Hi All. Here are the minutes from the last meeting. Please review them and advise if I made any major bloopers. Marcy will post them in a day or two if there are no corrections.
Minutes written by Aubrey Freedman
Libertarian Party of San Francisco
Minutes
for Monthly Meeting at the San Francisco Public Library on Saturday, June 14,
2014
Attendees: Phil Berg, Marcy Berry
(Vice Chair), Bill Bowen (guest), Chris Bowman (guest), Francoise Fielding,
Aubrey Freedman (Chair), Jawj Greenwald, Nitin Garg (guest), Les Mangus
(Treasurer), Dan Pickell, Starchild, and Nicholas Sturtevant (guest).
Activist Reports: Marcy walked precincts for John Dennis’ campaign, made buttons
for our Pride booth, and worked on our website. Jawj helped a fellow-cat lover with legal advice who was on trial for
animal abuse for housing 93 cats in her house. Nitin joined in a walk from Los Angeles to Sacramento as part of “Rise
99.” Bill Bowen helped to organize and
push the “Restore Transportation Balance” initiative to keep out Sunday,
evening, and holiday parking meters and also freeze parking rates for 5
years. Nicholas just returned to the Bay
Area and is restarting the Marin LP. Francoise hosted a button-making party at her apartment for Pride. Phil attended a JCC presentation by Tim
Geitner and complained to the JCC afterwards about the lack of content and
interaction with the audience. Aubrey worked
on the John Dennis campaign by precinct walking and gave public comment at an
ABAG hearing about PCA’s.
Announcements:
* Monday, June 16, 2014-7-9 PM-Monthly meeting of Golden Gate Liberty Revolution at Moksha Life Center-405 Sansome Street.
* Tuesday, June 17, 2014-6:00-9:00 PM-Lawrence McQuillan from the Independent Institute-Club Lounge-The Infinity Towers-333 Main Street, San Francisco (call Kyle Palermo at 510-632-1366 ext. 149 for availability).
* Thursday, June 19-Loren Spivack “Free Market Warrior”-Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association-Harry’s Hofbrau Banquet Room-390 Saratoga Avenue, San Jose.
* Saturday, July 5, 2014-6-11 PM-Monthly social of Free Exchange at Jim Elwood’s in Parkmerced. (Francoise noted that Jim will skip the social this month).
June 3 Election Report: Aubrey reported Prop A (Bond
for Earthquake Safety that the LPSF opposed) won easily with a 79% YES vote,
but 25,491 voters did vote NO. Prop B
(Voters will need to approve height increases along the waterfront, which the
LPSF neither supported nor opposed) passed with a 59/41 YES vote. John Dennis came in second against Pelosi
with an 11.9% (to Pelosi’s 73.5%). In
state contests, Leland Yee still managed to garner a 12.2% in SF and 9.5%
statewide, and Laura Wells (Green Party candidate who was at our Prop 13 Tax
Symposium) got 8.9% in SF and 5.7% statewide. Jonathan Jaech (the only Libertarian statewide candidate) received
95,387 votes statewide (2.4%) and 2,977 votes in SF (2.5%). Kashkari beat out Donnelly for the number 2
spot for Governor by receiving 19% to Donnelly’s 14%, but interestingly in SF Donnelly
got more votes (3.5% for Kashkari and 4.3% for Donnelly), which prompted Phil
to point out that the Republicans are smarter in SF than statewide.
Restore Transportation
Balance Initiative: Bill Bowen pointed out the main reasons to
support this measure: while 79% of the
residents in SF own cars, SFMTA is governed by MUNI riders and bicyclists, and
motorists currently have no representation on the Board; first responders are
finding it harder to get to emergencies; no new parking garages have been built
in SF in 20 years; the current war on autos is especially hard on seniors, the
disabled, and families with children; and businesses have complained about loss
of customers due to loss of parking spaces. While this initiative is only a declaration of policy, if it passes, the
same coalition will come back in 2016 with another initiative that has more
“teeth” in it. Chris Bowman joined us
later in the meeting having just returned from getting signatures at the West
Portal Street Fair, and he announced that signature traffic was very brisk that
day with many folks lined up to sign the petition. They thanked the LPSF for endorsing the
measure and solicited our help in obtaining more signatures before the July 7
deadline and left us with more petition sheets.
Treasurer’s Report: Les reported that we have $3,080.51 in our coffers. Marcy pointed out that Aubrey has not
submitted the Pride expenses yet, so that amount will drop by $400.00 when
Aubrey submits the expenses after Pride.
$2K Motion for
General Operating Account: Marcy’s
motion from two meetings ago was that the LPSF always maintain no less than
$2,000.00 in our regular checking account for the basic operating expenses of
mailbox, voice mail, outreach literature, and the operation of our website
(domain and hosting). Starchild again
argued against keeping so much money in our account and countered with a motion
to drop the amount to $1,500.00 rather than $2,000.00. We voted on his motion and it was voted down
4 to 1. Then we voted on the original
motion to always maintain at least $2,000.00 in our account, and the vote was 4
to 2 in favor of always maintaining the $2,000.00 balance.
Membership Report: Aubrey reported that membership is about the same—16 regular
paid-up and current members and 22 lifetime members for a total of 38 members.
Website Report: In addition to continuing
to write articles for the website, Marcy has written a summary of core
Libertarian beliefs under “Issues” in our website. The website is all ready to go with a special
page for elections and campaigns for the upcoming election in November.
Tax Day Event 2015: Aubrey booked a meeting room for a speaker at the Main Branch of
the Public Library for April 5, 2015, but the library doesn’t take reservations
that early in advance, so he will have to wait until October to try and book
the room again. He asked for help to
form a committee to plan the event.
Pride 2014: Aubrey
reported that everything is set for our Pride booth at the end of the month,
except more helpers are needed to man the booth. Dan mentioned that the Pink Pistols march in
the parade is still on, but there have been no dates set yet for the safety
monitor trainings.
November Election: Aubrey quickly briefed us on the following ballot measures (so
far):
1. Laura’s Law-involuntary treatment of the
mentally ill.
2. Union Iron Works Historic District Housing,
Waterfront Parks, Jobs & Preservation Initiative-could be another
implementation of Plan Bay Area & deals with height limits.
3. Regulate Illegal Use of Housing for Tourists—cut
out AirBnB and VRBO.
4. Minimum Wage Act of 2014.
5. Athletic Fields in Golden Gate Park Remain
Natural Grass.
6. Conflict of Interest Prevention Initiative-no
outside employment for the Board of Supervisors.
7. Policy Regarding Transportation Balance
Priorities (LPSF already endorsed this one).
Aubrey suggested that different members write separate
arguments for as many of the ballot measures that we’re interested in so that
we have lots of arguments to submit to the Department of Elections on August
14. Les expressed interest in the AirBnB
and the minimum wage ballot measures. Marcy was interested in the conflict of interest measure since she has
already written about this one on our website.
Thanks!
Aubrey