2015 Finance Subcommittee
Date: Thursday 5th week, Hilary 2015 (2015-02-19)Present: Aisha Simon (Vice-President (Administrative)), Richard May (Secretary), John Clark-Maxwell (Treasurer), Richard Ware (Lindsay), Gaetano Iannetta (Foody), Michael Wrathall (Foody)
Absent with apologies: Duncan Shepherd (President)
Agenda
- Matters Arising
- General Finance
- Buildings Committee
- Pantry
- June Jamboree
- Bar
- AOB
Minutes
Matters Arising
- Late night Pantry may be restarting next week. Pizza has been moved to Tuesday to replace burgers.
- Max Dalton will cover some shifts if needed.
- The new bar couch is done at a cost of £180, and just needs to be upholstered before it can be installed
- The cost for removing the partition in the main bar will be £120, which is expected to cover parts but not labour. Heat-proof materials will be used in case the paint peeling is due to the hot pipes behind the wall.
- Bar and Pantry advertising has been stepped up, and seems to be working well.
- The accumulated wage problem is being dealt with effectively.
General Finance
It was discovered that the Ball Committee have a forgotten-about account. The money in it will be reclaimed to pay off the Ball Committee’s debts to the JCR, which arose from the disastrous ball five years ago.
John said he was concerned about the practice of people stealing laundry slots, and wondered if there might be a way to reduce this. Aisha asked if it would potentially be possible to restrict people to booking two slots; Richard May responded that this would be entirely possible if it was felt this would be the best approach. It was suggested that labelling the machines would help mitigate the problem – Richard May recommended we update the emails sent on booking laundry slots to include the machine number.
John said there are some issues with the JCR bank account signatories, due to issues with HSBC. The issues should be resolved tomorrow, but we won’t know for sure unless we sign a cheque for over £10,000 (the threshold at which HSBC actually begins to check that the cheques have been validly signed).
Buildings Committee
Duncan went to Buildings Committee with a bid for £70,000 to improve bar access, with the JCR willing to make a goodwill contribution. College have expressed a preference for us to pay for a larger proportion of the costs.
It was decided that we should talk to Jo Roadknight to establish the exact details of the situation, and potentially bring a GM motion to decide on a course of action.
Pantry
Pantry is on their last week of free labour, which has been keeping costs down. Unfortunately, revenue is still low and the reasons for this are unclear. It was suggested that less people might be using Pantry at lunch, and Mike asked if there were suggestions for how to resolve this. Aisha suggested that self-serve Pantry might be a good idea that would alleviate queuing.
There have been 14 applicants for the Pantry job position. The advert expired yesterday, and we will begin re-advertising for a weekend position shortly.
John suggested that Pantry begin a lunchtime stock rotation to attract more people. Mike said that Maureen is ordering in filter coffee, which is slightly more expensive but substantially nicer.
It was suggested that Pantry loyalty cards and pre-payment cards be introduced, and it was felt these should be trialled for a week. In the case of the pre-payment cards, Richard Ware suggested that there be a discount for paying up front (such as five meals for the price of four).
John observed that he was currently winning Pantry in terms of spending. It was suggested that there be some sort of Pantry leaderboard, potentially with rewards such as free coffee for the top spenders.
Mike said that if Pantry takings continue as they currently are, we should end up making a profit on the term.
June Jamboree
Richard Ware suggested we get Zorb balls, and it was generally felt that this would be great fun.
Bar
Third week was great for the Bar, particularly due to the Superbowl event in 3rd Week. Saturday of 3rd was also great due to Parents’ Dinner followed by a football Cuppers event. Overall, the Bar was up £107 over this week last term.
4th Week was less good. The Bar has started slipping with regards to Open Mic Night, but Richard Ware is meeting with Daisy Cutts (the new Maestro Music) tonight at 8:30 to organise the event. Richard said that it would be good to have events post-GM to entice people down to the bar; Richard May asked if discounts such as Happy Hour might be a better approach, but Richard Ware felt they were not (both on the grounds that it would have to be negotiated with College and that events would probably prove better). BUMS dinner was good, but the rest was fairly quiet.
Richard Ware suggested that shelves be put into the weird Bar cupboard thing and it could be used to store stock instead. He’s also looking into putting pictures of women on the walls, and is working with the Women’s Officers to accomplish this.
The Bar is currently trying to burn off old stock with weekly special offers. Aftershock in particular has been extremely popular.
Richard Ware is meeting with the Carlsberg rep on Thursday at 11 to discuss account details, replacing the lines, and potentially changing some of the beers (particularly Staropramen).
Rachel is happy for us to advertise Crazy Tuesdays outside College. Richard is planning to ask Indigo (the LGBTQ Rep) to put together Crazy Tuesday posters to put around Oxford – probably not in JCRs because other Colleges might object.
It was felt that we should push to get more Balliol members in on Tuesdays, potentially with the aid of Entz events.
AOB
- John asked about the status of post-bop all-day brunch, and suggested that the Peer Support Brunch could be improved by providing food via Pantry.
- John is still pushing for Entz to keep better track of their finances, and will see how this goes after the next bop.
- Slow progress has been made on the TV Room Working Group.
- John is presenting our accounts to College over the next week, and asked if people would be interested in seeing them. There was a broadly positive response to this suggestion.
The meeting ended.