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February 2007 Meeting Notes
Author: Pattey Bleecker
NEAOBA Board Meeting
February 1, 2007
7:00 pm, Teleconference
Final Draft
In Attendance: Liz MacEachran, Kevin OLeary, Jack Dibb, Dan Nash, Bill Ley, and Pattey Bleecker
I. Financial Report by Jack Dibb
A. We have about $38,000 in the bank now. We owe Mark and Alisa a little under $9,000, so that leaves us approximately $29,000 in our account.
B. NEAF will take another $1000 to $1500.
C. The CD has been rolled into our account.
D. Members who have advertised in the newsletter still owe us $1,400. Jack will send out reminder emails to those people. It was decided that Alisa could confirm ads by email which could also stand as an invoice. Alisa gives Jack a list of ads and Jack maintains a list of paid advertisers. They go back and forth a bit making corrections to each others list. This protocol seems to be working so it was decided to leave it in place.
E. As for NECC, Pinelands agreed to reduce their bill by $2500, and so we paid the bill. Tim is in negotiations for next year. Hes trying to get a better deal with Pinelands and the tent people by committing to two years. It was also decided to go with a smaller tent and possibly having to turn people away who want to enter the show.
II. Nominating Committee
A. Jay Ward and Pam Harwood are heading up the committee. Bill had suggested that Jay would be a good candidate for the board and will run this idea by him.
B. Jay sent an email about his ideas on structuring the committee.
i. Could the board provide simple job descriptions for each position up for election? We decided that this request wasnt possible as the board decides who has what position after the election. Candidates are running for an open board and not for any one position.
ii. Could the board supply the wording for the ballots, keeping in mind that there are two votes per farm? Yes, we decided we could do this for the nominating committee.
iii. Could a board member be a liaison to the committee? We decided that a board member could sit in on the first meeting to get the ball rolling, but after that would not have much contact with the nominating committee.
iv. Could an email group be established for ease of communication between committee members? We discussed that they could set up a Yahoo! Group on their own for such a purpose.
C. Two board members terms are up in 2007 (Dan and Kevin). Kevin has declined to run again, but Dan would like to run for the board again.
III. Vets Seminar
A. We made $3,200 from the seminar. Fifty-four vets came on Saturday along with 4 students. The comments were good, if sparse. The facility was excellent.
B. The next issue of our newsletter should include an article about this seminar.
C. We discussed that possibility of Megan writing down notes, advice, suggestions, timelines, etc. for putting on this seminar for the next person who will chair next years vet seminar.
D. Possible locations for next years seminar were discussed. CT and ME have not held a seminar yet. Liz has been getting calls from people wanting to chair an event in their area. She will check a map to see where these people are located. It was also mentioned that Ann Fiore might be interested in chairing a vet seminar in RI for next year.
E. Kevin mentioned that Cheryl Gilley has moved to MA and might be a good speaker for the breeders seminar on Sunday. With her judging background, she could address topics on fleece.
IV. NEAF
A. Dan has talked been in contact with the chairpersons for this event and its coming along.
B. Liz is working on the judges contract with Les Foshay. He will start judging on Friday, so we decided that NEAOBA need only offer to provide one nights stay at a hotel, his mileage and one days pay.
C. Nicola is starting to get entries. She has 8 or 9 exhibitors so far. Were halfway to the minimum we promised the Sheep & Wool organizers.
V. Membership
A. Bill reported that about half of last years membership have signed on for another year. It was decided to send an email blast to our membership reminding them to renew their memberships online and send a check to Bill. This email should remind the members that not doing so will result in their farm profile no longer being posted on the NEAOBA website. Liz will send out an email on February 2nd.
B. Bill pointed out that at any time there are about 40 or so pending memberships. Fifteen or so of these 40 members are new members who havent sent in their checks and perhaps changed their minds, and another 15 or so past members who initiated a renewal but havent sent their check to Bill yet.
C. It was mentioned that there is an AOBA rule that states 90% of an affiliates members must also be members of AOBA in order to maintain its affiliate status. Jack thought we had done an accounting not too long ago and that NEAOBA was running close to that percentage.
D. Bill brought up that currently the websites membership function is working from a rolling anniversary protocol, but that NEAOBA has switched to an association-wide January 1st anniversary date protocol. Bill has to manually change the anniversary date of new memberships and renewals when he receives the checks, which is cumbersome. He also mentioned that it isnt easy to get things changed or added to the website because of the layers of communication we go through at Breedworks. It was decided that Liz would get a punch list of items needing Breedworks attention so that we can approach them about cost.
VI. Marketing Committee
A. Barbie Tilton is equally frustrated with the lack of communication between her committee as well as with us. She wants to place an ad in Show & Tell
B. Liz will mention to Barbie that her committee can hold conference calls when necessary to get things rolling.
C. The NEAOBA logo should be made available to our membership for use on members farm marketing items and websites. It may need to be reworked in order to remove fuzziness when compressed down to a smaller size, and to remove the banner from behind the image. It was decided that incorporating the website URL into the logo somehow would be beneficial.
VII. Affiliate Congress
A. Liz represented NEAOBA at the AOBA affiliate congress held recently.
B. AOBA continues to be hamper by its bylaws that require two-thirds of the membership to change the bylaws, including raising dues. The bylaws, however, allow for dissolving the organization with only 51% of the quorum.
C. An idea was offered at the congress to send socks to our troops in Iraq. We all agreed that was a great idea. We will put out an email to the membership to send either socks or money to Liz to send to our soldiers.
VIII. Connecticut Affiliate
A. Liz received a phone call from a irate breeder who received a call from the CT state representative, Norm Nadeau. He claimed to be updating NEAOBAs records but used the phone call to offer his investment services. This is clear abuse of office. The board voted unanimously to relieve Norm of his duties as the CT and RI state representative. The board also voted unanimously to offer the CT state representative position to Melissa Ferrara and the RI state representative to Ann Fiore.
B. The email from Steve Putney that went out to all CT breeders entitled Our time has come. Time for a CT AOBA Affiliate was forwarded to the board. Liz has also received phone calls from CT breeders concerning this email. It appears that Steve is under the impression that if CT should become an AOBA affiliate that it can receive grants from AOBA, but also financial assistance from NEAOBA. It was decided that Pattey would call Steve to see if this is, in fact, his vision for a CT affiliate and to let him know that a CT AOBA affiliation could not receive funds for an event from NEAOBA.
Submitted by Pattey Bleecker, Recording Secretary.
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