[Rfu-station] RFU Station Meeting Notes, Dec. 4, 2007

[Mike Lehman]

RFU Station Meeting Notes

About 18 members present, attendance sheet circulated and filed

Forgot to have anyone take notes, so these are reconstructed from Mike’s 
memory. Additions or corrections should be sent to the RFU list.

Tech Report
Dan: IMC Tech still working getting more bandwidth for the building, 
most likely won’t be able to add to what exists without additional 
resources being committed by groups who need it. Presently, test use 
indicates that even one outgoing audio stream at the same time as other 
use is barely supported, slowing the entire system.

Mike notes that Randy volunteered to lock down access to back of board, 
which will hopefully prevent tampering with connections that regularly 
causes problems.

Finance
Jennine, Andrew, and Ian report that another Trivia Night raised $119 
for the Tower Fund, which currently is at about $3000. Jennine will be 
working on letters to be sent to potential funders. Everyone should 
consider who contact people are for the religious and other 
organizations that are supported by RFU programming. Please forward this 
info so that RFU-Finance can use it to help put together a mailing.

Membership
Randy is working on the Training Manual revision; required retraining 
for ALL programming groups will take place over the summer of 2008 for 
those who are in town, then beginning mid-August through September for 
those who are out of town for the summer, plus any new groups that join 
us. Retraining must be accomplished by Sept. 30 for all programming 
group members in order for time slots to be renewed for another year. 
Then a proposal…

Proposal for 2008 Renewals
Membership renewal this year was a lengthy, drawn-out project, made more 
difficult because so many groups waited until the last minute to renew, 
creating the need for multiple lists to be created and revised. It is 
proposed:

ALL member/programming group renewals will be due next year on September 
1, 2008. All renewals, plus required retraining, must be accomplished by 
September 30, 2008. The new schedule will be approved at the Oct. 2, 
2008 station meeting and any groups not renewed by the deadline will be 
dropped from the finalized schedule at that meeting.

Proposal was APPROVED, with the provision that appeals for delayed 
renewals can be made in person at the Oct. 2, 2008 meeting.

Tower Funding
Mike reported that the Community Foundation of East Central Illinois did 
not fund our request for funding support for the new tower. Dan reported 
that he believes he has located volunteer professional tower crew 
assistance, which may help with the cost. At this time, we still need to 
raise at least $10,000 more to build the tower. Every programming group 
should help by doing a tower fund PSA during their show and generals 
begging for folks to send money to help with this worthy and essential 
project to better serve our listeners.

Andrew noted that Bill Taylor can present a report on Radio Lenca, our 
sister station in Honduras. Mike noted that Honduras is the second 
poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, after Haiti, and the 
indigenous Lenca are among the poorest populations in Honduras. While it 
may seem like WRFU has financial issues, Radio Lenca struggles even more 
to get and stay on the air. It would be good if we could eventually 
provide some assistance to them. They are interested in exchanging 
programming, for instance, which costs virtually nothing. We set a 
tentative date for Bill to do a presentation on Radio Lenca for our Feb. 
19 meeting. Andrew will contact Bill and confirm a date.

The studio lock
Since everyone currently on air managed to renew, we put off the lock 
change until closer to the holidays, when it will be less disruptive and 
easier to accomplish. We’ll let everyone know when we do it.

The IMC (red) front doors
Those who have #4 keys should remember that the red double doors into 
the IMC should remain locked when no one is in there to staff the IMC 
space. If you go into the IMC space to use the restroom or check things 
in the Production room, be sure and lock the door after you do so. If 
you unlock the door with your key, please turn it all the way back in 
the opposite direction to relock it behind you. The lock is either 
locked or unlocked from the outside (lobby side). Please do NOT leave 
the IMC space unlocked unless it is being staffed.

Those present had an opportunity to claim the open time slots, but no 
one wanted to move. Since then (and before these notes are belatedly 
coming to you) the time slots have been available for any existing shows 
to move to. They are now available for new programming groups to claim, 
as well as existing groups.

Again, my apologies for forgetting to ask someone to take notes. If 
there are any additions or corrections, please send them to rfu at ucimc.org