GMNC Board meeting 12 August 2020 6:00-8:13PM
GMNC Board meeting 12 August 2020 6:00-8:13PM
Attending: Lynea Schultz-Ela, Tina Wilson, Callie West, Caryl Brown, Joe Ramey, Dan Tille. Absent: Jodi Peterson
Guests: Felix and Donna Lovanni, Martin Wiesiolek.
1. Guest comments. Donna Lovanni had no comments to start the meeting. Felix Lovanni and Martin Wiesiolek had not yet joined.
2. July minutes. Motion to accept the minutes. Unanimously passed without comment.
3. The Master Development Plan. The Board expressed gratitude to Tina for her hard work on this document. Some of the goals within the MDP were labeled “Under Board consideration:” to indicate these goals were not yet decided upon by the full Board.
Lynea: does the document state when we will update the MDP? Callie and Tina: the document is good for 10 years and needs to be updated in 5 years, 2025.
Joe made a motion to submit this finalized draft version of the MDP to the USFS for their comments on August 13, 2020. Tina seconded. The motion passed unanimously.
4. New Bylaws originally updated in May 2020 by Annie Murphy and Joe Ramey.
Callie had three comments:
– Should it be stated that Board members should represent the geographical reach of the membership, from both Mesa and Delta Counties?
– The Bylaws’ description of the Secretary position has expanded to “keep the companies records” and the actual Secretary duties need to match. Lynea expressed similar concerns about the Secretary position. Also keeping the company records now means organizing our documents on Google Docs. The word ‘digital’ will be added to the documents portion.
– In Article 10.2.2 committees need to submit their budgets earlier than October. After discussion, budget submission timeline was changed to July.
Tina’s requested changes have previously been made:
- the President shall not hold two officer positions,
- Board be limited to 4-9 members.
Lynea asked that a stray “fee” word be removed from Article 3 title.
Joe made a motion to pass the Bylaws with three changes (the Secretary description states ‘digital documents’, committees’ budgets be submitted in July, and drop the “fee’ from Article 3). Lynea seconded. The motion passed unanimously.
5. Martin Wiesiolek to speak about PSIA ski camp 17-18 April 2021. Martin advocates to bring the spring camp to Grand Mesa. It is a two-day event with fewer than 20 people expected during the COVID era, but he wants this to become a permanent feature. He hopes to grow the event over the years. The Rocky Mountain division is all behind it. The camp will need two days of grooming. The GMNC is a member school of PSIA.
Board discussion: Dan asked: can this be moved into our normal operating period? Without COVID, how many participants can we expect in the future? Martin doubts it can be moved to March but he will ask. The next season participant growth will be modest, perhaps 25.
Callie: Should there be a policy for outside groups to contribute to grooming? And all outside groups (The Nature Connection, CMU sprint race, for example) should be treated equally. Or would we consider this a donation?
Lynea: grooming costs could be as high as $400. Could some of the GMNC ski instructors attend as an exchange of value? Martin said Yes.
Dan: perhaps we could adopt a policy to ask every outside group to consider a donation. Tina agreed. The complication with this camp is, the dates are outside our grooming season, so it is unique. We still need to get USFS approval and this is accomplished through the seasonal Operating Plan.
Caryl: snow conditions will likely be great. Callie: but number of skiers drops of markedly.
Tina: If the camp participants each made the suggested daily donation of $10, this would be helpful. Martin will explore some sort of PSIA donation.
Lynea: supports the camp because of its economic value to the local area, but we need an in-kind commitment back.
Caryl: supports the camp because it will add to GMNC exposure and she wants to attend! She sees it as GMNC and local-community advertising.
Martin’s primary goal is to increase the level of instruction for GMNC instructors.
Lynea: we settle this issue with the PSIA camp with Martin without actually making a policy.
Callie: we don’t need a vote but we need to garner USFS approval.
Dan: but we need to give Martin our approval now.
Felix: grooming occurred for snowmobiles April-May this last season.
Dan: motion to approve Martin’s concept with USFS. Joe seconded. The motion passed unanimously.
- Martin said the new website redesign will be done in a few weeks.
6. Budget for 2020-2021 season, Callie lead an overview of the major budget changes.
Lynea: the budget is an estimate based on last season and future trends. Callie: there are huge variations every year.
Dan asked why we eliminated all social-media advertising expense? Dan: given flat membership we need to increase exposure. We did not boost any messages last year. Return on investment is hard to quantify. Felix: there has been no outreach at the trailheads for the last few seasons. Tina: who is going to manage this? Dan&Tina: this would provide market targeting beyond our normal network. Tina suggested she and Dan could manage this advertising budget. Dan: originally proposed $1900. Callie: what is our goal for growing membership? Lynea: we need to include Instagram and local newspapers. There is a West Slope bank that provides grants for non-profits to advertise their mission. We can write a grant for that.
Much discussion on different platform complications.
Dan and Joe: $300 per month for November-February = $1200. Spending logistics to be determined. Board informally approves the social media advertising budget addition.
Callie: Motion to approve budget with change of social media advertising from $0 to $1200. Lynea seconded. Motion approved unanimously.
Tina and Dan will manage with Martin’s input.
7. Volunteer update for pre-season trail work (tree removal, shrub trimming, sign and post repair & installation). Lynea: 99% of Skyway and County Line are complete. Still need to complete Summit, Outer Limits and snowshoe trail. Operations moving to Ward beginning 19August and it will be challenging. Four work days expected there. There are 25 volunteers that responded from the Mailchimp. The work is fun and community building. We need to capture work pictures for social media. There is budgeting for volunteer t-shirts with art by Caryl. Callie: 19 trail map signs and 25 custom trail name signs that need to be deployed in September into October. Dan: sign work needs to be reported back to REI for their grant, so we see need photos then.
8. Financial support for a snow ranger through the USFS. The position has been advertised. They have asked for financial support. There is no expense in the just-approved budget. Discussion about an unknown value; we will evaluate again for next season. We need USFS help with dogs at Skyway.
Executive session-
The meeting adjourned at 8:13PM.