Minutes of SWANA Rocky Mountain Chapter Monthly Board of Directors Meeting

7:00 am, The Egg & I, 6818 S Yosemite, Centennial, CO

ATTENDANCE:

Present: Kathy Andrew, Debby Barton, John Briest, Leonard Butler*, Roger Doak, Stephen Gillette, Dick Sprague, Cathryn Stewart, Tom Strickland

Absent: Laurie Batchelder Adams, Susie Gordon, Neil Nowak

Notations: * - Member arrived after meeting called to order

** - Member had to leave before meeting was completed.

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

CALL TO ORDER: Meeting called to order at 7:07 as 8 of 12 directors present for a quorum.

ADOPTION OF AGENDA: Sprague/Doak moved/seconded to adopt the agenda. Motion carried unanimously.

MINUTES:

February meeting minutes previously approved via email.

TREASURER:

Gillette reported checking cash balance as of 28 February 2007of $14,922.57. Gillette reported the Quicken upgrade went smoothly and all transactions were converted. Savings balance is $17,977.12, which will remain at this amount until interest is posted in July and assuming no funds are added or deducted from the account. Briest reported that to redeem the July 2008 e-loan which has a missing promissory note, a copy of the note will be made by national and two officers of the chapter will have to sign the copy and return to national to redeem the note with interest. Gillette raised concerns about how to obtain registration fees from companies/individuals who sign up for an event then do not show but meals are purchased based on their registration. Discussion held that payment or purchase order must be received prior to the event or a check must be brought to the door. Stewart will send some recommended language for future registrations. A suggestion was made to review to see if the nonpayers are chronic registrants that fail to come or pay. Discussion held that most of those present when registering made payment whether attendance was met or not. This topic may be discussed later during development of annual meeting registration brochure.

COMMITTEE REPORTS and ASSIGNMENTS:

Membership: Andrew reported that the chapter has 150 members with 4 new members in January and 3 in February. Andrew has sent welcome letters to the new members. There are two unpaid members. Email to members is going well. Andrew only has 15 without email. She will mail list to the board members to review and maybe obtain email to reduce mailings.

Technical Program/Meetings:

Annual Meeting:

Gillette provided information on three hotels in the Rocky Ford/La Junta area that can be used for attendance at this year's annual conference. Catering is taking some time and may require Gillette visiting the area again to make final arrangements for the catering as well as the liquor license for Thursday's banquet.

Meeting theme has been proposed as All Aboard for Rocky Ford. A second call for papers will be sent out to the membership. Possible speakers, topics & assignments as follows:

CDPHE updates from Charles Johnson to include geotechnical, tires, HB1288 status and other changes (follow up by Doak)

Otero topics of interest

Jeff Hunter, Compliance Issues or "Knock on the Door - how to respond" (follow-up by Stewart)

Colorado and the Global Climate Change (follow-up by Stewart)

Biodiesel and Alternative Energy Sources (follow-up by Briest and Butler)

Single Stream and actual impacts on the Landfill Waste Stream (follow-up by Gillette)

Bent's Fort for Thursday night or Thursday luncheon guest speaker (follow-up by Barton)

Railroad cleanup issues - spilling handling, hazardous material, waste material, response and cleanup, possible speaker from BNSF RR (follow-up by Doak)

E-scrap issues, speaker Dag Adamson (no assignment made)

SE Colorado Recycling Association speaker (follow-up by Andrew)

CU Recycling (follow-up by Strickland)

Interactive with the audience. Suggestion made to have a Jeopardy or Trivia Game. Butler has a trivia game that he will bring to the next meeting for the board to review.

Technical/Luncheon Programs:

Program will be deferred to May because of timing and need to coordinate with Thornton. Briest will continue to follow-up with Villalobas and Lovato on a possible program for haulers.

Educational Scholarship/Grants: One application has been received for professional development for the registration at the annual meeting. Consensus was to hold the application until a deadline for application on the annual meeting is met then all applications received would be reviewed. Sprague volunteered to help review applications for the annual meeting.

The beta version for the scholarship application is on the website. Three issues were raised concerning the form:

There is no timeout on the form

There is no saving the form to return later

There is limited printing capability.

Consensus was that the priority to improve the form would be to printout the form from the website. Saving on line and the time out issues are not as big a concern at this time. The web page also has two selections for the scholarship/grants programs. Discussion was held on what documentation was needed for training from other sources. Suggestions included hard copy or web link for registration information.

Bob Edmiston, Mesa County, has expressed concerns on the impact of Amendment 41 on future scholarships to state or local governmental official's family members in particular for educational pursuits. Proof of GPA, receipt of CEU/PDH or passing certification exams was discussed as proof of attendance or successfully meeting the criteria for the scholarships.

Nominations: Butler will develop the ballots for the annual meeting. A suggestion was raised to include bios of all those on the ballot.

Legislative: Neither Gordon or Batchelder Adams present to give a report in person. Batchelder Adams had emailed an updated legislative table pertaining to bills in Colorado. Discussion held that sending out the table via email to current members would be another membership benefit. Andrew said this wouldn't be too difficult or time consuming an effort.

International Board: Sprague reported on the legislative call he attended. Another round on the Carbonne and flow control issues is expected out in the next 6 or so weeks. The opinion will be reviewed by SWANA legal counsel and information will be sent out to the SWANA membership. National is taking a stand that any waste activities that recover assets (i.e. recycling) or energy (i.e. landfill gas recovery) should be considered for tax credits as any other energy saving initiative. There will probably be no overturning jurisdictional issues on railroad versus solid waste regulations in the near future. Climate change issues are very political and controversial at this time. National has not developed a stand or policy statement on the issue at this time. The IB meeting will be held before the June landfill manager's symposium in San Diego.

Website/Webmaster: Contact list has been updated. The February program should be posted by the end of the month. Renewal letters for advertising should be out by the end of the month also. Butler asked if CO-SWANA web site is used to list or advertise an RFP, what charges would be imposed. Consensus was that the advertising rate for RFP or similar would be $100, the same as the annual advertising fee. Consensus was that what was posted on the website would be a link to the actual RFP/entity advertising. Discussion held on posting board member bios on the web page. The suggestion was met with lukewarm reception at this time. Doak asked that if something isn't working on the web page or there are suggestion for changes to let him know and he will work with Erin. Next month Erin hopes to meet with the board to discuss web site issues and suggestions for improvements.

Newsletter: Next newsletter deadline will be to finalize and publish by early July.

OLD BUSINESS:

Road-E-O: Date for the Road-E-O will be sometime in August as the national Road-E-O will be in Atlantic City, NJ sometime in September or October.

National Training Loan (T-Loan): Sprague/Strickland moved/seconded that Colorado SWANA should reinvest the $5,000 coming from the redeemed April e-loan be reinvested in the national T-loan program. Discussion held with Gillette recommending that the amount be raised to $10,000 by reinvesting all of the April e-loan and making up the difference to $10,000 total.

Sprague/Strickland amended their motion to state that Colorado SWANA reinvest the April 2007 e-loan with interest plus additional amount from the checking account to make a total investment of $10,000 in the national T-loan program. Butler commented he has been involved in peer review of some of the body of knowledge used by national for training courses. Part of the money invested by chapters will be used to update the 8 body of knowledge for the 8 certification courses. With no further discussion, motion was called to the vote. Motion passed unanimously.

NEW BUSINESS:

CDPHE Stakeholder Meetings: Briest has been involved in the geotechnical guidance document meetings which is in the infancy stage for Alternative Final Covers at this time. Additional topics will be added over time. The primary CDPHE contact is Doug Ikenberry. The group meets monthly but not on a set schedule at this time. Cindy Smith and Jerry Henderson were commended for their efforts on the stakeholder meetings on the ban for residential tires, batteries and oil.

Agenda Items: Strickland suggested the agenda items be rotated to allow more discussion time for critical items or those items that don't get as much attention as they are at the end of the meeting.

Email Subjects: Strickland suggested that emails addressed to the board members requiring attention or response have something in the subject line or body indicating that a response is expected. Discussion also held on how to forward emails to reduce the addresses when a thread discussion is held.

Next Board Meeting: The next Board meeting will be the third Tuesday, 17 April 2007 beginning at 7 am at The Egg and I, 6818 S Yosemite, Centennial in the back meeting room. Erin Doak, chapter's webmaster, will be invited to attend. Briest will send out notice to verify location and time if a different location is needed to meet with Erin.

ADJOURNMENT:

With no further business, Doak/Sprague moved/seconded to adjourn the meeting. Motion passed unanimously and the meeting adjourned at 9:11 am.

Respectfully submitted,
Deborah Barton
Secretary