Upcoming :FAN: Board Meeting (2016-12-21)

WHAT: FAN Board Meeting
WHEN: Wednesday, Dec 21st at 7 pm (3rd Wednesdays of each month)
WHERE: Pioneer Bank Community Room ( Google Maps Link )
623 W 38th St, Austin, TX 78705

There is a community room that is accessible past business hours. It is not accessible through the main entrance of the building. The entrance is on the first floor, to the right of the main entrance. We’ll try to have something directing visitors, but the conference room is visible through the wall of windows.

There are public transit stops nearby as well as garage parking.

We’re looking forward to an interesting and productive meeting.
Draft Board Agenda can be found here for reference.

Board members please feel free to edit before arriving, and we’ll review prior to starting the meeting.

Regular members can pose items for considerations in the comments below.

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Just a few things I’d like to talk/hear about. Obviously can’t hit all of them tonight if we want to be out by eleven, but I think all are worth keeping in mind from a strategic perspective. In what I think is order of priority/urgency:

  1. What are we doing to prepare for the Code Wars? How can/should we exploit key points in the schedule (code drop EOM Jan, maps in spring if we’re lucky, etc) as recruitment/outreach/get-people-involved events?

  2. Recruitment in general: how should we go about more effective at this? What can be done that we haven’t tried? (I’m new enough not to actually be sure what we have tried…)

  3. 1-year plan: With 2016 drawing to a close, where should we hope to be a year from today? What do we want to accomplish this year?

  • What ANC-member NAs are most vulnerable to flipping this year (small/apathetic ANC loyalists group, relatively large/mature parallel FAN org, high renter concentration). Which ones should we target this year, and how?
  • Recruiting/size goals, to (2)
  • Policy: what’s the best we can realistically hope for out of the policy fights this year (code, transit?, ASH?, etc) and how do we make that happen?
  1. 5-year plan: How do we make sure we hold more influence than the ANC by this time in 2021?
  • How much should we focus on flipping legacy NAs versus building our own?
  • How do we concentrate efforts in a way that maximizes electoral impact?
  • How should we think about FAN’s place within the broader ecology of somewhat like-minded groups (AURA, CNU-CTX, EvolveAustin…), interest groups/industries that occasionally agree with us on something (RECA, TNCs, STRs,…) and the like. What gaps are there in that landscape – what needs to be done that nobody’s doing? How does our role within the movement now differ from what we’d like it to be long-term? And, should we be raising money from sometimes-aligned IGs, given that the media will accuse us of being in their pocket whether we do so or not?
  1. Coalition-building, perception management, etc:
  • What, other than writing rebuttals, can/should we do to insulate ourselves from the accusations of being “right-wing”? Should we, say, go out of our way to take (leftish) positions on things like the homestead exemption, or safety net programs, etc that will result in a more nuanced/accurate view of, say, Troxclair?

  • More broadly, how should we think about other issues and messaging in the context of forming a broader coalition that can actually develop, I don’t know, a modicum of electoral clout?

    • Would it even help to try to back away from things perceived to be “conservative”, or is there instead more to be gained from trying to also be a voice for more center-right/libertarian folks?
    • In light of the fact that ~75% of Austinites commute by car, should we emphasize “pull” rather than “push” modeshift (i.e. we want people to start taking transit because transit has gotten better, not because driving has gotten worse)? I’d rather go even further and pretend that the best argument for more bus investment is making the drive faster by making other modes attractive enough that everyone’s neighbors take them. How much weight should we give the effects of advocating for anything like a “road diet” on the breadth of the set of people willing to support us against the pure policy/efficiency appeal of road diets?

Are there notes from this meeting that can be viewed?

Absolutely. The minutes will be posted to the website as soon as the board approves them.