District 32 minutes 18 October 2021 Open with serenity prayer at 1900 Concept 10 read by Shelby B Tradition 10 read by Julie R In Attendance: Angela R - Alt DCM, Carrie - Web / back up Secretary, Aaron - Alt web, Shelby - YPC, Dylan - archivist, Heather - PI, Julie R - GSR, Greg - Treasurer, Dessie - GSR, Tony H - Alt Treasurer, Troy O - Grapevine, David G - GSR, Michele G - GSR, Linda K - Treatment, Max R - GSR, Ruth A - GSR GSRs - 7 (2 virtual) Elected Chairs - 8 Guests - 0 15 total voting members REPORTS Treasurer - Greg Will send virtual attachment Beginning balance: 2,449.35 Total contributions $226 Standard Expenses and schedules - $99.09 Total Expenses $241.48 Bringing total dowen to 2,433.88 Taking out prudent reserve, available amount is $1,308.88 This month we spent a little more than we made this month Motion to accept - Max, seconded - Dylan Web - Carrie Nothing out of the ordinary this past month. Just updated the calendar to mirror Area's events and kept our meeting lists updated based on emails and texts received. I am looking forward to the web quarterly meeting this coming weekend. Treatment - Linda She’s been involved in Area 72 assembly, Treatment quarterly was last month and the treatment committee met for the first time in a while. Doing 2 treatment panels for intersect. Have a hot lead at Lakeside Milam outpatient, looking for what we can do to get meetings there. It’s been hard to get past the front desk there. There was a trend from the quarterly that almost all of the districts, at the quarterly, are having different Lakeside Milam facilities reaching out. There must be some change or new emphasis in their leadership and that’s something they all shared excitement about in the Area quarterly. They continue to do 2 treatment panels at Intercept. She’s had a lead at Valley Cities about them being interested to see what AA can and cannot do for them. She’s followed up but can’t get in touch yet. They're proceeding as normal and please asked others to join them. Alt Treatment Dave - Valley Cities is having work done with District 15. He’s getting together with Jack, the district chair, to see what they can do to work together. Corrections - Not here Grapevine/Lit - Troy New Grapevine book: Prayer and Meditation is available for $1.50 and best of Grapevine is available for $23. New podcast that started October 4th. Called Grapevine half hour variety hour. First 3 episodes are up and on their website. They’ve changed a few words in the preamble. “We are a fellowship of people” is new and he thinks that may be updated in the 5th edition in the big book. If you're ordering anything in Grapevine, expect delays. CPC - Tony Hasn’t been doing much but answer emails for 12 step calls, only had one last month. Has a person that wants to make herself available for the position. Jackie O will be here for the November or December meeting. She’s been very helpful to do 12 step calls. Also have the quarterly coming up in November on Zoom that he will try to attend. Archivist - Dylan Nothing to report Bridging the Gap - Allison Not here Accessibilities - Sam Not here but Dylan texted Sam and went to the intergroup meeting and has a few things to report: It looks like he’d like people to announce if they could, that they’re looking for languages besides Spanish like Korean, Lebanese, etc. And there’s a big push to bring meetings into senior living facilities. 3rd Legacy - Caroline They had the tradition meeting with Seattle intergroup and wants to thank Angela and Greg for being part of the forum. They had 11 people there. It was a good meeting on Tradition 10. Last month they finished the concept studies. Thinking about a tradition study but would love suggestions from us on what we’d like to do at the District level now that we’ve completed the concept study. She will send that in the minutes that she’s late on (sorry Savannah). Max - The concept study, is that the meeting that used to take place an hour before this? Yes. We just finished the concepts and it took about 9 months to a year to get through. Greg - We’ve been hinting that we want a GSR school, can we have a GSR Q&A or maybe class, or what else can we do as a GSR? Caroline thanks everyone for the suggestions and asks that we keep thinking about it so we can start at the beginning of the year. Linda suggested - She was lacking when she became treatment chairmen was that she didn’t know what was in the pamphlets, that would be a useful skill to have for the GSR’s to know what’s in the pamphlets Events Chair - Casey Not here Alt DCM - Angela Phone lists for October is updated. Attended the Assembly which was great it was on zoom. If you’re a new GSR, come see her so she can get your info. Also she has a traditions checklist to bring back to people’s homegroups. It’s a good thing for that group inventory. PI - Heather This month she actually did something lol. She brought schedules to Auburn hospital where she works and St. Francis and Ray of Hope shelter and also talked to one of the social workers at St. Francis about 12 step calls and they were interested about hearing about it again since Tony talked to them about it in the past. Next thing is to gather pamphlets to bring to Ray of Hope who asked for another rack of pamphlets. Also, FYI, she works with Valley Cities a lot for her job so if you’re having a hard time reaching them, she also has a hard time and a back line to connect them with someone. YPC - Shelby She met with the Area YPC and talked about ideas since she was overwhelmed on where to start. We only have 1 YP meeting in our district, she went there and there were no young people there so that’s a problem. She has a starting point, maybe to get attendance up. If she was new, and searched YP and went to that meeting she would leave right away and find other meetings. She’s going to talk to other YP chairs in the nearby districts to see what works for them and will check back in with the area chair next month. Quarterly is this coming weekend which she will be attending. Greg - Finally free was started by a guy named Dan because he couldn’t get into the Alano club in time after work. It was at St. Lukes, his dad followed him into sobriety and a large group of people joined. It also had childcare and the alanon meeting was with them. It moved to Brookelake to the portables then the gym and it’s been fluctuating back and forth before covid. Once covid hit, they had a dilemma with someone who took over the meeting and they haven’t recovered. The chair position is open. They’re going 100% online and will be joining District 25. Ruth - There is one in between Auburn and Kent on Friday evenings, there were lots of young people. Asking a friend where it is. Aaron - how will that work with that new online district since it’s no longer D32? Greg - D32 has had the policy that they are able to list whatever meetings they’d like. Aaron - we’ve stopped that since Intergroup pulls from us now and if we do other areas, it screws up their site. We have to be strictly Auburn, Federal Way, Pacific and Algona. Greg - unless we want to have a sublisting that’s not part of that upload? That would cause more work but since they’re online people they can fill out a form. It’s one of the problems we’re going to encounter. Shelby - If it’s D25, is it easier to take the YP off of that and create a new YP m meeting? Angela suggested attending the business meeting with that group to see what they want to do. Greg - that is a great suggestion. Aaron - it would be great to have a YP meeting. Angela - maybe you can find a lot more candidates that meet that criteria. Aaron - if it’s hybrid it could remain in D32. Ruth - Friday at the Grange in Kent has a lot of young people there. Dessie - What is the age range for these young people? Shelby - if you got sober young, if you identify as young, there’s no age range, it’s just encouraged. Aaron - Young is anywhere below 30ish, a guy from Area said that. Angela - She’s gone to several YP panels and it was described to her as young at heart. She got sober when she was 20, went to treatment when she was 16 and identifies as young and all people are welcome. Intergroup liaison - Tony - I know that Gavin isn't here and he’s the intergroup liaison for us. He's been helping Gavin and lots is going on. The 2020 committee went over the policies and procedures. If anything needs to be changed, what should it be? They've added a blurb about not being able to accept money from loans from outside agencies and that’s being talked about. December 21st is the winter assembly where anyone from a group served by Intergroup in Seattle up and down I5 has a vote. Normally only our intergroup rep can vote so if your group wants to be heard and have an opinion on anything such as these policies and procedures, please attend that meeting. Let your voice be heard. Instead of 1 vote for D32, we can have 100 votes. There are only 2 times a year that all groups are allowed to vote, the other one is in June. They brought back the sustainers program. If you’d like to contribute to Intergroup on a monthly, recurring basis on debit, credit, you can register on their website and done $1 - however much and it helps them with their planning and budgeting and running intergroup. Linda - What’s the date? Tony - December 21st. Max - Where is it? Tony - Online or at the Intergroup office. DCM-Nic (Angela read it) Thank you for your understanding of my absence today. I attended the assembly this month and was pleased with the district’s participation. Old business: Area motion and discussions can be found on Area’s website. Motions Move to WW area 72 fund spanish interpretation when hosting PNC - motion passed. - 283 votes were submitted & 189 votes were needed to reach substantial unanimity - Totals = 255 Yes & 28 No Move to hold the 2021 Assembly via Zoom and vote at the 2021 assembly whether to hold the 2025 assembly at the Lynnwood Convention Center or pay contract obligations. - The motion passed - 289 votes were submitted & 193 votes were needed to reach substantial unanimity - Totals = 288 Yes & 1 No We move that Western Washington Area 72 create a district for the online groups in the Area. - The motion passed - 296 votes were submitted & 197 votes were needed to reach substantial unanimity - Totals = 252 Yes & 44 No Area 72 adopt current, and future, General Service Office practices regarding contribution limits. - The motion passed - 258 votes were submitted & 172 votes were needed to reach substantial unanimity - Totals = 252 Yes & 6 No Move for Western Washington Area 72 to fund ASL interpretation for the Pacific Northwest Conference (PNC) in 2022. - The motion passed - 227 votes were submitted & 151 votes were needed to reach substantial unanimity - Totals = 216 Yes & 11 No An Amendment was proposed: “Area 72 fund American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation for the Pacific Northwest Conference (PNC) in the years that Area 72 hosts the PNC.” o After discussion the proposed amendment was rescinded. New business Tony - Sustainers program and how we can get involved with that. The compliance committee ad hocked adding something number 9, contributions from businesses shall not be submitted. That will be a change that’s significant that will be discussed in the December 21st meeting. Would love to have people there to discuss. Finances down at Intergroup. They’re in fairly good shape, really. Contributions are ebbing and flowing like we are here but no significant shortfall and they’re working on a budget for the upcoming year. This sustainers program is an outstanding way to help that organization to make it much more even. When you don’t know what you're getting for a couple of months, it makes it much more difficult which is why they're pushing for this. If the groups wanted to split it out to submit once a month instead of once every 3, that would be greatly helpful. Linda - Needs to mention because she forgot to mention it in her report. D32 has offered to host the Area 72 quarterly. It’ll be on zoom so all she has to do is make a flyer. Aaron - There’s a twitter going around with a bunch of leaked zoom meeting links. Our meeting got hit the other day. He’s got over 100 links posted so the more people can go and report it, the sooner it gets removed. He’s telling them “this is a good one with a bunch of old people” or “go when i post”. They’re taking screenshots of the cameras and whatnot. The twitter handle is @weldonwashere. Report it. Old business - Greg - As we all know, budgets are forecasting into the future. The beauty of groups like this, this is a helpful tool. Everything that’s listed next to the budget, he’s taken what we had in the last 10 months, multiplied that by 12 to what he thinks will be at the end of the year. Each one of the budgeted items and put it to that dollar amount, each item is shown there. $51 for Accessibilities is a lot. Back in the day we used to ride share and figure out how to do it with very little money so we can make it work. We can’t spend money we don’t have but when you’re going back to the groups that “this is where we’re at” is a lot better than saying “we’re not changing but we need $5k from you”. Ask for help in groups. By wiping out all the big ticket items, it just shows district expenses, schedules, the picnic and DCM and going to PRAASA and alt DCM wouldn’t be able to attend a bunch of things bringing things down to $950 total. Web presence is also meeting the New comers right away. If we have our 3rd legacy going to meetings to promote stuff, yay. The rest will come out of the general fund. If someone says we indeed something, we all raise our hand and do that, rather than waiting for people to say they don’t want to do something. This is how he would do it but would like our eyes on it to make it so what we will do. Pretty it up so he doesn’t go rogue and ask us to do it his way. Dylan - wanted to comment on getting rid of the storage unit. Area and GSIG doesn’t have a storage unit. Heather - it’s semantics in a way. This last column makes her uncomfortable. But the second collum is the last column since it’s usually how it works. If one committee isn’t using their money, she’d prefer to leave it more traditional so that there is some money allotted to everything. Last column are you suggesting to not have storage? Greg - If we did that, we’d be down $948. Heather - We can’t not have storage and rent. Greg - Everything can’t change so everything had to go on the other side of the equal sign. Can’t just go to the meetings and demand more money. We’re not doing something right if we’re continually doing less unless they really want us to do less. Aaron - doesn’t see what is wrong with saying District is struggling so people redivert their efforts since Area is struggling. GSR’s go back to their groups and say we’re struggling. Angela - Also see moving toward a solution - take this to the groups and communicating that there’s a money issue. As the pandemic happened, district is being forgotten about. Just a reminder that District is still here and still doing this stuff and getting in the solution. Greg - While he was on the treatment panel, he has the venmo handle on his upper right hand corner. While having business meetings, tey’re able to take a picture and grab it. That will help to get more donations. Ruth - She’s new here so maybe that’s why she’s asking but she doesn’t feel comfy going to her group saying we paid $948 for storage and the answer is not we pay it for stuff we don’t even use. What she’s asking for is how can you help us help you. Give us some talking points, what’s in it for groups and why do we need the storage. Max - Something he found effective in groups is when a dollar = $1 when AA started, it used to go towards this. 2 dollars doesn’t do it anymore. It has nothing to do with what we do as a district. Heather - If her group asked that, she’d be talking about how that money goes towards all of the service that D32 can do. Going to assemblies and quarterlies and doing treatment work, PI work and corrections, those are things to understandable to an every day alcoholic. For storage, it has archives in there and a lot of things our groups can benefit from, they just don’t know it’s happening. Focus on service, that’s what we do. Tony - It shouldn’t be about asking. It should be about letting them know what we can do with our money. If a time comes where we need more, we don’t need more money, we have a surplus. We have to give our best guess and if we want to do something special. If someone has an awesome idea, we then ask for more money. Far right column is the worst case scenario, at the bare minimum, we need to have this. Wants to agree with Heather to have something in each of these categories, if some of them go up and down, they work themselves out. Fill these service positions. Talk about what other districts are doing throughout the state and things we can do. He thinks it’s important to focus on the positive things that District can do to help the whole. One group by itself doesn’t reach as many people as 160 can, that’s the point of district. If they have something they like or don’t like, they have this platform. GSR Sharing - Max - GSR for Auburn sTagg group Tuesday @ Alano club at 7pm and online. Last business meeting they were talking about the split and will talk about doing it monthly. Business meeting will talk about if they will move it back to the church. Last Tues of the month. Started a big book study at the Alano club called the Rainier ____ on Saturdays at 9am and go through a workbook that asks a question about every line in the big book and could use some support. Linda - GSR for Healthy Women, meet Sunday at 7pm. They’re going hybrid starting Sunday. They have had a lot of discussion about this. One thing they came to is that they’ll spend a little money to make sure the hybrid is really well done. One of the reasons they feel it’s important to continue to have an online presence is that they have at least for the last 6 months, 2 people coming in from anywhere outside and they’d not bet here if it wasn’t online. Older people, newer people, women looking for a meeting on the reservation and don’t want to cut that access off. Want to make sure when they come they have an inclusive experience. The church has been helpful and she’s nervous but they’re excited to work through the technical issues that this will bring. It’ll cost them a little bit of money. It was something the group wanted and so they’ll find the money. Attendance for a regular attendance is 5 people. Very small meeting. Aaron - if you need help getting htat set up, he’s happy to help. Linda - also wants to share that they’ll be doing this on the church of the Good Sheppard on 312th. There are a couple other meetings that meet there, thinks they’re both stag meetings. They’re more than willing to help adding a hybrid for the other meetings, they're willing to share their equipment, a projector, speaker and an extra camera. Everyone should be able to participate. Aaron knows one of the stag meetings has completely separate and one in person. They stagger the times but he can bring it to their attention. Dave - JFT Saturday 7pm at Brooklake - doing good, doing hybrid. Had one of their guests cancelled last moment. Looking for people to do service work. Only 4 of them actively working this meeting. Different people speak and bring different guests. Different AA people that come each week so don’t have regular service people. Want regular people for a chair, set up, and with web service. Other than that, doing really good. Went to the assembly on Friday. For those that aren’t doing hybrid or doing AA with traditions with the internet, he went to the hospitality rooms and got 6 pages on AA and the internet about traditions. If anyone needs that, get ahold of him and he can send a link to that. Julie - Rush Hour Monday at 6. Still on Zoom for now. Not really looking at in person. The church they were in, doesn’t have a space for them to put the meeting that once was. Has 5 people that goes to the business meeting each month. That’s been tricky to get input. Last business meeting, they got ideas here to get people to donate since they have no bank account or venmo so somehow providing something for people and changing the account over to an old chair person’s name. But also in light of the district for online only, not sure if they want to forever be online, things are tricky. In the near future, that’ll be online for a while. Knows that the Alano club is open but there seems to be hesitation in moving it to other locations at this point. Aaron - was approached to see if we have a zoom on our district account and informed them that we have it. Just let us know if you need it. Ruth - Hour of Power Saturday at Alano club - Thinks the meeting is going well. Back in person, it’s going well, not doing hybrid. The numbers are smaller than it was pre-pandemic but thinks that’s the trend. Thinks it’s going well. A lot of their service positions are full. Don’t have a lot of conflict. Made her feel nice to hear the delegate at Area assembly about the strikes over masks and they don’ thave that, they have a good community. Dessie - She’s new at this. Thursday Women in Recovery - seems like it's going pretty good since she started going. It’s been getting bigger each week since she’s joined. Aaron - Was talking earlier about the Evergreen South Breakfast group getting zoom bombed and were using the district account. Made the settings pretty laxed since the zoom bombing had stopped. There’s a waiting room implemented but there are a few other measures that would keep zoom bombers out but would also prevent people from getting in that need it. Wanted to talk about whether we want to implement more security settings and what that would look like vs. Not doing that. Options are: require person to be registered be it their email address, a lot of people have a hard time logging in if they have a free zoom account or not doing that, setting a password for the meetings but then if we’re posting hte meetings on the district site, Area, INtergroup, we can’t post the password which defeats the purpose of security. You can set it up so they can’t unmute themselves or turn their cameras on, there's ways around it. What if any security measures can we do? Julie - What really is the risk, any difference than someone that comes into an in person meeting yelling? Are there security risks for her computer? Or is it just an interruption? Her concern is blocking people who need a meeting. Aaron - One thing he knows for sure is if they post a nefarious link and you click on it, they can take over your device. Tony - He doesn’t want to make it difficult for newcomers to come in but thinks some other security measures can be put in like disabling the chat, muting everyone and shutting off their cameras. Worst case, we shut the meeting down and call everyone back. You may lose someone because you don’t have their contact info but educating our hosts of the current security measures like muting everyone at the same time and kick someone out of the meeting like you would in person is good enough. David - He gets emails from Zoom where they have weekly or biweekly an online meeting for security and how to work the platform and allow you to report those people and it collects their mac address and won’t allow that address back into any zoom meetings. Without going to these webinars, it’s difficult to future out how to do this in settings. Greg - we have 2 zoom accounts, why don’t we use one for closed meetings for passwords and one for open meetings. When they’re doing treatment, they want it secure. Dylan - He supports making it easy as possible for people to get into meetings like disabling some permissions with chat. When his group was meeting online, you had to be logged into zoom and it was confusion. Aaron - as an admin for the district account, you can set it so it doesn’t allow participants to unmute themselves or turn on their cameras on it would be simplest to have the host for every meeting on the account. When you have 50-60 people join at once and they have bots taking over people’s names, it’s taking over legitimate people’s names. As a district, are we okay with that? Angela - What you’re saying is that this is a function, you wouldn’t have to learn it, it would automatically take place? Correct, you’d just have to know you have to know to unmute people. Dylan - online meeting platforms, do the Microsoft go to meetings, teams have the same issues? Aaron - yes but it’s more prevalent like Microsoft vs. Apple, Microsoft is being used more. Angela asked if we should take this to the groups? Aaron - no, it should be a district decision. It’s either one or nothing. Dylan - make the change and ask for forgiveness later. Do what you think is best to deal with the problem. Carrie suggested that we just update the settings and email the 4-6 groups still using our account of the change. David - repeated what Carrie said. Angela - it preserves our anonymity. Asked for anyone if they’re strongly opposed. Dylan - motion to close. Tony seconded at 2035 closed at 2038 with responsibility statement