[Lnc-business] Email Ballot 2017-06: Move Archive Records to CO

Fri Mar 24 12:51:32 EDT 2017

Alicia,

The issue of common carrier versus U-Haul is something I discussed with
Wes.  In order to pack things up so that it can be transported would take
staff time.  And Wes wants to send the shelving, and just send things "as
is" and let me straighten it up.  With the U-Haul it can just be put in and
sent with no re-packing needed.

As far as whether or not everything can be organized and scanned before the
end of next term, there are several issues there. First, the committee
itself. While this committee ends at that time, it is my intention to prove
its value, have a good working model, and move for a permanent historical
committee next year.  In any event, LPedia must be maintained, and I expect
the LNC will appoint a new committee- and if I am not on the LNC, I will
apply to be on the committee.  Even if not, I will continue my volunteer
work.  I think Starchild covered this well.  As far as goals, I am very
sober-minded as to our goals.  I absolutely do not expect (nor is there
budget for, though I am doing pretty well at finding no-cost volunteers)
the entire archives to be scanned by the end of this term.  I do
realistically expect it to be organized and inventoried and the most
critical items uploaded. And with the organization, the next committee will
be able to continue to prioritize until it is done.  Without the
organization, I cannot wisely spend the initial budget on the most critical
and most  general interest items. While I might be in rapturous delight
over a handwritten note by Gary Nolan on the back of a memo, our membership
is more interested in news items. training items, press releases, and
minutes.  I am prioritizing to the needs and wants of our members.  And as
Daniel and Wes said, there is a lot of duplicates and items that do not
need to be saved.  I will be able to make culling recommendations to the
LNC and to Wes and to carry those out.

I expect these records will remain here for at least a few years. And I
have a volunteer that drives cross country often, and I might be able to
find someone to bring them back at little to no cost - the volume will be
less in any event, even if we have to pay.  And they could come back by
common carrier as I will be able to have the volunteers to re-pack as
necessary.

I went quickly through a representative portion of the offsite storage.
Everything I saw were items to be saved (in general, most certainly there
is redundancy and culling and curating to do).  It is interesting you
mention the "so and so's desk" boxes... that is part of the problem. Who is
ever going to go through that stuff?  Wes thinks there might be minutes and
other important items there, if not, I will straighten it out and solve
that problem.  And when I say "I" I don't mean I am super woman to do it
all myself, but with a home base in CO, the birthplace, of the Party, and
my volunteer connections in neighboring states, I can manage this properly,
as a Chair should.

In any event, it will be cheaper to come back after several years, in great
shape with professional organization and of use to the Party and its
members.

-Caryn Ann

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 10:40 AM, Caryn Ann Harlos <carynannharlos at gmail.com
> wrote:

> I have a bunch of commentary to add that I will take one at a time.
>
> Daniel, that is exactly what I was thinking.  I think this Committee may
> find some auction items and may be able to put together a nice historical
> interest display, and you might want to consider having one of us speak.
>
> -Caryn Ann
>
> On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 10:24 AM, Daniel Hayes <danielehayes at icloud.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Us finally throwing away a bunch of sacred invoices and other magical
>> papers and stuff we don't need was my motivation to sponsor .  It might
>> take 5 years to recoup but it is money we can save.
>>
>> Also, keep in mind that if we can monetize some of this stuff, even
>> better.  As Sam and a couple of others know, we are looking to hold a
>> silent auction at convention in NOLA.  Caryn Ann may find some things that
>> we don't want to throw away but don't have space to display that a member
>> might have interest in.  I'd rather see us put some cash to the use this
>> party exists for and allow a member to have some enjoyment instead of
>> sticking it in a box on a shelf.  One person's junk is another person's
>> treasure.
>>
>>
>> Daniel Hayes
>> LNC At Large Member
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Mar 24, 2017, at 11:07 AM, Wes Benedict <wes.benedict at lp.org> wrote:
>>
>> Actually, if Caryn Ann does a good enough job, we should no longer need
>> an off-site storage unit. The unit we're in now just went up to $248 per
>> month starting in March 2018 (up about $20 from February).
>>
>> William Redpath, can you calculate the Prevent Value of the saving of
>> $248 per month in perpetuity?
>>
>> And if you can do that, can you then get a bit more precise by making the
>> assumption the $248 per month spending won't stop for 2 years?
>>
>> Thanks Bill, that'd be great.
>>
>>
>> Wes Benedict, Executive Director
>> Libertarian National Committee, Inc.
>> 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314(202) 333-0008 ext. 232 <(202)%20333-0008>, wes.benedict at lp.orgfacebook.com/libertarians @LPNational
>> Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership
>>
>> On 3/24/2017 11:43 AM, Wes Benedict wrote:
>>
>> Around 300 boxes with the miscellaneous "slips of paper" have been
>> shredded since 2013. I spent many days on that work myself doing a first
>> and second pass through the mountain of junk in the cool, damp,
>> rat-infested dungeon storage underneath the Watergate complex, and then
>> doing 3rd and 4th passes at our storage units after moving the stuff to
>> Alexandria. (I did not shred the stuff myself--just identified the boxes
>> and then had a professional service handle it).
>>
>> I am not exaggerating about the rats. I do not recall finding dead rats
>> in any boxes and did not necessarily see rats inside our particular unit,
>> but there were dead dried out rat carcasses less than 20 feet outside the
>> door to our unit and in the hallway leading up to our unit and inside
>> adjacent units.
>>
>> In addition to things that have been shredded, I did not count the number
>> of boxes of stuff that I threw away that did not need to be shredded. I
>> also personally tore apart, dismantled, and sawed when necessary (with my
>> personal Bosch circular saws and drill), large painted plywood structures
>> that I think were used in the 2000 and 2004 national conventions (along
>> with the wooden pallets).
>>
>> For a decade, it seemed, no one was willing to throw things away. I can't
>> blame them. Who wants to throw something away when someone might complain
>> later? Plus, it's easier to just box up an old employees stuff and push it
>> aside rather than go through it and sort it all out.  The result was
>> valuable things were getting buried by old broken furniture and useless
>> pieces of returned mail slips that had no value. Boxes of potentially
>> valuable documents were getting crushed and split and were spilling in the
>> damp basement of the Watergate. The basement of the Watergate obviously
>> wasn't climate controlled and the storage facilities were down an
>> underground hallway from the dumpsters for CVS and the grocery store
>> Safeway, and just 200 yard crawl for rats from the shores of the Potomac.
>> Grocery stores generate a lot of smelly garbage that attracts rats.
>>
>> For the most part, I did not go through many individual boxes and sort
>> through individual pieces of stuff. I either kept the whole box, or through
>> the whole box out (or shredded if necessary).
>>
>> We still have over a dozen 4-drawer file cabinets and maybe 100 boxes of
>> stuff that needs to be gone through more carefully. That takes a lot of
>> time. When it's time to bring the stuff back from Colorado, I expect the
>> content to be 15% of it's original size. That's because there is still
>> stuff to throw away, and also, for things like fundraising letters that
>> were sent in 1992--there are probably 5 or 10 copies of each.
>>
>> That stuff is getting older every day, but at least we now have it stored
>> in a climate controlled storage unit in Alexandria, instead of the basement
>> of the Watergate.
>>
>> I probably inadvertently  threw some things out that we wished I hadn't,
>> but I feel like my actions to jettison some garbage even if there was some
>> collateral damage, was urgent, and necessary for the greater good of the
>> documents that were saved, and because we needed space for our more recent
>> documents.
>>
>> A few photos attached.
>>
>> Wes Benedict, Executive Director
>> Libertarian National Committee, Inc.
>> 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314
>> (202) 333-0008 ext. 232 <(202)%20333-0008>, wes.benedict at lp.org
>> facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational
>> Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership
>>
>> On 3/24/2017 4:43 AM, Alicia Mattson wrote:
>>
>> Having spent some time digging through these materials a few years ago, I
>> know there are a LOT of boxes of old membership forms with hand-written
>> signatures on the membership certification.  I don't imagine those going
>> online for the world to see, so why ship 50 boxes to Colorado and back?
>>
>> I don't recall a terribly high percentage of those files being things
>> that are of historical value that would belong in an online archive.  Some
>> of it was, but much was not.  Old invoices and vendor contracts.
>> Miscellaneous contents of the desk drawers of former employees.  Is there
>> really enough historical material to fill a UHaul?
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> *In Liberty,*
> *Caryn Ann Harlos*
> Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona,
> Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann.
> Harlos at LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos at LP.org>
> Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado
> <http://www.lpcolorado.org>
> Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus
> <http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org>
> Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee
>
> A haiku to the Statement of Principles:
> *We defend your rights*
> *And oppose the use of force*
> *Taxation is theft*
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
*In Liberty,*
*Caryn Ann Harlos*
Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona,
Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann.
Harlos at LP.org <Caryn.Ann.Harlos at LP.org>
Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado
<http://www.lpcolorado.org>
Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus
<http://www.lpradicalcaucus.org>
Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles:
*We defend your rights*
*And oppose the use of force*
*Taxation is theft*
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