BoardMeeting202512

Minutes

December 21, 2025 virtually via Big Blue Button

• Start time: 4:00 PM
• Attendance: Issac M., Sue J., Jondale S., Tracy H., Billy H., Daryl H., Sean S., Russell P.
• Nine general members also in attendance

Votes

• Voted unanimously to pursue a commercial mortgage loan with Y12.
• Voted unanimously to designate the following people to be signatories:
  • Issac Merkle: President
  • Tracy Homer: Secretary
  • Sue Joslin: Treasurer
• Voted unanimously to give a UTK student a membership scholarship to supplement her Knox Makers capstone project.

Meeting end: 4:45 PM

Supplemental Notes

• This year each person on the board will report on their individual projects so we can keep everyone on task

Issac: President

• Building purchase
  • Two prongs to finalize this - amend the master lease with SPARK so that we are not renting from someone while they also rent from us. We are close to having this worked out, Issac has meeting tomorrow.
  • Second prong is to finalize financing -looking good so far, waiting on underwriting.

Sue: Treasurer

• Money things!
• Fundraising trucking along which is good because we had to pay earnest money.

Tracy: Membership Director

• Annual meeting is coming up in January - board nominations for 2026 are open.
  • So far everyone currently on the board has been nominated and accepted their nomination.
  • No other nominations have come in - please email or DM Tracy if you have them.
• 400 members!

Russell: Community Director

• Talks and Crafts have been going really well - always at least a dozen people attend and people seem really excited to do them and attend them.
• We have been approached by a UTK student about using Knox Makers for her capstone project for her major in Human Centered Design (focus on landscape and urban design).
  • We'd like to give her a scholarship so she can do cool stuff besides the schoolwork.

Jondale: Tech Director

• Our webserver has been getting hammered so upgrading to alleviate that.
• Mattermost also needs a server update - both to be done off hours.
• We could maybe trick bots so they leave our website alone.

Daryl: Communications

• Sadly our communications guy can't get his mic off mute.
• Will have more time for website stuff soon and also a new member is interested in helping with SEO.

Sean: Creative Director

• Collaborating with Annie about editing current videos and getting more content.
• If/when we go public with campaign, we should have a meeting to talk about it specifically and how to promote it.

Billy: Facilities

• Keeping tabs on some plumbing issues, nothing catastrophic
• Did some inventory of the chemical cabinet - also nothing catastrophic there
• We might need more member storage shelves, looking for space for that

Other stuff

• Next meeting: January 18, 2026!