candidate events (debates, roundtables, &c)
  • We will create a "Fact Sheet" and "Info Sheet" for candidates, to be done at Discussion Night on Wed, 31 July 2019.

• Outreach
  • Contact David Dirks to help with Outreach
  • Targetting millennials
  • Reach out to teachers teaching Civics courses in High School
    • There's a High School History Teachers conference, find people there?
    • Contacts with individual teachers; our existing contacts have moved on.

• Door to Door Pilot
  • There have been no additional campaigns
  • There was a remarkable level of interest, and signing of petitions
  • Door-to-door is an effective thing to do, but labour intensive
  • We don't want to commit our limited volunteer hours on this
  • The postcards (infographic?) were effective
  • Door-to-door is a good thing to do during an election year
    • Do it earlier, June and July, so we get to the doors before the candidates do
  • Work in pairs, but even better as a group
  • How often?
    • Two hours every two weeks? No.
    • Two hours every month? Yes.
    • Start in May

• Letter Writing Group
  • Need a better mailing list (can be set up with a permanent webhost)
  • Need "Media Watchers"
    • Respond to anyone who writes about electoral reform or proportional representation
    • Articles about public issues, these illustrate why we need proportional representation

• Strategy: We need a big annual event
  • "Intro to PR"?
  • Get 200 people into a room?
    • Typical turnout for our events is 20 to 50 people (some of us think that's very successful)
    • ...but only politically engaged people come to these events
  • Make this an annual event, get big-name speakers as it builds
  • One annual event is more approachable than monthly meetings
  • Target for July, August

• Hold the FVC AGM in Waterloo Region?
  • Approach Anita Nickerson (Executive Director of FVC), National Council
  • Open some AGM events to the community
  • Have multiple streams: 1) Community 2) Fair Vote members

• Municipal level
  • Approach local township / city councils about ranked ballots
  • Berry Vrbanovic (Kitchener mayor) is interested; Matt Piggott has already approached him (but Matt is no longer in Waterloo Region)
  • Scott McMillan (Woolwich councillor) has expressed interest in pursuing ranked ballots

• What does Fair Vote do?
  • Advocates only for Proportional Representation
  • Not ranked ballots in single member systems

• Other news
  • Myron Steinman is working with CKWR (FM 98.5); wants to revive the Community Connections show.
  • Sharon Sommerville will be stepping down as Chapter Coordinator.

Meeting notes taken by Bob Jonkman