SLAGA Board Meeting Minutes

Meeting date:  December 1, 2010.

Present: John and Laurie Elfrank, Mike Henthorn, Sarah Chisholm, Jim Greene, Yvonne Von Der Ahe, Tom Wolpert

John Elfrank and Yvonne Von Der Ahe updated the membership rolls for all cash payments received in November. In the future, Yvonne will handle this.

The treasurer’s report for November was accepted.  There were no unusual income or expense items.

John Elfrank presented a request from a non-member to promote a breast cancer awareness fund raiser on the SLAGA web site. The fund raiser involves the sale of geocoins and pins as well as some other activities. No one had any objections. The request was referred to Sarah Chisholm for comment and possible action.

John Elfrank reported that no one attended the November premium member class on how to hold a geocaching event. As a result, the January class in St. Charles on the same topic will not be held.  The SLAGA calendar has been updated to reflect the change.

There was a general discussion as to whether or not to continue premium member classes in view of the lack of interest.  It was also suggested that we might open the classes to all members, rather than just premium members.  After some discussion, the consensus was that we will again offer the spring classes to premium members only.  John Elfrank will gather statistics on suggested topics and attendance.  The decision as to whether or not to continue will be left up to the next board.

Tom Wolpert will handle booking St. Louis County Library space for the February and April class dates.  Preferred dates are Wednesdays in the middle of the month (February 16, 2011 and April 20, 2011).  Alternate dates are the Wednesdays immediately before and after those dates. 

Post-meeting information:  The Tesson Ferry branch is booked solid.  We reserved meeting room #2 at the Cliff Cave branch for 6-9 pm on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 and Wednesday, April 20, 2011.  Tom Wolpert will handle paying for these reservations and placing them on the SLAGA calendar.  Topics for the classes TBD.

Laurie Elfrank will include another plea for class topic suggestions in the next newsletter.

John Elfrank reviewed upcoming local events and SLAGA participation.

• Christmas party on December 18, 2010.  SLAGA will provide 5 ready to place regular-sized caches as prizes for the photo scavenger hunt. Caches to include regular-sized geocaching.com containers, log books, pencils and swag. Jim Greene will handle this.  Mike Henthorn e-mailed Mike Griffin regarding the inclusion of a food drive in addition to the planned Toys for Tots drive.  Mike Griffin to clear this with the restaurant and update the cache page.  Laurie Elfrank to include mention of the food drive in the next newsletter.
• Meet and greet and group hunt on January 1, 2011.  Cache page is up.  No special SLAGA participation required other than the promised live entertainment.
• Annual slurpin’ soup and watchin’ eagles event on January 8, 2011.  Chod is sponsoring as usual.  Cache page is up.  No special SLAGA participation required.
• Winter potluck on January 29, 2011.  MOGA will donate some materials for the silent auction.  SLAGA provides everything else except the food.

Sarah Chisholm asked about placing non-SLAGA events, particularly mega-events, on the calendar.  After discussion, there was no objection to placing brief mentions on the calendar so as to give everybody a place to look for conflicts when scheduling local events.  Detailed calendar entries will only be made for events within a 250 mile radius.

John Elfrank gave Tom Wolpert an introduction to SLAGA calendar maintenance.

Meeting adjourned.