In attendance: Patrick Bowman (Seneschal), Shannon Wanty (Herald), Katherine Davies (Webwright), Wendy Rowsell (Chatelaine), Nora Czaykowski (Reeve) (arrived 8.05pm during November Crown discussion), Angela Wells
Apologies: Eleanor Hall (steward of Crescent Fence), Chantelle Gerrard (A&S Officer), Rob McIntyre (Marshal)
Meeting Opened: 7.45pm
Reports
Quarterly reports – received in advance
Chatelaine: Wendy would like to step down from this role as soon as possible, so will advertise this to the list and seek volunteers to replace her. She is happy to remain as Quartermaster.
Upcoming Events
Crescent Fence: (Nicola) Report Inserted:Apologies that neither myself or Emyrs are able to attend this council meeting it seems it was a good weekend to travel! Darton has definitely turned on the spectacular weather!!
Bond paid, I did it directly- I'll sort it with Reeve later.
Booking form is being discussed with the web mistress I just need to find time to go through it on my laptop.
Advertising to start ASAP, I need to chase E about this or get it out myself.
Many thanks to Ludwig who got the web page up.
St Cath’s: (Chantelle) Report Inserted St Caths is live, we have a booking form and they are open. thank you to shannon and katherine for their hard work on making and testing.
i am going to send grim an email about marshal again as he still hasn't responded yet.
David has kindly agreed to do the rapier tourney format for st caths.
November Crown Proposal: (Katherine) We discussed the budget as presented in the proposal as a couple of discrepancies had been noticed. Katherine explained that with careful checking, and allowing for inflation, she had increased the petrol cost and decreased the printing cost but hadn’t quite reflected that accurately in the table. She will update the budget to reflect this.
Shannon queried whether the a-b-c-1-2-3 should be swapped in the budget table to reflect the notes above this. This was discussed and decided to leave as is.
Shannon asked about tokens for the under-5’s – whether the stewards wanted to include an option for parents to buy a site token. Katherine said she thought there would be enough in the budget to potentially absorb any that might be required. Patrick commented that this will require a little bit of care ensuring that there were enough tokens to cover any.
Patrick asked about budgeted items, specifically, the wreaths and bells. Katherine said that this was part of the requirement of running a crown event: wreaths for the tourney victors & bells for the winners of the A&S competitions.
Shannon asked about the alcohol comment. We discussed what will be advertised and what will be emailed separately to the Kingdom Seneschal and the attendees.
No smoking is going to be a hard rule.
Wendy asked whether there was a Constable. Katherine commented that there isn’t, but she thinks there should be, and made a note to get one. Shannon commented that this could be done by someone outside the immediate group, Wendy commented on some members who used to enjoy performing this role. Katherine noted that this was a role that she’d worry about filling a few months out from the event.
Shannon [Feast cook] commented that if there’s room in the chores roster, she’ll take four people on each shift if available.
Katherine is considering ways for getting Aussies to pay: whether it’s possible to have an Australian bank account for this. The problem will be regarding the currency exchange. Patrick commented that the exchange rate is not that volatile, however, we would need to consider it. One possibility would be that the money remain in Australia and go to the Australian Kingdom account. We won’t be accepting international cheques.
The most straightforward way is of course to accept cash from Aussies on the day, however, if we’re expecting 10-20 Australians then it could be several thousand dollars of cash.
One option is to accept the current exchange rate, add 5-10% and call it that if they pay it in Australian $$ to an Australian bank account in advance.
Katherine has an existing Australian bank account that she doesn’t use that could potentially be used; this would need to be run past SCANZ and the Kingdom. Patrick pointed out that this might be a problem for Katherine in terms of the Australian tax system, however, it was thought that the amount of money coming in was likely to be small enough that it wouldn’t hit any tax issues.
Katherine also queried whether there was any way this could affect the Aussie GST payment: Patrick thought this could potentially be an issue.
Wendy commented that there may need to be an extra $25 allowed for to cover the cost of making one international transaction from Katherine’s account to ours. Patrick also commented that it would be worthwhile only setting the Australian pricing until close to the time when the bookings open.
Another option would be to use another branch account based in Australia – however, it would be relying on the other group to communicate the information around transactions to us.
Nora thought it should be a case of leaving with the Aussies to sort out themselves, and perhaps they can work in groups to make only one payment.
Someone asked whether we could make a cash deposit on the Saturday – assuming that there is a nearby branch open, and we receive a large amount of cash.
Council was in agreement that it’s worth investigating further. Katherine will talk to SCANZ and the Kingdom Exchequer over the next few days and have a look at it further.
Pending the minor changes to the budget and update of the website to correct minor typos (Shannon is emailing these to Katherine), Council accepted the proposal and agreed that it could be submitted to the Kingdom. Patrick commented that the Kingdom Seneschal has already been reading the draft.
General business
Tea towels: (Following discussion on Council list)
Shannon showed the tea towels to the group. Given her report to the group, everyone agreed to buy 100 white tea towels at $97.
New platters: Angela made templates of the plates. The Council examined the templates. The group commented that bowls the size of the smallest plates would be good. The small wooden bowls that we have have lasted relatively well; the key problems are availability and their non-medieval look.
The group was in agreement that we wanted a box of the medium platters.
Katherine was interested in the small plates for serving lunch in for November Crown in place of the baskets. Shannon & Ange suggested that the medium-sized plates would be better, and everyone came around to this idea in terms of not over-stacking. The agreement was to wait and see if we get the bid, and then decide – with the back-up of getting the baskets. There is the possibility of the plate and/or the napkin being the site token.
The group decided that Shannon could buy one or two boxes of what seems appropriate on the day; probably a box of medium-sized plates and large-sized plates.
The Council thanked Ange for her superb templates
Meeting Closed: 8:36pm