Minutes of SWANA Rocky Mountain Chapter Monthly Board of Directors Meeting

8:00 am, Geotech Offices, 2650 E 40th Ave, Denver, CO 80205

ATTENDANCE:

Present: Debby Barton, John Briest, Roger Doak, Stephen Gillette, Neil Nowak, Tom Schweitzer, Dick Sprague, Cathryn Stewart, Tom Strickland

Absent: Kathy Andrew and Susie Gordon

Attendance 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 was called to order at 8:03 as 9 of 11 directors present for a quorum.

MINUTES:

January Board meeting minutes were previously approved via email vote.

ADOPTION OF AGENDA:

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

TREASURER:

Gillette reported that the checking balance is $10,729.03, savings balance is $18,873.38 which included the posting of $453.58 of interest in January and the e & t-loan balance with national SWANA is $16,153.25. Discussion held on the availability of scholarship funds. The budget has an item of $1,250 for professional development which by consensus of the Board members present would be registration fees for various training classes.

COMMITTEE REPORTS and ASSIGNMENTS:

Membership: Andrew not present but sent a report that the chapter has 149 members (7 more than the previous report). There were 17 renewals in January with a total of $655 due in reimbursements. There were four new members which results in a rebate of $80 due from National reflecting a $20 per new member "finders" fee. She will follow up with welcome letters.

Technical Program/Meetings:

Technical Program:

February: Gillette reported that we had 26 registered with an additional 2 registering yesterday afternoon for the class. Briest had the CEU form which had 3 CEU’s for landfill discipline and 2 CEU for other disciplines such as transfer station or composting. Geotech is sponsoring the lunch and providing refreshments for attendees. They also offered a tour of the facility for after the training for anyone interested in seeing the manufacturing and repair process.

Future: Discussion held on three possible topics for future training. Stewart will continue to look at defensive driving class options. Nowak has been in contact with Colorado Lining who would be interested in providing a class on various liners, including seams and destructive testing methodology. He will check with them for an April 15 class. The third program under consideration would be a web based for air pollution control division topics such as fugitive dust emissions and Title V concerns. Doak and Barton will research this as a topic for the July training session.

Annual Meeting: Strickland brought information on two hotel options in Golden for the annual meeting. Strickland/Barton moved/seconded to accept the Golden Hotel as the meeting site for the 2/3 October 2008 SWANA meeting. There is no requirement for hotel rooms to be rented to hold the rental prices for the meeting rooms. Cost is anticipated as $1000 for the meeting rooms. Per individual cost is based on 60 attendees for a cost of $105 per person which includes a luncheon awards banquet. Motion carried unanimously. Strickland/Nowak moved/seconded to reserve the Buffalo Rose for the Thursday evening dinner and entertainment for the annual meeting. The motion carried with one abstention. Discussion was held on the meeting agenda which is proposed to have a general welcome session then breaking into two concurrent sessions for the morning, an awards banquet for lunch, afternoon tour, evening gathering at the Buffalo Rose. The second day would have 2 concurrent sessions ending with a lunch. Discussion held on possible tour locations to include National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and Rocky Mountain Container Division (Bottle Division). Schweitzer will take on developing the tour for the meeting.

Educational Scholarship/Grants: Via email on 14-15 February 2008, Doak/Gordon moved/seconded to approve Jennifer Martinez’s request for a scholarship in the amount of $715 with the condition of acceptance of the scholarship that Ms. Martinez must take the course exam but is not required to pass the exam. Discussion was held whether or not a passing grade should be required. A new motion was presented as Gordon not present to agree to the change proposed to the original motion. Doak/Sprague moved/seconded to approve Jennifer Martinez’s request for a scholarship in the amount of $715 with the condition of acceptance that Ms. Martinez must take the exam. Motion carried unanimously.

Nominations: No report. Board members were encouraged to look for additional members to the Board. There is no maximum number of members however the bylaws specify there may be no less than nine (9) members.

Legislative: Gordon not present. Nowak provided a copy of the legislative table. There has been not as much contentious solid waste related bills this year. The consensus was to post the current table to the website with a link to the state legislative page for members to link to for current information. There were no national legislative issues to report.

International Board: Sprague reported that the audit for national SWANA had two “findings” which has some impact on the local chapters. The first was that all chapters must look to the confidentiality of their members, especially emails. The second was that legal counsel would ask for statements of good standing for all chapters. Colorado has their annual report in however; the bylaws have not been reviewed or changed since 2004. Sprague will check into whether we need some legal assistance to review to make sure our bylaws are in accord with current state law. Detailed minutes are available from Sprague if any Board member would like to review them.

Web site/Webmaster: Paypal was implemented. Gillette stated this appears to be working very well at this time as we used it for the technical program. There was an initial glitch which Erin corrected as soon as he was notified. The approved updates should be up by mid-April. Erin may do a beta test for the Board before releasing to the membership at large to work on any potential bugs. If any problems are found on the website, Board members are to notify Doak as the liaison to Erin for getting problems resolved. Current advertising has 3 renewals which will be due soon.

Newsletter: Sprague apologized for not getting the newsletter out. He is currently training his successor and the transitioning has taken more time and effort than originally planned. The newsletter is formatted and will be finalized this weekend. He will add the annual meeting dates.

OLD BUSINESS:

Future planning: See above notes on the technical programs and annual meeting.

Geotechnical Stakeholder Meeting: The draft document is scheduled for becoming final in the next two months. The next meeting for 6 March 2008 was postponed to 22 April to finalize the documents. CDPHE is using the SWANA distribution to get the guidance documents out to interested parties.

Colorado Compost School: Barton had nothing further to add than what had been sent to her by CSU.

SWANA Officer News: Briest asked the Board members if they would like to receive the SWANA Chapter news. Nowak/Strickland moved/seconded to circulate the SWANA Officer Chapter News to the Board members. Motion carried unanimously.

Next Board Meeting: The next Board meeting will be teleconference beginning at 7 am on 18 March. Briest will set up the conference call.