Minutes October 06

Fort Bend Libertarian Party Meeting
October 14th, 2006
Sweet Mesquite – Sugar Land, Texas

Attendance:
Kevin Tunstall – Chairman;
Michael Lee – Vice-Chairman;
Danny Sessums – Treasurer;
Candace Sessums – Secretary;

Gary Copland, Art Faye, David Finberg, Kirby Hobley, Marcus Jante, Guy McLendon, Todd Owens, Bob Smither, David Dannemiller Meeting began approximately 4:15 p.m.

Chairperson’s Report – Kevin Tunstall distributed and briefly explained his quarterly chair person’s report. He stated that he hopes to start having monthly social gatherings along with our monthly meetings; and he has made it a point to attend Guy McLendon’s (Harris County) meetings and social gatherings. As for fundraising goals, he hopes that after this year he will be able to create a baseline in order to extrapolate next year’s goals. He addressed his hopes for a living history event to attract membership and indicated that he would request a motion during the regular business meeting to that effect. One of his goals had been to assist candidates in their bids for office and Fort Bend County was providing a great deal of assistance to many campaigns, notably the Smither campaign. Fort Bend currently has 7 organized precincts, just 3 from Kevin’s goal of having 10.

1. The minutes were unavailable but would be emailed to the executive committee the following Monday.
2. A hard copy treasurer’s report was unavailable but Danny Sessums advised that the current balance is $151.26, but that an expenditure of approximately $60.00 could be expected in February 2007 for the cost of the post office box.
3. Committee Reports:
   • County Fair Booth – Danny Sessums reported that the Fort Bend County Fair had been a great success. He and Clyde Garland set up the booth the day before. Evenings during the fair were “hopping” and in the end over 1,000 quizzes were taken and 388 persons scored Libertarian. Of those we were able to obtain 213 addresses for contacting persons. Most notably, the Libertarian booth displayed a great deal of activity the entire fair and its constant activity appeared to out-perform the other major political party booths.
   • Mock Elections – Report unavailable.
   • Voter Database – Kevin reported that the Smither campaign had purchased the Data Set for District 22 which included all but 14 precincts in Fort Bend County and would provide excellent data for the database.
4. Unfinished Business:
   • Shirts – Danny and Candace advised that they had purchased two types of shirts, specifically for use at the fair and were requesting a donation of $20.00 and $15.00 respectively for the shirts. Also, the embroiderer could attach the logo to any shirt if someone wanted to request a custom shirt of their own.
5. New Business –
   • Dissolution of Fair Booth Committee – Candace moved to dissolve the Fort Bend Fair Booth Committee. The motion passed unanimously.
   • Ad Hoc Committee Formation –
     1. Living History Event – Candace moved to form a committee to develop an annual living history event. Guy inquired as to what type of living history event. Danny indicated that he would envision a characterization of an historical figure such as Thomas Jefferson discussing the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. Guy suggested that he would like to see this become a part of his Common Ground Event and Kevin affirmed that he could see a connection of the living history events with other events. David inquired as to whether this might fall under the volunteer committee. Kevin advised that he envisioned a separate committee that would work closely with the volunteer committee. A vote was taken and the motion passed. Art made a motion to nominate Danny to chair the committee. Guy requested that he be allowed to participate in the committee as an SLEC member. The motion passed.
     2. Study of Local Races – Candace made a motion to create an ad-hoc committee to study and report on “viable” local races in which to run candidates. After discussion, the motion failed as presented. Candace made an amended motion to read: “A motion to appoint Michael Lee as liaison to the SLEC municipal election research committee.” The motion passed.

1. Smither Campaign – Kevin noted that Mr. Smither would provide a campaign update after the meeting.
2. Gary Copeland indicated that many people running for office don’t have viable websites. He stated that he could create websites with good presentation for $10.00 for 6 mos. Kevin agreed that each candidate needs a website. Also Gary could create cards and other marketing material from home and could provide templates. David noted that he was able to get business cards from Vistaprint.com by paying just shipping and handling.

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