Member meeting - Dec 14, 2017 - Quick discussion on Project Storage Rules

DMS General
#23

EDIT: I can’t think of any topic that’s more contentious than storage and I really want to thank the few of you that volunteer your time to make it work.

Having once made an honest mistake and nearly had my stuff off-sited, I can certainly appreciate that! OMG you wouldn’t believe how panicked I was … and believe me, I certainly haven’t made that mistake twice.

Based on @ESmith 's comments above about habitual offenders, my approach would vary based on whether the “storage user” has been offsited in the past or not. A first offense could be an honest mistake. For a second (or greater) offense, I would send the materials straight to the trash.

Could the storage system kiosk be modified to:
(a) Send an expiration reminder 7 days in advance, and
(b) Print an identifier on the ticket so that the offsiting volunteers who are reviewing the expired storage would know the number of times that the specific storage user has been offsited?

I suggest this not to shame the storage user but to make the information readily available for the offsiting volunteers.

2 Likes
#24

An issue that came up in the past that I think @lukeiamyourfather was referring to was that someones project was discarded and the materials were then recovered by another member. Argument ensued over materials. If things end up in the trash this will happen.

Another issue we had was with the freebie shelf where someone picked something off freebie shelf only to have another person take it claiming they needed it more and locked it in their car and the cops were called. So whatever you decide please don’t put them up for grabs/dumpster diving.

I understand off siting is a lot of work and really the most viable solution I see is an employee. Someone that along with other duties handles storage. Maybe they don’t off site but they track and charge.

Just for some other perspectives this is what other Makerspaces do.
https://wiki.milwaukeemakerspace.org/projectstorage/parkingpermitstickets
https://quelab.net/wiki/doku.php?id=policies%3Aproperty_tags&s[0]=permits
https://wiki.pumpingstationone.org/Tidy_Space_Policy



But all of this doesn’t matter if no one is willing to do the work.

1 Like
#25

If that is the most viable solution, then the rest of that solution is that those using storage fully cover that cost not the general membership. I think when the majority of the storage good actors are required to pay for the bad, non-$$$ non-employee solutions will be found much more acceptable. Hiring someone because certain folks don’t want to keep commitments to follow usage rules is in my opinion one of the worse reasons to expend member funds.

I don’t understand why when an adult walks into the Space they are suddenly not expected to be responsible and accountable like they are when they are in “the real world”? This creates a culture of enabling bad behavior: “Yeah I know I agreed to comply with the storage rules - but I know I can ignore it, someone else will move it offsite for me and I can just go pick it up there.”

Why not an off-siting fee of say $25 or $50, proceeds to Logistics. Or pay it to the offsiters as an independent contractor on a 1099. If not paid by time their next dues payment is due, membership cancelled until paid unless there’s a way to bill them, the agreement could be part of when they sign up for storage space.

The problem is members not being held responsible for their actions. They can pick it up on-time, renew in person at the logistics meeting, or have a proxy show-up. That’s three options we’ve made available that are not being utilized. The fourth is we extend storage for a month with volunteers moving it offsite - much of it never claimed. How are we being the bad actor here?

4 Likes
#26

Thank you guys for doing what you to do. Especially in the hot of summer and cold of winter, it’s miserable. Those who make a habit of leaving their items should definitely be required to help off site to get their storage privileges back imo.

3 Likes
#27

Lots of good ideas here - I like sending a notification before storage expires and perhaps a 7 day grace period. I think items abandoned in storage should be put in the dumpster or freebie shelf. DMS volunteer time is too valuable for offsiting, volunteers could be doing more important things to help at DMS. If it’s decided to keep taking things to storage then I think we should find a 1099 contractor who will haul it to storage and then charge an off-siting fee to cover the cost of the contractor.

1 Like
#28

Here I fixed it for you Zach. Lol Clean burning. That gets rid of the “He stole my project”
IMG_2454

8 Likes
#29

Alex, thanks for sharing this. It’s useful to see how others do things so we can shameless steal leverage other good ideas.

After reading all of these, they are similar to what we do. They have catchier names and stickers, but conceptually they are similar. They vary in who can issue a parking “ticket” for a storage offense, but are otherwise much alike.

The question I would have is how well these schemes work for them; what they’ve done for enforcement, and any modifications they would suggest.

Storage will expand to fill the amount of space allotted to it. This is a truism. Space is at a premium and less storage = less volunteer-intensive. If we drastically reduced project storage I’m sure we could find more uses for that space.

@LukeStrickland … do you have any feel for what percentage of storage slots are in violation monthly?

2 Likes
#30

Shelf 1: 8/11
Shelf 2: 5/11
Shelf 3: 4/11
Shelf 4: 16/23
Shelf 5: 7/12
Shelf 6: 5/8
Shelf 7: 3/6

Vertical: Unknown… some amount greater than 20

That’s the count of red tags, offsiting was about 2/3rds of that. Two pickup trucks, two suv backs filled.

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#31

So much good wood. Knowing that a good chunk of that will end up in the trash is truly heartbreaking.

#32

We chop most of it in half :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#33

YIKES!! Everyone should pay attention to this. Not counting the really big stuff, which was also egregious, 58% of the storage was non-compliant! And about 40% of the total storage was off-sited.

Minor procedural changes aren’t going to make enough impact. It’s time for a drastic change.

5 Likes
#34

I’m going to post extreme notice of the storage extension meeting this month and count again and see if the number changes much. I extended as many people as I’ve normally extended though.

2 Likes
#35

Evil man!

What date will off-siting be in January? If its the weekend of the 13th I can be there to help and we can use my truck as well.

#36

they work alright but most places have staff. If you look at a lot of makerspaces they get staff when they have around 200 members, some have them from day 1. Charging a fee is the common thing for offenders. Even low fees like $1 a day still needs someone to monitor items daily.

From Hammerspace in KCMO

Parking permits, parking tickets, up for grabs, borked or broken equipment.

Parking permits are issued by the staff and incur a charge of $1 per day for oversized storage.

Members have free perpetual storage for items that will fit in a banker box.

A dollar a day for a large item, pallet of wood, stack of metal, piece of furniture Etc is reasonably low, while still acting as a deterrent against using the space as free storage for the garbage in your garage.

Parking tickets are attached to property that has been left in the space without a parking permit.

Oversized items left without a permit still incur $1 a day charges, which must be paid to retrieve your item.

Parking tickets on smaller items are a courtesy attempt to locate the owner.

If a parking ticket remains on an item for the period of one month, the item may be disposed of according to the discretion of the staff.

Up for grabs items can be left in the same storage areas that we use for permitted parking. The special tag indicates that it is member-owned property, but should be considered available for any member to use.

After 30 days, up for grabs items are either disposed of, or added to our material inventory.

Borked or broken tool tags are available for use after hours to notify the staff of tool breakage or other tool related issues.

if cost is too low people will just pay the fee and think its OK to leave large items for longer.

I think it was Allen that told me a story about a daycare that had a problem with parents picking their kids up on time. So to solve this they said they would charge something like $5 for every 15 minutes a parent was late picking up their kids. Late parents increased because it was now acceptable to be late and only have to pay a few dollars.

I don’t think there is a perfect solution as a fee is more a deterrent for others but I can’t think of a punishment that is equal to all, so that is why it is my suggestion.

1 Like
#37

I proposed economy via non-monetary, non-transferable means in the past in order to reduce some of these potential shenanigans. Fail to exercise reasonable urgency in your use of storage and it will cost you storage privileges in the future, simple as that.

5 Likes
#38

Not saying this is a good idea, but when it comes to “punishment fitting the crime”…

what if, in order to retrieve your offsited stuff, you had to be there, with the offsiting team, assisting to offsite THIS round’s stuff. This makes YOUR offsited stuff “hostage” until the next offsite, at which point, you get to assist in the ongoing effort, including throwing away all the stuff nobody bothered to show up for… I’m sure there’s tons of flaws in that, but it seems like one way to enact some of the suggestions here.

Alternately, (or in concert, perhaps) I like the idea of rolling deadlines, which I think is more possible now, with the ticketing kiosk. Thus, it can be broken down into smaller, more manageable loads daily, weekly, or really, at any interval decided upon by the committee chair and designees. Once the time allotment is exceeded for any phase, it is subject to go to the next phase at any time.

#40

I see many sides of this, and yours is a very valid one, yet not one which appears to curry much favor amongst the membership.

#41

When a member has to have their storage off sited, they LOSE their right to storage
until they help offsite

A rotating system might be a help, b ut then if we are still offsiting it just take more times

#42

Alright folks I’m taking the knowledge shared in this thread, and adding it to my notes for tonights discussion.

Thanks for the feedback so far. It’s good to know how we’ve done it in the past, what worked, what didn’t and what others are doing.

I don’t have a solid plan yet but I’ll share my ideas tonight.

@Team_Moderators Can you close this topic?

3 Likes
#43

We can’t expect violators to voluntarily participate in off-siting so any consequences that require off-siting won’t succeed. Nor do we have a good way to collect financial penalties and there is the side effect that it becomes low cost storage.

Now that I see the magnitude of the problem, here’s my suggested procedural changes.

All items 2-5 assume they are within some rolling time period (6 months? 12 months?)

(1) Please implement a 7-day advance warning email from the kiosk on storage expiration.
(2) First offense - your stuff gets off-sited
(3) Second offense - your stuff goes straight to the trash
(4) Third offense - your stuff goes straight to the trash and you lose storage privileges for the next (6-month rolling?) time period
(5) Fourth offense - your stuff goes straight to the trash and you lose DMS access for 30 days.

Anyone could roll-back their penalty one level by spending a full day participating in the off-siting.

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