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Board Meeting Minutes

Location: Interpretive Centre

Date: Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 7:30 pm

1. Adopted Minutes of meeting March 18, 2009:

moved Mike, seconded Gary Lomax. Carried.

2. Correspondence:

Baillie Birdathon letter to be passed on to the naturalist Club through Gary C. Tom will attend the Smart Growth Workshop on Saturday April 24, 2009.

3. Treasurer’s Report:

Cash account $4656 and mony market $10, 477.11 as of March 31. A few bills have been paid since then and no further income. Moved Mike , seconded Gary Carder, carried

4. Staffing the Centre:

No word yet as to the student grant application. Some discussion took place of hiring weekend person at our expense or using volunteers. A season opening celebration might involve Dick Cannings, at 10:am on the Saturday morning May 30 2009 before he leaves for home.. Since the same weekend is the convention for Ducks Unlimited it would be good to have the Centre open.

5. Brochure:

Hanne was congratulated on the arrival of the very attractive and up-to-date brochures. The board discussed where the brochures could be placed. Tom will send in project completion report to Credit Union and Shuswap Foundation who jointly funded the printing.

6. Membership:

The new fee rates were adopted at the previous meeting: $15 for an individual and $25 for a family membership. Ed and Mike will work on finalizing the current list of corporate sponsors so that acknowledgment may be properly made.

7. Web cam:

The advertising campaign has not yet started. The camera is not yet functioning and Ron and Tim will continue to try to get things moving. Meanwhile shuswapnews.com is the address to visit.

8. Trail Improvement:

The funding is available and the fall of 2009 may see action though much depends on the environmental assessment. Ron and Gary L. .will pursue this matter with Cory Paiement the city planner among others. Ron raised the need to constantly examine the boardwalks from the point of view of public safety.

9. Nests:

The two osprey nests nearest the Prestige Hotel have been cleared and are again occupied by pairs of ospreys. Geese have taken over the one near A and W but the one on the island seems to be ignored by all so far. Tom will write to Yves Cusson thanking him for clearing the mests.

10 Gate signs:

Ron reported that two handsome permanent signs were now attached to the Sanctuary gate, one giving the name and bearing the Rotary sign, the other indicating dogs were not welcome. Discussion took place on what the other panels could say. Ideas included temporary replaceable text re natural values (western grebes etc), list of sponsoring corporate members, rotating information about different species (six grebe species, six swallow species, two dozen shore bird species and nearly twenty varieties of water fowl, ospreys etc). The back of the signs could also be used to "rotating" pictures and texts.

11. Advertising:

Various ideas were put forward on ways to better advertise the Centre once staffing was assured. The banner is again improving the visibility. Even before staffing is in place, organizations can phone the secretary at 832-3951 to arrange special openings for groups. There was further discussion of hiring a Chinese speaking person to cater to the two or three busloads of Chinese tourists who stay the night at the Prestige with little in town to entertain them.

12 Buoys:

Hanne reported on her pricing of possible buoy types.. It was agreed that a number of these larger buoys with bleach bottles between should be placed appropriately before the boating season gets into full swing. As soon as a figure is set Tom will seek grants for this purposes.

West Marine $100 for a 37" buoy; a Vernon firm provided another design with correct wording for about same price.

13. T-Shirts:

It was agreed that Hanne should order eighty bearing the SABNES logo from Smart’s Imprinting for sale at the Centre and possibly at the Prestige.

14. Student research:

The lecturers at the college should be alerted to the possibilities along the foreshore for student research projects; inventories of everything from mammals, reptiles, amphibians, to insects are needed by our society. Ed might be able to draw this to the science profs’ attention.

15 Turtle hatcheries:

The Young Naturalists are still considering adopting the improvement of turtle habitat as a project.

16. AGM:

Annual General Meeting is 7:30 Friday May 29 at the Salmon Arm Art Gallery with Outstanding Naturalist, Dick Cannings, as speaker . Mike showed the wording for the newspaper announcement. Memberships and the fund-raising pictures of Christmas Island will be available.

17. Next board meeting:

May 20, 2009 at 7:30 at the Interpretive Centre.


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