Minutes of SWANA Rocky Mountain Chapter Monthly Board of Directors Meeting

7 December 2004, 1:30 pm, Table Mountain Inn, 1310 Washington St., Golden, CO

ATTENDANCE:

Present:Curt Ahrendsen, Debby Barton, Laurie Batchelder Adams, Leonard Butler, John Briest, Roger Doak, Cindi Etcheverry, and Dick Sprague

Absent: Stephen Gillette

Minutes are in the order of the agenda and not necessarily in order of discussions.

CALL TO ORDER: Meeting called to order at 1:38 pm as quorum present and meal order completed.

ADOPTION OF AGENDA: No additions or corrections to agenda noted.

MINUTES:

Approval of 16 November 2004 minutes: Batchelder Adams/Doak moved/seconded to approve minutes as corrected. Motion carried unanimously.

FINANCIAL:

Treasurer's Report: Ahrendsen reported $9,781.61 in checking, $17,353.58 in savings, and the e-investment at $10,000. The payment to National SWANA for the Amicus Brief was sent in and is reflected in the checking amount. There is one outstanding bill for about $101 due as reimbursement for a room rental. There is a net profit from the annual meeting of about $3,428.

Budget: Directors began a line by line review of last year’s budget to develop current year’s budget. Basic consensus was to drop the Arid Landfill Symposium line item and to keep a line item for the Road-E-O pending someone wishing to take on the project for the chapter. There is a need for a chairman with passion, interest and contacts. Consensus was to leave as a breakeven and to revisit the line item in detail in February. Ahrendsen will take the information from the following discussions and send cleaned up version to Butler and Barton for review with the goal to send out to the board by 15 December for approval by the January board meeting. The following discussion points are in order of the budget line items and not necessarily in order of discussion.

Annual Meeting: Leave as a 10% profit to expenses. Batchelder Adams asked whether we need to set a goal of profit of 25% for meetings. No consensus reached except to note that the bi-monthly programs have had poorer attendance and it is hard to meet a breakeven much less a profit.
Bi Monthly Programs: Leave as is with dates of February, March and possibly April.
Board Meetings: Increase to $1,000 for $100 per meeting based on the current costs.
Annual Board Retreat: No discussion held to remove line item or address costs/revenue.
Road-e-o: Leave as break even item for now. Revisit in February 2005 if there is interest and a chairman to develop and ramrod the event.
Travel: Leave as is. The WasteCon portion of travel was to offset a director’s attending the Wastecon. This past year all that attended did so with their employer’s payment and no reimbursement requested or needed. Consensus was to leave for now as is. Batchelder Adams stated to leave the IB meeting reimbursement as is.
Membership Costs: Discussion held as to what is entailed in the costs. Discussion held to try for a member drive using other organizations lists, if possible or to request list from CDPHE to reach out to the smaller landfills and operators in the state that are not members of SWANA at this time. The costs for welcome letter with a possible invitation letter to non-members would be covered in this line item. Doak will check on availability of any CDPHE list for SWANA membership drive use.
Newsletter: Printing costs should be dropped to $25 as we have gone to electronic version for most members. A few do not have emails and would need a paper version. Leave postage as is. Move the advertisement revenue to the website as that is the trend to use the electronic webpage and emails. Discussion held on the amount to charge. Consensus was $100 for card ad in the newsletter as well as listing on the webpage.
Website: Briest brought in a budget developed by Erin Doak (current webmaster). Cost for 5 year name renewal is $65, one year web host fee of $120.89 (due now), and estimated $150 per month for webmaster duties. Total expenses expected at $1,985.89. Decision was to use $2,000 as cost. Revenue may be 5 to 10 companies for an income of 1000 which means a loss of $1000. Consensus was that there is cost avoidance for printing and mailing costs in the newsletter as we transfer to the website as well as providing member support. Consensus was to leave as $2,000 expense and $1,000 revenue. Briest will check with Erin about the use of .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) files to be downloaded by visitors to the web as well as maintaining all in MS Office type documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).
Promotions/Advertisements: Consensus was to leave as is. Discussion held on developing a new chapter banner for display at registration and meetings. Batchelder Adams will check with national SWANA about banner and new LOGO for the chapter. Discussion held on wanting to add the Colorado LOGO to any banners also to match website and program brochures. Discussion held on updating Tabletop with decision to leave alone for the time being.
Dues Rebates for National: Leave as is.
Officers E&O Liability: There is a slight increase in this line item but no one had the exact amount. National SWANA usually keeps out the amount needed from the dues in the first three months of their fiscal year (1 Oct – 31 Dec) so we don’t have to write a check back to National SWANA.
CD Interest on Savings: Leave the interest income as is. Ahrendsen will confirm conditions on the savings account as well as seeing if there is any higher, short term interest bearing accounts that could be tapped into.
Interest on Checking: There is no interest on the checking accounting but there is a monthly service charge of around $1 to $3 per month. Ahrendsen will check with bank about getting the fees waived or determining whether a different bank should be used for the chapter.
E Commerce Loan to National: Leave as is as the loans will not come due during the next year.
Miscellaneous Revenues/Expenses: Leave as is.
Discretionary Budget Items:

Awards and Scholarships: Increase Educational Student Scholarship to $500 to be awarded to a high school student (Grade 9-12). Delete the Road-e-o scholarship. Consider 2 scholarships for the June symposium. Leave other items alone.
Training and Special Events: Add a partnering line item (to allow partnering with other chapters or CDPHE) for joint training sessions. Add $2,500 using the profit from the annual meeting. Discussion held on the June symposium with the possibility of hosting an off site reception for about $500. Further discussion will be held in January or February.

COMMITTEE REPORTS:

Membership/Newsletter: Sprague will be mailing letters to members with expiring memberships. Ahrendsen will assist. Discussion held on needing to get emails for members without emails (a list was previously mailed to each board member for review and comments). Goal for the year is to retain the current membership and attempt to get inactive/suspended members back into the organization. There will be an effort to look at other lists to elicit new member recruitment (see previous discussion notes). Articles will need to be finished by 11 January 05 and sent to Sprague for the winter newsletter. Topics will include (primary responsible party in parenthesis): Annual Meeting Wrap Up and President’s Corner (Butler), Legislative and regulatory update and Amicus Brief status (Batchelder Adams), Scholarship plans and board director membership review (Briest), June Symposium in Boulder (Sprague & Batchelder Adams), and program synopsis (Doak)

Programs: Doak has been in contact with NE Colorado (Cliff Henry) and SE Colorado (Pat Mason) operators to get feedback on interest and topics for meetings. Etcheverry stated Republic Services has indicated to her an interest in training – she will report back on this contact. Question raised about the need to hold a MOLO at this time – no clear consensus reached. The February meeting would be in town and the other monthly programs are anticipated to go to other parts of the state to provide the training (if there is interest). Annual meeting discussion was begun with consensus to finalize dates and locations at the January meeting.

Legislative: No activity at this time – bills are in the process of being written.

Scholarship: Briest still awaiting feedback on taking SWANA to the field for training – will coordinate with program committee. Barton commented that the Southwest part of the state is still interested in household hazardous waste training. CAFR does not have ready cash but may be willing to partner in some events in the next year. The goal for training and scholarships is to increase member benefits. Need a “local champion” to coordinate training efforts as well as helping set the program. Briest will iron out scholarship information for the newsletters and will set deadlines for scholarship applications. Project for the high school scholarship will be for a paper or project due by April and/or May. Also need to set criteria for scholarships for the Boulder June symposium for professional people.

Nominations: No formal report. Discussion held to have an article in the newsletter about why someone should serve on the board with input from the current board members and possible past board members. Briest will develop and submit to the newsletter (see discussion under newsletter above).

Audit: Barton had not completed the audit and was working with Ahrendsen. Annual report was sent to the national office.

OTHER BUSINESS/REPORTS:

International Board: No activity/report.

Website: Briest brought the copy of the new contract ready for signature by the president. In addition, the web hosting fee of $120.89 is now due. Discussion held that Briest was given authorization to submit bills for payment. All documents, minutes and related material for the web are to go through Briest. Briest proposed to send out invoices to current advertisers. Consensus was to do so. See discussion under budget for website revenue. Discussion held that if need to purchase Adobe Acrobat for Erin to use on the web page we should do so. Briest will check with Erin on status of using .pdf files before coming back to the board with recommendation. Sprague/Ahrendsen moved/seconded to approve the website contract with Erin Doak and direct the president (Leonard Butler) to sign the contract. Motion carried unanimously.

SWANA 2005 Landfill/Planning Symposium, Boulder, CO: Symposium abstracts still arriving at national office. They are still looking for a keynote speaker. Some additional names mentioned by board members includes: John Fielder (Colorado photographer), Mike Leavitt (EPA), Doug Benevento (CDPHE), Robbie Roberts (Region VIII EPA), Gale Norton (Secretary, US Department of Interior), Hank Brown (former US Senator), and Mark Udall (former US Representative).

NEW BUSINESS (added to end of agenda/meeting)

National SWANA Web Links: Link for member information is working but can only print 1 page per time as reported by Sprague. Also the CEU is still under Beta testing with hopeful roll out by January/February.

Email Address change: John Briest is now working for Weaver Boos and will be helping establish their office in the Colorado area. He will send out information for addresses, emails and the like as the office opens fully.

Retirement: Glenn Mallory, CDPHE, has announced his retirement the end of February. His replacement will hopefully be on board by the first part of February to allow some overlap/training.

ADJOURNMENT

Next meeting will be at Racine’s in downtown Denver (650 Sherman Street) on Tuesday, 18 January 2005 at 7 am. Butler will make reservations. With no further business, meeting adjourned at 3:15 pm.

Email Votes proposed before next board meeting: