1.Approval of minutes from the March 18, 2010
meeting
A motion was made and seconded to
accept the mintues as emailed.
2.Election of officers and committee chairs
Officers elected for 2010-2011 are
as follows:
President: Bill Ley
Vice President: Barbie Tilton
Treasurer:Lennie Foss
Secretary:Cheryl Miller-Harper
Committee chairs for 2010-2011 are:
Marketing:Barbie Tilton
Membership:Bill Ley
Events:Pam Welty
Education:Matt Townsend
3.Approval of the Treasurer's Report
Currently there is one outstanding
ad from the NEAOBA News spring edition.Lennie, as treasurer, will contact this farm to remind them about
the payment.
The Board would like to be able to
isolate specific events in order to show their profit/loss.Lennie believes that this can be
done and will see if he can do this for NEAF.He will have it for our next meeting.
The Treasurer's Report was accepted
as presented.
4. State Reps
The original concept for the State
Reps (pre-email) was to be a way for the Board be able to distribute
information to the farms in their states while contacting only one person.Currently we use the E-blast to reach all
members quickly and efficiently.The
question discussed was if the State Reps are still needed.It was determined that the State Reps could
be very valuable in not only hosting the annual state picnic, but trying to
gather information about any alpaca/fiber related events that are happening in
their state that NEAOBA might be a part of, which could be really helpful with
our marketing efforts.The Board feels
that there should also be an educational component to the picnic, if only to
share events that might be of interest to all members.Barbie, Matt and Pam will work together to
decide what the role of a State Rep should be and email their ideas to the
Board.Once the Board has agreed on the
description of a Rep, Bill will send out an E-blast to solicit volunteers for
the position in each state with an explaination of what it entails.Current State Reps will certainly be allowed
to continue if they wish to do so.The
Board feels that there should be a BOD member at the annual picnics, if
possible, to give members the opportunity to ask questions and get direct
feedback from us.New and current topics
that could be discussed are fiber sorting and the vet side of alpaca
ownership.A discussion was held to see
if there might be the possibility to open the picnics as a list of NEAOBA
picnics being held on specific dates, instead of by state, to see if
participation could be increased.The
Board has taken this under advisement.
5. and 6. Marketing
and Events
Marketing and Events were
overlapping in this meeeting and handled as one agenda item.
There was a discussion on the future
sponsorships at The Big E($500) and at
Green Mountain as the Grand Sponsor ($3500).
A motion was made and seconded to
sponsor at the highest sponsorship level of $500 for The Big E.
A motion was made and seconded to
continue to be the Grand Sponsor of the Green Mountain show at a cost of $3500.
Barbie again spoke of trying to get
a NEAF type event to be held in other states.If we can find another fiber/sheep/wool festival, it would be of a
benefit to us all.This fall, in
Massachusetts, the Fiber Festival of New England will be held at The Big E.Cheryl will be the NEAOBA representative at
this event, being held on November 6 and 7.The NEAOBA booth will be set up and she will have animals there as
well.It is our hope that this will be
our "foot in the door" to join this event on a larger scale like we
did NEAF.
Barbie gave the Board a list of
upcoming events for September through December.Included are:
September17 -26Rochester Fair(NEAOBA attends)
September 17- October
3The Big E(alpaca show September 28 - 30)
September 25 & 26
National Alpaca Farm Days
September 30 -
October 3Deerfield Fair (NEAOBA attends)
October 2 - 3Vermont Sheep and Wool
October 15 - 17Green Mountain show
November 6 - 7NH Open Doors
November 6 - 7Fiber Festival of New England (NEAOBA
attends)
November 26 - 28NEAOBA Alpaca Holiday Tour
December 4 - 5NEAOBA Alpaca Holiday Tour
It would be great if
we could have a presence at these events.
7.Membership Report
Bill reported that we currently have
160 farm memberships and 18 associate memberships for a total of 178 members.
This is drop from 2009 when we had 223 members.NEAOBA is not the only alpaca organization to have lower numbers this
year.
8.Other Business
The topic of universal health
regulations for all of New England was discussed.It is our understanding, and was verified by
Matt, that the State Vets meet together over the summer.We feel that it might be helpful if we draft
a letter to the chair of this event stating our position and asking for its
consideration at their summer meeting.
Also discussed was the new rule
created by AOBA of having a CVI that is dated within 30 days of an alpaca
show.We wondered if there was a medical
concern that this rule was based on?Matt
will check with other State Vets as well as with Claudia Raessler of AOBA to
see why thhis rule was created.He will
email the replies to the BOD.
Barbie asked about the updating of
articles from NEAOBA News that are in the NEAOBA website library.It seems that the articles currently
available are very dated.Pam will be
working on updating the articles and Bill will help her with this.He will also notify Breedworks to give both
Pam and Matt administrative access to the website.
Due to conflicts in
scheduling, our monthly meetings will now be held on the second Thursday of
each month.
Next meeting to be
held on August 12, 2010 at 7:30 P.M.
