Blue:
Motion
Red: Responsibilities
1.
Members Present:
Jennifer Fish, President; Mark Wilson, President-Elect; Lloyd
Owens, Past-President; Brent Sohngen, Secretary; Dave
Libben, At-Large Council Member.
2.
Call to Order and Minutes:
President Fish called the meeting to order.
- The Executive Council Meeting
minutes from April 8, 2003 were reviewed. Lloyd
Owens moved to accept the April minutes, seconded by Mark
Wilson. Motion carried.
3.
Treasurers Report:
A written treasurer’s report was provided by Jim Bennett (see
attached):
·
Operating: $3,370.48;
Scholarship: $13,843.82; Envirothon: $5,325.24.
·
Jennifer
will ask Jim if he would prepare a budget for this year.
·
Dave
Libben moves to accept the Jim “Greenspan” Bennet’s Treasurer
report; Mark Wilson seconds. Motion Carried.
4.
Discussion of Goals from last time
- Dave
Libben meeting with Dot this afternoon. Jennifer offers assistance
to Dave and Dot, as this is one of the most important issues
for the organization to work on this year.
- Dave
would like to find some regional coordinators to help with
membership recruitment (SW, SE, NW, NE). Any ideas for
people, particularly from the NE region to help coordinate.
Mark suggests Luanne Winkle in SW Ohio (LMR watershed coordinator).
- Jennifer
passed out an updated list of people who were interested
in helping with the organization.
- Membership
as main goal, technical training and public policy discussions
as reasons why people might want to become members.
- Develop
a display board for meetings, i.e. Connecting Ohio Watersheds
Conference.
- Dave Libben will check with Dot Riley on what
is available from the previous display board.
- Jennifer Fish will look into the cost of a new
display.
- Discussion
on technical training: Do we want to actually put together
technical training workshops, or do we want to help advertise
and sponsor other programs.
- It
would be a good idea to develop a budget line to consolidate
expenditures on support for different workshops.
- Winter
and summer meeting as technical training workshops.
- Discussion
on public policy: How to do that?
- Point-counterpoint
in the newsletter as a lead up for the summer meeting
- Potential
topics to discuss (see discussion below on summer meeting
themes).
5.
Newsletter:
- Lloyd
provided a proposed schedule (see attached).
- Shift
to four newsletters per year (quarterly).
- Need
to have a discussion about the cost per newsletter (have run
two newsletters with the new service)
- May
Newsletter to printer by 21 May, should go out by 28th
of May.
- Articles
- Winter
meeting (Sean)
- Presidential
Address (Jennifer)
- Awards,
donations, conservation champions, etc. (Sean)
- GIS
conference (Nathan/Sean)
- Member
highlight suggestions for future: Luke Miller; LuAnne Winkle;
Adrian Achterman.
- Membership committee (Dave Libben) develops a
questionnaire and method for spotlighting a member in the
future, using Sean’s questionnaire as a starting point.
- Deadlines
for remaining newsletters
- Summer
newsletter (with summer meeting announcement) sent out by
August 1 (article deadline: July 15).
- Fall
newsletter articles due: November 14.
- Winter
newsletter articles due: January 15.
Old
Business
6.
Scholarship:
- Doug
Deardorff has sent out the scholarship announcement to area
colleges etc. Deadline for submissions is May 15, 2003.
7.
Annual Meeting Wrap-up:
- Jennifer
Fish reports. Jim Bennet also made the meeting.
- Last
meeting went very well.
- For
this years meeting they are giving us $1200. They like the
50%-25%-25% split, so AOC gets 25% of profits.
- Next
years registration fee: hopefully will keep at $50.
- Jim
has financial records from the accounting and will put those
in the financial records.
- Ed
Crawford will organize a July meeting to discuss next year’s
meeting. Jim Bennet offered to attend the meeting.
- Lloyd
Owens discussed the program. Not many people attended the
annual membership meeting in part because it was cross-listed
with other technical sections. Suggests not to have the annual
member meeting at the same time as a technical session.
- Also
need to get the identification of the AOC highlighted more
specifically at the annual meeting. Put a logo next to the
sessions organized by the group.
8.
Summer Meeting (Mark Wilson)
- The
Summer Meeting is set for September 11, 2003 at the Agricultural
Research Service (ARS) Hydrologic Station in Coshocton.
- Mark
suggests one of the meeting topics could be the introduction
and field testing of a self-assessment tool developed by the
Ohio Farm Bureau in collaboration with a newly established
CORE 4 Alliance in Ohio called the Ohio Agricultural Environmental
Assurance Alliance. This tool is designed for farmers to
assess how well cropland, pastureland, woodland and the farmstead
meet NRCS quality criteria and other environmental benchmarks.
- Mark
also suggests the self-assessment tool could provide a good
lead in for a policy discussion on issues such as: reliance
on voluntary measures to attain conservation and environmental
goals and/or how to accomplish a massive conservation planning
mandate by the 2002 Farm Bill with limited USDA – NRCS resources..
- Lloyd
Owens offered to provide a tour of the Research Station.
- The Executive council supported
continued planning by Mark the above ideas, and Mark will work with Lloyd and other Program Committee
members to continue planning the meeting.
9.
Committees and other business
- See
above for discussions from a number of committees
- Mark
W. suggests that Larry Antosch would be willing to take on
the Long Range Planning Committee. Jennifer
will contact him to confirm that.
- Jennifer
passed around an evaluation from the GIS conference.
Next
Meeting Time and Place: Meeting will be at the Franklin Soil
and Water Conservation District Office in Grove City, Tuesday,
June 10th, 9:30 am.
Brent Sohngen moves that we adjourn, Dave Libben
seconds. Motion passes.
Meeting
adjourned 11:55 am.
