PASCO Board Meeting Minutes

Minutes from Meeting – September 14, 2009   7:12PM

2009 Goals = Completed

  1. Fill all the board & committee positions
  2. Complete website information infrastructure and content – monthly updates
  3. Increase activity of site champions (through promotions chair)
  4. Increase air show promotions to 3/year.
  5. Increase use of the private pilot glider support program.
  6. Consolidate FAA relationships. Build on good relationships to date.
  7. Two Westwinds per year March & September
  8. Clarify Pasco’s position & capacity to promote winch launching
  9. Increase PASCO visibility to clubs and FBO’s – membership drive
  10. PASCO Spirit wear
  11. Banquet, seminars, safety issues info and dissemination
  12. Financial audit and budget

 

 

Board Members Present:

  • Peter Deane
  • Joel Klein
  • Bruce Roberts
  • Karol Hines
  • Ramy Yanetz
  • Fred LaSor
  • Mike Mayo
  • Hans Van Weersch

Regional Directors/Governors present/FAA Liason present

  • Jay McDaniels

Completed Action Items:

  • Karol/Hans: Organize official financial audit with external CPA
    • Status: Done. Based on advice of CPA we’ll change our internal procedures. See discussion below.
  • Joel: Research Sport Pilot-related events for possible PASCO display.
    • Status: Ongoing. Bruce displayed his glider at Palo Alto Airport Day on Saturday, 9/12. He’ll also be displaying at Livermore Airport Day on Saturday 9/26, which gets us to our goal of three shows this year. Hayward show too expensive to attend at $1500.
  • Peter: Send out Fred’s notice about switching to xponder code 1200 from 0440 when heading south past Mono Lake as email blast to PASCO membership.
    • Status: Done
  • Jay: Send request for nominations for SSA awards to board@pacificsoaring.org
    • Status: Done. Will send update out soon.

Rollover Action Items:

  • Peter: Solicit for MC for 2009 banquet
    • Status: Open
  • Hans: Find out how to get Peter as a signatory, and get him bank material & info.
    • Status: Electronic paperwork has been submitted, in progress. —
  • Rob / Karol: Create promotion strategy for PASCO with ASI (to get ASI members to join and be involved in PASCO) (Karol, Stu, Robert Stoney)
    • Status: Got list from Ty of Air Sailing members who are NOT PASCO members, so we can do a mailing at some point. Karol: Abdicating—we should ask Stew to take this on.
  • Ty/Peter: Create membership promotion plan for Westwind and PASCO website (“Get a member, get a free membershp.”)
    • Status: In progress. See discussion below.
  • Peter / Joel: Two PASCO spiritware items, a shirt and a hat.
    • Status: In progress. See discussion below.
  • Mike: Conduct general membership survey (What do members want: from the seminars, outside of the seminars, annual meeting, safety content, annual presentation of awards, other topics?) Mike expects to have a “straw man” proposal soon.
    • Status: In progress. See discussion below.
  • Peter/Rolf: Put together straw man plan on how best to approach NORCAL regarding glider ops out of Byron & Hollister.
    • Status: Open. Peter will follow up with Rex.
  • Peter: Send out a message to all PASCO members asking for volunteers, both to serve in board positions and to edit WestWind.
    • Status: Open (which just went out—haven’t had any response yet.)
  • Karol/Jay: Contact SSA about getting the PASCO Reno Procedures (or a subset thereof) published in Soaring with a link to the full thing on the PASCO web site. Also forward to Region 12 (Cindy Brickner) so they can publish it in their newsletter.
    • Status: Open
  • Bruce: Need liquor insurance to have event at Hiller Museum.
    • Status: In progress.
  • Bruce: PASCO board needs general liability insurance.
    • Status: In progress
  • Peter & Larry: Create news update for website.
    • Status: Open
  • Larry: create archive page for old news updates.
    • Status: Open
  •  Larry: Put latest Reno Procedures up on web site.
    • Status: Open
  • Larry: Add Fred’s notice about switching to xponder code 1200 from 0440 when heading south past Mono Lake to website.
    • Status: Open
  • Jay: Check with SSA about upcoming contests (perhaps their website is out of date?) and report back.
    • Status: Open
  • Peter: Call Rick Walters for other contest news.
    • Status: Open
  • Ramy: Begin process to solicit nominations for PASCO awards.
    • Status: Open

New Action Items

  • Peter: Send out a save the date email to members for the banquet & seminars.
  • Fred/Bruce: Collaborate on topics for the safety seminar.
  • Ramy: Consider changes to Sawyer Award rules to better adhere to the award’s original intent to encourage new up and coming cross country pilots.
  • Ramy: Contact Sergio to see if he’s willing to opt out of Sawyer Award.
  • Mike: Do a second revision of the Membership Survey and look into Survey Monkey or other on-line approaches.
  • Fred: Propose what SoarNV and PASCO’s roles should be for the 2012 SSA convention in Reno.
  • Bruce: Determine if feasible to do a PASCO display at Livermore Airport Open House.

2. Treasure’s report:

  • Hans: No changes to financial situation.

Discussion About Audits:

  • Karol: My CPA said that due to new rules, formal audit for a small non-profit would be tedious and expensive. Her opinion is that if we keep really good records and produce a formal monthly statement we should be OK. Then, once a year have someone NOT on the board do an informal audit. Main Thing: We need to start producing and publishing proper financial statements in the correct format.
  • Peter: Hans should be OK with producing this.
  • Karol: We should be able to find a template online.
  • Discussion about getting Peter as signatory on bank accounts:Hans: Did send documents to the woman at Wells, but haven’t heard back. Will follow up.

3. Banquet & Seminars Preparation Site, speaker, topics Discussion:

  • Bruce: Don’t yet have any speakers lined up yet. Have paid the $500 deposit. Will follow up with Allen Brown about speaking.
  • Karol: Fred, as Safety Officer, you should collaborate with Bruce about topics.

4. Awards

  • Ramy: Flight nominations from PASCO members and Service awards nominations from Members and Board. Last year did not receive any nominations from members.
  • Peter: We can send a solicitation out to the general membership. Also want to make sure we get all flights--will solicit for those not submitted to OLC as well.

Decision on changes to Sawyer Award

  • Postpone changes until end of year. Ramy will put more thought into what those might be. Ramy will call Sergio about opting out.

4. Membership Issues and Promotion

  • PASCO Spirit Wear discussion
  • Board members like the artwork that Peter & Joel have put together, with the proviso that the colors need to work appropriately with the color of the items they’ll appear on. General preference for light colored shirt that won’t reflect inside the canopy—off white or beige. Some would also like the option of a white t-shirt. Perhaps a couple of options: something like a polo shirt with just the art on the breast pocket, and perhaps a short sleeve white t-shirt with small logo on front breast pocket, and larger artwork on back, but tasteful, and not printed so densely as to be uncomfortable while flying. Joel will find some shirts that seem appropriate and circulate some visual mockups to the board.

Ty White’s Membership Promotion Program Ideas

  • Peter: Ty has put together a straw man for the PASCO “Sponsor a Friend Membership” Program… (Peter to cut and paste Ty’s text here.) …for every 1-2, sponsor will receive 1 free year of membership…
  • Joel: We could offer a PASCO hat or t-shirt as an option to free membership. Mike Mayo’s Membership Survey Discussion Mike put together a straw man example of a membership survey and circulated it to the board.
  • Action Item: Mike—will do a revision two and look into Survey Monkey.
  • Peter: It would be nice to have it back for the AGM in November. That gives us two months.

5. Communications

  • a. Website Peter: Still need to do another membership news update. and create archive page for old updates. Also need to put latest Reno Procedures up on web site.
  • b. WestWind Peter sent out Editor Request as part of his appeal to members.

6. Safety Issues

  • Fred: We’ve published the change to the transponder sqwak code over Mono lake.
  • Joel: Palo Alto Airport day proponent aviation safety
  • Peter: Williams dual-tow accident mentioned at last meeting—have we heard any more details on that? Fred: I’ll follow up with Rex on that. Karol: Accident discussions at Safety Seminar are important. Ramy: Motorglider accident over Sierras—is it a good idea to cross the Sierras with a 35 knot head wind? Peter: Wind-related issues would be a good discussion for the seminar. Steve Fosset’s crash was wind-related as well.

7. Contest Updates

  • Regionals and Nationals
  • No update.
  • Jay: SSA has not received any paperwork from anyone in the region for contests next year.

8. Winch activities progress

  • Peter: Sent out email at Marc’s request over the weekend with 3-D engineering drawings, soliciting for help and getting close to getting started building. Looks very professional and like a Skylaunch sort of winch. See updates at http://www.ranlog.com/winch/

10. SSA updates

  • Jay: Convention going to Reno in 2012. No particular club has been called to volunteer. It may take PASCO to help put it together. Will probably be at the Peppermill or the Atlantis—not locked in yet.
  • Recently, conventions are mostly organized by SSA, since local groups haven’t been stepping up.
  • Karol: SSA has been doing the majority of the organizing, putting together the speakers, etc., but needs local volunteers on the ground at the convention doing things like registration, etc.
  • Fred: Denise Leighton & Laurie Hardin were both on the phone multiple times to help bring it to Reno. She’s talking about adding an employee to work on this full time. Will talk with Jim Skydell who’s put on the best convention in recent memory and get tips from him.
  • Action Item: Fred—propose what SoarNV and PASCO’s roles should be for the convention.
 11. New Business
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Meeting Ended 8:56PM

Next Meeting: Wednesday October 14