Minutes April 2010 Board Meeting

I am posting these minutes here - they will end up in the proper place when I figure out how to do that. There are some reports missing - thanks for your patience. tk98



Round Table Discussion:
• Hiding ArkGeo caches – A proposal for guidelines will come from the Community Relations Committee

Meeting was called to order at 6:30 pm.

Members present – Pat Vaughn, David Spicer, Richard Lee, Beth Daniel, and Mike Pinkston and Jerry Turner by conference call. Also present by conference call was assistant Web Master, Mark Schneider.
Members of ArkGeo present – Judy Vaughn (MathSeeker), Wayne Lunsford (gaddiel), Holly Thorwarth (gingerose) and 00shark.

Submission of minutes from last meeting:
Minutes were submitted and approved online.

Officers’ reports:
President’s Report- (insert here)
Treasurer’s Report – Current balance as of
March 31 is $2013.69.
Website Manager’s Report – unable to obtain – we heard from MarkSAr. Please see committee report.

Committee reports:
Election committee:
We have six nominees for the Board Election. Five were nominated by the committee. Two were nominated from the membership. One of our nominees has withdrawn from the election.

Fund Raising committee:
They are frustrated with the process of obtaining funds to order merchandise. We discussed the possibility of a “Fund Raising Month”.

Community Relations Committee: (Insert report from David that was sent to Jerry)

Events Committee: (Insert report from Richard)

Special committee for website management continuity: Wayne has submitted a report.

Unfinished business:
Status of ArkGeo Goals – Goals are being met by the deadlines with the exception of website continuity.
Website issues – Blocking of IP addresses was discussed.
Future of website continuity committee: A two man committee of Wayne and Mike to begin a search for our website. Contact Bert/content management system/recruit committee members/ possibly transferring ownership of ArkGeo domain will be their goals.

Getting MOGA to Arkansas: The Board discussed the amount of help needed for hosting MOGA.

New business:
*The slate of candidates for 2010 Board Election was assembled as follows:
- David Cope (grizz51)
- Brian Landers (geojeepers)
- Ron Laster (rkl of rklmbl)
- Tim Stone (BSA534)
- Holly Thorwarth (gingerose)
- Judy Thiedig Vaughn (MathSeeker)

*Resignation of Mike Beavers: This has necessitated the need to fill the position of Secretary for next year. The motion was made, seconded, and approved to combine the positions of Secretary and Treasurer with the by-laws and standing rules changed to reflect this combination.

*Establishment of an annual budget: All committees will send input to Secretary/Treasurer for their budget needs. She will assemble a proposed budget to submit to the Board for approval.

*Addition of Website Moderators: The President, Vice President, website manager, assistant webmaster, immediate past president, and Wayne Lunsford currently have the ability to moderate website posts. The biggest need thus far has been to delete spam.

*Co-Webmaster duties and responsibilities: Mark has done an awesome job, but is limited by our current website. Thanks, Mark!

*Adoption of a point system for ArkGeo member participation: Proposal for the point system is to be sent to the Board on the Board forums in the immediate future. Excellent work, committee!
An ad hoc membership participation committee consisting of the current members of the community relations committee was approved.

*Agreement with Arkansas State Parks for maintenance of State Park Caches was approved. This was signed by the President and will be sent to the State Parks for their signatures. (Way to go, Frank! Thanks for handling this for us!)

*Next Board meeting will be July 9, 2010 in Conway.

Meeting was adjourned.

I would think that board members and general ArkGeo membership would be interested in having a breakdown of income and expenditures as part of the treasurer's report...ie., Beginning Balance, Income by category, Expenses by category, and Ending Balance.

One of the biggest problems a few years ago which caused spinoffs from Arkansas Geocachers Association was lack of timely information from Board meetings and the fact that the members were not told what was happening behind the scenes. We would certainly hate to see the same problems arise again.

Have to agree with the L's about that. Although I don't see a LARGE lack of info being passed down to membership, there is SOME. For example, the very first part of the minutes, about some type of guidelines for ArkGeo caches. I haven't even heard a simple rumour about that, much less any type of statement from the board.

The board represents those of us who are simple members, they aren't there to completely make all decisions which affect us, without us being involved. So information being shared with membership should be of primary & immediate importance.


On a lighter note:

I have maintained 2 personal web-sites for year through AwardSpace. Other than an occasional outage, which usually occurs during maintanance & lasts 10 minutes or so, I have NEVER had a problem with them. Quite opposite, I would have to recommend them over ANY host that I've ever used which have been 3-5 of them.

At one time, I used one of those web-sites quite a bit & needed lots of bandwidth. So I upped my package to 750Gig/month, which was later upgraded at no extra cost to 1,000Gig/month, then again to unlimited bandwidth per month.

That last part was purely a "loyalty" bonus, since I had been using them for 35 years & never missed a payment. (Somehing like that anyway) But basically what it boils down to, I have a hosting package capable of supporting up to 32 domains, 30 assorted types of databases, 30 PostgreSQL's (whatever thems is), PHP4/5/6, ASP.NET, Perl/cgi-bin, python, ruby, & all that other junk you don't need & I don't know what is. It also has unlimited sub-domans, e-mail accounts, & alias's. Also comes with a free domain name for life .... but I already use that part & ain't giving it up.

Since I'm on a special "loyalty" plan, not available to new-comers, I'm not sure what it would cost for all of this. But I think I'm paying about $60/year.

All of this is there for the taking, for free, if ArkGeo wants to move the site over there. My personal sites will never be taken down, because I use them every day, so there's no worry about it even getting disconnected for non-payment. Although I won't ask for any type of reimbursement ever, being as the offer is to just help the association out, there will be 2 conditions:

1. I WON'T refuse donations .... say, like ammo-cans, bison-tubes, & Lock-N-Locks. :) :)

2, Apart from doing all I know how in order to make the move (not much), like giving the webmaster appropriate passwords & such .... I won't help in making or maintaining the operation any more than that. I'm not being mean, it's just that (a.) I know VERY little about web design, coding, etc., so just can't be of much help & (b.) It's not something I enjoy doing, and don't really have any desire to learn how to do.

So, if ArkGeo want to use what I have, wants it for free, & has someone that can do the job without my help .... it's here for you to use.

If the board is interested, give me a PM.

If you consider Robert's Rules of Order for a Board Meeting, these minutes are actually involved. One could recommend that the treasurer submit a more formal annual, bi-annual or quarterly report to be attached to these minutes.

When I was recording the minutes for some of our past Secretaries, I always did much more involved minutes. I have drasticly reduced that due to the Board's desire to adhere to Robert's Rules. The Board as a whole decided this for me. Board meetings can be attended by anyone. They can even be attended by phone.

The minutes were slow to be posted this time because I was not aware I would be taking minutes that week until a day before and I was not sent the appropriate reports from the various committees. Someone will soon be teaching me how to post the reports and the minutes by uploading it to that google docs thing, but that hasn't happened yet.

I think the minutes to date have been fine. No complaints and good work. Actually, as the secretary of an association, this stuff is work and your efforts are appreciated...

Thank you! I appreciate the appreciation. hahaha My tendency is truly not to be so short-winded. You should see a time or two when the gentlemen were editing me. HAHAHA Bless their hearts. :wink:

I think the info to date has always been great and I thank yall for doing this. I agree with the recommendation of a quarterly or at every meeting a quick run down of monies in/out to help curb concern about spending. I think the proposed budget idea is a great way to stay "on track" for the entire year.

I'm not sure if your looking for a entire host or new forum software or both...but I could probably help there a little. At least give some information on what I know is out there. Like PHP-BB is free and has a good following of people so questions and answers should be able to get answered quickly when it comes to features on the site and how to implement or troubleshoot them. Just as a FYI you have an expiration date on your domain:
Expiration Date:26-May-2011 15:24:53 UTC is what I pulled from whois so hopefully this gets figured out by then or at least renewed with Bert.

I am of the mindset that too much information is never too much. So having a good run down of the meeting and topics discussed at the meetings is a good thing overall for a healthy club/organization. I could care less about the formality of the minutes as long as it is organized in a consistent and thoughtful manner.

Also, I was hoping my topic: http://arkgeocaching.org/modules.php?na ... 3b5e6a7782 got some air time at this meeting, but it looks like I'll have to try and make a future meeting.

More information (except items in executive session) is always a good thing.

A question for the board.

Is there a formal method of requesting a topic to be addressed during a board meeting, especially in cases where a person who might want it addressed can't make the meeting?

I'm not on the board, but I used to be, so maybe I can answer that question.

The best avenue would probably be to contact a board member directly and get them to add it to the meeting agenda. You can also address the board at a meeting yourself. If you want to do this, be sure to request a place on the agenda.

Wayne