Rocky Mountain Flycasters - Board Meetings
Rocky Mountain Flycasters Board Meeting
April 11, 2012
Those in attendance included: Dave Piske, Melinda Macpherson, Lee Evans, Paul Wehr, Dennis Cook, Cullen Emsing, Charles Plunkett, Bryon Fessler, Dick Jeffries, Wil Huett, Sean Cronin, and Susan Schafer and Catherine Dillon from the City’s Natural Areas program.
Called to order: 7:00pm
President’s Comments: I’ll gloss over the fact that Lee got skunked on the San Juan and just mention that we had a few additions to the agenda.
Conservation Report: Our guests from the Fort Collins Natural Areas program are Susan Schafer and Catherine Dillon. We’re mutually happy with how we are being treated. The Fort Collins Natural Areas Adopt-a-Trail program was new for the city last year and they wanted to ease into it with just a few projects and a few groups. The two projects that RMF was involved with (Overlook Trail and Black Powder Trail at Gateway Park) went great, there were 12 volunteers for each. The next phase will be to commit to an additional 3 years (2 projects per year) and in recognition of our partnership the City will provide: a sign at the trailhead recognizing RMF, an ad of thanks in the Coloradoan two times per year, recognition in the City’s e-newsletter, links from the City website to the RMF website. A motion was made a passed to commit to three years of supporting the Adopt-a-Trail program. Project dates for this year will be June 13th (8am-11am) and September 8th (8am-11am), both Saturdays with a picnic to follow. Also, save the date for the volunteer appreciation picnic (with food, live music and prizes!) on August 18th. In addition Susan told us that the RMF branding of the monofilament collection tubes is a go. (Woot!)
The minutes from the last meeting were approved as corrected.
Treasurer’s Report: The new income items included the March meeting raffle sales, $2 for pop, 2 youth camp entries, an unsolicited sustaining donor donation for the Robert Hillen Memorial, and a directed donation to the youth camp from OtterCares. We are still waiting for some folks to pay for the CTU Gala.
Nominations Report: The slate of officers needs to be approved by the board of trustees. Even though we have a standing committee, all leadership committee members should be encouraging and recruit people in the chapter who might be interested in a leadership role. We still don’t have a nominee for VP, but we’re still hoping someone might step up. A motion was made a passed to accept the slate of officers as presented by the nomination’s committee. As a matter of housekeeping, the description of duties should be normalized between the by-laws and website.
Youth Activities Report: There is an update of TIC in the newsletter. The Fort Collins Recreator will be out on April 23rd with the advertisement for the Youth Day Camp. Right now we have 5 campers registered and paid and 3 in the wings. Two of the four cash grants have come in. The Coloradoan will run 4 ads April-June using the spiffy new ad from the Recreator.
Adam Omernick has agreed to step into the Day Camp coordinator role for next year.
Jerry Pelis (who has agreed to head up the Children’s Water Festivals) will attend the next board meeting to meet the group.
Membership Report: Stephanie was not in attendance. We were introduced to Wil Huett who has agreed to step in to the Community Outreach/Membership position. Dick outlined a proposal for a newly formed leadership chair to handle broader PR for the chapter. A motion passed to create a new position “Community Outreach Chair” and to graciously accept Wil Huett in that position. This person will include notifications to the various newspapers under their duties and will work to develop stronger relationships with CTU and National TU.
Old Business:
- Newsletter: Thanks for meeting the deadlines and good job with formatting and sticking the guidelines. Some links to points of contact have failed, go to website so everyone sees the contact info and how to get in touch. Instead of utilizing a calendar, just use lists in the youth and conservations reports for upcoming events. The recognition that we received from Constant Contact was awesome!
- Donor recognition: Lee suggested a new procedure via e-mail. The goals were to: recognize the donors and do it in a way that is manageable for the newsletter editor. For each activity the lead person has to write an article to recognize the sponsors/donors and the volunteers for the activity—this provides immediate recognition. The point of contact for major corporate donors could write an article about these companies for the newsletter (may include a coupon? Or something?). Every newsletter will have a picture at the bottom what shows all the corporate donors—Paul will come up with a JPEG for consideration.
- The Larimer County Fishing Expo: There was discussion with participants regarding our youth camp and mission. This may not be our audience, they seemed to be mostly spin-casters. There were no recommendations for changes from the volunteers, other than possibly having a more visible conservation display, and possibly more volunteers.
- CTU Gala: Dave attended. It was an amazing production with a huge (computerized) silent auction and a live auction. It looks like from announcements made at the event that New Belgium will be partnering with the Save the Colorado campaign.
- CTU Rendezvous: Dennis is attending and will report at the next board meeting.
- RMF Awards Procedure: Dennis made a few updates to his initial policy. These awards will begin next year. There was a motion to accept this procedure which had been tabled at the last meeting. The motion to create this awards program was made and carried.
- RMF Patches: Are here and Dennis was a lovely model!
- Project Healing Waters Discussion: There is no cost to the group to get involved, we don’t have to start big (although there may still be some discussion about licenses/insurance?) and we will partner with the VA hospital in Cheyenne. There was a motion made and carried to sponsor Project Healing Water and to tell Chris Lamsen to “go for it”. The group expressed that they would like periodic updates for Chris about how things are going.
- Fort Collins Water Fest: Jerry Pelis is working on this event.
- Loveland Waterway Clean-up: it’s rolling!
- Strategic Plan: It should be short and simple. We’ll table this until next month.
- Narrows Clean-up Date: We have a tentative date to clean-up on May 19th. It’s mostly downed branches.
- Next meeting: Mr. Sweet talks about the Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout. The US Forest service will talk about upcoming volunteer activities. Eric Ishiwata will be “on the vice”. Jake Ruthven will plug his club’s fishing slam. Dick will run the meeting since Lee will be out of town.
- Coffee Sales: Are we going to open the group to corporate advertising? At this point the board is not willing to open ourselves to an ongoing corporate relationship.
- Chapter Fishing Plans: A Delaney Buttes trip. We should think about getting a fishing activity program together that would include both day and overnight trips.
The meeting was adjourned: 9:45pm
Melinda Macpherson, Secretary