05-10-2012 Meeting Minutes for Northern Wisconsin NORML

5-10-12 Meeting Minutes for Northern WI NORML

Rich opened the meeting

Jay gave the Treasurer’s report – our current balance is $841.00.
We did have $757 expenses in the month of April
We had 30 new members join
Jay promoted a $4.20 money bomb which yielded 23 of those members.

After the Treasurer’s Report, Secretary Jessica called for the board member elections to begin.

Jay nominated Richard A Martin, Jr. for Executive director.
Jessica Seconded
All in room stated “aye”

Jay nominated Jessica Franke for Secretary
Rich seconded
All in room stated “aye”

Jessica nominated Jay Selthofner for Treasurer.
Rich seconded
All in room stated “aye”

Rich nominated Jason / Nox to be Assistant Executive Director
Jessica seconded
All in room stated “aye”

Lee volunteered to become Rich’s volunteer assistant

Elections are closed.

Rich moved the meeting on to Chapter Business. He opened by discussing the Wisconsin / Minnesota Joint Libertarian Convention that we attended in Eau Claire in April 2012. Rich, Jay, Jessie, Bob and Lee attended the convention and tabled for Northern WI NORML. Jay spoke at the event. We held a discussion about the event.

Rich also announced his candidacy for Wisconsin State Assembly in District 55. He is running as a Libertarian because they are the political party that supports the legalization of cannabis and hemp. His website is

Lawrence University has contacted Rich and informed him that they are bringing in James G from LEAP on Thursday May 17th from 7-9. The presentation is free for those interested in attending. Jim has been a supporter in the past.

Free Fishing Weekend – Sunday June 3rd from 9am – 12 noon we will be holding our 3rd annual Potluck Fisheree. Jay is making the arrangements. It’s a great time, come out and fish!

Postcard Legislation: Rich received a postcard from the libertarian party regarding the legalization of raw milk. It gave him an idea – we should be making postcards for specific issues, such as the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act. Jay showed the group the postcards that he had created for Valentines day 2012. The postcard featured the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act. The cost to send it to 72 legislators is about $130. Once the template is built it’s just a matter of updating the list of elected officials after every election.

The Fox Cities Marathon is coming up. They are always looking for volunteers to hand out water and towels at the check in points. Rich was thinking that our chapter could volunteer for the event.

Rich would also like to try and get a booth at Oktoberfest in Appleton in 2012. Jay has looked into it in the past and was told that they do not allow political booths or political literature. Rich is going to look into that and find out if there is any way that Northern Wisconsin NORML could be included in Oktoberfest.

Jay brought up the Shirt of the Month idea. Members may submit their T-shirt ideas and we will pick a winner from the submissions. Lee will donate money to make a few copies of the winning shirt each month. We will raffle a few off and sell a few at the next meeting. Lee submitted 2 T Shirt design ideas and is this month’s winner, since his were the only submissions.

Jay already has about 100 T Shirts in inventory that we need to sell. We should be empowering field activists to be selling shirts as well as activist kits. Buy Tshirts for people’s birthdays as gifts, etc. so that we are not stuck with inventory.

Jay also said that as Treasurer, he recommends that we need to keep at least $300 in our bank account at all times to cover event registrations and other fees. Each event that we reserve a park or hall for, costs about $100. The free fishing day in June will cost us $125 registration fee but we will get an $80 deposit back. For this reason we do need to sell shirts before we print more. So, we need to sell T Shirts, and we need to get new T Shirt design ideas.

Rich re-opened the elections and nominated Brian Halsley as Field Director.
Brian is not present tonight.
Jay seconded.
All in room stated “Aye”
If he accepts the nomination, he will be our new Field Director.

We had a brief discussion regarding the Google Hangouts functionality and what the limitations are and how it all works.

Ken, who joined us via Google Hangout, suggested that we check out justin.tv for video streaming capabilities.

Jay introduced a motion to close the meeting.
Rich seconded.
All in room said “Aye”.

The official meeting then closed. We kept the Google Hangout open and continued to chat about cannabis law reform.