Meeting of 11 February, 2017

San Francisco Public LIbrary, 4th floor conference room
11 February, 2017

Attendance
Aubrey Freedman (chair), Ivy Valory, Nick Smith (secretary), Lisa Remmer, Starchild (vice chair/outreach), Saũl Flores

Announcements
Aubrey filed form 460 for Fair Political Practices Commission with Secretary of State
Does this need to be filed with the SF Ethics Commission? Still no answer…

12-Feb: Covenant of Democratic Nations with Edwin Black
Hosted by Mario & Nina Pellegrini at their home in Montara

California Libertarian Party Annual State Convention
28-April to 30-April

News: In a great victory for third parties, a Federal Judge rules that the Presidential Debate Commission must rewrite the criteria for debate inclusion. In 2016, Gary Johnson was excluded from the debates, polling consistently around 11%, due to the unnecessarily high bar to be polling at 15%.

Membership
21 life members, 26 regular dues paying members. Unchanged from last month.
Dues are $25/yr. Local & State are combined, National is separate.

Newsletter
Sent out to 296 recipients. One of Aubrey’s articles from the January Newsletter, “San Francisco’s Legacy of Cronyism,” was republished in the California Policy Center by Marc Joffe.

Treasurer’s Report
Balances reported from Les Mangus, as of 10 February, 2017

Bank of America: $4,587.11
Paypal: $518.82
Total: $5,105.93

Pride 2017
24-June - 25-June

Aubrey completed the registration and the booth is paid for ($140), insurance will be about $65. Some of the pink pamphlet “Honoring LGBTQQII Rights-- And Everyone Else’s: A Libertarian Tradition” will be revised and updated.

The spinning wheel: This was done last year. We have a spinning wheel with 16 or so activities on it, and people can spin the wheel and try to land on a spot with something that is not illegal (there were 1 or 2 of them). There are all outrageous laws that no one would believe, so we found the ordinance for each individual law to back up each claim. For this year, we are considering other laws that can be added to the wheel.

Change to Credit Union
We have been with Bank of America for a long time, and we are considering moving away from the big banks and supporting the local institutions. Mike has looked into the San Francisco Federal Credit Union, which offers no fees, more transactions than we could possibly use.

Starchild uses SF Fire Credit Union and has done some research for us.  There is a one-time $5 opening fee. There are 3 locations in the city, and have shared branches with other credit unions. There is an upcoming shareholders meeting which members can attend, where Starchild got a resolution passed previously to have the credit union put out a statement opposing intrusive government regulations.

Before we can do this, we need to dig up our Federal tax ID number, which we will need in order to open an account at any credit union.

We’re tabling the discussion for now, but we will make the shift soon.

Tax Day / Annual Panel Discussion
We have discussed some ideas including secession, sanctuary cities and finding common ground between the Libertarians and the Greens (although Aubrey has doubts that the Greens are interested in this after a lack of enthusiasm reported from Barry, Starchild is pursuing it). We haven’t come to a decision on what the topic will be yet, although sanctuary cities seems promising, and definitely topical. We would also like to be able to be able to find some common ground with other groups, to bring us together and have a more lasting effect.