February 2015 Board Meeting Minutes – Washington Recreational River Runners

Conference call meeting

Call to order @ 7:01
1. Officers: David, Brenan, Rebecca, Jason
2. Directors: Jared, Matt, Chris, Adam (7:15), Nancy (7:28)
Review minutes and approve
Review agenda
Officer’s reports
1. Chairperson/President – David Elliott
  1. Membership 136 (last month 132)
2. VP River Ops – Brenan Filippini
  1. Tilton is this weekend
  2. Flip Practice is on the website
  3. Pre-clean last weekend of April
  4. Green River Cleanup
    1. Matt Holmes and Mark Burns volunteered at the general membership meeting
    2. Would like more volunteers so they can break the registration into groups, 9-10 and 10-11.
    3. Need volunteers for mercury and nozzle. Tried radios last year, but too noisy. Thinking do red and green towels.
    4. Need volunteers to help Mary at BBQ around 2:30.
    5. Shangri-La reserved for WRRR members, Kanaskat Palmer for non-WRRR members.
    6. Chris can reach out to paddle trails, Brian to professional paddlers
3. VP Business – Jason Cohen
  1. Nothing to report
4. VP Finance
  1. Over 6k in bank account, no balance on credit card, move $86 over from PayPal
Standing Committee Reports
1. Waterlog – Brian Vogt
  1. Not present
2. River Watch
  1. Access sucks on the middle-middle, several mile walk in to nearest put in from road closure. We could potentially get access, road close mostly to keep the vandals out.
3. Safety and Education
  1. No idea what to do yet. Brenan will meet up with Rebecca at Tilton and go over ideas.
4. Communications – Adam Schierenbeck
  1. Not present
5. Membership – Mary Koncikowski
  1. Not present
6. Programs/Volunteers
  1. Not present
7. WRRR Wear
  1. Brenan has the WRRR wear and will bring it to the Tilton
  2. Have a few flasks left. Should push them. OWA does pre-orders and doesn’t order them till they get enough.
  3. Talked about putting merch on the website. We would have to charge sales tax if we do that.
  4. Talked about having a website manage the merch where they have your logo and make the stuff when it is ordered. Joe S. had a company in mind, Rebecca will follow up next time they get together. Zazzle.com was the site.
Old Business
1. Tilton Trek Status
  1. Bunch of us will be there Friday. Log jam is gone, plan to run the gorge Friday/Saturday. Not much going on Sunday, maybe run the upper section.
  2. Need to do a little better getting the group together.
  3. Partly cloudy with 10% chance of rain both days, should be running about 1000 (slightly better than 900 it was a few years ago when some rafts and cats made it down).
New Business
1. Creating new annual events
  1. When thinking of new annual events, lets try them out first but not make them official until we see that they work out. That is how the White Salmon came to be, did it unofficially for the first 3 years.
2. Flip practice discussion
  1. Jim was going to be here to talk about it. Jim was talking about moving the date, but might have been confused about when it was supposed to be. Thought it was the Sunday before the Clean-up. Should be the 3rd Sunday in April. Last year, what happened was that was the same day as Easter so we moved it. Should be about the same as last year.
3. IK progression discussion
  1. Rowers progression, new IK (class 2/3), and step-up program, moving up to class 3+/4 like Tilton, Green, Cooper. Make sure we do safety talk. Practice whistle and eddy out and swimmer.
  2. Should be about 4 or 5 weekends starting in May.
    1. Snoqualmie?
    2. Green (head works to Kanaskat)
    3. Sauk
    4. Sky (split rock to big eddy)
    5. Green (Shangri-La to Flaming Geyser)
  3. Nisqually is also a good run to do.
4. Prize donations
  1. Need to delegate working on prize donations. David can help out with some. Always try to send out letters. Watershed said it was too late, want to know in October timeframe. Even if they can’t give us something, can they sell it for cheap. Maybe we can have a list and email template and can assign them out to different people to follow up.
5. Safety class planning
  1. Like the timing of two years ago when we did it in April. Will run into the same class size limitation unless we want to go with Casey again. Rebecca just did a 3 day class with Sierra Rescue in December and can’t say enough good stuff about them. Very professional and knew their stuff. Class size would be about 10-12 people.
  2. Could poll people, but they will tell you one thing but not commit. Better to just put something together and tell people.
Waterlog articles needed by 2/20
1. Green River Cleanup teaser
  1. Already went out in January.
2. Don’t need anything, but
  1. Brenan will get something about rowers progression.
  2. Rebecca will try to get safety article.
Announcements and good of the order
1. Can Rebecca retroactively request scholarship money for class in December? David makes a motion to allow, motion approved.
2. Rebecca: has anyone done any work on tax exempt status? Brenan and Nancy: yes, was huge pain. Last time we applied we were denied, but likely due to delays in mail. If we apply again, we need to keep up on mail, no longer than two weeks between checking it. Brenan will bring copies of stuff to Tilton for Rebecca.
Adjourn @ 7:55