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Evergreen
Soaring
Board of Directors Meeting Minutes
Saturday, 10 January, 2009
The
meeting was called to order at 9:20 AM in the ES Clubhouse by President Fred
Hermanspann. Present were voting members Marty Gibbins, Merel O'Rourke,
Tony Puglisi, Paul Sjoberg, and Ron Bellamy. Non-voting board members
Howard Glover and Mark Nyberg were also present. Several other members
were also present, among them: Glenn Chouinard; Brian Hood; Heinz Gehlhaar.;
Kevin Finke; Aaron Balog; and Steve Fribley.
New Members:
No applicants. Instead, there was an immediate and general discussion of
the New Member Process and of Membership Categories. Glenn and Marty will
work out the definitions of the various membership categories they would like
to see. Marty in particular would like to see Inactive status replaced by
Social. There are other categories that may have served a purpose but
don't seem to at the moment. Glenn and Marty will report back.
The actual paper flow, waivers, applications and checks, will also be ironed
out. The waivers and the applications will show the flow as a punch
list. That too will be reviewed later.
OFFICERS' REPORTS:
President (Fred Hermanspann)
Chris Murray is now our contact with the Airport and the Hanger Condo
Association. It looks like we're going to need Chris's help in getting
the Airport's to sort out our power and water bills. We also need him to
impress upon the Airport management that we need water and electricity at the
"trailer farm." Glass ships' paint can suffer due to
condensation from unventilated and unheated trailers over the winter.
(Chris M. was not present; Merel will contact and work out the details.)
The SGC holds its monthly meetings on the 1st Monday of each month. They
are normally in the "Little Classroom" in the basement of the Museum
of Flight at Boeing Field.
Para-Phernalia is sponsoring Allen Silver's annual
parachute presentation. The information that Allen presents dispels myths
and saves lives. Doors open at Arlington Boy & Girls Club, 18513 59th
Ave. Arlington (across the street from the
Arlington airport) at Noon on Saturday the 17th.
Bob Wander will present a WanderFest on 31 January in
Neal Karman's hanger. Bob always has a lot of useful material to present
as well as putting on a great show.
We will have a display at the Soaring Expo on 21-22 March at the Museum of
Flight at Boeing Field. There was discussion about taking one of our
newly-painted L-23's this year. And maybe an L-33.
To be decided.
There is much more in the works for this year--looking out to March will do for
now.
President Elect (Gary Paulin) Not in attendance.
Treasurer (Marty Gibbins, )
Martin has several sheets (see attachments). The Board went over the
Budget 2009 and the Income & Expense pages in some detail.
Martin repeated (from earlier Board meetings) that we need a review of
tow-pilot and instructor status. If people are not towing and/or
instructing then the Club needs to move them to another status.
He also noted in passing that we operate our books on a
accrual rather than a cash basis, for all you closet accountants out
there.
Brian noted that while we have made amazing strides in tracking income and
expenses on a line-by-line basis, we have no "snapshot" view of our
financial status. A synthesis, more accurately.
We need this year on year to track the financial course of the club.
Someone pointed out that the IRS 990 that we file contains just such a
statement, compiled by the bookkeeper and our tax consultant. But we need
QuickBooks to do this for us too. Marty will pursue.
Regarding the aging report: Merel reported that he had
contacted Kevin Belisle who thought that he had left
the club more than a year ago. A motion to forgive
Kevin's debt passed by acclamation. Merel's
motion that he be made "inactive" did not: the Board moved Kevin to
resigned status. Merel will contact Kevin and explain his options.
Further, Fred will contact both Paul A. and Ernest Z. in an effort to sort out
their accounts. In the worst case, both could be placed on a No-Fly List,
to be posted in all three tow planes and updated monthly following each Board
meeting. (See more, under Old Business further down.)
To move things along, Merel moved that we eliminated the Inactive status.
Members not wishing to fly can either resign or apply for Social status, paying
$22/year. As intended, the motion died for lack of a second. Martin
and Glenn will review the existing membership categories and report back to the
Board in February or March.
Secretary (Merel O'Rourke)
Merel announced that we are once more a corporation! The Secretary of
State, Washington State Corporations Div. shows that ES is an active
not-for-profit corporation. Merel will now update our listing with the
new officers.
Merel will also send a letter to the Arlington Airport Manager with the same
information as above.
Merel then read the note sent him by Nick Constantine. He and Marianne
have requested Inactive status--they are moving out of the area while Nick
returns to school. Nick's note repeated the status of our chutes.
Tony P. will contact Nick and make sure that chutes 1-4 are repacked one way or
the other. And that the 20+ year-old chutes are rendered unusable.
Operations Director (Paul Sjoberg)
Paul reports that we should have a clean membership roster by
February. This has proved to be tedious, if not difficult.
He will visit with Ron B. and Fred H. and then outline an Operations Calendar
at the Feb. Board meeting. For high points, he wants a Flying Week with
split operations at KAWO and Green Valley.
Paul wondered if our insurance is still divided between ES and WSSA or has it
been combined under ES. Mark N. will double
check.
Paul had a question that has come up on the flight line as we have trained
FOO's: how is the FOO to know who can fly, and what they can fly? Much
discussion ensued but the rapid consensus was that the logbook is the legal
document and should be our guide. As for SSA membership and insurance,
the tow card should be the final word--language should appear on the tow card
affirming that and perhaps more. We are getting low on tow cards so Brian
H. volunteered to update the wording on the next batch of 1,000 cards--the Board
will supply him with the text.
Chief Flight Instructor (Ron Bellamy)
Ron just reminded people of the WanderFest, more
accurately: Soaring Safety Seminar, on Sat. 31 January at Neal Karman's
hanger. Ron also wants to follow that meeting with a meeting of the tow
pilots and instructors in February. Among other things he wants to review
the new flight rules that he and Fred have been working on.
Equipment Manager (Tony Puglisi)
The second L-23 should be back from Moses Lake, newly painted, in a week or
two. This paint job will cost considerably less than the first in that
there is no annual involved and there are no control surfaces to be
recovered.
The flip-out windows on 356BA (the first L-23 to be painted) seem to have slid
away at some point before it went to Moses Lake--Steve F. will see if we can replace them with those from 029.
The L-23 trailer is road worthy but not sailplane-carry worthy. Someone
in Moses Lake will patch weld it to get it back here. After that, Dan
King (huge, sophisticated welding operation) will take a look at long-term
adjustments.
Tony moved that we sell the electric golf cart at the first opportunity at a
reasonable price. Passed by acclamation.
Tony has finished moving the old Boeing Soaring Library into the
Clubhouse. Yeah!
As for the continuing problem of transferring the WSSA gliders to ES, we will
proceed on the basis of a verbal agreement to merge the two clubs. Looks
very unlikely that the proper paperwork was ever submitted to the Sec. of
State, Corp. Div. to merger the two clubs
officially. Merel will pursue this after he updates our ES
filing.
Scheduler (Dan Teifke)
Not present.
GlidePath Editor (Mark Nyberg)
The new GlidePath is out! See: http://www.fishernyberg.com/glidepath.pdf
Chief Tow Pilot (Howard Glover)
Pierre P. reported that tow plane 30Y should be available again by this coming
weekend. 74D is available for use. The new engine for 17Z should arrive
this next week. Engine mounts need to be replaced and the supplier sent
the wrong mounts. But we're moving ahead, snow, ice, and suppliers
notwithstanding.
Howard initiated a discussion of tow planes in general. Do we indeed want
to keep three tow planes? Should we sell the Super Cub and perhaps buy
another Pawnee? Or are two tow planes enough? In the end, the
consensus was the the Tow Plane Committee should
reconvene and make it's
recommendations by the Feb. or March Board meetings.
OLD BUSINESS:
Glenn C. revisited the New Member issues that the Board has been
sort-of dealing with for some time.
Glenn pointed out that there is a difference between people who are considering
joining ES (and want a glider ride) and the people who just want a glider
ride. The Club would do better to deal with them as separate issues by
way of separate processes.
Specifically, the prospective members could be channeled through the SSA's FAST
Program. See: http://www.ssa.org/FAST.asp
for full details. But in essence, for $100 the FAST program
provides:
·
An
introductory lesson consisting of a minimum of 30 minutes of ground instruction
and approximately 30 minutes of flight time.
·
A
copy of the Glider Flying Handbook.
·
A
glider pilot logbook
·
An
introductory 3 month membership in the Soaring Society of America, including
one copy of the monthly magazine Soaring.
That's moves prospective members along much further and faster than we have
been doing in some time.
In recognition of the market value of our demo rides, Glenn proposed that we
increase the demo ride price to $100.
Merel moved that ES accept the SSA's FAST Program as our new-pilot starter
program. Fred seconded. Passed by a roar (and unanimously)!
Fred moved that we increase demo rides to $100 for a 3,000-foot tow plus $20
for each additional 1,000 feet. The roar was echoed but there was also
one dissenting vote; acclamation is not always unanimous.
Now, we have two issues with the SSA.
- For our insurance, we must make "a good-faith
effort to notify our members in order to keep their SSA memberships
current;
- To be an SSA Chapter, 100% of our members must be SSA
members.
While
ES managed the SSA membership, these were not much of an issue--ES paid the
membership fees and billed the members. Post-merger, this changed.
Now we are looking at the increased management costs of the change as well as
to the potential for some of the membership fees to become accounts
receivable. More will be said about this, I'm sure.
Fred moved that the President be given the power to add and remove members from
the No-Fly List, to be reviewed at the monthly Board meeting and posted in all of
our tow planes. The motion was seconded and passed by acclamation.
(See also comments above regarding the No-Fly List.)
Fred repeated that he is taking on the mentoring of new members.
In a separate piece of business, the Minutes of the December 2008 Board meeting
were accepted by the Board as read.
The question of whether or not we need our tow pilots to hold commercial
certificates in order to tow Lynn W's commercial flights, our own demo flights,
tows at contests such as in Ephrata, etc., slipped past the Board in its
fatigue at this point. It is a chronic issue that will be
revisited. Mark N. will press Costello and other authorities for a
clearer answer to this question. We have sought direction in the past but
the responses have been somewhat ambiguous.
NEWS:
- Allen Silver will present his Emergency Egress workshop
at the Arlington Boys & Girls Club (across from the airport) at Noon
on Sat. 17 Jan. Should run about 2 Hrs. Excellent recurrent
training for those who have already attended one of Silver's
seminars. And pretty-much a must-see for those who haven't.
- Bob Wander will present his WanderFest
at Neal Karman's hanger on Sat. 31 Jan. Time to be announced.
- The annual Soaring Expo is scheduled for 22-23 March at
the Museum of Flight, Boeing Field. It'll be here before ya know it!
The FAA approved a 180-day parachute repack cycle.
Allen Silver will have the wording and the details at his workshop.
SETTING OF THE NEXT BOARD MEETING:
The next Board meeting will take place at 9 AM, Saturday 07 Feb., in
the ES Clubhouse.
Fred gaveled the meeting closed at 1:40 PM.
Respectfully
submitted,
Merel R O'Rourke, ES Secretary
merelo@merelo.cnc.net
503-320-7059