January Meeting Minutes

Meeting minutes from Wednesday, January 8th, 2020
Call to Order by President Michael Polzin at 6:05 p.m.
Board Member present: Michael Polzin, Shannon Johnson, Katie Wurtz, Ashley Thompson, Vicki Taylor, Jenni Wyatt, Debbie, Page, Kathie Kemp, Greg Schneider, and
Those who were not present: James Pogue and Sheila Riddell.
1. Approval of minutes from November 5, 2019. Vicki motioned, Shannon seconded the motion and President, Michael Polizin approved the minutes.
2. Corporate sponsorship committee – Shannon agreed to help FLANO spearhead this mission. Since Shannon does not live in the area and not familiar as well as we are, she requested all the board members to compile a list of potential sponsors in the local area and submit to her via email to get the process started. A few already discussed were: Cedar Stump Pub, speaking to owner, Jeremy Shaw. Let if Flow Yoga, speaking to co- owner, Sandy Plemmons, etc. Shannon will look at all these corporations and decide how we can proceed/approach people at one time once we determine what our goals are. Michael spoke about money easier to manage and what we can offer them when they participate. Event based versus project-based recognition. Shannon will work on putting together the “package” once we have submitted our ideas to her. Vicki mentioned she has worked with companies like Dick’s Sporting Goods and they will generally give out gift cards to promote at events, etc. Discussion continued by all board members.
Communication and Outreach Committee: Jeff was going to spearhead this committee prior to him moving away. Gregg discussed a possibility of us opening our monthly board members to the public – have a general meeting and if we need to discuss any private, we can. They can listen to what we are doing and hopefully it will bring more people to FLANO. Katie will email the members to start to advertise this. Everyone agreed that the meeting should be open to the public. Debbie Page is continuing to manage the website and FLANO’s Facebook account. Debbie also handles any press releases that we need. Debbie mentioned that she “boosted” the New Year’s Day Hike – with her own money on Facebook. There were 60 people at that hike. Debbie will be doing press releases for the grant we obtained.
Debbie Page mentioned that she will be doing the “Get Fit Iredell” event again at the park. This will take place on Sunday, May 3, 2020. We can advertise FLANO at this time, as we did last year.
a. Action item: each member email Shannon with your ideas.
3. Board Meetings change of day: Meetings to be rescheduled to the first Wednesday of the month. We had previously discussed quarterly but now that we have entered the busy
season and summer coming up, we have decided to do monthly meetings until we feel comfortable. We also need to set up the Annual Meeting. Katie mentioned we can move our April meeting to coincide with the annual meeting. We discussed and confirmed that the Annual Meeting will take place on Saturday, April 4, 2020, starting at 10 a.m.Pursuant to the rules, this will be posted to the public on Facebook and our website. Debbie will add to the slideshow we did last year and incorporate the events and pictures from this year. Jenni Wyatt informed us she will not be at the meeting. We will keep the March meeting to prepare for the annual meeting. Michael is going to email Karen so we can be sure they have the space open for us since we have moved our meetings to another day. We are requesting the auditorium for the annual meeting.
4. Membership Update: Katie Wurtz reported that we have 24 members in 2019. $2, 628.74, in general funds. There is $275 amount left for the REI grants funds that need to be used by March. There is $395 in the petty cash. Kathie asked Greg how he thought we are doing according to how other parks are doing, Katie said that the 2 grants we obtained during the year was a good start. REI grant was $6,000 in total. Discussion followed on how we thought we were doing member wise. We could continue to do outreach to obtain more members. Renewal membership emails were sent out in August. Katie is going to continue to remind members to update their memberships. Katie mentioned when people sign up with PayPal it provides their address and email address for her to add to the member distribution. Katie thought if we sold a five (5) year membership that may bring better numbers.
5. Group Camp Project Update: Katie and Greg let us know that the update is we need to set another date to continue. Joy from REI let Katie know that she does not need much of a heads up for the date, she can help. B & C look great and are serviceable. A & E need to be completed so we will need 2 more days, discussions followed by board members. Vicki mentioned we need to look at dates for the Enhancement Program workdays. Shannon said we should include the school kids as they need something to do and have been helpful. Next day scheduled is February 22, 2020. Discussions followed about having the school kids help and the logistics of same. Greg thinks we can utilize the kids for group camp D. Vicki reminded us we have a specific timeline for the eradication grant, deadline would begin the eradication phase by winter and now we will need to send a repot to them in September of 2020. Discussions followed about how to order what we need, and Vicki and Greg came up with a plan to order online and have FSP pay for it in the cart. Katie thought that would be the fastest way to get the grant money spent. After some date discussions with the board, we decided the following dates below.
Dates decided for the Invasive Species Eradication as follows: February 15th & February
th th 29 &March7 .
Dates decided for the Habitat Enhancement Program as follows: March 14th and March
th 28 .
Katie will put together a list of all the dates for FLANO events that we can distribute to all the members and Debbie will add to the website and Facebook.
6. New Business: After the discussions above we have decided to push back this topic until the following meetings. Greg is planning on continuing the hikes he has been doing and the next one will take place on Saturday, February 8th starting at 9am. These have been very successful. He will get us more dates during the following months. Discussions followed about moving our FLANO goods to the basements of the park. We can use it for an office and to house all our gear.
**We have scheduled our next meeting for Wednesday, February 12, 2020. Meeting adjourned at 7:10 p.m. Katie Wurtz and I will open the donation box.