[SJAAboard] November 17, 2007 - Draft SJAA Board Meeting Minutes
Craig Scull
craigus at rocketmail.com
Fri Dec 14 18:51:28 MST 2007
Here are the meeting minutes again... I cannot attend the meeting this month as I mentioned to some of you already because I am traveling back east to visit family over the holidays. Please let me know if any further edits are needed before I send out the "final" version. I should be able to process those last edits from my parents house since they have internet access, and then from there I can send out the "final" version, or this can all wait until I return on the 29th.
As for note taking tomorrow, you are welcome to video or audio record the meeting and let me transcribe it (if I can hear folks well enough), or one of you can take notes by hand and I can type them up. Do whatever works best for you and I will get them online when I return.
best,
Craig
======================================================
November 17, 2007 - SJAA Board Meeting Minutes
- Craig Scull
======================================================
Lee made a motion to approve the October meeting
minutes as corrected. The motion was seconded by Craig
and approved by unanimous vote. There were no
abstentions or oppositions.
-------------------------------------
Steve Nelson's resignation
-------------------------------------
The board conducted a special meeting and accepted
Steve Nelson's resignation from the board. Meeting
minutes were recorded and sent separately to the
sjaaboard list.
-------------------------------------
Members present
-------------------------------------
SJAA Board Members
*-Rob Hawley (absent, excused)
*-Rich Neuschaefer
*-Lee Hoglan
*-Craig Scull
*-Gary Mitchell
*-Dave Smith
*-Robert Armstrong
*-Gordon Reade
SJAA Members
*-Jim Van Nuland
-------------------------------------
Coverage for upcoming events
-------------------------------------
NOVEMBER
18 -Su- Fall Swap at Houge Park. Sellers set up at
noon. The swap opens at 1pm and goes into the late
afternoon.
Gary
30 -Fr- Houge Park star party. Sset 4:51 pm, 53%
moon rise 11:33 pm. Star party hours: 7:00 until
10:00 pm
Rob
30 -Fr- Astronomy Class at Houge Park. a 3D view of
what is around the Milky Way.
Rob
DECEMBER
14 -Fr- Houge Park star party. Sset 4:51 pm, 27%
moon sets 9:45 pm.
Star party hours: 7:00 until 10:00 pm
Rob
22 -Sa- General Meeting. Our own Dr. Lee Hoglan will
speak on
Night Myopia.
Board meeting at 6:00; General Meeting at 8:00
Rob
28 -Fr- Houge Park star party. Sset 4:58 pm, 69%
moon rise 10:21 pm.
Star party hours: 7:00 until 10:00 pm
Rob
-------------------------------------
Treasurer's report - Gary Mitchell
-------------------------------------
Treasurer's report for board meeting, November 17, 2007
Accounts:
CD 1 5251.66
CD 2 5000.00
CD 3 5393.07
CD 4 5215.84
Checking 731.42
Obs. Fund 3235.84
PayPal 217.04
Savings 0.00 closed, transferred to checking
Petty Cash 53.65
---------
TOTAL 25,098.52
There has been no new CD account activity since last
month.
The savings account has been closed, the money
($344.03) transferred to the checking account under
its own category, for these reasons:
1) Our RASC book order this year was rather high
($2465.75), there wasn't quite enough in the checking
account to cover it at the time, and I don't like
floating checks.
2) The savings account is nearly low enough so that
the bank will start charging a monthly maintenance
fee to keep in open. I've been planning to close it
anyway after another award for that reason.
3) There's no real reason to have the Gregory funds
in a separate physical account, it's easy enough to
track it within Quicken.
4) There's barely enough for 5 more awards anyway.
After that, I feel confident the board would pay for
them out of the general fund.
-------------------------------------
General Meeting Programs
-------------------------------------
Speakers are lined up through May.
An idea was discussed to put a description of the
upcoming meeting on the front page of the web site.
Rob would be the one who would be updating this. Rob
would need to agree to this. It was also suggested
that Rob should send out a note to TAC each month
describing the presentation for each upcoming meeting
to help generate interest.
There was some discussion of rescheduling Lee's talk
until June to allow for the Christmas party to take up
the entire meeting in December. Lee can present in
either December or June, we just have to let him know.
Since no decisions were made, Lee should assume that
he will present for 1/2 of the December meeting.
-------------------------------------
Loaner Program
-------------------------------------
In discussion we decided that we want to accept
nearly all telescopes that are donated to the club.
They will be accepted to our loaner program at our
discretion. When telescopes are not accepted for the
loaner program we may sell them at our discretion,
giving the necessary caveats to any potential buyers
if these telescopes seem like they could be off-
putting to their perception of the hobby or otherwise
have serious weaknesses. We should make a motion on
this in the next meeting to solidify it and also to
give Rob a chance to share his perspective, since it
would involve extra work for he and Rich to sell,
dispose, or store of some telescopes if we decide to
blindly accept all donations.
---Report on the program from Rob Hawley follows---
The program has been operating at a pace that Rich
and I are struggling to keep up. I would certainly
not describe this as a dead program. This
weekend alone 5 scopes are changing hands.
I did not get a chance to go to the DMV yet. The
same 3 scopes need further effort to recover.
We should discuss what to do with scopes 19 and 16
during the meeting. For some reason scope 43
(currently being stored at Gary's) had a removal
pending in the database, but I do not remember why.
I described the fire drill with 41 in another email.
There are currently 32 scopes in the inventory.
Loans to Non-Members (3)
Number Description check out date due date
1 4.5" Tasco Newt on EQ Mount 18-Jan-02 18-Jul-02
21 10" f/4.5 Homemade Dob 17-May-03 01-Jun-07
42 11x80 Binoculars 10-Jul-04 10-Oct-04
Available (17)
Number Scope Description due date
7 12.5" f/7 Homemade Dob 19-Jan-07
8 14" f/5 Homemade Truss Dob 02-Jan-07
9 C-11 f/10 Compustar 01-May-07
10 Star Spectroscope 15-Mar-07
11 6" f/8 Orion XT Dob 28-Jul-07
12 8" f/6 Orion XT Dob 07-Jun-07
13 6" f/8 Orion XT Dob storage
14 8" f/8.5 Homemade Dob 20-Apr-06
23 6" f/8 Edmund Newt on EQ Mount 09-Nov-03
32 5.5" f/7.6 Signature Dob 28-Apr-04
33 10" f/4.5 Orion DSE Dob 30-Dec-06
34 8" f/10 Dynamax S/C 24-Apr-04
35 8" f/6 Meade Newt on EQ Mount 25-Jul-07
43 4.5" f/8 Orion XT Dob storage
44 4.5" f/8 Orion Skyview Newt 03-Aug-06
45 10" f/5 Dob, Earletron 29-Aug-07
47 Meade ETX 90 storage
Storage means this scope was returned by a member and
is occupying volunteer storage.
Active Loans (5)
Number Scope Description check out date due date
3 4" f/15 Quantum S/C 16-Sep-03 31-Jan-09
6 8" f/10 Celestron S/C 19-Oct-07 19-Apr-08
36 8" f/6 Celestron Skyhop Dob 27-Oct-08 30-Apr-08
39 17" f/4.5 Zeiders Truss Dob 10-Nov-07 01-Apr-08
46 Orion XT6 IntelliScope 16-Nov-07 01-May-08
Pending/Repair (7)
Number Scope Description Repair x-fer date
16 60mm H-Alpha TRUE
19 6" f/8 Meade Newtonian TRUE
28 13" f/4.5 Coulter Dob TRUE April 08
29 8" Celestron S/C Astrophoto 18-Nov-07
37 4" Celestron Flourite Refract TRUE TBA
40 8" Celestron Super C8+ S/C 18-Nov-07
41 18" f/4.5 Sky Designs Dob 18-Nov-07
(to storage)
-------------------------------------
Nominating Committee
-------------------------------------
Deferred until next meeting.
-------------------------------------
What is a Majority?
-------------------------------------
Rich made a motion to accept Gary's proposed
rewording changes to the following bylaw. Craig
seconded the motion. There were 3 oppositions, 5 voted
in favor (one of these a proxy vote for Rob by Craig).
There were no abstentions. The vote passed by majority.
Current wording:
A quorum shall consist of 50% of filled Directorships
in attendance.
Proposed new wording:
A quorum shall consist of 50% of the Directorships.
(Note: There are 9 "Directorship" positions as
defined by the bylaws.)
Rich made a motion to accept Gary's proposed
rewording to the following bylaw. Gary seconded the
motion. 7 voted in favor. There was one opposition-
proxy voted for Rob by Craig. There were no
abstentions. The motion passed by majority.
Current wording:
Every act or decision done or made by a majority of
the directors present at a meeting duly held at which
a quorum is present is the act of the Board of
Directors, unless the Articles of Incorporation or
Bylaws of this corporation, or provisions of the
California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law,...
Proposed new wording (new words marked by >> <<):
Every act or decision done or made by a >>simple<<
majority of >>affirmative votes versus negative votes
of<< the directors present at a meeting duly held at
which a quorum is present is the act of the Board of
Directors, unless the Articles of Incorporation or
Bylaws of this corporation, or provisions of the
California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law,...
-------------------------------------
Observational Astronomy Class Report
-------------------------------------
No updates.
-------------------------------------
Houge Park SP
-------------------------------------
Clouded out.
-------------------------------------
Observatory Committee
-------------------------------------
There was some discussion of visiting Lee's current
observatory site near Chew's Ridge to see if it might
support use by a cadre of the club's deep sky or
planetary observers. Lee will email the board when he
has some time to lead us down for a site visit. Craig
borrowed the club's SQM meter so he can evaluate the
sky darkness in comparison to Willow Springs SQM range
of 21.5 to 21.6 on good nights.
-------------------------------------
School Star Parties - Jim Van Nuland
-------------------------------------
Here is the cumulative list of school events for 2007-
8 school year. Since we are in mid-month, November
appears in both halves of the tabulation.
Completed events:
Total Good Part. Cloudy Cancel
sched sky succ. fail at noon
Jul 1 1 - - -
Aug 3 3 - - -
Sep 2 1 - - 1
Oct 9 4 2 1 2
Nov 6 4 - 2 - Partial
-----------------------------------
Tot 21 13 2 3 3
Coming attractions:
Total Firm Makeup Negotiating
Nov 3 3 - - Partial
Dec 4 2 1 1
2008
Jan 5 5 - -
Feb 6 3 1 2
Mar 4 4 - -
Apr 4 4 - -
...
Aug 1 1 - -
Nov 1 - - 1
-----------------------------------
tot 28 22 2 4
"Makeup" are pre-scheduled make-up dates, and are
firm. They will be dropped from this list if the
primary
event is successful. If primary fails, the makeup
event
will be moved from 3rd to 2nd column, and the name of
the school will be added on the Current Events page.
-------------------------------------
Membership Report - Rob Hawley
-------------------------------------
When I looked at my calendar today was the day to do
the mail labels
While doing the labels I came up with 259 labels to
generate. That is a rather eye-popping drop from last
month's 270.
I tracked down the drop of 11 to:
-6 members that did not renew from Sept
-3 mailings deleted due to bad address or rejection
-2 expiring one year complementary
-2 inactive by request
-1 convert to electronic
+1 speaker
+2 new members
---
-11
So the numbers add up.
We will also likely not get as many new memberships
as we have in past years.
--------What Month Memberships expire--------
Last SJAA Meeting 10/27/2007
Report Date 11/14/2007
expired 83
Oct-07 8
Nov-07 11
Dec-07 13
Jan-08 16
Feb-08 17
Mar-08 20
Apr-08 12
May-08 19
Jun-08 58
Jul-08 23
Aug-08 22
Sep-08 19
Oct-08 17
Nov-08 10
Dec-08 4
more than 13 months 4
complementary 31
expiring 8
paid(current) 265
email delivery 38
Labels Generated 259
S&T Members 173
New Members since last mtg 2
current + complementary 296
--------Membership Retention--------
Members at end of year Members retained
2007 43
2006 58 37 64%
2005 64 24 38%
2004 68** 18 26%
2003 61** 21 34%
2002 26** 14 54%
< 2002 148** 108 73%
** based on 12/04 total 265
--------Count History--------
Combined Current Compl New Members
paid
2/20/02 292 276 16
4/19/02 289 273 16
12/15/04 311 285 26 11
11/9/05 319 290 29 8
10/4/06 316 285 31 7
12/13/06 321 289 32 2
1/10/07 319 286 33 4
2/20/07 315 281 34 2
3/21/07 312 279 33 4
4/14/07 311 278 33 4
8/14/07 308 274 34 8
9/18/07 305 270 35 5
10/17/07 304 271 33 4
11/14/07 296 265 31 2
The meeting was adjourned at 7:34.
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