[SJAAboard] Loaner Scope Policy adopted May 2007

[Rich N]

> Therefore, this was never a final agreement. What I recall was that some
> unspecified group of people was supposed to meet and refine the draft.  Rich
> and I did meet on June 5 but were not able to agree. I tried to bring this
> up in several later board meetings.  Since there was no agreement those
> occasions were never entered in the minutes.
> 
> Thus despite the May 07 text being very favorable to my position I consider
> this a very open issue.
> 
> Rob Hawley 

Yes, Rob and I did meet in early June '07.  

Rob and I, and I think the rest of the Board, are surprisingly close to
agreeing on the goal of the program and we are even close to agreeing on the 
size and type telescopes to have in the program.  Even if each of us would prefer 
to tweak the mix of telescopes a little differently, that doesn't mean we can't have 
a very workable loaner program.  

One year ago the club's loaner program was a mess.  We had a number of old,
not loanable, telescopes being stored all in many locations.  We weren't sure of 
the status of some the loans.  We even had scopes being held by non members.

In the last 12 month Rob has done an outstanding job fixing the SJAA's Loaner
Scope program.  There is more to be done but we have come a long way in 
improving the program.  

The program is surprisingly active.  Rob copies me on the emails between himself 
and people wanting to borrow telescopes.  I very much appreciate him keeping me 
informed about the transactions so that should something happen to one person 
we have visibility of the loan process and the scope repair activity.  

Thanks to Rob, and other board members, a number of the old telescopes have been
repaired and or put up for sale at our auction.  This evaluation and repair process
was not a small thing, it took a lot of work and has been a big help in improving
our loaner program.

We have received valuable input from other members of the Board email list.  I hope
that input will continue.  I'm sure over the next several months the loaner program
will continue to improve.  We will continue removing and adding telescopes to the 
program so that our inventory of telescopes is not too large, but large enough, and 
of the right mix of telescopes, so that the loaner program is even more useful to our 
membership.

Rich N.