Hi All. Here are the minutes from the last meeting, finally. I was rushed
and there may be some corrections needed, so please let me know if any are
needed, and I will make them. I'm running out the door to attend my first
meeting of the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, so no time for any gabbing
now--maybe later.
Minutes for November 10, 2018 Meeting of the Libertarian Party of San
Francisco taken by Aubrey Freedman.
*Attendees*: Nick Smith (Chair), Rebecca Lau (Vice Chair), Jawj Greenwald
(Treasurer), Aubrey Freedman (Secretary), Allen Sherzer (guest), Andrew
(guest), Saul (guest), Starchild, and Neil Walgren (guest).
*Introductions:* Neil has been in the Bay Area for three years and wants
to learn more about libertarianism. He was formerly in the military and
found out about the LPSF from reading our arguments in the Voter’s Handbook.
Andrew is looking to get involved in the liberty movement; he was involved
with Students for Liberty when he attended CAL.
*Chair’s Report:* Nick was still getting requests for ballot measure
information during the last few weeks preceding the election, and he tended
to all of them. One was from a lady from Pew Research Statline who was
interested in our perspective on Prop A (seawall bond), but she was more
interested in the engineering aspect of the issue than our
philosophical/economic points. The second call was from an anonymous
student who wouldn’t identify what organization she was calling for—again
this was for Prop A. The third request was from the League of Women
Voters, and Starchild presented the case against Prop A and Nick presented
against Prop E (arts funding earmark). Nick felt it was a good complement
for voters to see Libertarians represented by two different types—the more
anarchist-appearing Starchild and the straight-laced looking Nick. Nick
also did some follow-up work on the October mailer. 90 mailers were
returned due to folks having moved (even though he used a fresh updated
registration list from the Department of Elections), and he remailed the
mailers to 40 Libertarians voters and also sent out 11 thank you letters. The
results from the mailer show a net increase in income as the cost was $785
for 2,100 pieces, and the revenue was $945, which consisted of $675 in new
memberships and $270 in donations. Ten new members joined from the mailer,
and two of those were for 2-year memberships.
*Vice Chair’s Report:* Rebecca reported that she went to a meeting called
CORO, which is a public policy boot camp for graduates who work on
political campaigns in the Bay Area. They asked her a million questions. She
will be meeting with a small-knit group on November 11 about civility and
third parties. She will be speaking about the close Senate races in this
election and the “spoiler” effect of third parties. She will miss the next
LPSF meeting because it will be on the same day as the LPCA Excomm meeting.
*Treasurer’s Report: * Aubrey reported that we have $2,932.73 in the credit
union (plus another 8 cents that he already complained to the credit union
that they again charged our account in error for a deposit and he is
expecting it to be reversed) and what he estimates as $3,257.92 in
PayPal. Nick
also just received additional checks for new memberships and donations (no
doubt spurred by the recent mailer) totaling $425.00. During the month we
received in a total of $851.92 in memberships and donations, and no new
checks were written. That leaves our cash position at $2,932.73 + .08 +
$3,257.92 + $425.00 - $937.71 (Nick’s check for the mailer costs hasn’t
cleared the bank yet) = $5,678.02.
*Secretary’s Report:* Aubrey reported that membership continues to grow
every month lately. It is up by two members from last month with 21
lifetime members and 36 regular, currently paid-up members, for a total of
57. (During the meeting Neil took out a new membership, so that made it 37
regular members for an updated total of 58.) He pointed out that the
membership growth is hugely due to Nick’s efforts to grow the party locally.
*Newsletter Report:* Nick reported that the October newsletter went out to
1,589 recipients and was opened by 15.8% of the recipients and 5.3% clicked