I. Call to Order – 6:15
A. President: Alex Lee
B. Vice President: Abhay Sandhu
C. Senate Pro Tempore:
D. Senator: Sofia Molodanof
E. Senator: Sam Chiang
F. Senator: Shaitaj Dhaliwal
G. Senator: Irveen Grewal
H. Senator: Ricardo Martinez
I. Senator: Joshua Dalavai
J. Senator: Parteek Singh
K. Senator: Sam Park
L. Senator: Georgia Savage
M. Senator: Puneet Dihndsa
N. Senator: Adilla Jamaludin
O. Senator: Adam Xu (Zu)
P. ECAC Chair: - Komal Sharma
Q. EPPC Chair: Brent Rosenwald
R. IAC Chair: Nicholas Flores
S. EAC Chair: Joe Nazzal
T. AAC Chair: Ritesh Mishra
U. GASC Chair: Ivon Garcia x
V. B&F: David Heifetz
W. Secretary of Outreach and Engagement: Jade Wolansky
X. Controller: Joe DeAngelo
Sandhu: since there was no old legislation no agenda was printed. All last week were withdrawn.
II. Traffic Confirmations – 6:16
i. Nolan: how’s it going? We as a committee put out applications and got several applicants. Here are the top selections so hopefully you can confirm them speedily
ii. Savage: hi thank you for coming I was just wondering hat experience you have with ASUCD and what you will bring to ASUCD?
iii. Anisha: I’m a first year transfer and I don’t have experience but I am looking forward to helping the transfer committee and get involved.
iv. Echo: I’m a first year international agriculture major. I have a lot of friends who are transfers. I hopefully can get involved and know more people in asucd
v. Flores: what’s one area regarding transferring that you would like to see improve?
vi. Anisha: Tabling, I know it helps if there’s a table for transfers. To let us know about resources and connecting
vii. Echo: my suggestion is that maybe we can explore about the information. It’s about social media, about different people in different countries that have different preferred social media. I know people use different so we can expand more about the information displayed on social media.
viii. Singh: similar to Flores, what’s an issue transfer students face?
ix. Anisha: making new friends and getting to know people so just trying to find people and enjoy our time in Davis. I personally think that’s
x. Echo: I’m a transfer in primary school. I moved from Taiwan so I think the difficult thing is to get into different kinds f activities like very special activities in Davis.
xi. Nazzal: what do you think is the biggest way transfer issues are different from freshmen?
xii. Anisha: I think going off the semester system it was hard for me and taking upper division classes and adjusting to a new environment with the hard classes. It’s probably similar. Similar struggles
xiii. Echo: one of the biggest difficulty is when people are joining Davis in fall they already form a big family but transfers enter at a different time. So they need to get more involved because they have a harder time adjusting to society
xiv. Jamaludin: are you an international student and a transfer?
xv. Echo: I’m international not transfer
xvi. Jamaludin: how is your role different than international committee? Are you aware there was an international student committee?
xvii. Nolan: did you have applications open?
xviii. Jamaludin: you should let them know that’s an option. What are your ideas to bring as an international student?
xix. Echo: its hard to get involved to this society so I think as an international student I need to get more involved with the activities organized by organizations included international students
xx. Jamaludin: Nolan you should get her involved with that. It might be a conflict of interest for both committees. Communicate with Michelle
xxi. Sandhu: we can only ask applicants questions both can answer
Confirmed
III. Unit Director Report Bike Barn – 6:24
i. David: I’m the current business manager. John will be taking over in the summer
ii. John: we just heard there are misconceptions on what we do. Bike barn is the only student run bike shop on campus in Davis. We offer cool work experience and usually only employ ling term employees people usually stay for at least two years. We provide rental service very fast repairs and flat rates, bicycle trade in options and sales. We partner with multiple departments to offer bicycles for them to use. Some of those departments are the police, student housing, TAPS, and flying farmers.
iii. David: over the past months we’ve been looking at ways to save money and increase revenue. We now minimum wage went up and will continue to. One of the things in January we increased labor prices across the board and that’s been very successful. Nobody has said customers have left since the price increase. We added a charge for shop supply to ever repair. It’s a dollar per dollar since we use greasers and lubricant. In the past they weren’t accounted for in what they paid so we added a flat flee which certainly adds up. We are also looking at new ways, one of the things is the pricing of bikes and how students look for lower cost options such as Wal-Mart or target. We can’t ever compete with those prices we are looking at doing less business with higher end brands and focusing on price point students asking for. So in the 250-300 range because we do know that’s what the students want and we will do our best to provide for them We’ve been increasing marketing efforts we met with joseph yesterday about getting a sign in traffic circle. We share the building and that traffic circle gets a lot of attention. We are aware a lot of people don’t know where we are so as the only on campus ASUCD bike shop all students should know where that is so they don’t have to look up bike shops in Davis. We are trying to cement that in and the easiest way is to target freshmen. They should be customers for all four years.
iv. Josh: we love to have visitors and people stopping through. Our boss has offered this ever since he’s been here and one president has come down since 19 years so we would love any of you to come down and we can teach you anything you want. Well put you in an apron and answer any questions you have. We don’t even know who our adopted senator is so we would love to answer any questions
v. Sandhu: please put away all electronic devices. I have it open to look at schedule so please
vi. Chiang: there are issues with conference tomorrow and I’m trying to figure those out
vii. Sandhu: go outside then
viii. Heifetz: what do you think about inventory in the store do you have too many different colored units?
David: we are trying to reduce it down to bare necessities in that for lights, we don’t need a ton of different options. We are looking at reducing the different styles we have because that has been an issue in the past and it was brought up at last meeting as well. If we just tell them which one to pick
ix. Josh: normal bike shops are enthusiast. With us students just want cheap and fast. We are going to focus on that in the future and not buy unnecessary expensive things. We will remedy in future
x. Grewal: for the expensive inventory like bikes, will you sell at cheaper price or will they stay the same? I know that’s why bike barn is suffering and losing money
xi. Josh: every year we have a yard sale we sell a lot of our inventory there/ we discount bikes 40% off and we still have some stuff left. We are looking at different options I wanted to contact race and triathlon so they come to us for service
xii. David: our current flee of bikes can still be sold the following year so we wont buy more this upcoming year. I don’t anticipate people caring this bike is last years model. It will reduce expenses in the future since we have bikes now
xiii. Singh: I know you had yard sale how many units did you end up selling?
xiv. David: very successful sale, last year was average we did 3500 more in sales this year. We think its because we redid the format. Last year we took it outside and the construction had just begun so it was in a dirt lot, which was not ideal. This year we opened up the back of the shop like the warehouse area. That’s where all inventory is so people just came in and picked out what they wanted there and set up a walkway in the middle of the shop where mechanics were looking. It was new and it was easier to display everything.
xv. Josh: we are thinking of moving the front of the shop to the warehouse because it’s actually easier to see it from there. We are going to need air conditioning there it’ll need some work but we can push it for the future
xvi. David: its more suited as a show room. We ordered bike shop statistics and they tell you revenue and square footage and the ways to measure bike shop. Our show room space is way smaller than bike shops in comparable business. The warehouse area will allow us to display more product
xvii. Singh: so budget hearings are this weekend
xviii. Wolansky: an idea I had for bike barn is about getting permitting like a permit done at the bike barn like registration
xix. Josh: we offer that if you purchase through our program. It’s the same price as TAPS. We were offering to sell bike registration to students last move in weekend but TAPS only gave us so many stickers so we ran out
xx. David: I don’t think TAPS wants us to be the sole distributor of those but I will check with them and see why we haven’t had that partnership
xxi. Wolansky: because there are three locations and it’s a great way to bring people in. the reason I go to the depot is fir that so it’s a suggestion for marketing. I’m also working on creative media so are there any aspects you’d like to highlight for freshmen?
xxii. Josh: we talked about creating a commercial for working and working with the head of tabling for orientation. We wanted to do was get the commercial made and include it in an orientation package email and table at every dorm and give them like a coupon so they can come in the door. So everyone who moves in knows there’s a bike shop on campus
xxiii. Wolansky: so you’re in the process of making a pamphlet?
xxiv. Josh: yes
xxv. Dhaliwal: it says you have average 20 students how many are mechanics?
xxvi. David: no one has specifics besides higher up but everyone else is entry-level mechanics. Everyone is trained as one
xxvii. Dhaliwal: if you intend on increasing customers will your current staff handle that or will you hire more in the future?
xxviii. David: it depends what the additional people are looking for. We are very labor intensive we repair more than most bike shops and that requires our large staff. The bike shops downtown have three or four employees and don’t really do repairs. And that’s what we do; we do repairs. So if they’re all coming to get bikes fixed, additional staff would be needed. The limiting thing is how many we can do per day but if customers are willing to wait then we candle that
xxix. Dhaliwal: how many bikes did you fix this year?
xxx. David: close to ten thousand
xxxi. Josh: we do at least 20 a day, as well as building
xxxii. David: we also have students coming in for very simple things that don’t need the bikes to stay overnight. It’ll take me like two seconds to fix it. Its common
xxxiii. Josh: I can fix in less than a minute and they leave on their way
xxxiv. Chiang: I was wondering I looked at the actuals but I’m not numbers based, how much did yall lose this year?
xxxv. David: like the one that would have been finalized last July? It was 11000 loss. I will say I’m not sure its been clear is that our accounting is done we calculate all spending and after that its cost of inventory. If our inventory decreases by 10000 it gets factored as a lose because the value of the business decreased. Our inventory decreased 1500 last year so in terms of money spent and taken in it was a 4000 loss but the inventory decreased so the accounting dropped to -11000. We didn’t take money out of reserves or anything
xxxvi. Chiang: what will you project to be loss or gain this year?
xxxvii. David: inventory isn’t done until July so it’s hard to say. It’s hard to know for sure where it’ll sit. Right now around the break-even point, I guess maybe 5 to 10 thousand ahead
xxxviii. Chiang: what do you think you did wrong previously that led to this?
xxxix. Josh: we have a lot of inventory we can’t sell that’s just sitting and we have to sell it really discounted and incur a loss. We have things people don’t want to buy. So we have to make sure we have the product
xl. Chiang: how do you ensure you wont continue buying things that people won’t want?
xli. Savage: In regards to partnering with departments is that free or reduced rate what entails partnership?
xlii. David: none are free like student housing they ranked 12 bikes from us each year for the dorms and student bike share program. We rent out them and eservice as needed. They two years ago they signed an agreement for 250 per bike and then we gave a small discount for repeat customer and depreciated value. It’s normally the charge we charge everyone else
xliii. Savage: it is convenient to have this on campus and I definitely would think marketing is the biggest problem so its great you’re working with jade. If you’re thinking of handing out coupons it might be easier to put on freshmen doors so you get everyone