Minutes of SWANA Rocky Mountain Chapter Monthly Board of Directors Meeting

18 October 2005, LaPeep’s, 8081 E Orchard, Englewood, CO

ATTENDANCE:

Present: Debby Barton, , John Briest, Leonard Butler, Cathy Claes, Roger Doak, Cindi Etcheverry (late) and Stephen Gillette

Absent: Laurie Batchelder Adams and Dick Sprague

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

CALL TO ORDER: Meeting called to order at 7:08 am as 7 of 10 directors present for a quorum.

ADOPTION OF AGENDA: The following items were added to the agenda: National Certification Test Date (9 December), Power Point Presentation for International Board Report, and SWANA Officer’s Call for 15 November. Briest/Doak moved/seconded to adopt the agenda as amended. Motion carried.

MINUTES:

Barton requested that the member meeting minutes sent on 17 October not be approved as she found her notes and would have to correct and resubmit the minutes. Consensus was to approve the various minutes via email.

TREASURER:

Treasury Status: No report as transfer from Curt Ahrendsen to Stephen Gillette had not been completed. Discussion held that financial report will be due National by 31 December. Copy of the report format will be sent by Barton to Gillette. In addition to transferring the checkbook and updating signature cards, Quicken Software will be transferred for Stephen to continue the financial reporting for the chapter. Stephen plans to meet with Curt next week to complete the transfer. The next board meeting will work on the annual budget as well as program/annual meeting plans. Note that the chapter’s fiscal year is 1 November through 31 October so Stephen hopes to get all the annual meeting revenue and expenses taken care of by the end of the month.

COMMITTEE REPORTS and ASSIGNMENTS:

Membership: Cathy Claes has volunteered to maintain the membership list. Discussion held that Cathy will need to become enrolled to take over the duties from Dick Sprague. Cathy will contact National. Current expiring and new membership list was presented to the board members to review. Several board members volunteered to call and verify information. The information will be passed back to Claes.

Newsletter: Sprague had previously indicated an interest in continuing to prepare the newsletter. Further discussion deferred to the next meeting as he was not present.

Annual Meeting Debriefing: There were 25 surveys completed and returned. Doak and Etcheverry commented on the need for improving communications in preparing and executing the annual meeting. One suggestion was to assign directors to a specific session to develop, invite speakers and get into final form with the committee chairs in charge of coordinating the various sessions into a final working program as well as being responsibility for final contractual agreements. Discussion held on whether to hire a paid position to organize the event or to continue with volunteer board. Consensus is currently to keep with a volunteer board effort with consideration to spread the duties out further. Doak and Etcheverry both commented on the need to have the program pretty much in place, including speakers earlier, such as by mid-June. Discussion held on impact of other conferences on attendance. WasteCon 2006 is scheduled for 18-22 September in Charlotte, NC. This may not be as big an impact this year to Colorado’s plans. Tentatively, the consensus was to hold the next annual meeting the first part of October. Some areas considered were southwest Colorado or San Luis Valley. The survey participants do want the meeting and programs rotated through the state. Discussion held on how other states hold conferences. Wyoming, which has no national affiliate, holds a four-day conference including technical sessions, training and some fun events. Overall, the attendees felt the conference was a good mix of sessions and vendors. Etcheverry believes the conference cleared about $1700 in profit but she has not received final accounting of bills and invoicing needed for attendees and sponsors. She is reviewing the hotel bill and will be reconciling some of the discrepancies before sending to Stephen for payment and then the final P&L Statement to Board Members. She also recommended we get a different tag for exhibitors/vendors vs sponsors. Barton commented we need to order name tags much earlier to have paper stock on hand.

Programs: Discussion held on having programs separated into technical sessions with two chairs and the annual meeting with two chairs. Discussion held on having 2 or 3 technical sessions with a possibility of a half day event in Southwest Colorado similar to the one held last May. Discussion held on how to get available SWANA training materials out to the membership with consensus to use the chapter’s newsletter as well as e-mail postings.

Technical Program Chairs: Leonard Butler and Stephen Gillette

Annual Meeting Chairs: Anyone interested should contact Leonard Butler.

Certification Day – 9 December: Discussion held on having two locations for the event. Barton has not received any call back from Mesa County on having them host the event. Butler volunteered to find a place in Montrose pending Barton’s confirmation. Early bird registrations will be due soon and we will need to post via email to the membership. Registration will be through an address in Houston.

Scholarship: .John Briest has agreed to continue as program chair. Discussion held on whether to send money to national or keep for local or to do both. Clarification on what type of scholarships does the board see awarding – educational or professional as well as the level of support - $500 or $1000. And what audience do we pursue – college students or solid waste professionals seeking advancement? And what criteria will be required for recipients such as “mandatory” attendance as a chapter function or report cards or some other criteria? Further discussion deferred until Batchelder Adams is present to discuss national perspective on scholarships.

Nominations: Per bylaws, the past president serves as the chairman. John Briest is the most recent past president and has agreed to continue in the position. Butler challenged the board members to be on the look out for new members for the board to include city and small private companies. We need to keep our board diversified to reflect the diverse nature of the Colorado solid waste profession as well as membership.

Legislative: No report. In the past, Batchelder Adams has been the chair. Actual appointment deferred to the November board meeting.

International Board: Batchelder Adams not present so no verbal report given. She had forwarded to all the board members a copy of the Powerpoint presentation given during WasteCon. Butler and Barton had brought hard copy for board members who may not have received the email copy. Consensus was to post the report to the web site for member review.

OTHER BUSINESS/REPORTS:

Website/Webmaster. A new contract will be due by 1 November, as the old one is tied to the fiscal year end. Consensus was to keep the existing contract and arrangement. Briest will send an updated list of directors plus any other updates to Erin to post to the website. He will also send approved bills to Gillette for payment which is the process currently in place. Dick Sprague had volunteered to send the annual meeting presentations directly to Erin for posting.

SWANA Reports: Barton handed out the rough draft of the annual program report due to national SWANA by 31 December. She asked the board to review and bring any comments or discussion points to the next board meeting to be included in the final report.

ADJOURNMENT

The next board meeting was scheduled for 15 November 2005 from 9 am to 11 am. Etcheverry volunteered Weld County conference room for the meeting which has a speaker phone to allow for the board members to participate in the SWANA officer’s Conference call scheduled to begin at 11 am. Meeting will be dedicated to working on the annual budget as well as programs. Gillette will send out an electronic (excel spreadsheet) budget worksheet for the board members prior to the November meeting. Alternative location for the next meeting will be CDPHE. Etcheverry and Doak will notify Butler by Friday 21 October of room availability. With no further business and by consensus, meeting was adjourned at 8:48 am.

NEXT BOARD MEETING(S)

Nov 15: 9 am, Weld County Offices (tentative)
Dec 20: To be determined (tentative)

OTHER IMPORTANT DATES TO NOTE

Dec 9: SWANA Certification Test Date (Denver & West Slope Locations to be determined)
22 – 26 Jan 06: US Composting Council Technical Meeting, Albuquerque, NM
13-17 Feb 06: SWANA Recycling, Collection & Composting Training, Albuquerque, NM
4-7 Apr 06: Regional Compost Certification Class, CSU, Fort Collins, CO

BOARD REPORT DEADLINE DATES: