Discussion: Treasury Procedures

[Official Occupy Tulsa]

This is an open forum discussion regarding treasury procedures to be voted on at the next General Assembly meeting. Anyone may lead off the discussion.

--C. J. Williams

[cheripv]

The OT accounting workgroup (AWG), currently comprised of Mike Reidy and Cheri Peluso-Verdend, would like to put forth the attached Proposal for Accounting Procedures and Guidelines for Occupy Tulsa. We have modeled the guidelines on those currently in use by OWS and have done our utmost to balance the need for transparency, accountability, and financial controls with the reality of working within a volunteer organization that requires the flexibility to act quickly in often urgent situations.

We fully affirm that everything in this proposal is open for discussion and modification by the GA before a final vote is taken. We welcome all comments and will answer all questions to the best of our ability. Please be respectful of everyone’s suggestions and our ongoing efforts to establish a set of accounting guidelines that will help restore the broken trust many of us feel in regards to the past handling of OT’s financial matters.

We are posting this today with the hopes of generating conversation before we present it at GA tomorrow night. So, grab a cup of coffee and settle in to read, because this is 3.5 pages of dry accounting process – enjoy!

Respectfully,
Cheri Peluso-Verdend
Mike Reidy

Attachments:

[Official Occupy Tulsa]

Do the receipts need to be formally reviewed at each GA or are they simply a matter of public record?

What about recovering expenditures that are used inappropriately?

Reviewing "twice a month" seems kind of open-ended. Can we get a more definitive timeline, like may be the first and third week of the month?

"Regularly check" is also open-ended. Could we state "once a day" or "once every 3 days" or once every third and seventh day of the week, or once a week?

--C. J. Williams

[occupytogether]

I like CJ's critiques and didn't see anything else that bothers me.

[cheripv]

Hi C.J. Thanks for your questions. I'll try to answer what I can, but I encourage others to jump in here as well.

The way we wrote the proposal is that receipts are posted as a matter of public record. Then it is up to the individual members of the GA to review the receipts as they feel the need. If a member finds a workgroup receipt they question, that member would raise the question in the next GA. I believe that's the "regularly review" passage you referenced. Without bogging down the GA with reviewing every receipt in each GA, I don't see how we could mandate a frequency with which individual members review the receipts. I'm fairly confident in the collective ability of the GA members to flag any unusual expenditures. That said, if the GA wants to review all, or even a representative sample, of the receipts in each GA, that is a simple amendment we could vote to add to the proposal.

About recovering funds used inappropriately, I don't see a way for that to happen. That is the risk associated with designating petty cash to a workgroup. The benefit is that minor purchases take place in workgroups rather than taking up GA time. To reduce the risk, the GA can set the petty cash amount to $25 instead of $50. But the only way to eliminate the risk entirely is to eliminate workgroup petty cash all together and handle every expenditure authorization through the GA. Of course that would reduce the time available in the GA for all other matters.

As long as I am the person scanning and posting workgroup receipts, I have no problem saying that will be done on the first and third week. But I'm reluctant to require those dates in the formal proposal because over time that responsibility will be handled by different people with different availability. I suppose we could add that clause now and then alter it in the future as the workgroup members change.

Any/all of these items can be added to the proposal by amendment before the final vote.

[Official Occupy Tulsa]

That sounds good to me. As long as someone's eyes are reviewing the receipts at specified intervals is all that matters to me. (Someone not associated with any other workgroup.) I prefer not to have every receipt or every request for money approved by the GA, because the GA is for deciding policy and actions.

--C. J. Williams

[shannon]

Thanks for you thoughtfulness in creating this thorough document. Transparent and accountable. Everything we need.

[mike]

Shannon: Almost by definition, life is change ... so, our needs change as we grow. The AWG proposal is not the final, end-of-story say so, its a start in the right direction. Rest assured, it will be updated and amended so as to keep up with the evolution of the GA's needs for financial accountablitiy and transparency.