I agree with Alicia about the need for the budget increase requiring LNC approval, so I'm glad that approval is being sought. But why would the materials need to be sent back to Alexandria after they're moved to Colorado for scanning? There's nothing that says the LP's historical materials have to be stored in the same city or state where our office is located. They aren't being stored in the office anyway. Alicia's point about the LNC term expiring appears to be an allusion to the LNC Policy Manual (https://www.lp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/LNC_Policy_Manual_Adopted_2016... ), which states on page 16: "With the exception of the Convention Oversight Committee, the terms of office of all project managers, committee chairs, and committee members shall expire with the administration that appoints them, or when their successors are chosen, whichever occurs first." I tend to think that is a good rule, and should probably be part of the LP Bylaws, not the Policy Manual, because it is a limit on LNC power – in essence mandating term limits for members of LNC-created subcommittees. However this rule does not mean the committee's work shouldn't be undertaken unless it can be finished within that time frame. There's nothing to stop the next LNC from reappointing current members of the Historical Preservation Committee, or new members who can continue its work in Colorado. Regarding what's worth preserving, I like to think that people's signatures on Libertarian Party membership forms will someday be of historic value – that someday, people will be excited to find out that one of their ancestors was an early supporter of libertarianism in an era when the world was still mired in statism. I am not crazy about the wording of the motion budgeting as much as $5000, since I think we ought to be able to get the records moved for a lot less than that – I don't support paying staff wages on top of motels and meals if we can find a qualified volunteer or person willing to drive the UHaul for less than it would cost to have a staffer do it. However I am voting yes on the basis of supporting the LPedia wiki project and preservation of LP historical records – preserving our history should help keep us a strongly libertarian Libertarian Party – and trusting that committee chair Caryn Ann Harlos will endeavor to spend the party's money frugally. Love & Liberty, ((( starchild ))) At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee (415) 625-FREE @StarchildSF On Mar 24, 2017, at 1:43 AM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

I understand that this is an attempt to be practical, but I still have some concerns.

Regarding Daniel Hayes' previous comments that the ED could just do this, I disagree. The LNC had set a particular budget for this project, and the ED is limited to 110% of that budget. A doubling of the budget requires LNC approval.

Keep in mind that if it takes $5,000 to move it to Colorado, it will at some point take another $5,000 to move it back to Virginia.

Besides the "hit by a truck" scenario that Mr. Demarest already noted, there's also the reality that none of us can be certain that we will be on the LNC next term. If we're talking about a large enough volume that it takes a 20' UHaul truck to move it, is it realistic to think that amount of material can be organized and scanned before the end of the term next June? Is it overkill to send this kind of volume?

Having spent some time digging through these materials a few years ago, I know there are a LOT of boxes of old membership forms with hand-written signatures on the membership certification. I don't imagine those going online for the world to see, so why ship 50 boxes to Colorado and back?

I don't recall a terribly high percentage of those files being things that are of historical value that would belong in an online archive. Some of it was, but much was not. Old invoices and vendor contracts. Miscellaneous contents of the desk drawers of former employees. Is there really enough historical material to fill a UHaul?

I think the materials with historical value could easily be shipped via commercial carrier for much less than $10k round trip plus the employee cost to drive it to Colorado.

-Alicia

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 1:02 AM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote: We have an electronic mail ballot.

Votes are due to the LNC-Business list by April 3, 2017 at 11:59:59pm Pacific time.

Co-Sponsors: Harlos, Hayes, Bittner, Demarest

Motion:

Move to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site storage facility to a location in Colorado to be determined by Historical Preservation Committee Chair. The facility will be paid by for and under the control of the LNC and will be obtained at a cost equal or less to the price paid for the similar facility in Virginia. The Executive Director will be directed to send out up to two fundraising emails to cover this expense and the prior budgeted Historical Committee expense (credit to budget line 25).

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

Actually, if Caryn Ann does a good enough job, we should no longer need an off-site storage unit. The unit we're in now just went up to $248 per month starting in March 2018 (up about $20 from February). William Redpath, can you calculate the Prevent Value of the saving of $248 per month in perpetuity? And if you can do that, can you then get a bit more precise by making the assumption the $248 per month spending won't stop for 2 years? Thanks Bill, that'd be great. Wes Benedict, Executive Director Libertarian National Committee, Inc. 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314 (202) 333-0008 ext. 232, wes.benedict@lp.org facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership On 3/24/2017 11:43 AM, Wes Benedict wrote:

Around 300 boxes with the miscellaneous "slips of paper" have been shredded since 2013. I spent many days on that work myself doing a first and second pass through the mountain of junk in the cool, damp, rat-infested dungeon storage underneath the Watergate complex, and then doing 3rd and 4th passes at our storage units after moving the stuff to Alexandria. (I did not shred the stuff myself--just identified the boxes and then had a professional service handle it).

I am not exaggerating about the rats. I do not recall finding dead rats in any boxes and did not necessarily see rats inside our particular unit, but there were dead dried out rat carcasses less than 20 feet outside the door to our unit and in the hallway leading up to our unit and inside adjacent units.

In addition to things that have been shredded, I did not count the number of boxes of stuff that I threw away that did not need to be shredded. I also personally tore apart, dismantled, and sawed when necessary (with my personal Bosch circular saws and drill), large painted plywood structures that I think were used in the 2000 and 2004 national conventions (along with the wooden pallets).

For a decade, it seemed, no one was willing to throw things away. I can't blame them. Who wants to throw something away when someone might complain later? Plus, it's easier to just box up an old employees stuff and push it aside rather than go through it and sort it all out. The result was valuable things were getting buried by old broken furniture and useless pieces of returned mail slips that had no value. Boxes of potentially valuable documents were getting crushed and split and were spilling in the damp basement of the Watergate. The basement of the Watergate obviously wasn't climate controlled and the storage facilities were down an underground hallway from the dumpsters for CVS and the grocery store Safeway, and just 200 yard crawl for rats from the shores of the Potomac. Grocery stores generate a lot of smelly garbage that attracts rats.

For the most part, I did not go through many individual boxes and sort through individual pieces of stuff. I either kept the whole box, or through the whole box out (or shredded if necessary).

We still have over a dozen 4-drawer file cabinets and maybe 100 boxes of stuff that needs to be gone through more carefully. That takes a lot of time. When it's time to bring the stuff back from Colorado, I expect the content to be 15% of it's original size. That's because there is still stuff to throw away, and also, for things like fundraising letters that were sent in 1992--there are probably 5 or 10 copies of each.

That stuff is getting older every day, but at least we now have it stored in a climate controlled storage unit in Alexandria, instead of the basement of the Watergate.

I probably inadvertently threw some things out that we wished I hadn't, but I feel like my actions to jettison some garbage even if there was some collateral damage, was urgent, and necessary for the greater good of the documents that were saved, and because we needed space for our more recent documents.

A few photos attached.

Wes Benedict, Executive Director Libertarian National Committee, Inc. 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314 (202) 333-0008 ext. 232, wes.benedict@lp.org facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership

On 3/24/2017 4:43 AM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

...

Having spent some time digging through these materials a few years ago, I know there are a LOT of boxes of old membership forms with hand-written signatures on the membership certification. I don't imagine those going online for the world to see, so why ship 50 boxes to Colorado and back?

I don't recall a terribly high percentage of those files being things that are of historical value that would belong in an online archive. Some of it was, but much was not. Old invoices and vendor contracts. Miscellaneous contents of the desk drawers of former employees. Is there really enough historical material to fill a UHaul?

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

I have a bunch of commentary to add that I will take one at a time. Daniel, that is exactly what I was thinking. I think this Committee may find some auction items and may be able to put together a nice historical interest display, and you might want to consider having one of us speak. -Caryn Ann On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 10:24 AM, Daniel Hayes <danielehayes@icloud.com> wrote:

Us finally throwing away a bunch of sacred invoices and other magical papers and stuff we don't need was my motivation to sponsor . It might take 5 years to recoup but it is money we can save.

Also, keep in mind that if we can monetize some of this stuff, even better. As Sam and a couple of others know, we are looking to hold a silent auction at convention in NOLA. Caryn Ann may find some things that we don't want to throw away but don't have space to display that a member might have interest in. I'd rather see us put some cash to the use this party exists for and allow a member to have some enjoyment instead of sticking it in a box on a shelf. One person's junk is another person's treasure.

Daniel Hayes LNC At Large Member

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 24, 2017, at 11:07 AM, Wes Benedict <wes.benedict@lp.org> wrote:

Actually, if Caryn Ann does a good enough job, we should no longer need an off-site storage unit. The unit we're in now just went up to $248 per month starting in March 2018 (up about $20 from February).

William Redpath, can you calculate the Prevent Value of the saving of $248 per month in perpetuity?

And if you can do that, can you then get a bit more precise by making the assumption the $248 per month spending won't stop for 2 years?

Thanks Bill, that'd be great.

Wes Benedict, Executive Director Libertarian National Committee, Inc. 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314(202) 333-0008 ext. 232 <(202)%20333-0008>, wes.benedict@lp.orgfacebook.com/libertarians @LPNational Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership

On 3/24/2017 11:43 AM, Wes Benedict wrote:

Around 300 boxes with the miscellaneous "slips of paper" have been shredded since 2013. I spent many days on that work myself doing a first and second pass through the mountain of junk in the cool, damp, rat-infested dungeon storage underneath the Watergate complex, and then doing 3rd and 4th passes at our storage units after moving the stuff to Alexandria. (I did not shred the stuff myself--just identified the boxes and then had a professional service handle it).

I am not exaggerating about the rats. I do not recall finding dead rats in any boxes and did not necessarily see rats inside our particular unit, but there were dead dried out rat carcasses less than 20 feet outside the door to our unit and in the hallway leading up to our unit and inside adjacent units.

In addition to things that have been shredded, I did not count the number of boxes of stuff that I threw away that did not need to be shredded. I also personally tore apart, dismantled, and sawed when necessary (with my personal Bosch circular saws and drill), large painted plywood structures that I think were used in the 2000 and 2004 national conventions (along with the wooden pallets).

For a decade, it seemed, no one was willing to throw things away. I can't blame them. Who wants to throw something away when someone might complain later? Plus, it's easier to just box up an old employees stuff and push it aside rather than go through it and sort it all out. The result was valuable things were getting buried by old broken furniture and useless pieces of returned mail slips that had no value. Boxes of potentially valuable documents were getting crushed and split and were spilling in the damp basement of the Watergate. The basement of the Watergate obviously wasn't climate controlled and the storage facilities were down an underground hallway from the dumpsters for CVS and the grocery store Safeway, and just 200 yard crawl for rats from the shores of the Potomac. Grocery stores generate a lot of smelly garbage that attracts rats.

For the most part, I did not go through many individual boxes and sort through individual pieces of stuff. I either kept the whole box, or through the whole box out (or shredded if necessary).

We still have over a dozen 4-drawer file cabinets and maybe 100 boxes of stuff that needs to be gone through more carefully. That takes a lot of time. When it's time to bring the stuff back from Colorado, I expect the content to be 15% of it's original size. That's because there is still stuff to throw away, and also, for things like fundraising letters that were sent in 1992--there are probably 5 or 10 copies of each.

That stuff is getting older every day, but at least we now have it stored in a climate controlled storage unit in Alexandria, instead of the basement of the Watergate.

I probably inadvertently threw some things out that we wished I hadn't, but I feel like my actions to jettison some garbage even if there was some collateral damage, was urgent, and necessary for the greater good of the documents that were saved, and because we needed space for our more recent documents.

A few photos attached.

Wes Benedict, Executive Director Libertarian National Committee, Inc. 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314 (202) 333-0008 ext. 232 <(202)%20333-0008>, wes.benedict@lp.org facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership

On 3/24/2017 4:43 AM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

Having spent some time digging through these materials a few years ago, I know there are a LOT of boxes of old membership forms with hand-written signatures on the membership certification. I don't imagine those going online for the world to see, so why ship 50 boxes to Colorado and back?

I don't recall a terribly high percentage of those files being things that are of historical value that would belong in an online archive. Some of it was, but much was not. Old invoices and vendor contracts. Miscellaneous contents of the desk drawers of former employees. Is there really enough historical material to fill a UHaul?

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing listLnc-business@hq.lp.orghttp://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

Starchild, thank you for your trust in me. So far I believe I have demonstrated it - I *could* have easily spent up to a thousand dollars already but I have sought volunteers with skills to do professional scanning and as long as I can tap into those (and not burn out their time), I will do so. I treat OPP very seriously. I have also committed to being completely transparent and forthcoming with monetary decisions (and we have a public committee discussion list) and accountable to members. There have been some minimal costs that I have gotten donated. And that will be the case whenever I can - and it is in the best interest of the project (i.e. volunteer work has to be of the quality we need - a home scanner will not do when we need a professional scan job, but fortunately I have a volunteer with access to the genealogical scanner used by the LDS church- PRO!). - Caryn Ann On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 10:51 AM, Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos@gmail.com

wrote:

Alicia,

The issue of common carrier versus U-Haul is something I discussed with Wes. In order to pack things up so that it can be transported would take staff time. And Wes wants to send the shelving, and just send things "as is" and let me straighten it up. With the U-Haul it can just be put in and sent with no re-packing needed.

As far as whether or not everything can be organized and scanned before the end of next term, there are several issues there. First, the committee itself. While this committee ends at that time, it is my intention to prove its value, have a good working model, and move for a permanent historical committee next year. In any event, LPedia must be maintained, and I expect the LNC will appoint a new committee- and if I am not on the LNC, I will apply to be on the committee. Even if not, I will continue my volunteer work. I think Starchild covered this well. As far as goals, I am very sober-minded as to our goals. I absolutely do not expect (nor is there budget for, though I am doing pretty well at finding no-cost volunteers) the entire archives to be scanned by the end of this term. I do realistically expect it to be organized and inventoried and the most critical items uploaded. And with the organization, the next committee will be able to continue to prioritize until it is done. Without the organization, I cannot wisely spend the initial budget on the most critical and most general interest items. While I might be in rapturous delight over a handwritten note by Gary Nolan on the back of a memo, our membership is more interested in news items. training items, press releases, and minutes. I am prioritizing to the needs and wants of our members. And as Daniel and Wes said, there is a lot of duplicates and items that do not need to be saved. I will be able to make culling recommendations to the LNC and to Wes and to carry those out.

I expect these records will remain here for at least a few years. And I have a volunteer that drives cross country often, and I might be able to find someone to bring them back at little to no cost - the volume will be less in any event, even if we have to pay. And they could come back by common carrier as I will be able to have the volunteers to re-pack as necessary.

I went quickly through a representative portion of the offsite storage. Everything I saw were items to be saved (in general, most certainly there is redundancy and culling and curating to do). It is interesting you mention the "so and so's desk" boxes... that is part of the problem. Who is ever going to go through that stuff? Wes thinks there might be minutes and other important items there, if not, I will straighten it out and solve that problem. And when I say "I" I don't mean I am super woman to do it all myself, but with a home base in CO, the birthplace, of the Party, and my volunteer connections in neighboring states, I can manage this properly, as a Chair should.

In any event, it will be cheaper to come back after several years, in great shape with professional organization and of use to the Party and its members.

-Caryn Ann

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 10:40 AM, Caryn Ann Harlos < carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

...

I have a bunch of commentary to add that I will take one at a time.

Daniel, that is exactly what I was thinking. I think this Committee may find some auction items and may be able to put together a nice historical interest display, and you might want to consider having one of us speak.

-Caryn Ann

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 10:24 AM, Daniel Hayes <danielehayes@icloud.com> wrote:

...

Us finally throwing away a bunch of sacred invoices and other magical papers and stuff we don't need was my motivation to sponsor . It might take 5 years to recoup but it is money we can save.

Also, keep in mind that if we can monetize some of this stuff, even better. As Sam and a couple of others know, we are looking to hold a silent auction at convention in NOLA. Caryn Ann may find some things that we don't want to throw away but don't have space to display that a member might have interest in. I'd rather see us put some cash to the use this party exists for and allow a member to have some enjoyment instead of sticking it in a box on a shelf. One person's junk is another person's treasure.

Daniel Hayes LNC At Large Member

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 24, 2017, at 11:07 AM, Wes Benedict <wes.benedict@lp.org> wrote:

Actually, if Caryn Ann does a good enough job, we should no longer need an off-site storage unit. The unit we're in now just went up to $248 per month starting in March 2018 (up about $20 from February).

William Redpath, can you calculate the Prevent Value of the saving of $248 per month in perpetuity?

And if you can do that, can you then get a bit more precise by making the assumption the $248 per month spending won't stop for 2 years?

Thanks Bill, that'd be great.

Wes Benedict, Executive Director Libertarian National Committee, Inc. 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314(202) 333-0008 ext. 232 <(202)%20333-0008>, wes.benedict@lp.orgfacebook.com/libertarians @LPNational Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership

On 3/24/2017 11:43 AM, Wes Benedict wrote:

Around 300 boxes with the miscellaneous "slips of paper" have been shredded since 2013. I spent many days on that work myself doing a first and second pass through the mountain of junk in the cool, damp, rat-infested dungeon storage underneath the Watergate complex, and then doing 3rd and 4th passes at our storage units after moving the stuff to Alexandria. (I did not shred the stuff myself--just identified the boxes and then had a professional service handle it).

I am not exaggerating about the rats. I do not recall finding dead rats in any boxes and did not necessarily see rats inside our particular unit, but there were dead dried out rat carcasses less than 20 feet outside the door to our unit and in the hallway leading up to our unit and inside adjacent units.

In addition to things that have been shredded, I did not count the number of boxes of stuff that I threw away that did not need to be shredded. I also personally tore apart, dismantled, and sawed when necessary (with my personal Bosch circular saws and drill), large painted plywood structures that I think were used in the 2000 and 2004 national conventions (along with the wooden pallets).

For a decade, it seemed, no one was willing to throw things away. I can't blame them. Who wants to throw something away when someone might complain later? Plus, it's easier to just box up an old employees stuff and push it aside rather than go through it and sort it all out. The result was valuable things were getting buried by old broken furniture and useless pieces of returned mail slips that had no value. Boxes of potentially valuable documents were getting crushed and split and were spilling in the damp basement of the Watergate. The basement of the Watergate obviously wasn't climate controlled and the storage facilities were down an underground hallway from the dumpsters for CVS and the grocery store Safeway, and just 200 yard crawl for rats from the shores of the Potomac. Grocery stores generate a lot of smelly garbage that attracts rats.

For the most part, I did not go through many individual boxes and sort through individual pieces of stuff. I either kept the whole box, or through the whole box out (or shredded if necessary).

We still have over a dozen 4-drawer file cabinets and maybe 100 boxes of stuff that needs to be gone through more carefully. That takes a lot of time. When it's time to bring the stuff back from Colorado, I expect the content to be 15% of it's original size. That's because there is still stuff to throw away, and also, for things like fundraising letters that were sent in 1992--there are probably 5 or 10 copies of each.

That stuff is getting older every day, but at least we now have it stored in a climate controlled storage unit in Alexandria, instead of the basement of the Watergate.

I probably inadvertently threw some things out that we wished I hadn't, but I feel like my actions to jettison some garbage even if there was some collateral damage, was urgent, and necessary for the greater good of the documents that were saved, and because we needed space for our more recent documents.

A few photos attached.

Wes Benedict, Executive Director Libertarian National Committee, Inc. 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314 (202) 333-0008 ext. 232 <(202)%20333-0008>, wes.benedict@lp.org facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership

On 3/24/2017 4:43 AM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

Having spent some time digging through these materials a few years ago, I know there are a LOT of boxes of old membership forms with hand-written signatures on the membership certification. I don't imagine those going online for the world to see, so why ship 50 boxes to Colorado and back?

I don't recall a terribly high percentage of those files being things that are of historical value that would belong in an online archive. Some of it was, but much was not. Old invoices and vendor contracts. Miscellaneous contents of the desk drawers of former employees. Is there really enough historical material to fill a UHaul?

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing listLnc-business@hq.lp.orghttp://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

Okay I think I answered everyone's post. I will say the one thing I said when I was looking at taking five years to get a two year degree because I waited until I was out on my own to go to school. Five years will come no matter what. The only question is where I will be when they do. Similarly, the years will pass here. Do we want a pile of unorganized stuff in two years or do we want to take advantage of this opportunity (that may in fact be very low costs because Wes will do a few fundraising emails for it, and I have committed some money). - Caryn Ann On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 10:58 AM, Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos@gmail.com

wrote:

Wes, I cannot promise we will not need an offsite storage any longer, for instance there are a few items to add to the historical collection (Nolan's widow has his personal correspondences and some early Party stuff I am securing), but it will certainly be compact and lean and useable. While I am passionate about Party history, I am not sentimental to the extent of "OMG The Nolan may have this touched This Piece of Paper, it Must Be Saved!" but any culling decisions will be brought to the LNC, and you will have thorough recommendations.

I also think we can use this project as a means of "touch" to the members to garner some excitement. Whether one thinks my interest is silly (as some do), there is no doubt, that I am infectious with it.

- Caryn Ann

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 10:55 AM, Caryn Ann Harlos < carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Starchild, thank you for your trust in me. So far I believe I have demonstrated it - I *could* have easily spent up to a thousand dollars already but I have sought volunteers with skills to do professional scanning and as long as I can tap into those (and not burn out their time), I will do so. I treat OPP very seriously. I have also committed to being completely transparent and forthcoming with monetary decisions (and we have a public committee discussion list) and accountable to members. There have been some minimal costs that I have gotten donated. And that will be the case whenever I can - and it is in the best interest of the project (i.e. volunteer work has to be of the quality we need - a home scanner will not do when we need a professional scan job, but fortunately I have a volunteer with access to the genealogical scanner used by the LDS church- PRO!).

- Caryn Ann

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 10:51 AM, Caryn Ann Harlos < carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Alicia,

The issue of common carrier versus U-Haul is something I discussed with Wes. In order to pack things up so that it can be transported would take staff time. And Wes wants to send the shelving, and just send things "as is" and let me straighten it up. With the U-Haul it can just be put in and sent with no re-packing needed.

As far as whether or not everything can be organized and scanned before the end of next term, there are several issues there. First, the committee itself. While this committee ends at that time, it is my intention to prove its value, have a good working model, and move for a permanent historical committee next year. In any event, LPedia must be maintained, and I expect the LNC will appoint a new committee- and if I am not on the LNC, I will apply to be on the committee. Even if not, I will continue my volunteer work. I think Starchild covered this well. As far as goals, I am very sober-minded as to our goals. I absolutely do not expect (nor is there budget for, though I am doing pretty well at finding no-cost volunteers) the entire archives to be scanned by the end of this term. I do realistically expect it to be organized and inventoried and the most critical items uploaded. And with the organization, the next committee will be able to continue to prioritize until it is done. Without the organization, I cannot wisely spend the initial budget on the most critical and most general interest items. While I might be in rapturous delight over a handwritten note by Gary Nolan on the back of a memo, our membership is more interested in news items. training items, press releases, and minutes. I am prioritizing to the needs and wants of our members. And as Daniel and Wes said, there is a lot of duplicates and items that do not need to be saved. I will be able to make culling recommendations to the LNC and to Wes and to carry those out.

I expect these records will remain here for at least a few years. And I have a volunteer that drives cross country often, and I might be able to find someone to bring them back at little to no cost - the volume will be less in any event, even if we have to pay. And they could come back by common carrier as I will be able to have the volunteers to re-pack as necessary.

I went quickly through a representative portion of the offsite storage. Everything I saw were items to be saved (in general, most certainly there is redundancy and culling and curating to do). It is interesting you mention the "so and so's desk" boxes... that is part of the problem. Who is ever going to go through that stuff? Wes thinks there might be minutes and other important items there, if not, I will straighten it out and solve that problem. And when I say "I" I don't mean I am super woman to do it all myself, but with a home base in CO, the birthplace, of the Party, and my volunteer connections in neighboring states, I can manage this properly, as a Chair should.

In any event, it will be cheaper to come back after several years, in great shape with professional organization and of use to the Party and its members.

-Caryn Ann

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 10:40 AM, Caryn Ann Harlos < carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

...

I have a bunch of commentary to add that I will take one at a time.

Daniel, that is exactly what I was thinking. I think this Committee may find some auction items and may be able to put together a nice historical interest display, and you might want to consider having one of us speak.

-Caryn Ann

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 10:24 AM, Daniel Hayes <danielehayes@icloud.com

...

wrote:

...

Us finally throwing away a bunch of sacred invoices and other magical papers and stuff we don't need was my motivation to sponsor . It might take 5 years to recoup but it is money we can save.

Also, keep in mind that if we can monetize some of this stuff, even better. As Sam and a couple of others know, we are looking to hold a silent auction at convention in NOLA. Caryn Ann may find some things that we don't want to throw away but don't have space to display that a member might have interest in. I'd rather see us put some cash to the use this party exists for and allow a member to have some enjoyment instead of sticking it in a box on a shelf. One person's junk is another person's treasure.

Daniel Hayes LNC At Large Member

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 24, 2017, at 11:07 AM, Wes Benedict <wes.benedict@lp.org> wrote:

Actually, if Caryn Ann does a good enough job, we should no longer need an off-site storage unit. The unit we're in now just went up to $248 per month starting in March 2018 (up about $20 from February).

William Redpath, can you calculate the Prevent Value of the saving of $248 per month in perpetuity?

And if you can do that, can you then get a bit more precise by making the assumption the $248 per month spending won't stop for 2 years?

Thanks Bill, that'd be great.

Wes Benedict, Executive Director Libertarian National Committee, Inc. 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314(202) 333-0008 ext. 232 <(202)%20333-0008>, wes.benedict@lp.orgfacebook.com/libertarians @LPNational Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership

On 3/24/2017 11:43 AM, Wes Benedict wrote:

Around 300 boxes with the miscellaneous "slips of paper" have been shredded since 2013. I spent many days on that work myself doing a first and second pass through the mountain of junk in the cool, damp, rat-infested dungeon storage underneath the Watergate complex, and then doing 3rd and 4th passes at our storage units after moving the stuff to Alexandria. (I did not shred the stuff myself--just identified the boxes and then had a professional service handle it).

I am not exaggerating about the rats. I do not recall finding dead rats in any boxes and did not necessarily see rats inside our particular unit, but there were dead dried out rat carcasses less than 20 feet outside the door to our unit and in the hallway leading up to our unit and inside adjacent units.

In addition to things that have been shredded, I did not count the number of boxes of stuff that I threw away that did not need to be shredded. I also personally tore apart, dismantled, and sawed when necessary (with my personal Bosch circular saws and drill), large painted plywood structures that I think were used in the 2000 and 2004 national conventions (along with the wooden pallets).

For a decade, it seemed, no one was willing to throw things away. I can't blame them. Who wants to throw something away when someone might complain later? Plus, it's easier to just box up an old employees stuff and push it aside rather than go through it and sort it all out. The result was valuable things were getting buried by old broken furniture and useless pieces of returned mail slips that had no value. Boxes of potentially valuable documents were getting crushed and split and were spilling in the damp basement of the Watergate. The basement of the Watergate obviously wasn't climate controlled and the storage facilities were down an underground hallway from the dumpsters for CVS and the grocery store Safeway, and just 200 yard crawl for rats from the shores of the Potomac. Grocery stores generate a lot of smelly garbage that attracts rats.

For the most part, I did not go through many individual boxes and sort through individual pieces of stuff. I either kept the whole box, or through the whole box out (or shredded if necessary).

We still have over a dozen 4-drawer file cabinets and maybe 100 boxes of stuff that needs to be gone through more carefully. That takes a lot of time. When it's time to bring the stuff back from Colorado, I expect the content to be 15% of it's original size. That's because there is still stuff to throw away, and also, for things like fundraising letters that were sent in 1992--there are probably 5 or 10 copies of each.

That stuff is getting older every day, but at least we now have it stored in a climate controlled storage unit in Alexandria, instead of the basement of the Watergate.

I probably inadvertently threw some things out that we wished I hadn't, but I feel like my actions to jettison some garbage even if there was some collateral damage, was urgent, and necessary for the greater good of the documents that were saved, and because we needed space for our more recent documents.

A few photos attached.

Wes Benedict, Executive Director Libertarian National Committee, Inc. 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314 (202) 333-0008 ext. 232 <(202)%20333-0008>, wes.benedict@lp.org facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership

On 3/24/2017 4:43 AM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

Having spent some time digging through these materials a few years ago, I know there are a LOT of boxes of old membership forms with hand-written signatures on the membership certification. I don't imagine those going online for the world to see, so why ship 50 boxes to Colorado and back?

I don't recall a terribly high percentage of those files being things that are of historical value that would belong in an online archive. Some of it was, but much was not. Old invoices and vendor contracts. Miscellaneous contents of the desk drawers of former employees. Is there really enough historical material to fill a UHaul?

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing listLnc-business@hq.lp.orghttp://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

Alicia, If there were an amendment or second motion that none of the materials to be sent to Colorado be discarded without an elected or appointed member of the party leadership gives the okay, would that allay your concerns? Or perhaps a motion/amendment saying certain categories of things can't be discarded, period? Having seen the kind of stuff that's sometimes been left behind and thrown away after LP conventions – current outreach materials, unused office supplies, etc. – not to mention stuff being deleted from our website, old meeting minutes and other important records apparently having been thrown out by people at various times, etc., I share your concern that things might get thrown out which would better be saved. Where we may possibly see things differently is that I don't perceive there being a greater risk of this occurring in Colorado than in Alexandria. The discarding of minutes and other important past materials presumably took place in the D.C. area. More recently, Wes mentioned in a recent message that he discarded some stuff, and although I trust there were no minutes among those materials, there wasn't a lot of detail provided about precisely what they did include, and I can't help wondering whether anything was discarded that I personally might have kept. I might have the same concern upon hearing of stuff discarded in Colorado, of course, but I wouldn't be any more concerned. Love & Liberty, ((( starchild ))) At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee (415) 625-FREE @StarchildSF On Mar 26, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

The discussion on this thread paints the motion in a very different light for me. I want to take a step back and put this in context.

The motion adopted by email ballot to create this committee included the following scope description:

"The LNC establishes a Historic Preservation Committee to help preserve and publish historical documents of the party and to manage LPedia."

The goal is to preserve and publish things of historical value.

This motion suggests that the newly-requested funds will be used:

"to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site storage facility to a location in Colorado..."

That to me sounds like the materials in question are of historical value, and it thus warrants the expenditure to preserve them.

What we're learning, though, is that possibly the vast majority of this material is trash, and we're paying thousands of dollars to ship trash to Colorado to be thrown away there.

This is really more of a document destruction project than a historical preservation project, though along the way it will likely find a few historical documents worth preserving.

We created a Historic Perservation Committee, rather than a Basement Cleanout Committee, and they're very different tasks.

I would be comfortable with volunteers in Colorado taking things deemed to have historic value and scanning them for preservation, or making them available for silent auction fundraising, etc.

I am not comfortable with volunteers in Colorado who have no experience in operations of our headquarters essentially making decisions about what documents get thrown away.

The reason I spent a day in the Watergate dungeon (I think it was in the fall of 2011) digging through that material is because I was looking for some records that should have been preserved in perpetuity, but someone who didn't understand their importance apparently threw them out. They actually had very high value for legal reasons.

As pretty as it sounds to have a team of volunteers in the birthplace of the LP building historical archives, a person's Colorado residence doesn't grant them magical knowledge of what business records ought to be kept and which ones ought to be thrown away.

I realize that you say that the LNC will ultimately decide which things get tossed, but the quality of the LNC's decision depends heavily on the description of the records we are given. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains miscellaneous receipts, it's one thing if it's 15-year-old receipts for office supplies that have long since been used up, but it's another if the receipts are for equipment still in use today and maybe still under warranty. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains old email correspondence with a state chair, it's one thing if the conversation was, "I look forward to seeing you at the convention", but it's another thing if the conversation was relaying facts about a situation that is the subject of a lawsuit.

If the person looking at the records doesn't really understand the context of the records, how can they give us the key information we need to make an informed decision about which ones to throw away?

This is not a project that should be undertaken by people with no understanding of our party operations.

There may also be old employment records with sensitive personnel information, social security numbers, etc., and those shouldn't just be passed around among random volunteers.

I have no objection to paying for the committee chair to make a trip to the storage facility, spend a few days sorting through it to find items of historical value, and then shipping those 10 boxes to Colorado for further processing. That is within the function of a Historic Preservation Committee.

I do have objection to shipping our trash-mixed-with-important-records across the country for people who don't understand what is valuable and what isn't to give us vague descriptions which will be the basis of uninformed decisions for destroying our records. This document destruction task is not what I had in mind when the Historic Preservation Committee was created.

For several years our outside auditors have been urging us to adopt document retention policies (and also whistleblower policies, but that's another subject). I think it was two terms ago near the end of that term that the Audit Committee proposed some starter language to try to get the ball rolling, but the LNC has not yet implemented anything.

At minimum we need to establish how long certain records are to be kept such as employment records, financial records, membership certifications, and other categories. These can be important to keep for legal reasons, for FEC compliance, etc. Even after we make those policy decisions, I think the document maintenance has to be done by knowledgeable insiders rather than miscellaneous volunteers.

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

Destruction of documents without LNC permission would have been strictly prohibited under the version of the HPC motion that was originally brought forward. I'm just sayin'. On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 12:19 AM, Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos@gmail.com

wrote:

Nothing would be unilaterally discarded by me.

I do not believe the HPC has that authority.

A detailed culling recommendation would be given.

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 5:35 PM Starchild <sfdreamer@earthlink.net> wrote:

...

Alicia,

If there were an amendment or second motion that none of the materials to be sent to Colorado be discarded without an elected or appointed member of the party leadership gives the okay, would that allay your concerns? Or perhaps a motion/amendment saying certain categories of things can't be discarded, period? Having seen the kind of stuff that's sometimes been left behind and thrown away after LP conventions – current outreach materials, unused office supplies, etc. – not to mention stuff being deleted from our website, old meeting minutes and other important records apparently having been thrown out by people at various times, etc., I share your concern that things might get thrown out which would better be saved.

Where we may possibly see things differently is that I don't perceive there being a greater risk of this occurring in Colorado than in Alexandria. The discarding of minutes and other important past materials presumably took place in the D.C. area. More recently, Wes mentioned in a recent message that he discarded some stuff, and although I trust there were no minutes among those materials, there wasn't a lot of detail provided about precisely what they *did* include, and I can't help wondering whether anything was discarded that I personally might have kept. I might have the same concern upon hearing of stuff discarded in Colorado, of course, but I wouldn't be any *more* concerned.

Love & Liberty, ((( starchild ))) At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee (415) 625-FREE @StarchildSF

On Mar 26, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

The discussion on this thread paints the motion in a very different light for me. I want to take a step back and put this in context.

The motion adopted by email ballot to create this committee included the following scope description:

"The LNC establishes a Historic Preservation Committee to help preserve and publish historical documents of the party and to manage LPedia."

The goal is to preserve and publish things of historical value.

This motion suggests that the newly-requested funds will be used:

"to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the

historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site

storage facility to a location in Colorado..."

That to me sounds like the materials in question are of historical value, and it thus warrants the expenditure to preserve them.

What we're learning, though, is that possibly the vast majority of this material is trash, and we're paying thousands of dollars to ship trash to Colorado to be thrown away there.

This is really more of a document destruction project than a historical preservation project, though along the way it will likely find a few historical documents worth preserving.

We created a Historic Perservation Committee, rather than a Basement Cleanout Committee, and they're very different tasks.

I would be comfortable with volunteers in Colorado taking things deemed to have historic value and scanning them for preservation, or making them available for silent auction fundraising, etc.

I am not comfortable with volunteers in Colorado who have no experience in operations of our headquarters essentially making decisions about what documents get thrown away.

The reason I spent a day in the Watergate dungeon (I think it was in the fall of 2011) digging through that material is because I was looking for some records that should have been preserved in perpetuity, but *someone who didn't understand their importance apparently threw them out*. They actually had very high value for legal reasons.

As pretty as it sounds to have a team of volunteers in the birthplace of the LP building historical archives, a person's Colorado residence doesn't grant them magical knowledge of what business records ought to be kept and which ones ought to be thrown away.

I realize that you say that the LNC will ultimately decide which things get tossed, but the quality of the LNC's decision depends heavily on the description of the records we are given. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains miscellaneous receipts, it's one thing if it's 15-year-old receipts for office supplies that have long since been used up, but it's another if the receipts are for equipment still in use today and maybe still under warranty. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains old email correspondence with a state chair, it's one thing if the conversation was, "I look forward to seeing you at the convention", but it's another thing if the conversation was relaying facts about a situation that is the subject of a lawsuit.

If the person looking at the records doesn't really understand the context of the records, how can they give us the key information we need to make an informed decision about which ones to throw away?

This is not a project that should be undertaken by people with no understanding of our party operations.

There may also be old employment records with sensitive personnel information, social security numbers, etc., and those shouldn't just be passed around among random volunteers.

I have no objection to paying for the committee chair to make a trip to the storage facility, spend a few days sorting through it to find items of historical value, and then shipping those 10 boxes to Colorado for further processing. That is within the function of a Historic Preservation Committee.

I do have objection to shipping our trash-mixed-with-important-records across the country for people who don't understand what is valuable and what isn't to give us vague descriptions which will be the basis of uninformed decisions for destroying our records. This document destruction task is not what I had in mind when the Historic Preservation Committee was created.

For several years our outside auditors have been urging us to adopt document retention policies (and also whistleblower policies, but that's another subject). I think it was two terms ago near the end of that term that the Audit Committee proposed some starter language to try to get the ball rolling, but the LNC has not yet implemented anything.

At minimum we need to establish how long certain records are to be kept such as employment records, financial records, membership certifications, and other categories. These can be important to keep for legal reasons, for FEC compliance, etc. Even after we make those policy decisions, I think the document maintenance has to be done by knowledgeable insiders rather than miscellaneous volunteers.

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

Also, I am not with child and I have not been cloned. It's just the morning typing on a phone. Daniel Hayes LNC At Large Member Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 27, 2017, at 7:01 AM, Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

And it would not happen under my oversight either. Whether spelled out or not, that is an LNC level decision and I treat it as such. I would like to make recommendations to the LNC however.

...

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 5:40 AM, Ken Moellman <lpky@mu-net.org> wrote: Destruction of documents without LNC permission would have been strictly prohibited under the version of the HPC motion that was originally brought forward. I'm just sayin'.

...

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 12:19 AM, Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote: Nothing would be unilaterally discarded by me.

I do not believe the HPC has that authority.

A detailed culling recommendation would be given.

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 5:35 PM Starchild <sfdreamer@earthlink.net> wrote:

...

Alicia,

If there were an amendment or second motion that none of the materials to be sent to Colorado be discarded without an elected or appointed member of the party leadership gives the okay, would that allay your concerns? Or perhaps a motion/amendment saying certain categories of things can't be discarded, period? Having seen the kind of stuff that's sometimes been left behind and thrown away after LP conventions – current outreach materials, unused office supplies, etc. – not to mention stuff being deleted from our website, old meeting minutes and other important records apparently having been thrown out by people at various times, etc., I share your concern that things might get thrown out which would better be saved.

Where we may possibly see things differently is that I don't perceive there being a greater risk of this occurring in Colorado than in Alexandria. The discarding of minutes and other important past materials presumably took place in the D.C. area. More recently, Wes mentioned in a recent message that he discarded some stuff, and although I trust there were no minutes among those materials, there wasn't a lot of detail provided about precisely what they did include, and I can't help wondering whether anything was discarded that I personally might have kept. I might have the same concern upon hearing of stuff discarded in Colorado, of course, but I wouldn't be any more concerned.

Love & Liberty, ((( starchild ))) At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee (415) 625-FREE @StarchildSF

...

On Mar 26, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

The discussion on this thread paints the motion in a very different light for me. I want to take a step back and put this in context.

The motion adopted by email ballot to create this committee included the following scope description:

"The LNC establishes a Historic Preservation Committee to help preserve and publish historical documents of the party and to manage LPedia."

The goal is to preserve and publish things of historical value.

This motion suggests that the newly-requested funds will be used:

"to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the

historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site

storage facility to a location in Colorado..."

That to me sounds like the materials in question are of historical value, and it thus warrants the expenditure to preserve them.

What we're learning, though, is that possibly the vast majority of this material is trash, and we're paying thousands of dollars to ship trash to Colorado to be thrown away there.

This is really more of a document destruction project than a historical preservation project, though along the way it will likely find a few historical documents worth preserving.

We created a Historic Perservation Committee, rather than a Basement Cleanout Committee, and they're very different tasks.

I would be comfortable with volunteers in Colorado taking things deemed to have historic value and scanning them for preservation, or making them available for silent auction fundraising, etc.

I am not comfortable with volunteers in Colorado who have no experience in operations of our headquarters essentially making decisions about what documents get thrown away.

The reason I spent a day in the Watergate dungeon (I think it was in the fall of 2011) digging through that material is because I was looking for some records that should have been preserved in perpetuity, but someone who didn't understand their importance apparently threw them out. They actually had very high value for legal reasons.

As pretty as it sounds to have a team of volunteers in the birthplace of the LP building historical archives, a person's Colorado residence doesn't grant them magical knowledge of what business records ought to be kept and which ones ought to be thrown away.

I realize that you say that the LNC will ultimately decide which things get tossed, but the quality of the LNC's decision depends heavily on the description of the records we are given. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains miscellaneous receipts, it's one thing if it's 15-year-old receipts for office supplies that have long since been used up, but it's another if the receipts are for equipment still in use today and maybe still under warranty. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains old email correspondence with a state chair, it's one thing if the conversation was, "I look forward to seeing you at the convention", but it's another thing if the conversation was relaying facts about a situation that is the subject of a lawsuit.

If the person looking at the records doesn't really understand the context of the records, how can they give us the key information we need to make an informed decision about which ones to throw away?

This is not a project that should be undertaken by people with no understanding of our party operations.

There may also be old employment records with sensitive personnel information, social security numbers, etc., and those shouldn't just be passed around among random volunteers.

I have no objection to paying for the committee chair to make a trip to the storage facility, spend a few days sorting through it to find items of historical value, and then shipping those 10 boxes to Colorado for further processing. That is within the function of a Historic Preservation Committee.

I do have objection to shipping our trash-mixed-with-important-records across the country for people who don't understand what is valuable and what isn't to give us vague descriptions which will be the basis of uninformed decisions for destroying our records. This document destruction task is not what I had in mind when the Historic Preservation Committee was created.

For several years our outside auditors have been urging us to adopt document retention policies (and also whistleblower policies, but that's another subject). I think it was two terms ago near the end of that term that the Audit Committee proposed some starter language to try to get the ball rolling, but the LNC has not yet implemented anything.

At minimum we need to establish how long certain records are to be kept such as employment records, financial records, membership certifications, and other categories. These can be important to keep for legal reasons, for FEC compliance, etc. Even after we make those policy decisions, I think the document maintenance has to be done by knowledgeable insiders rather than miscellaneous volunteers.

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- In Liberty, Caryn Ann Harlos Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: We defend your rights And oppose the use of force Taxation is theft

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

Starchild, My concerns are not about the city in which the analysis is done, but about the depth of experience of the person analyzing the contents in order to characterize them for the decision maker(s). -Alicia On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Starchild <sfdreamer@earthlink.net> wrote:

Alicia,

If there were an amendment or second motion that none of the materials to be sent to Colorado be discarded without an elected or appointed member of the party leadership gives the okay, would that allay your concerns? Or perhaps a motion/amendment saying certain categories of things can't be discarded, period? Having seen the kind of stuff that's sometimes been left behind and thrown away after LP conventions – current outreach materials, unused office supplies, etc. – not to mention stuff being deleted from our website, old meeting minutes and other important records apparently having been thrown out by people at various times, etc., I share your concern that things might get thrown out which would better be saved.

Where we may possibly see things differently is that I don't perceive there being a greater risk of this occurring in Colorado than in Alexandria. The discarding of minutes and other important past materials presumably took place in the D.C. area. More recently, Wes mentioned in a recent message that he discarded some stuff, and although I trust there were no minutes among those materials, there wasn't a lot of detail provided about precisely what they *did* include, and I can't help wondering whether anything was discarded that I personally might have kept. I might have the same concern upon hearing of stuff discarded in Colorado, of course, but I wouldn't be any *more* concerned.

Love & Liberty, ((( starchild ))) At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee (415) 625-FREE @StarchildSF

On Mar 26, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

The discussion on this thread paints the motion in a very different light for me. I want to take a step back and put this in context.

The motion adopted by email ballot to create this committee included the following scope description:

"The LNC establishes a Historic Preservation Committee to help preserve and publish historical documents of the party and to manage LPedia."

The goal is to preserve and publish things of historical value.

This motion suggests that the newly-requested funds will be used:

"to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site storage facility to a location in Colorado..."

That to me sounds like the materials in question are of historical value, and it thus warrants the expenditure to preserve them.

What we're learning, though, is that possibly the vast majority of this material is trash, and we're paying thousands of dollars to ship trash to Colorado to be thrown away there.

This is really more of a document destruction project than a historical preservation project, though along the way it will likely find a few historical documents worth preserving.

We created a Historic Perservation Committee, rather than a Basement Cleanout Committee, and they're very different tasks.

I would be comfortable with volunteers in Colorado taking things deemed to have historic value and scanning them for preservation, or making them available for silent auction fundraising, etc.

I am not comfortable with volunteers in Colorado who have no experience in operations of our headquarters essentially making decisions about what documents get thrown away.

The reason I spent a day in the Watergate dungeon (I think it was in the fall of 2011) digging through that material is because I was looking for some records that should have been preserved in perpetuity, but *someone who didn't understand their importance apparently threw them out*. They actually had very high value for legal reasons.

As pretty as it sounds to have a team of volunteers in the birthplace of the LP building historical archives, a person's Colorado residence doesn't grant them magical knowledge of what business records ought to be kept and which ones ought to be thrown away.

I realize that you say that the LNC will ultimately decide which things get tossed, but the quality of the LNC's decision depends heavily on the description of the records we are given. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains miscellaneous receipts, it's one thing if it's 15-year-old receipts for office supplies that have long since been used up, but it's another if the receipts are for equipment still in use today and maybe still under warranty. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains old email correspondence with a state chair, it's one thing if the conversation was, "I look forward to seeing you at the convention", but it's another thing if the conversation was relaying facts about a situation that is the subject of a lawsuit.

If the person looking at the records doesn't really understand the context of the records, how can they give us the key information we need to make an informed decision about which ones to throw away?

This is not a project that should be undertaken by people with no understanding of our party operations.

There may also be old employment records with sensitive personnel information, social security numbers, etc., and those shouldn't just be passed around among random volunteers.

I have no objection to paying for the committee chair to make a trip to the storage facility, spend a few days sorting through it to find items of historical value, and then shipping those 10 boxes to Colorado for further processing. That is within the function of a Historic Preservation Committee.

I do have objection to shipping our trash-mixed-with-important-records across the country for people who don't understand what is valuable and what isn't to give us vague descriptions which will be the basis of uninformed decisions for destroying our records. This document destruction task is not what I had in mind when the Historic Preservation Committee was created.

For several years our outside auditors have been urging us to adopt document retention policies (and also whistleblower policies, but that's another subject). I think it was two terms ago near the end of that term that the Audit Committee proposed some starter language to try to get the ball rolling, but the LNC has not yet implemented anything.

At minimum we need to establish how long certain records are to be kept such as employment records, financial records, membership certifications, and other categories. These can be important to keep for legal reasons, for FEC compliance, etc. Even after we make those policy decisions, I think the document maintenance has to be done by knowledgeable insiders rather than miscellaneous volunteers.

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

Well, let me say this: the debate on this motion has entirely changed my view on the questions involved. One thing I am gleaning from the debate, though, is that different people are talking about entirely different issues and concerns, and several of those issues are not well-framed enough to be answered in a yes/no manner. For a while, I thought the debate was largely off-track because it was getting into the weeds, but now I realize that some of those weeds are LNC concerns, and others, despite ideally not being LNC concerns, have become such due to a lack of other governance mechanisms. I will attempt here to lay out what I see as the issues being discussed - largely independently - and suggest that the question be narrowed. *The Stuff* We have piles of stuff, is what I'm gathering. We passed a motion a while ago, creating the Historical Committee, which I think was implicitly premised on the idea that the stuff falls into two groups: garbage, and things we wish to preserve for historical value. At least, that was my implicit premise. Now we're finding, though, that there's a third group: things we wish to preserve for legal/business purposes. This suggests to me that our handling of the previous motion might not have been sufficient because of this faulty premise. So we're left with a broad question: how to handle all this stuff. I think a lot of us thought our previous motion would take care of that, but perhaps it will not if this third category exists. *Financial Considerations* This is what I originally thought this motion was all about - spending money. In particular, it seems to me that this motion is based on the idea that the money we previously allocated was not sufficient. This gives me independent concerns: if the expected cost of a project doubles in a matter of weeks, experience shows us that it is likely to continue rising. I also would like to know how we learned this - since none of the originally allocated money has been spent, and the proposed increase is exactly the amount allocated, why can't the allocated money be spent to do this? While much discussion has been about the proposed object, the motion seems to me only to authorize money, and to take for granted that the moving can be done by staff as long as the money is there. Now, assuming there's some other use for the original $5k, I don't think what Wes has told us suggests that we can do this project for either $5k or $10k. I think it suggests that the cost of the project is (at least) $10k, once staff time is included, as it should be. A functionally allocated budget would have made this clear, whereas with our current budgeting procedures it has to come out in discussion and remain a little fuzzy, but that's how I'm reading it. We can spend the additional $5k in cash, or we can spend it in lost staff time. That brings up a new question, then - since we approved the project at $5k, do we still think it is worth doing at $10k? I think that's perfectly well-framed to be answered with a yes/no decision. However, what is less clear is what happens if we say no. One option is that things would remain at status quo, and we'd continue paying for storage space. Another is to throw everything out. There are probably other options, too. *The Value of Things in Storage* Focusing for a moment on the items of business/legal significance, I think that, if a clean-up project does not proceed, they might as well be in the trash. It is extremely unlikely that things can be found when needed, and it would be healthier, when such a concern comes up, to be able to say cheerfully "yep, it's gone," than to have a vague notion that it may exist in a large pile of stuff, buried under furniture. Turning to the historical items, I confess to being less interested in these than others are, but I take the result of the vote to suggest that we find it important, and so we're unlikely to think they're worth preserving at $5k, but worth throwing out if it would cost $10k. In the grand scheme of things, $5k is not much money, and it's believed that there are donations available to support much of this. In my mind, though, such donations are currently speculative - and I can speculate that costs will continue rising. So let's ignore both speculations and assume we'll be spending the money out of what's currently in our budget - it's still rather small and not worth much of the time spent discussing it. Heck, it's the amount we let the chair spend freely - which raises one possible solution. More generally, it raises the idea that we should be freer with allocating budgets to projects without involving ourselves in the questions of how the money is spent. Personally, I find it baffling that we turn over the vast majority of our budget to staff, yet insist on weird control mechanisms for small portions - putting the most control on money to be spent by committees, largely populated by board members. I have no idea why we single out budget access, for instance, for EC control (why not, at least, control by the people directing ballot access?), but leave half the budget in Compensation. But then, I don't understand many things about the world. *Budgetary Impact* That said, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, when donations are available for a given project, it is not always clear if they will increase total revenue, or simply be taken out of other giving the same people might otherwise have planned. I suspect the answer is somewhere in the middle - a $10k project, fully funded by donations, will not cost us $10k, but also will not cost us $0, all things considered. *Why is There a Pile of Stuff?* I think Wes has well explained this one - people are afraid to throw things out. A few years ago, I was elected Secretary of my fire department. I went through old minutes and found that all correspondence was there - i.e. Christmas cards, invitations to Climb for Life, for decades. This doesn't make it particularly easy to do the project I was engaged in - no one had kept records of standing rules, so I was attempting to reconstruct them from old minutes. (A fun story for anyone who says "I don't see what's wrong with including discussion in the minutes" or who fails to see why it is important to record the actual language of the motion.) Anyway, with a custom going back decades, it's hard to be the one who decides to break it. The solution is a document retention policy, which we should come up with. I will move in Pittsburgh that we appoint a committee to recommend one. *How to Throw Things Out* Although we have agreed that the LNC will make this decision, based on this discussion, I am questioning the wisdom of that move. I think if a committee is going through this material, and if we have adopted such a policy, that committee should be free to throw things out within that policy. Currently, as the Secretary notes, making these calls would take a good amount of expertise with the specifics of the materials. With a document retention plan in place, I don't think it will. I think it would be crazy for the LNC to make document by document decisions, personally. Let's set some rules about what sorts of things we want to keep, and then let volunteers have at it. *Purpose of Historical Committee* As the Secretary notes, we appointed a historical committee, not a clean-up committee. If it turns out that cleaning up is necessary before the historical work can be done, we need to decide if the historical committee is the right committee for that purpose, or if something else needs to be done first. Joshua A. Katz On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 10:36 PM, Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos@gmail.com

wrote:

Hi Alicia,

My recommendations will be primarily about duplicates. I do believe I am experienced enough to determine a duplicate. I also undertook a similar (obviously smaller scale but in principle the same) project already in Colorado (http://www.lpcolorado.org/archives).

The rest would be done via inventory and in consultation with more experienced Party members.

I do not have experience in years, but I have experience in diving in more deeply than persons with twenty years of experience have done. Further CO has a wide breath of available persons to volunteer.

Right now there is no danger of anyone's experience because it simply isn't being done, and unless another person with the passion I have for the topic appears, it likely will not in any forseeable future. It hasn't so far.

I respectfully submit that making recommendations is not complicated and I believe I have proven my understanding on historical artifacts.

-Caryn Ann

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 9:26 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Starchild,

My concerns are not about the city in which the analysis is done, but about the depth of experience of the person analyzing the contents in order to characterize them for the decision maker(s).

-Alicia

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Starchild <sfdreamer@earthlink.net> wrote:

...

Alicia,

If there were an amendment or second motion that none of the materials to be sent to Colorado be discarded without an elected or appointed member of the party leadership gives the okay, would that allay your concerns? Or perhaps a motion/amendment saying certain categories of things can't be discarded, period? Having seen the kind of stuff that's sometimes been left behind and thrown away after LP conventions – current outreach materials, unused office supplies, etc. – not to mention stuff being deleted from our website, old meeting minutes and other important records apparently having been thrown out by people at various times, etc., I share your concern that things might get thrown out which would better be saved.

Where we may possibly see things differently is that I don't perceive there being a greater risk of this occurring in Colorado than in Alexandria. The discarding of minutes and other important past materials presumably took place in the D.C. area. More recently, Wes mentioned in a recent message that he discarded some stuff, and although I trust there were no minutes among those materials, there wasn't a lot of detail provided about precisely what they *did* include, and I can't help wondering whether anything was discarded that I personally might have kept. I might have the same concern upon hearing of stuff discarded in Colorado, of course, but I wouldn't be any *more* concerned.

Love & Liberty, ((( starchild ))) At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee (415) 625-FREE @StarchildSF

On Mar 26, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

The discussion on this thread paints the motion in a very different light for me. I want to take a step back and put this in context.

The motion adopted by email ballot to create this committee included the following scope description:

"The LNC establishes a Historic Preservation Committee to help preserve and publish historical documents of the party and to manage LPedia."

The goal is to preserve and publish things of historical value.

This motion suggests that the newly-requested funds will be used:

"to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site storage facility to a location in Colorado..."

That to me sounds like the materials in question are of historical value, and it thus warrants the expenditure to preserve them.

What we're learning, though, is that possibly the vast majority of this material is trash, and we're paying thousands of dollars to ship trash to Colorado to be thrown away there.

This is really more of a document destruction project than a historical preservation project, though along the way it will likely find a few historical documents worth preserving.

We created a Historic Perservation Committee, rather than a Basement Cleanout Committee, and they're very different tasks.

I would be comfortable with volunteers in Colorado taking things deemed to have historic value and scanning them for preservation, or making them available for silent auction fundraising, etc.

I am not comfortable with volunteers in Colorado who have no experience in operations of our headquarters essentially making decisions about what documents get thrown away.

The reason I spent a day in the Watergate dungeon (I think it was in the fall of 2011) digging through that material is because I was looking for some records that should have been preserved in perpetuity, but *someone who didn't understand their importance apparently threw them out*. They actually had very high value for legal reasons.

As pretty as it sounds to have a team of volunteers in the birthplace of the LP building historical archives, a person's Colorado residence doesn't grant them magical knowledge of what business records ought to be kept and which ones ought to be thrown away.

I realize that you say that the LNC will ultimately decide which things get tossed, but the quality of the LNC's decision depends heavily on the description of the records we are given. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains miscellaneous receipts, it's one thing if it's 15-year-old receipts for office supplies that have long since been used up, but it's another if the receipts are for equipment still in use today and maybe still under warranty. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains old email correspondence with a state chair, it's one thing if the conversation was, "I look forward to seeing you at the convention", but it's another thing if the conversation was relaying facts about a situation that is the subject of a lawsuit.

If the person looking at the records doesn't really understand the context of the records, how can they give us the key information we need to make an informed decision about which ones to throw away?

This is not a project that should be undertaken by people with no understanding of our party operations.

There may also be old employment records with sensitive personnel information, social security numbers, etc., and those shouldn't just be passed around among random volunteers.

I have no objection to paying for the committee chair to make a trip to the storage facility, spend a few days sorting through it to find items of historical value, and then shipping those 10 boxes to Colorado for further processing. That is within the function of a Historic Preservation Committee.

I do have objection to shipping our trash-mixed-with-important-records across the country for people who don't understand what is valuable and what isn't to give us vague descriptions which will be the basis of uninformed decisions for destroying our records. This document destruction task is not what I had in mind when the Historic Preservation Committee was created.

For several years our outside auditors have been urging us to adopt document retention policies (and also whistleblower policies, but that's another subject). I think it was two terms ago near the end of that term that the Audit Committee proposed some starter language to try to get the ball rolling, but the LNC has not yet implemented anything.

At minimum we need to establish how long certain records are to be kept such as employment records, financial records, membership certifications, and other categories. These can be important to keep for legal reasons, for FEC compliance, etc. Even after we make those policy decisions, I think the document maintenance has to be done by knowledgeable insiders rather than miscellaneous volunteers.

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

To supplement the other update and relevant to this motion: I now have two volunteers willing to dedicate an entire week block of time if the records are in the Denver area to work on the project. This is with minimal word of mouth from person(s) who read the LNC list. I believe I would get several regular crews. LPCO already has a commitment to its history (unfortunately some records list due to past neglect prior to my time and were soiled by vermin). I am a prolific volunteer recruiter when I need them. -Caryn Ann On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 3:19 PM Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Joshua, any historical work with a budget is going to require prioritization which requires knowing what we have. If it were just the records in the basement, that would not be an issue (another volunteer I found just spent two more days there - total volunteer time on the project now totals likely over a 100 hours between inventory work and LPedia database fix issues - IOW significant volunteer has already been expended - we have been effective). It is the storage facility records that are the issue. If they remain there, one possible avenue to keep staff uninvolved as much as possible is to grant me the key to designate to a certain core group of volunteers in the area to be determined. I am confident that whatever is decided, we will make the most effective, cheapest, least intrusive means possible. As I said, I will have to spend vacation time in VA this summer if they are not moved. I do not require any staff oversight, but that money could go to the Party rather than Southwest and Marriot.

And no, this year that expense will not grow (and next year is a different budget discussion). I am convinced it is too high by at least $1000 (unless salary is way more than I figure in my head - which of course would be a confidential discussion). And I want to remind everyone that I already raised nearly $1200 and promised an additional $1500 if the move was approved. So if I am right (and I am pretty convinced I am) that the $9000 figure is correct, taking away the pledge and the amount raised, we are at $6800. Which is only $1800 more than the LNC expected already to come out of the budget (and most certainly money will be raised toward that) in additional to the free professional labor. Putting aside that this is my project and I have a bias, we need to be supporting these volunteer initiative small projects. I could wax long about that, but I will save it to not bore everyone to death with this post. But you are right, we have spent more discussing a relatively trivial amount with a potential result of volunteered time, product, and good will way beyond the amount. For once, I am nearly talked out - miracle of miracle. I have never tried so hard to give away so many hours of my professional time over several years.

I don't think there is much btw that falls in some third category. I do think that is somewhat of a false premise. I broadly went through records in the facility and it was not that category (membership slips should be scanned IMHO - whether they are published is a different decision). There are filing cabinets in the basement which do, but which have always been outside our scope.

I find it interesting that it seems there is a critique that the original scanning budget has not been spent - it seems my prudence and caution is being used as a point of suspicion rather than good stewardship which rather reminds me of government budgeting. I could have spent it in a week. I am determined to squeeze it for every penny but it seems that this suggestion would have had a lot less discussion if I were irresponsible. I did get some advice to just spent it right away being cautioned about this very thing. I don't operate that way. I treat OPM (other people's money) as sacred. I have spent my own money on misc items rather than nickel or diming this. Volunteers have spent days from their vacation time - neither of them lived by HQ, one was further away in VA and the other was all the way from AZ.

PS: I have a volunteer willing to commit a full week of time to assisting with these records,, if they are moved to CO.

-Caryn Ann

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Joshua Katz <planning4liberty@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, let me say this: the debate on this motion has entirely changed my view on the questions involved. One thing I am gleaning from the debate, though, is that different people are talking about entirely different issues and concerns, and several of those issues are not well-framed enough to be answered in a yes/no manner. For a while, I thought the debate was largely off-track because it was getting into the weeds, but now I realize that some of those weeds are LNC concerns, and others, despite ideally not being LNC concerns, have become such due to a lack of other governance mechanisms. I will attempt here to lay out what I see as the issues being discussed - largely independently - and suggest that the question be narrowed.

*The Stuff*

We have piles of stuff, is what I'm gathering. We passed a motion a while ago, creating the Historical Committee, which I think was implicitly premised on the idea that the stuff falls into two groups: garbage, and things we wish to preserve for historical value. At least, that was my implicit premise. Now we're finding, though, that there's a third group: things we wish to preserve for legal/business purposes. This suggests to me that our handling of the previous motion might not have been sufficient because of this faulty premise. So we're left with a broad question: how to handle all this stuff. I think a lot of us thought our previous motion would take care of that, but perhaps it will not if this third category exists.

*Financial Considerations*

This is what I originally thought this motion was all about - spending money. In particular, it seems to me that this motion is based on the idea that the money we previously allocated was not sufficient. This gives me independent concerns: if the expected cost of a project doubles in a matter of weeks, experience shows us that it is likely to continue rising. I also would like to know how we learned this - since none of the originally allocated money has been spent, and the proposed increase is exactly the amount allocated, why can't the allocated money be spent to do this? While much discussion has been about the proposed object, the motion seems to me only to authorize money, and to take for granted that the moving can be done by staff as long as the money is there.

Now, assuming there's some other use for the original $5k, I don't think what Wes has told us suggests that we can do this project for either $5k or $10k. I think it suggests that the cost of the project is (at least) $10k, once staff time is included, as it should be. A functionally allocated budget would have made this clear, whereas with our current budgeting procedures it has to come out in discussion and remain a little fuzzy, but that's how I'm reading it. We can spend the additional $5k in cash, or we can spend it in lost staff time. That brings up a new question, then - since we approved the project at $5k, do we still think it is worth doing at $10k? I think that's perfectly well-framed to be answered with a yes/no decision. However, what is less clear is what happens if we say no. One option is that things would remain at status quo, and we'd continue paying for storage space. Another is to throw everything out. There are probably other options, too.

*The Value of Things in Storage*

Focusing for a moment on the items of business/legal significance, I think that, if a clean-up project does not proceed, they might as well be in the trash. It is extremely unlikely that things can be found when needed, and it would be healthier, when such a concern comes up, to be able to say cheerfully "yep, it's gone," than to have a vague notion that it may exist in a large pile of stuff, buried under furniture.

Turning to the historical items, I confess to being less interested in these than others are, but I take the result of the vote to suggest that we find it important, and so we're unlikely to think they're worth preserving at $5k, but worth throwing out if it would cost $10k. In the grand scheme of things, $5k is not much money, and it's believed that there are donations available to support much of this. In my mind, though, such donations are currently speculative - and I can speculate that costs will continue rising. So let's ignore both speculations and assume we'll be spending the money out of what's currently in our budget - it's still rather small and not worth much of the time spent discussing it. Heck, it's the amount we let the chair spend freely - which raises one possible solution. More generally, it raises the idea that we should be freer with allocating budgets to projects without involving ourselves in the questions of how the money is spent. Personally, I find it baffling that we turn over the vast majority of our budget to staff, yet insist on weird control mechanisms for small portions - putting the most control on money to be spent by committees, largely populated by board members. I have no idea why we single out budget access, for instance, for EC control (why not, at least, control by the people directing ballot access?), but leave half the budget in Compensation. But then, I don't understand many things about the world.

*Budgetary Impact*

That said, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, when donations are available for a given project, it is not always clear if they will increase total revenue, or simply be taken out of other giving the same people might otherwise have planned. I suspect the answer is somewhere in the middle - a $10k project, fully funded by donations, will not cost us $10k, but also will not cost us $0, all things considered.

*Why is There a Pile of Stuff?*

I think Wes has well explained this one - people are afraid to throw things out. A few years ago, I was elected Secretary of my fire department. I went through old minutes and found that all correspondence was there - i.e. Christmas cards, invitations to Climb for Life, for decades. This doesn't make it particularly easy to do the project I was engaged in - no one had kept records of standing rules, so I was attempting to reconstruct them from old minutes. (A fun story for anyone who says "I don't see what's wrong with including discussion in the minutes" or who fails to see why it is important to record the actual language of the motion.) Anyway, with a custom going back decades, it's hard to be the one who decides to break it. The solution is a document retention policy, which we should come up with. I will move in Pittsburgh that we appoint a committee to recommend one.

*How to Throw Things Out*

Although we have agreed that the LNC will make this decision, based on this discussion, I am questioning the wisdom of that move. I think if a committee is going through this material, and if we have adopted such a policy, that committee should be free to throw things out within that policy. Currently, as the Secretary notes, making these calls would take a good amount of expertise with the specifics of the materials. With a document retention plan in place, I don't think it will. I think it would be crazy for the LNC to make document by document decisions, personally. Let's set some rules about what sorts of things we want to keep, and then let volunteers have at it.

*Purpose of Historical Committee*

As the Secretary notes, we appointed a historical committee, not a clean-up committee. If it turns out that cleaning up is necessary before the historical work can be done, we need to decide if the historical committee is the right committee for that purpose, or if something else needs to be done first.

Joshua A. Katz

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 10:36 PM, Caryn Ann Harlos < carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Alicia,

My recommendations will be primarily about duplicates. I do believe I am experienced enough to determine a duplicate. I also undertook a similar (obviously smaller scale but in principle the same) project already in Colorado (http://www.lpcolorado.org/archives).

The rest would be done via inventory and in consultation with more experienced Party members.

I do not have experience in years, but I have experience in diving in more deeply than persons with twenty years of experience have done. Further CO has a wide breath of available persons to volunteer.

Right now there is no danger of anyone's experience because it simply isn't being done, and unless another person with the passion I have for the topic appears, it likely will not in any forseeable future. It hasn't so far.

I respectfully submit that making recommendations is not complicated and I believe I have proven my understanding on historical artifacts.

-Caryn Ann

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 9:26 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

Starchild,

My concerns are not about the city in which the analysis is done, but about the depth of experience of the person analyzing the contents in order to characterize them for the decision maker(s).

-Alicia

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Starchild <sfdreamer@earthlink.net> wrote:

Alicia,

If there were an amendment or second motion that none of the materials to be sent to Colorado be discarded without an elected or appointed member of the party leadership gives the okay, would that allay your concerns? Or perhaps a motion/amendment saying certain categories of things can't be discarded, period? Having seen the kind of stuff that's sometimes been left behind and thrown away after LP conventions – current outreach materials, unused office supplies, etc. – not to mention stuff being deleted from our website, old meeting minutes and other important records apparently having been thrown out by people at various times, etc., I share your concern that things might get thrown out which would better be saved.

Where we may possibly see things differently is that I don't perceive there being a greater risk of this occurring in Colorado than in Alexandria. The discarding of minutes and other important past materials presumably took place in the D.C. area. More recently, Wes mentioned in a recent message that he discarded some stuff, and although I trust there were no minutes among those materials, there wasn't a lot of detail provided about precisely what they *did* include, and I can't help wondering whether anything was discarded that I personally might have kept. I might have the same concern upon hearing of stuff discarded in Colorado, of course, but I wouldn't be any *more* concerned.

Love & Liberty, ((( starchild ))) At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee (415) 625-FREE @StarchildSF

On Mar 26, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

The discussion on this thread paints the motion in a very different light for me. I want to take a step back and put this in context.

The motion adopted by email ballot to create this committee included the following scope description:

"The LNC establishes a Historic Preservation Committee to help preserve and publish historical documents of the party and to manage LPedia."

The goal is to preserve and publish things of historical value.

This motion suggests that the newly-requested funds will be used:

"to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the

historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site

storage facility to a location in Colorado..."

That to me sounds like the materials in question are of historical value, and it thus warrants the expenditure to preserve them.

What we're learning, though, is that possibly the vast majority of this material is trash, and we're paying thousands of dollars to ship trash to Colorado to be thrown away there.

This is really more of a document destruction project than a historical preservation project, though along the way it will likely find a few historical documents worth preserving.

We created a Historic Perservation Committee, rather than a Basement Cleanout Committee, and they're very different tasks.

I would be comfortable with volunteers in Colorado taking things deemed to have historic value and scanning them for preservation, or making them available for silent auction fundraising, etc.

I am not comfortable with volunteers in Colorado who have no experience in operations of our headquarters essentially making decisions about what documents get thrown away.

The reason I spent a day in the Watergate dungeon (I think it was in the fall of 2011) digging through that material is because I was looking for some records that should have been preserved in perpetuity, but *someone who didn't understand their importance apparently threw them out*. They actually had very high value for legal reasons.

As pretty as it sounds to have a team of volunteers in the birthplace of the LP building historical archives, a person's Colorado residence doesn't grant them magical knowledge of what business records ought to be kept and which ones ought to be thrown away.

I realize that you say that the LNC will ultimately decide which things get tossed, but the quality of the LNC's decision depends heavily on the description of the records we are given. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains miscellaneous receipts, it's one thing if it's 15-year-old receipts for office supplies that have long since been used up, but it's another if the receipts are for equipment still in use today and maybe still under warranty. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains old email correspondence with a state chair, it's one thing if the conversation was, "I look forward to seeing you at the convention", but it's another thing if the conversation was relaying facts about a situation that is the subject of a lawsuit.

If the person looking at the records doesn't really understand the context of the records, how can they give us the key information we need to make an informed decision about which ones to throw away?

This is not a project that should be undertaken by people with no understanding of our party operations.

There may also be old employment records with sensitive personnel information, social security numbers, etc., and those shouldn't just be passed around among random volunteers.

I have no objection to paying for the committee chair to make a trip to the storage facility, spend a few days sorting through it to find items of historical value, and then shipping those 10 boxes to Colorado for further processing. That is within the function of a Historic Preservation Committee.

I do have objection to shipping our trash-mixed-with-important-records across the country for people who don't understand what is valuable and what isn't to give us vague descriptions which will be the basis of uninformed decisions for destroying our records. This document destruction task is not what I had in mind when the Historic Preservation Committee was created.

For several years our outside auditors have been urging us to adopt document retention policies (and also whistleblower policies, but that's another subject). I think it was two terms ago near the end of that term that the Audit Committee proposed some starter language to try to get the ball rolling, but the LNC has not yet implemented anything.

At minimum we need to establish how long certain records are to be kept such as employment records, financial records, membership certifications, and other categories. These can be important to keep for legal reasons, for FEC compliance, etc. Even after we make those policy decisions, I think the document maintenance has to be done by knowledgeable insiders rather than miscellaneous volunteers.

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

I vote "YES". Daniel Hayes LNC At Large Member Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 29, 2017, at 7:34 PM, Brett Bittner <brett.bittner@lp.org> wrote:

I vote Aye on email ballot 2017-06.

Brett

**This message sent from my phone. Please excuse any typos.

...

On Mar 29, 2017 20:31, "Caryn Ann Harlos" <carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote: To supplement the other update and relevant to this motion: I now have two volunteers willing to dedicate an entire week block of time if the records are in the Denver area to work on the project. This is with minimal word of mouth from person(s) who read the LNC list. I believe I would get several regular crews. LPCO already has a commitment to its history (unfortunately some records list due to past neglect prior to my time and were soiled by vermin). I am a prolific volunteer recruiter when I need them.

-Caryn Ann

...

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 3:19 PM Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Joshua, any historical work with a budget is going to require prioritization which requires knowing what we have. If it were just the records in the basement, that would not be an issue (another volunteer I found just spent two more days there - total volunteer time on the project now totals likely over a 100 hours between inventory work and LPedia database fix issues - IOW significant volunteer has already been expended - we have been effective). It is the storage facility records that are the issue. If they remain there, one possible avenue to keep staff uninvolved as much as possible is to grant me the key to designate to a certain core group of volunteers in the area to be determined. I am confident that whatever is decided, we will make the most effective, cheapest, least intrusive means possible. As I said, I will have to spend vacation time in VA this summer if they are not moved. I do not require any staff oversight, but that money could go to the Party rather than Southwest and Marriot.

And no, this year that expense will not grow (and next year is a different budget discussion). I am convinced it is too high by at least $1000 (unless salary is way more than I figure in my head - which of course would be a confidential discussion). And I want to remind everyone that I already raised nearly $1200 and promised an additional $1500 if the move was approved. So if I am right (and I am pretty convinced I am) that the $9000 figure is correct, taking away the pledge and the amount raised, we are at $6800. Which is only $1800 more than the LNC expected already to come out of the budget (and most certainly money will be raised toward that) in additional to the free professional labor. Putting aside that this is my project and I have a bias, we need to be supporting these volunteer initiative small projects. I could wax long about that, but I will save it to not bore everyone to death with this post. But you are right, we have spent more discussing a relatively trivial amount with a potential result of volunteered time, product, and good will way beyond the amount. For once, I am nearly talked out - miracle of miracle. I have never tried so hard to give away so many hours of my professional time over several years.

I don't think there is much btw that falls in some third category. I do think that is somewhat of a false premise. I broadly went through records in the facility and it was not that category (membership slips should be scanned IMHO - whether they are published is a different decision). There are filing cabinets in the basement which do, but which have always been outside our scope.

I find it interesting that it seems there is a critique that the original scanning budget has not been spent - it seems my prudence and caution is being used as a point of suspicion rather than good stewardship which rather reminds me of government budgeting. I could have spent it in a week. I am determined to squeeze it for every penny but it seems that this suggestion would have had a lot less discussion if I were irresponsible. I did get some advice to just spent it right away being cautioned about this very thing. I don't operate that way. I treat OPM (other people's money) as sacred. I have spent my own money on misc items rather than nickel or diming this. Volunteers have spent days from their vacation time - neither of them lived by HQ, one was further away in VA and the other was all the way from AZ.

PS: I have a volunteer willing to commit a full week of time to assisting with these records,, if they are moved to CO.

-Caryn Ann

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Joshua Katz <planning4liberty@gmail.com> wrote: Well, let me say this: the debate on this motion has entirely changed my view on the questions involved. One thing I am gleaning from the debate, though, is that different people are talking about entirely different issues and concerns, and several of those issues are not well-framed enough to be answered in a yes/no manner. For a while, I thought the debate was largely off-track because it was getting into the weeds, but now I realize that some of those weeds are LNC concerns, and others, despite ideally not being LNC concerns, have become such due to a lack of other governance mechanisms. I will attempt here to lay out what I see as the issues being discussed - largely independently - and suggest that the question be narrowed.

The Stuff

We have piles of stuff, is what I'm gathering. We passed a motion a while ago, creating the Historical Committee, which I think was implicitly premised on the idea that the stuff falls into two groups: garbage, and things we wish to preserve for historical value. At least, that was my implicit premise. Now we're finding, though, that there's a third group: things we wish to preserve for legal/business purposes. This suggests to me that our handling of the previous motion might not have been sufficient because of this faulty premise. So we're left with a broad question: how to handle all this stuff. I think a lot of us thought our previous motion would take care of that, but perhaps it will not if this third category exists.

Financial Considerations

This is what I originally thought this motion was all about - spending money. In particular, it seems to me that this motion is based on the idea that the money we previously allocated was not sufficient. This gives me independent concerns: if the expected cost of a project doubles in a matter of weeks, experience shows us that it is likely to continue rising. I also would like to know how we learned this - since none of the originally allocated money has been spent, and the proposed increase is exactly the amount allocated, why can't the allocated money be spent to do this? While much discussion has been about the proposed object, the motion seems to me only to authorize money, and to take for granted that the moving can be done by staff as long as the money is there.

Now, assuming there's some other use for the original $5k, I don't think what Wes has told us suggests that we can do this project for either $5k or $10k. I think it suggests that the cost of the project is (at least) $10k, once staff time is included, as it should be. A functionally allocated budget would have made this clear, whereas with our current budgeting procedures it has to come out in discussion and remain a little fuzzy, but that's how I'm reading it. We can spend the additional $5k in cash, or we can spend it in lost staff time. That brings up a new question, then - since we approved the project at $5k, do we still think it is worth doing at $10k? I think that's perfectly well-framed to be answered with a yes/no decision. However, what is less clear is what happens if we say no. One option is that things would remain at status quo, and we'd continue paying for storage space. Another is to throw everything out. There are probably other options, too.

The Value of Things in Storage

Focusing for a moment on the items of business/legal significance, I think that, if a clean-up project does not proceed, they might as well be in the trash. It is extremely unlikely that things can be found when needed, and it would be healthier, when such a concern comes up, to be able to say cheerfully "yep, it's gone," than to have a vague notion that it may exist in a large pile of stuff, buried under furniture.

Turning to the historical items, I confess to being less interested in these than others are, but I take the result of the vote to suggest that we find it important, and so we're unlikely to think they're worth preserving at $5k, but worth throwing out if it would cost $10k. In the grand scheme of things, $5k is not much money, and it's believed that there are donations available to support much of this. In my mind, though, such donations are currently speculative - and I can speculate that costs will continue rising. So let's ignore both speculations and assume we'll be spending the money out of what's currently in our budget - it's still rather small and not worth much of the time spent discussing it. Heck, it's the amount we let the chair spend freely - which raises one possible solution. More generally, it raises the idea that we should be freer with allocating budgets to projects without involving ourselves in the questions of how the money is spent. Personally, I find it baffling that we turn over the vast majority of our budget to staff, yet insist on weird control mechanisms for small portions - putting the most control on money to be spent by committees, largely populated by board members. I have no idea why we single out budget access, for instance, for EC control (why not, at least, control by the people directing ballot access?), but leave half the budget in Compensation. But then, I don't understand many things about the world.

Budgetary Impact

That said, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, when donations are available for a given project, it is not always clear if they will increase total revenue, or simply be taken out of other giving the same people might otherwise have planned. I suspect the answer is somewhere in the middle - a $10k project, fully funded by donations, will not cost us $10k, but also will not cost us $0, all things considered.

Why is There a Pile of Stuff?

I think Wes has well explained this one - people are afraid to throw things out. A few years ago, I was elected Secretary of my fire department. I went through old minutes and found that all correspondence was there - i.e. Christmas cards, invitations to Climb for Life, for decades. This doesn't make it particularly easy to do the project I was engaged in - no one had kept records of standing rules, so I was attempting to reconstruct them from old minutes. (A fun story for anyone who says "I don't see what's wrong with including discussion in the minutes" or who fails to see why it is important to record the actual language of the motion.) Anyway, with a custom going back decades, it's hard to be the one who decides to break it. The solution is a document retention policy, which we should come up with. I will move in Pittsburgh that we appoint a committee to recommend one.

How to Throw Things Out

Although we have agreed that the LNC will make this decision, based on this discussion, I am questioning the wisdom of that move. I think if a committee is going through this material, and if we have adopted such a policy, that committee should be free to throw things out within that policy. Currently, as the Secretary notes, making these calls would take a good amount of expertise with the specifics of the materials. With a document retention plan in place, I don't think it will. I think it would be crazy for the LNC to make document by document decisions, personally. Let's set some rules about what sorts of things we want to keep, and then let volunteers have at it.

Purpose of Historical Committee

As the Secretary notes, we appointed a historical committee, not a clean-up committee. If it turns out that cleaning up is necessary before the historical work can be done, we need to decide if the historical committee is the right committee for that purpose, or if something else needs to be done first.

Joshua A. Katz

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 10:36 PM, Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Alicia,

My recommendations will be primarily about duplicates. I do believe I am experienced enough to determine a duplicate. I also undertook a similar (obviously smaller scale but in principle the same) project already in Colorado (http://www.lpcolorado.org/archives).

The rest would be done via inventory and in consultation with more experienced Party members.

I do not have experience in years, but I have experience in diving in more deeply than persons with twenty years of experience have done. Further CO has a wide breath of available persons to volunteer.

Right now there is no danger of anyone's experience because it simply isn't being done, and unless another person with the passion I have for the topic appears, it likely will not in any forseeable future. It hasn't so far.

I respectfully submit that making recommendations is not complicated and I believe I have proven my understanding on historical artifacts.

-Caryn Ann

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 9:26 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote: Starchild,

My concerns are not about the city in which the analysis is done, but about the depth of experience of the person analyzing the contents in order to characterize them for the decision maker(s).

-Alicia

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Starchild <sfdreamer@earthlink.net> wrote:

Alicia,

If there were an amendment or second motion that none of the materials to be sent to Colorado be discarded without an elected or appointed member of the party leadership gives the okay, would that allay your concerns? Or perhaps a motion/amendment saying certain categories of things can't be discarded, period? Having seen the kind of stuff that's sometimes been left behind and thrown away after LP conventions – current outreach materials, unused office supplies, etc. – not to mention stuff being deleted from our website, old meeting minutes and other important records apparently having been thrown out by people at various times, etc., I share your concern that things might get thrown out which would better be saved.

Where we may possibly see things differently is that I don't perceive there being a greater risk of this occurring in Colorado than in Alexandria. The discarding of minutes and other important past materials presumably took place in the D.C. area. More recently, Wes mentioned in a recent message that he discarded some stuff, and although I trust there were no minutes among those materials, there wasn't a lot of detail provided about precisely what they did include, and I can't help wondering whether anything was discarded that I personally might have kept. I might have the same concern upon hearing of stuff discarded in Colorado, of course, but I wouldn't be any more concerned.

Love & Liberty, ((( starchild ))) At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee (415) 625-FREE @StarchildSF

...

On Mar 26, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

The discussion on this thread paints the motion in a very different light for me. I want to take a step back and put this in context.

The motion adopted by email ballot to create this committee included the following scope description:

"The LNC establishes a Historic Preservation Committee to help preserve and publish historical documents of the party and to manage LPedia."

The goal is to preserve and publish things of historical value.

This motion suggests that the newly-requested funds will be used:

"to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the

historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site

storage facility to a location in Colorado..."

That to me sounds like the materials in question are of historical value, and it thus warrants the expenditure to preserve them.

What we're learning, though, is that possibly the vast majority of this material is trash, and we're paying thousands of dollars to ship trash to Colorado to be thrown away there.

This is really more of a document destruction project than a historical preservation project, though along the way it will likely find a few historical documents worth preserving.

We created a Historic Perservation Committee, rather than a Basement Cleanout Committee, and they're very different tasks.

I would be comfortable with volunteers in Colorado taking things deemed to have historic value and scanning them for preservation, or making them available for silent auction fundraising, etc.

I am not comfortable with volunteers in Colorado who have no experience in operations of our headquarters essentially making decisions about what documents get thrown away.

The reason I spent a day in the Watergate dungeon (I think it was in the fall of 2011) digging through that material is because I was looking for some records that should have been preserved in perpetuity, but someone who didn't understand their importance apparently threw them out. They actually had very high value for legal reasons.

As pretty as it sounds to have a team of volunteers in the birthplace of the LP building historical archives, a person's Colorado residence doesn't grant them magical knowledge of what business records ought to be kept and which ones ought to be thrown away.

I realize that you say that the LNC will ultimately decide which things get tossed, but the quality of the LNC's decision depends heavily on the description of the records we are given. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains miscellaneous receipts, it's one thing if it's 15-year-old receipts for office supplies that have long since been used up, but it's another if the receipts are for equipment still in use today and maybe still under warranty. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains old email correspondence with a state chair, it's one thing if the conversation was, "I look forward to seeing you at the convention", but it's another thing if the conversation was relaying facts about a situation that is the subject of a lawsuit.

If the person looking at the records doesn't really understand the context of the records, how can they give us the key information we need to make an informed decision about which ones to throw away?

This is not a project that should be undertaken by people with no understanding of our party operations.

There may also be old employment records with sensitive personnel information, social security numbers, etc., and those shouldn't just be passed around among random volunteers.

I have no objection to paying for the committee chair to make a trip to the storage facility, spend a few days sorting through it to find items of historical value, and then shipping those 10 boxes to Colorado for further processing. That is within the function of a Historic Preservation Committee.

I do have objection to shipping our trash-mixed-with-important-records across the country for people who don't understand what is valuable and what isn't to give us vague descriptions which will be the basis of uninformed decisions for destroying our records. This document destruction task is not what I had in mind when the Historic Preservation Committee was created.

For several years our outside auditors have been urging us to adopt document retention policies (and also whistleblower policies, but that's another subject). I think it was two terms ago near the end of that term that the Audit Committee proposed some starter language to try to get the ball rolling, but the LNC has not yet implemented anything.

At minimum we need to establish how long certain records are to be kept such as employment records, financial records, membership certifications, and other categories. These can be important to keep for legal reasons, for FEC compliance, etc. Even after we make those policy decisions, I think the document maintenance has to be done by knowledgeable insiders rather than miscellaneous volunteers.

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- In Liberty, Caryn Ann Harlos Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: We defend your rights And oppose the use of force Taxation is theft

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- In Liberty, Caryn Ann Harlos Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: We defend your rights And oppose the use of force Taxation is theft

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

Yes On Mar 29, 2017 8:34 PM, "Brett Bittner" <brett.bittner@lp.org> wrote:

I vote Aye on email ballot 2017-06.

Brett

**This message sent from my phone. Please excuse any typos.

On Mar 29, 2017 20:31, "Caryn Ann Harlos" <carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

...

To supplement the other update and relevant to this motion: I now have two volunteers willing to dedicate an entire week block of time if the records are in the Denver area to work on the project. This is with minimal word of mouth from person(s) who read the LNC list. I believe I would get several regular crews. LPCO already has a commitment to its history (unfortunately some records list due to past neglect prior to my time and were soiled by vermin). I am a prolific volunteer recruiter when I need them.

-Caryn Ann

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 3:19 PM Caryn Ann Harlos < carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hi Joshua, any historical work with a budget is going to require prioritization which requires knowing what we have. If it were just the records in the basement, that would not be an issue (another volunteer I found just spent two more days there - total volunteer time on the project now totals likely over a 100 hours between inventory work and LPedia database fix issues - IOW significant volunteer has already been expended - we have been effective). It is the storage facility records that are the issue. If they remain there, one possible avenue to keep staff uninvolved as much as possible is to grant me the key to designate to a certain core group of volunteers in the area to be determined. I am confident that whatever is decided, we will make the most effective, cheapest, least intrusive means possible. As I said, I will have to spend vacation time in VA this summer if they are not moved. I do not require any staff oversight, but that money could go to the Party rather than Southwest and Marriot.

And no, this year that expense will not grow (and next year is a different budget discussion). I am convinced it is too high by at least $1000 (unless salary is way more than I figure in my head - which of course would be a confidential discussion). And I want to remind everyone that I already raised nearly $1200 and promised an additional $1500 if the move was approved. So if I am right (and I am pretty convinced I am) that the $9000 figure is correct, taking away the pledge and the amount raised, we are at $6800. Which is only $1800 more than the LNC expected already to come out of the budget (and most certainly money will be raised toward that) in additional to the free professional labor. Putting aside that this is my project and I have a bias, we need to be supporting these volunteer initiative small projects. I could wax long about that, but I will save it to not bore everyone to death with this post. But you are right, we have spent more discussing a relatively trivial amount with a potential result of volunteered time, product, and good will way beyond the amount. For once, I am nearly talked out - miracle of miracle. I have never tried so hard to give away so many hours of my professional time over several years.

I don't think there is much btw that falls in some third category. I do think that is somewhat of a false premise. I broadly went through records in the facility and it was not that category (membership slips should be scanned IMHO - whether they are published is a different decision). There are filing cabinets in the basement which do, but which have always been outside our scope.

I find it interesting that it seems there is a critique that the original scanning budget has not been spent - it seems my prudence and caution is being used as a point of suspicion rather than good stewardship which rather reminds me of government budgeting. I could have spent it in a week. I am determined to squeeze it for every penny but it seems that this suggestion would have had a lot less discussion if I were irresponsible. I did get some advice to just spent it right away being cautioned about this very thing. I don't operate that way. I treat OPM (other people's money) as sacred. I have spent my own money on misc items rather than nickel or diming this. Volunteers have spent days from their vacation time - neither of them lived by HQ, one was further away in VA and the other was all the way from AZ.

PS: I have a volunteer willing to commit a full week of time to assisting with these records,, if they are moved to CO.

-Caryn Ann

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Joshua Katz < planning4liberty@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, let me say this: the debate on this motion has entirely changed my view on the questions involved. One thing I am gleaning from the debate, though, is that different people are talking about entirely different issues and concerns, and several of those issues are not well-framed enough to be answered in a yes/no manner. For a while, I thought the debate was largely off-track because it was getting into the weeds, but now I realize that some of those weeds are LNC concerns, and others, despite ideally not being LNC concerns, have become such due to a lack of other governance mechanisms. I will attempt here to lay out what I see as the issues being discussed - largely independently - and suggest that the question be narrowed.

*The Stuff*

We have piles of stuff, is what I'm gathering. We passed a motion a while ago, creating the Historical Committee, which I think was implicitly premised on the idea that the stuff falls into two groups: garbage, and things we wish to preserve for historical value. At least, that was my implicit premise. Now we're finding, though, that there's a third group: things we wish to preserve for legal/business purposes. This suggests to me that our handling of the previous motion might not have been sufficient because of this faulty premise. So we're left with a broad question: how to handle all this stuff. I think a lot of us thought our previous motion would take care of that, but perhaps it will not if this third category exists.

*Financial Considerations*

This is what I originally thought this motion was all about - spending money. In particular, it seems to me that this motion is based on the idea that the money we previously allocated was not sufficient. This gives me independent concerns: if the expected cost of a project doubles in a matter of weeks, experience shows us that it is likely to continue rising. I also would like to know how we learned this - since none of the originally allocated money has been spent, and the proposed increase is exactly the amount allocated, why can't the allocated money be spent to do this? While much discussion has been about the proposed object, the motion seems to me only to authorize money, and to take for granted that the moving can be done by staff as long as the money is there.

Now, assuming there's some other use for the original $5k, I don't think what Wes has told us suggests that we can do this project for either $5k or $10k. I think it suggests that the cost of the project is (at least) $10k, once staff time is included, as it should be. A functionally allocated budget would have made this clear, whereas with our current budgeting procedures it has to come out in discussion and remain a little fuzzy, but that's how I'm reading it. We can spend the additional $5k in cash, or we can spend it in lost staff time. That brings up a new question, then - since we approved the project at $5k, do we still think it is worth doing at $10k? I think that's perfectly well-framed to be answered with a yes/no decision. However, what is less clear is what happens if we say no. One option is that things would remain at status quo, and we'd continue paying for storage space. Another is to throw everything out. There are probably other options, too.

*The Value of Things in Storage*

Focusing for a moment on the items of business/legal significance, I think that, if a clean-up project does not proceed, they might as well be in the trash. It is extremely unlikely that things can be found when needed, and it would be healthier, when such a concern comes up, to be able to say cheerfully "yep, it's gone," than to have a vague notion that it may exist in a large pile of stuff, buried under furniture.

Turning to the historical items, I confess to being less interested in these than others are, but I take the result of the vote to suggest that we find it important, and so we're unlikely to think they're worth preserving at $5k, but worth throwing out if it would cost $10k. In the grand scheme of things, $5k is not much money, and it's believed that there are donations available to support much of this. In my mind, though, such donations are currently speculative - and I can speculate that costs will continue rising. So let's ignore both speculations and assume we'll be spending the money out of what's currently in our budget - it's still rather small and not worth much of the time spent discussing it. Heck, it's the amount we let the chair spend freely - which raises one possible solution. More generally, it raises the idea that we should be freer with allocating budgets to projects without involving ourselves in the questions of how the money is spent. Personally, I find it baffling that we turn over the vast majority of our budget to staff, yet insist on weird control mechanisms for small portions - putting the most control on money to be spent by committees, largely populated by board members. I have no idea why we single out budget access, for instance, for EC control (why not, at least, control by the people directing ballot access?), but leave half the budget in Compensation. But then, I don't understand many things about the world.

*Budgetary Impact*

That said, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, when donations are available for a given project, it is not always clear if they will increase total revenue, or simply be taken out of other giving the same people might otherwise have planned. I suspect the answer is somewhere in the middle - a $10k project, fully funded by donations, will not cost us $10k, but also will not cost us $0, all things considered.

*Why is There a Pile of Stuff?*

I think Wes has well explained this one - people are afraid to throw things out. A few years ago, I was elected Secretary of my fire department. I went through old minutes and found that all correspondence was there - i.e. Christmas cards, invitations to Climb for Life, for decades. This doesn't make it particularly easy to do the project I was engaged in - no one had kept records of standing rules, so I was attempting to reconstruct them from old minutes. (A fun story for anyone who says "I don't see what's wrong with including discussion in the minutes" or who fails to see why it is important to record the actual language of the motion.) Anyway, with a custom going back decades, it's hard to be the one who decides to break it. The solution is a document retention policy, which we should come up with. I will move in Pittsburgh that we appoint a committee to recommend one.

*How to Throw Things Out*

Although we have agreed that the LNC will make this decision, based on this discussion, I am questioning the wisdom of that move. I think if a committee is going through this material, and if we have adopted such a policy, that committee should be free to throw things out within that policy. Currently, as the Secretary notes, making these calls would take a good amount of expertise with the specifics of the materials. With a document retention plan in place, I don't think it will. I think it would be crazy for the LNC to make document by document decisions, personally. Let's set some rules about what sorts of things we want to keep, and then let volunteers have at it.

*Purpose of Historical Committee*

As the Secretary notes, we appointed a historical committee, not a clean-up committee. If it turns out that cleaning up is necessary before the historical work can be done, we need to decide if the historical committee is the right committee for that purpose, or if something else needs to be done first.

Joshua A. Katz

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 10:36 PM, Caryn Ann Harlos < carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Alicia,

My recommendations will be primarily about duplicates. I do believe I am experienced enough to determine a duplicate. I also undertook a similar (obviously smaller scale but in principle the same) project already in Colorado (http://www.lpcolorado.org/archives).

The rest would be done via inventory and in consultation with more experienced Party members.

I do not have experience in years, but I have experience in diving in more deeply than persons with twenty years of experience have done. Further CO has a wide breath of available persons to volunteer.

Right now there is no danger of anyone's experience because it simply isn't being done, and unless another person with the passion I have for the topic appears, it likely will not in any forseeable future. It hasn't so far.

I respectfully submit that making recommendations is not complicated and I believe I have proven my understanding on historical artifacts.

-Caryn Ann

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 9:26 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

Starchild,

My concerns are not about the city in which the analysis is done, but about the depth of experience of the person analyzing the contents in order to characterize them for the decision maker(s).

-Alicia

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Starchild <sfdreamer@earthlink.net> wrote:

Alicia,

If there were an amendment or second motion that none of the materials to be sent to Colorado be discarded without an elected or appointed member of the party leadership gives the okay, would that allay your concerns? Or perhaps a motion/amendment saying certain categories of things can't be discarded, period? Having seen the kind of stuff that's sometimes been left behind and thrown away after LP conventions – current outreach materials, unused office supplies, etc. – not to mention stuff being deleted from our website, old meeting minutes and other important records apparently having been thrown out by people at various times, etc., I share your concern that things might get thrown out which would better be saved.

Where we may possibly see things differently is that I don't perceive there being a greater risk of this occurring in Colorado than in Alexandria. The discarding of minutes and other important past materials presumably took place in the D.C. area. More recently, Wes mentioned in a recent message that he discarded some stuff, and although I trust there were no minutes among those materials, there wasn't a lot of detail provided about precisely what they *did* include, and I can't help wondering whether anything was discarded that I personally might have kept. I might have the same concern upon hearing of stuff discarded in Colorado, of course, but I wouldn't be any *more* concerned.

Love & Liberty, ((( starchild ))) At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee (415) 625-FREE @StarchildSF

On Mar 26, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

The discussion on this thread paints the motion in a very different light for me. I want to take a step back and put this in context.

The motion adopted by email ballot to create this committee included the following scope description:

"The LNC establishes a Historic Preservation Committee to help preserve and publish historical documents of the party and to manage LPedia."

The goal is to preserve and publish things of historical value.

This motion suggests that the newly-requested funds will be used:

"to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the

historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site

storage facility to a location in Colorado..."

That to me sounds like the materials in question are of historical value, and it thus warrants the expenditure to preserve them.

What we're learning, though, is that possibly the vast majority of this material is trash, and we're paying thousands of dollars to ship trash to Colorado to be thrown away there.

This is really more of a document destruction project than a historical preservation project, though along the way it will likely find a few historical documents worth preserving.

We created a Historic Perservation Committee, rather than a Basement Cleanout Committee, and they're very different tasks.

I would be comfortable with volunteers in Colorado taking things deemed to have historic value and scanning them for preservation, or making them available for silent auction fundraising, etc.

I am not comfortable with volunteers in Colorado who have no experience in operations of our headquarters essentially making decisions about what documents get thrown away.

The reason I spent a day in the Watergate dungeon (I think it was in the fall of 2011) digging through that material is because I was looking for some records that should have been preserved in perpetuity, but *someone who didn't understand their importance apparently threw them out*. They actually had very high value for legal reasons.

As pretty as it sounds to have a team of volunteers in the birthplace of the LP building historical archives, a person's Colorado residence doesn't grant them magical knowledge of what business records ought to be kept and which ones ought to be thrown away.

I realize that you say that the LNC will ultimately decide which things get tossed, but the quality of the LNC's decision depends heavily on the description of the records we are given. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains miscellaneous receipts, it's one thing if it's 15-year-old receipts for office supplies that have long since been used up, but it's another if the receipts are for equipment still in use today and maybe still under warranty. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains old email correspondence with a state chair, it's one thing if the conversation was, "I look forward to seeing you at the convention", but it's another thing if the conversation was relaying facts about a situation that is the subject of a lawsuit.

If the person looking at the records doesn't really understand the context of the records, how can they give us the key information we need to make an informed decision about which ones to throw away?

This is not a project that should be undertaken by people with no understanding of our party operations.

There may also be old employment records with sensitive personnel information, social security numbers, etc., and those shouldn't just be passed around among random volunteers.

I have no objection to paying for the committee chair to make a trip to the storage facility, spend a few days sorting through it to find items of historical value, and then shipping those 10 boxes to Colorado for further processing. That is within the function of a Historic Preservation Committee.

I do have objection to shipping our trash-mixed-with-important-records across the country for people who don't understand what is valuable and what isn't to give us vague descriptions which will be the basis of uninformed decisions for destroying our records. This document destruction task is not what I had in mind when the Historic Preservation Committee was created.

For several years our outside auditors have been urging us to adopt document retention policies (and also whistleblower policies, but that's another subject). I think it was two terms ago near the end of that term that the Audit Committee proposed some starter language to try to get the ball rolling, but the LNC has not yet implemented anything.

At minimum we need to establish how long certain records are to be kept such as employment records, financial records, membership certifications, and other categories. These can be important to keep for legal reasons, for FEC compliance, etc. Even after we make those policy decisions, I think the document maintenance has to be done by knowledgeable insiders rather than miscellaneous volunteers.

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

Ed's message did make it to the list. I responded to it on March 31 (though looking back at that message now I see that I only did a "reply" rather than a "reply all" so the rest of you didn't see it), and he again confirmed to me off-list that he intended to vote yes on both email ballots -06 and -07, so that's what I have recorded. -Alicia On Sat, Apr 1, 2017 at 3:58 PM, Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

I wanted to record this here : Ed Marsh reports having email issues and sent this email to the list separately (see attached image)

On Sat, Apr 1, 2017 at 4:50 PM, Arvin Vohra <votevohra@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Yes

On Mar 29, 2017 8:34 PM, "Brett Bittner" <brett.bittner@lp.org> wrote:

...

I vote Aye on email ballot 2017-06.

Brett

**This message sent from my phone. Please excuse any typos.

On Mar 29, 2017 20:31, "Caryn Ann Harlos" <carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

...

To supplement the other update and relevant to this motion: I now have two volunteers willing to dedicate an entire week block of time if the records are in the Denver area to work on the project. This is with minimal word of mouth from person(s) who read the LNC list. I believe I would get several regular crews. LPCO already has a commitment to its history (unfortunately some records list due to past neglect prior to my time and were soiled by vermin). I am a prolific volunteer recruiter when I need them.

-Caryn Ann

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 3:19 PM Caryn Ann Harlos < carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hi Joshua, any historical work with a budget is going to require prioritization which requires knowing what we have. If it were just the records in the basement, that would not be an issue (another volunteer I found just spent two more days there - total volunteer time on the project now totals likely over a 100 hours between inventory work and LPedia database fix issues - IOW significant volunteer has already been expended - we have been effective). It is the storage facility records that are the issue. If they remain there, one possible avenue to keep staff uninvolved as much as possible is to grant me the key to designate to a certain core group of volunteers in the area to be determined. I am confident that whatever is decided, we will make the most effective, cheapest, least intrusive means possible. As I said, I will have to spend vacation time in VA this summer if they are not moved. I do not require any staff oversight, but that money could go to the Party rather than Southwest and Marriot.

And no, this year that expense will not grow (and next year is a different budget discussion). I am convinced it is too high by at least $1000 (unless salary is way more than I figure in my head - which of course would be a confidential discussion). And I want to remind everyone that I already raised nearly $1200 and promised an additional $1500 if the move was approved. So if I am right (and I am pretty convinced I am) that the $9000 figure is correct, taking away the pledge and the amount raised, we are at $6800. Which is only $1800 more than the LNC expected already to come out of the budget (and most certainly money will be raised toward that) in additional to the free professional labor. Putting aside that this is my project and I have a bias, we need to be supporting these volunteer initiative small projects. I could wax long about that, but I will save it to not bore everyone to death with this post. But you are right, we have spent more discussing a relatively trivial amount with a potential result of volunteered time, product, and good will way beyond the amount. For once, I am nearly talked out - miracle of miracle. I have never tried so hard to give away so many hours of my professional time over several years.

I don't think there is much btw that falls in some third category. I do think that is somewhat of a false premise. I broadly went through records in the facility and it was not that category (membership slips should be scanned IMHO - whether they are published is a different decision). There are filing cabinets in the basement which do, but which have always been outside our scope.

I find it interesting that it seems there is a critique that the original scanning budget has not been spent - it seems my prudence and caution is being used as a point of suspicion rather than good stewardship which rather reminds me of government budgeting. I could have spent it in a week. I am determined to squeeze it for every penny but it seems that this suggestion would have had a lot less discussion if I were irresponsible. I did get some advice to just spent it right away being cautioned about this very thing. I don't operate that way. I treat OPM (other people's money) as sacred. I have spent my own money on misc items rather than nickel or diming this. Volunteers have spent days from their vacation time - neither of them lived by HQ, one was further away in VA and the other was all the way from AZ.

PS: I have a volunteer willing to commit a full week of time to assisting with these records,, if they are moved to CO.

-Caryn Ann

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Joshua Katz < planning4liberty@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, let me say this: the debate on this motion has entirely changed my view on the questions involved. One thing I am gleaning from the debate, though, is that different people are talking about entirely different issues and concerns, and several of those issues are not well-framed enough to be answered in a yes/no manner. For a while, I thought the debate was largely off-track because it was getting into the weeds, but now I realize that some of those weeds are LNC concerns, and others, despite ideally not being LNC concerns, have become such due to a lack of other governance mechanisms. I will attempt here to lay out what I see as the issues being discussed - largely independently - and suggest that the question be narrowed.

*The Stuff*

We have piles of stuff, is what I'm gathering. We passed a motion a while ago, creating the Historical Committee, which I think was implicitly premised on the idea that the stuff falls into two groups: garbage, and things we wish to preserve for historical value. At least, that was my implicit premise. Now we're finding, though, that there's a third group: things we wish to preserve for legal/business purposes. This suggests to me that our handling of the previous motion might not have been sufficient because of this faulty premise. So we're left with a broad question: how to handle all this stuff. I think a lot of us thought our previous motion would take care of that, but perhaps it will not if this third category exists.

*Financial Considerations*

This is what I originally thought this motion was all about - spending money. In particular, it seems to me that this motion is based on the idea that the money we previously allocated was not sufficient. This gives me independent concerns: if the expected cost of a project doubles in a matter of weeks, experience shows us that it is likely to continue rising. I also would like to know how we learned this - since none of the originally allocated money has been spent, and the proposed increase is exactly the amount allocated, why can't the allocated money be spent to do this? While much discussion has been about the proposed object, the motion seems to me only to authorize money, and to take for granted that the moving can be done by staff as long as the money is there.

Now, assuming there's some other use for the original $5k, I don't think what Wes has told us suggests that we can do this project for either $5k or $10k. I think it suggests that the cost of the project is (at least) $10k, once staff time is included, as it should be. A functionally allocated budget would have made this clear, whereas with our current budgeting procedures it has to come out in discussion and remain a little fuzzy, but that's how I'm reading it. We can spend the additional $5k in cash, or we can spend it in lost staff time. That brings up a new question, then - since we approved the project at $5k, do we still think it is worth doing at $10k? I think that's perfectly well-framed to be answered with a yes/no decision. However, what is less clear is what happens if we say no. One option is that things would remain at status quo, and we'd continue paying for storage space. Another is to throw everything out. There are probably other options, too.

*The Value of Things in Storage*

Focusing for a moment on the items of business/legal significance, I think that, if a clean-up project does not proceed, they might as well be in the trash. It is extremely unlikely that things can be found when needed, and it would be healthier, when such a concern comes up, to be able to say cheerfully "yep, it's gone," than to have a vague notion that it may exist in a large pile of stuff, buried under furniture.

Turning to the historical items, I confess to being less interested in these than others are, but I take the result of the vote to suggest that we find it important, and so we're unlikely to think they're worth preserving at $5k, but worth throwing out if it would cost $10k. In the grand scheme of things, $5k is not much money, and it's believed that there are donations available to support much of this. In my mind, though, such donations are currently speculative - and I can speculate that costs will continue rising. So let's ignore both speculations and assume we'll be spending the money out of what's currently in our budget - it's still rather small and not worth much of the time spent discussing it. Heck, it's the amount we let the chair spend freely - which raises one possible solution. More generally, it raises the idea that we should be freer with allocating budgets to projects without involving ourselves in the questions of how the money is spent. Personally, I find it baffling that we turn over the vast majority of our budget to staff, yet insist on weird control mechanisms for small portions - putting the most control on money to be spent by committees, largely populated by board members. I have no idea why we single out budget access, for instance, for EC control (why not, at least, control by the people directing ballot access?), but leave half the budget in Compensation. But then, I don't understand many things about the world.

*Budgetary Impact*

That said, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, when donations are available for a given project, it is not always clear if they will increase total revenue, or simply be taken out of other giving the same people might otherwise have planned. I suspect the answer is somewhere in the middle - a $10k project, fully funded by donations, will not cost us $10k, but also will not cost us $0, all things considered.

*Why is There a Pile of Stuff?*

I think Wes has well explained this one - people are afraid to throw things out. A few years ago, I was elected Secretary of my fire department. I went through old minutes and found that all correspondence was there - i.e. Christmas cards, invitations to Climb for Life, for decades. This doesn't make it particularly easy to do the project I was engaged in - no one had kept records of standing rules, so I was attempting to reconstruct them from old minutes. (A fun story for anyone who says "I don't see what's wrong with including discussion in the minutes" or who fails to see why it is important to record the actual language of the motion.) Anyway, with a custom going back decades, it's hard to be the one who decides to break it. The solution is a document retention policy, which we should come up with. I will move in Pittsburgh that we appoint a committee to recommend one.

*How to Throw Things Out*

Although we have agreed that the LNC will make this decision, based on this discussion, I am questioning the wisdom of that move. I think if a committee is going through this material, and if we have adopted such a policy, that committee should be free to throw things out within that policy. Currently, as the Secretary notes, making these calls would take a good amount of expertise with the specifics of the materials. With a document retention plan in place, I don't think it will. I think it would be crazy for the LNC to make document by document decisions, personally. Let's set some rules about what sorts of things we want to keep, and then let volunteers have at it.

*Purpose of Historical Committee*

As the Secretary notes, we appointed a historical committee, not a clean-up committee. If it turns out that cleaning up is necessary before the historical work can be done, we need to decide if the historical committee is the right committee for that purpose, or if something else needs to be done first.

Joshua A. Katz

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 10:36 PM, Caryn Ann Harlos < carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Alicia,

My recommendations will be primarily about duplicates. I do believe I am experienced enough to determine a duplicate. I also undertook a similar (obviously smaller scale but in principle the same) project already in Colorado (http://www.lpcolorado.org/archives).

The rest would be done via inventory and in consultation with more experienced Party members.

I do not have experience in years, but I have experience in diving in more deeply than persons with twenty years of experience have done. Further CO has a wide breath of available persons to volunteer.

Right now there is no danger of anyone's experience because it simply isn't being done, and unless another person with the passion I have for the topic appears, it likely will not in any forseeable future. It hasn't so far.

I respectfully submit that making recommendations is not complicated and I believe I have proven my understanding on historical artifacts.

-Caryn Ann

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 9:26 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

Starchild,

My concerns are not about the city in which the analysis is done, but about the depth of experience of the person analyzing the contents in order to characterize them for the decision maker(s).

-Alicia

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Starchild <sfdreamer@earthlink.net> wrote:

Alicia,

If there were an amendment or second motion that none of the materials to be sent to Colorado be discarded without an elected or appointed member of the party leadership gives the okay, would that allay your concerns? Or perhaps a motion/amendment saying certain categories of things can't be discarded, period? Having seen the kind of stuff that's sometimes been left behind and thrown away after LP conventions – current outreach materials, unused office supplies, etc. – not to mention stuff being deleted from our website, old meeting minutes and other important records apparently having been thrown out by people at various times, etc., I share your concern that things might get thrown out which would better be saved.

Where we may possibly see things differently is that I don't perceive there being a greater risk of this occurring in Colorado than in Alexandria. The discarding of minutes and other important past materials presumably took place in the D.C. area. More recently, Wes mentioned in a recent message that he discarded some stuff, and although I trust there were no minutes among those materials, there wasn't a lot of detail provided about precisely what they *did* include, and I can't help wondering whether anything was discarded that I personally might have kept. I might have the same concern upon hearing of stuff discarded in Colorado, of course, but I wouldn't be any *more* concerned.

Love & Liberty, ((( starchild ))) At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee (415) 625-FREE @StarchildSF

On Mar 26, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

The discussion on this thread paints the motion in a very different light for me. I want to take a step back and put this in context.

The motion adopted by email ballot to create this committee included the following scope description:

"The LNC establishes a Historic Preservation Committee to help preserve and publish historical documents of the party and to manage LPedia."

The goal is to preserve and publish things of historical value.

This motion suggests that the newly-requested funds will be used:

"to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the

historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site

storage facility to a location in Colorado..."

That to me sounds like the materials in question are of historical value, and it thus warrants the expenditure to preserve them.

What we're learning, though, is that possibly the vast majority of this material is trash, and we're paying thousands of dollars to ship trash to Colorado to be thrown away there.

This is really more of a document destruction project than a historical preservation project, though along the way it will likely find a few historical documents worth preserving.

We created a Historic Perservation Committee, rather than a Basement Cleanout Committee, and they're very different tasks.

I would be comfortable with volunteers in Colorado taking things deemed to have historic value and scanning them for preservation, or making them available for silent auction fundraising, etc.

I am not comfortable with volunteers in Colorado who have no experience in operations of our headquarters essentially making decisions about what documents get thrown away.

The reason I spent a day in the Watergate dungeon (I think it was in the fall of 2011) digging through that material is because I was looking for some records that should have been preserved in perpetuity, but *someone who didn't understand their importance apparently threw them out*. They actually had very high value for legal reasons.

As pretty as it sounds to have a team of volunteers in the birthplace of the LP building historical archives, a person's Colorado residence doesn't grant them magical knowledge of what business records ought to be kept and which ones ought to be thrown away.

I realize that you say that the LNC will ultimately decide which things get tossed, but the quality of the LNC's decision depends heavily on the description of the records we are given. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains miscellaneous receipts, it's one thing if it's 15-year-old receipts for office supplies that have long since been used up, but it's another if the receipts are for equipment still in use today and maybe still under warranty. If a volunteer describes to us that a box contains old email correspondence with a state chair, it's one thing if the conversation was, "I look forward to seeing you at the convention", but it's another thing if the conversation was relaying facts about a situation that is the subject of a lawsuit.

If the person looking at the records doesn't really understand the context of the records, how can they give us the key information we need to make an informed decision about which ones to throw away?

This is not a project that should be undertaken by people with no understanding of our party operations.

There may also be old employment records with sensitive personnel information, social security numbers, etc., and those shouldn't just be passed around among random volunteers.

I have no objection to paying for the committee chair to make a trip to the storage facility, spend a few days sorting through it to find items of historical value, and then shipping those 10 boxes to Colorado for further processing. That is within the function of a Historic Preservation Committee.

I do have objection to shipping our trash-mixed-with-important-records across the country for people who don't understand what is valuable and what isn't to give us vague descriptions which will be the basis of uninformed decisions for destroying our records. This document destruction task is not what I had in mind when the Historic Preservation Committee was created.

For several years our outside auditors have been urging us to adopt document retention policies (and also whistleblower policies, but that's another subject). I think it was two terms ago near the end of that term that the Audit Committee proposed some starter language to try to get the ball rolling, but the LNC has not yet implemented anything.

At minimum we need to establish how long certain records are to be kept such as employment records, financial records, membership certifications, and other categories. These can be important to keep for legal reasons, for FEC compliance, etc. Even after we make those policy decisions, I think the document maintenance has to be done by knowledgeable insiders rather than miscellaneous volunteers.

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________

Lnc-business mailing list

Lnc-business@hq.lp.org

http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights*

...

[Message clipped] _______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

Yes I will address the parts of Alicia's email in a separate message. On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 4:12 AM David Demarest <dpdemarest@centurylink.net> wrote: I vote “YES” on the 2017-06 motion to move archive records to CO. Thoughts? ~David *Dec 28-Jan 1 Omaha Libertarian Strategy - Nolan Awards - Family Fun Un=Convention* ~David Pratt Demarest LNC Region 6 Representative (IA, IL, MN, MO, ND, NE, WI) Secretary, LPNE State Central Committee Cell: 402-981-6469 Home: 402-493-0873 *From:* Lnc-business [mailto:lnc-business-bounces@hq.lp.org] *On Behalf Of *Alicia Mattson *Sent:* Friday, March 24, 2017 3:02 AM *To:* lnc-business@hq.lp.org *Subject:* [Lnc-business] Email Ballot 2017-06: Move Archive Records to CO We have an electronic mail ballot. *Votes are due to the LNC-Business list by April 3, 2017 at 11:59:59pm Pacific time.* *Co-Sponsors:* Harlos, Hayes, Bittner, Demarest *Motion:* Move to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site storage facility to a location in Colorado to be determined by Historical Preservation Committee Chair. The facility will be paid by for and under the control of the LNC and will be obtained at a cost equal or less to the price paid for the similar facility in Virginia. The Executive Director will be directed to send out up to two fundraising emails to cover this expense and the prior budgeted Historical Committee expense (credit to budget line 25). -Alicia _______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

Yes. Also, I'd like to help with the project this summer. Whitney Bilyeu Region 7 Representative On Apr 2, 2017 8:44 AM, "Nicholas Sarwark" <chair@lp.org> wrote:

I vote yes.

-Nick

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 1:02 AM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

...

We have an electronic mail ballot.

Votes are due to the LNC-Business list by April 3, 2017 at 11:59:59pm Pacific time.

Co-Sponsors: Harlos, Hayes, Bittner, Demarest

Motion:

Move to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site storage facility to a location in Colorado to be determined by Historical Preservation Committee Chair. The facility will be paid by for and under the control of the LNC and will be obtained at a cost equal or less to the price paid for the similar facility in Virginia. The Executive Director will be directed to send out up to two fundraising emails to cover this expense and the prior budgeted Historical Committee expense (credit to budget line 25).

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

Yes Sam Goldstein Libertarian National Committee Member at Large 8925 N Meridian St, Ste 101 Indianapolis IN 46260 317-850-0726 Phone 317-582-1773 Fax On Sun, Apr 2, 2017 at 11:46 AM, Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos@gmail.com> wrote:

That is great Whitney! There has been great interest in volunteering for this.

On Sun, Apr 2, 2017 at 9:01 AM, Whitney Bilyeu <whitneycb76@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Yes.

Also, I'd like to help with the project this summer.

Whitney Bilyeu Region 7 Representative

On Apr 2, 2017 8:44 AM, "Nicholas Sarwark" <chair@lp.org> wrote:

...

I vote yes.

-Nick

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 1:02 AM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

...

We have an electronic mail ballot.

Votes are due to the LNC-Business list by April 3, 2017 at 11:59:59pm Pacific time.

Co-Sponsors: Harlos, Hayes, Bittner, Demarest

Motion:

Move to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site storage facility to a location in Colorado to be determined by Historical Preservation Committee Chair. The facility will be paid by for and under the control of the LNC and will be obtained at a cost equal or less to the price paid for the similar facility in Virginia. The Executive Director will be directed to send out up to two fundraising emails to cover this expense and the prior budgeted Historical Committee expense (credit to budget line 25).

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

I have been speaking with Wes today, and I don't think anything like that will be involved - but absolutely would be willing to have any volunteers sign an NDA to that extent. I will ask Wes to have one sent that is tailored to this project, and I will have them signed. I intend to personally open each box first to find out what is in them, and if there is any box(es) of materials that I should not have, it will immediately be sent back, and I will sign an NDA to that extent. There is a chance however, that there is a stray folder that a volunteer might see - and thus I have no issue asking for that to be signed. Wes and I are in discussions about the logistics for the move. On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 3:32 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

Will we be asking for NDAs from the volunteers working on this project? Certainly we intend for some of the material to be disclosed in an archive, but there is a wide variety of materials we have just voted to hand over without really knowing what is in it. If they run into a box containing employee records, that sort of material should be protected,

-Alicia

On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 2:22 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Voting has ended for the email ballot shown below.

*Voting "aye":* Bilyeu, Bittner, Demarest, Hagan, Harlos, Hayes, Goldstein, Lark, Marsh, Sarwark, Starchild, Vohra

*Voting "nay":* Katz, Mattson

*Express abstention:* Redpath

With a final vote tally of 12-2, the motion PASSES.

-Alicia

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 1:02 AM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

...

We have an electronic mail ballot.

*Votes are due to the LNC-Business list by April 3, 2017 at 11:59:59pm Pacific time.* *Co-Sponsors:* Harlos, Hayes, Bittner, Demarest

*Motion:*

Move to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site storage facility to a location in Colorado to be determined by Historical Preservation Committee Chair. The facility will be paid by for and under the control of the LNC and will be obtained at a cost equal or less to the price paid for the similar facility in Virginia. The Executive Director will be directed to send out up to two fundraising emails to cover this expense and the prior budgeted Historical Committee expense (credit to budget line 25).

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

I think a black scarf might work just fine :) I have one in mind... -Caryn Ann On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 5:57 PM, Sam Goldstein <goldsteinatlarge@gmail.com> wrote:

Please take mold and allergy precautions before opening long buried boxes.

Sam

p.s. Just wrapping a black scarf around your face is not adequate protection.

Sam Goldstein Libertarian National Committee Member at Large 8925 N Meridian St, Ste 101 Indianapolis IN 46260 317-850-0726 <(317)%20850-0726> Phone 317-582-1773 <(317)%20582-1773> Fax

On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 6:11 PM, Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos@gmail.com

...

wrote:

...

I have been speaking with Wes today, and I don't think anything like that will be involved - but absolutely would be willing to have any volunteers sign an NDA to that extent. I will ask Wes to have one sent that is tailored to this project, and I will have them signed. I intend to personally open each box first to find out what is in them, and if there is any box(es) of materials that I should not have, it will immediately be sent back, and I will sign an NDA to that extent. There is a chance however, that there is a stray folder that a volunteer might see - and thus I have no issue asking for that to be signed.

Wes and I are in discussions about the logistics for the move.

On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 3:32 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Will we be asking for NDAs from the volunteers working on this project? Certainly we intend for some of the material to be disclosed in an archive, but there is a wide variety of materials we have just voted to hand over without really knowing what is in it. If they run into a box containing employee records, that sort of material should be protected,

-Alicia

On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 2:22 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Voting has ended for the email ballot shown below.

*Voting "aye":* Bilyeu, Bittner, Demarest, Hagan, Harlos, Hayes, Goldstein, Lark, Marsh, Sarwark, Starchild, Vohra

*Voting "nay":* Katz, Mattson

*Express abstention:* Redpath

With a final vote tally of 12-2, the motion PASSES.

-Alicia

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 1:02 AM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

...

We have an electronic mail ballot.

*Votes are due to the LNC-Business list by April 3, 2017 at 11:59:59pm Pacific time.* *Co-Sponsors:* Harlos, Hayes, Bittner, Demarest

*Motion:*

Move to budget an additional $5,000 (budget line 90) to relocate the historical records in the Duke Street basement and in the off-site storage facility to a location in Colorado to be determined by Historical Preservation Committee Chair. The facility will be paid by for and under the control of the LNC and will be obtained at a cost equal or less to the price paid for the similar facility in Virginia. The Executive Director will be directed to send out up to two fundraising emails to cover this expense and the prior budgeted Historical Committee expense (credit to budget line 25).

-Alicia

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

_______________________________________________ Lnc-business mailing list Lnc-business@hq.lp.org http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org

-- *In Liberty,* *Caryn Ann Harlos* Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos@LP.org> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado <http://www.lpcolorado.org> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee A haiku to the Statement of Principles: *We defend your rights* *And oppose the use of force* *Taxation is theft*