Minutes of SWANA Rocky Mountain Chapter Monthly Board of Directors Meeting

7:00 am, 21 August 2007, The Egg & I, 6818 S Yosemite, Centennial, CO

ATTENDANCE:

Present: Debby Barton, John Briest, Roger Doak, Stephen Gillette**, Susie Gordon, Dick Sprague, Cathryn Stewart, Tom Strickland

Absent: Kathy Andrew, Laurie Batchelder Adams, Leonard Butler, Neil Nowak,

Others Present:

Notations: * - Member arrived after meeting called to order

** - Member left before meeting ended

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.

MINUTES:

July meeting minutes previously approved via email.

ADOPTION OF AGENDA:

Sprague/Doak moved/seconded to adopt the agenda. Motion carried unanimously.

TREASURER:

Gillette presented report stating there was $13,803.80 in checking, $18,419.80 in savings, which was renewed for another 6-month term at 5%. The balance reflects $3,000 to date of Road-E-O income received with about $3,350 still outstanding due in. The check for $4,200 approved for Road-E-O expenses, plus the winner’s stipend had not been issued at time of report. To date, Gillette has received 5 registrations/sponsorships for the annual meeting. There were at least two individuals registered to attend the July technical session that cancelled and have not made payment for their registration. The overall technical session netted a negative $79.97. A request was presented that the chapter pay the Road-E-O winner’s registration fee for the national Road-E-O. Gordon/Strickland moved/seconded that the Colorado SWANA Chapter cover the registration fee of $225 for the state Road-E-O winner to attend the national Road-E-O provided the individual is a current SWANA member at the time of the national Road-E-O. Discussion was held that organizations may wish to pay for the registration fee rather than receive payment from the chapter and should have that option to refuse the registration fee as the chapter is paying $1200 stipend for the individual to attend. Comment was made that the organization would be paying a membership for the individual to attend and was also allowing the individual paid time to attend the Road-E-O. With no further discussion, the motion was called to the vote and passed unanimously.

COMMITTEE REPORTS and ASSIGNMENTS:

Membership: Andrew not present but reported there are 148 members, no new members and several job changes have occurred in the membership. Board members were reminded to get survey results to Andrew by 1 September 2007 for inclusion in the annual directory. If an extension is needed, members are to contact Andrew directly.

Technical Program/Meetings:

Technical Program: Final head count for the July web technical program will be provided by Gillette. Overall comments were very positive about the program and the venue for the program. CDHE has signed up with Glance, a web based net meeting resource, for one year and is interested in pursuing additional web based training for the future.

Annual Meeting: The bulk of the Board meeting was directed towards finalizing plans for the annual meeting. Gillette plans to make one more trip in September to verify everything is in place and ready to go. He will also verify status of technology support for podium, microphones (lapel), large (more than 4 x 4) screen for power point presentations and similar related items.

Program brochure will be sent by Briest to Margie Griek, Colorado Association for Recycling Executive Director, to send out to the CAFR members with invitation to register at SWANA member rates. Stewart will send invitation out to the Kansas and Nebraska SWANA chapters. Strickland handed out the proposed survey. Comments from the Board members were that it was very well done.

Discussion held on how to hold the raffle on the surveys with a consensus to use tickets again this year which will be drawn from a hat or other holder. Moderators are to contact Stewart if there are any problems with the presenters. Discussion held on having some sort of trivia or similar game at the beginning of each session with the winners receiving a door prize for correct answers. Stewart will work on that aspect. Consensus was that door prizes would include conductor hats as well as other door prizes. No firm decision was made on who would get additional door prizes with suggestion to defer to the September Board meeting. Barton commented she has one door prize ready – a Lego trash truck with assembly required. Briest, Stewart and Barton will confirm quantities of on hand lanyards, name tags, tag holders and ribbons. Briest will get the speaker gifts and thank you cards for moderators to hand to their assigned speakers. Barton will do the name badges and attendee list as in the past.

Gillette left at 8 am for another meeting. As quorum still was present, meeting continued.

Discussion held on how to have board members stand out at the meeting. Some individuals do not want to use the proposed train hats. Gordon suggested that board members have a permanent metallic name tag that can be worn. Barton suggested a different colored name badge for the meeting. Ribbons stating board member might also be obtained to place on the name badges. Gordon will check on cost for obtaining a permanent name tag.

Butler will be detailed, as the Nominating Chair, to bring extra election ballots for members who did not vote electronically and wish to cast a ballot. Gordon and Stewart volunteered to man the registration booth. Briest will prepare the Sponsor board and PowerPoint slide for sponsors. Briest/Butler will check with national on obtaining a CEU form.

Discussion held on what would be in the conference packet. Strickland and Doak volunteered to assemble them. At a minimum, the packet will contain a conference agenda with the sponsorship list, a member directory, a CEU form, the 4 page questionnaire/survey and any local donations from Rocky Ford Chamber. A suggestion was made that the DVD for “An Inconvenient Truth” be obtained for one of the door prizes. Consensus was to have a minimum of 8 door prizes for the trivia game and 3 survey question raffle gift cards. Consensus was to order 10 hats at approximately $7 per hat. The annual meeting committee will determine whether to add SWANA logo or Rocky Ford information.
Briest will give a state of the state welcome address to include items on what the chapter has done for the membership this year with emphasis on the Road-E-O, the technical sessions, educational scholarship and research grants, and an improved website. He will also discuss plans for website improvement for advertisers/sponsors to allow better feedback to them. Stewart will attempt to make a power point presentation for the Thursday banquet. Additional discussion on the annual meeting will be held either by email or final decisions at the September Board meeting.

Educational Scholarship/Grants: Kaitlyn Edmiston submitted the requested information for consideration by the scholarship committee who made a recommendation to the board to consider a $1,000 scholarship. Doak/Sprague moved/seconded to approve a $1,000 scholarship for Kaitlyn Edmiston. Discussion held that a short article should be requested from Ms. Edmiston to include in the winter newsletter. Motion called to the vote and was carried unanimously. Gordon asked what policy did Colorado SWANA have to reimburse a board member to attend WasteCon. Consensus was she would develop a proposed budget and request and further discussion would be held via email with a deadline to make a decision before the early bird registration date of 7 September 2007.

Executive Session: Sprague/Gordon moved/seconded to move into an executive session to discuss items concerning Waste Con and outstanding member discussions. Motion carried. Executive session began at 8:15 am and completed at 8:30 am. Monetary obligations for the decisions made will be approximately $500. Gillette will be given specific information for treasurer tracking purposes.

Nominations: No report.

Legislative: No report.

International Board: Sprague requested guidance from the Board on the chapter’s stand on where funds should be used once the reserve fund meets the 20% of annual budget goal. At present there are three areas that funds could be used for. The areas are training (whether updating the classes, holding costs down or other items), membership recruitment (National SWANA membership is increasing at a low rate of 3%), or increasing reserve funds about the 20% of annual budget goal. Sprague commented that the 20% goal should be reached in January. One idea that has been discussed has been to refund a larger portion of new member’s dues back to the chapter. Several comments received from Board Members that training is what SWANA is known for and should be emphasized with consideration for those entities that cannot afford large registration fees. A question was asked if scholarships and grants are part of this discussion. Sprague did not know. He commented that National is interested in the protocols that we have developed for our scholarship and research grant program.

Web site/Webmaster: Minutes for July 2007 Board meeting have been posted. Training will be posted within a week. Doak will follow up with advertisers by given direct calls to them. Briest will add information about the website planned improvements to his annual meeting address.

Newsletter: The next newsletter will be due out in December/January. Sprague recommended obtaining a co-editor for the newsletter. Consensus was to wait until after the annual meeting to make committee assignments.

OLD BUSINESS:

Road-E-O: The Road-E-O was held 18 August 2007 at the Boulder County Fairgrounds. Strickland attended as a board member and as representing the city and county of Denver. There were 22 paid participants at $125 per person registration fee. A total of $3,600 was received from sponsors. Total gross income will be $6,350. Known expenses (insurance, operational expenses, stipend, and registration) are $6,225. One of the lessons learned is the need to provide seed money at the beginning of the process to help the committee make decisions on the Road-E-O. Another lesson was the need for more wide-spread advertising of the event to get more people to participate. Consensus was that recognition of the committee should be made at the annual meeting as well as in the newsletter.

Geotechnical Stakeholder Meeting: Briest commented that the September meeting has not yet been scheduled. Comments are due on the alternative final cover guidance documents. Other guidance documents that will be worked on include process for CQA, Construction design and response on submittals to CDPHE. There have not been as many participants/comments received from rural areas. The CDPHE point of contact is Doug Ikenberry.

NEW BUSINESS:

Assistance Committee Assignment: Gordon was appointed to the Assistance Committee which will help the Pollution Prevention Committee in developing guidelines for the Recycling grant and rebate programs implemented under HB 7-1288.

Next Board Meeting: Due to the National Recycling Coalition Congress as well as workload constraints, the next Board meeting will be FRIDAY, 21 September 2007 and will include the potential for telephonic participation. Both HDR and Denver have been volunteered as hosts because of speaker conference phone support. HDR also has net meeting potential.