MASWCD MINUTES
Regular Meeting
Capitol Plaza Hotel
March 29, 2010
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Present |
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Steve Radcliff, President Bruce Biermann, Area I Tom Lambert, Area II Kenny Lovelace, Area III Beverly Dometrorch, Area IV George Engelbach, Area V Ben Gorden, Area VI Sharon Gifford, Area VII Steve Huber, Area VIII Peggy Lemons, Executive Director Not Present Fred Feldmann, Past President |
Richard Hoelscher, Area V Alternate David Hale, Area VI Alternate Sandy Hutchison, Employees
Association J. R. Flores, Charles Franke, Perry SWCD |
President Steve Radcliff welcomed everyone and called the
meeting to order at 1:05 p.m.
Quorum established by roll call.
A motion was made by Tom Lambert to approve the agenda,
Bruce Biermann seconded. Motion carried
unanimously (8-0).
The minutes from the January 12, 2010 meeting were approved
as presented. Motion for approval made
by Bruce Biermann, Sharon Gifford seconded.
Motion carried unanimously (8-0).
A treasurer report was given by David Dix. He had a breakdown of the income and expenses
from the 2009 Training Conference. To
date 86 Districts have paid their MASWCD dues in full and 2 have paid partial
dues. Kenny Lovelace motioned to approve
the treasurer report, Ben Gorden seconded.
Motion carried unanimously (8-0).
Treasurer reports for the MDC grant accounts (CRP-BOB and CREP) were
also presented. The CRP-BOB and original
CREP grants have been closed and settled with MDC. The current CREP
agreement will end June 30, 2010. There will be an administrative fee of 5% to
be retained from the CREP funds less the $10,000 pre-payment for administration
received last year. A motion was made by
Sharon Gifford to close one of the accounts in
Steve Radcliff reviewed the conference call held by the Soil
and Water Commission last Friday and actions taken during that call.
MDC Report: No report.
NRCS Report: J. R. Flores distributed a map of the watersheds identified
for the Mississippi River Basin Initiative.
Proposals are due May 3, and the Commission has approved a potential
support for the program of $500,000. The
next State Technical Committee Meeting will be May 13. J.R. encouraged everyone to attend as the
input from the State Technical Committee helps him decide on funding levels for
EQIP, etc. He also stated that NRCS will
start taking a look at stream bank issues since MDC has no technical expertise
to take the lead on this resource. J.R.
also stated that NRCS was receiving funding through stimulus dollars for
watershed work. This year is the 75th
anniversary of NRCS. The actual
anniversary day is April 27th.
J.R. encouraged Districts to take the opportunity to celebrate this with
NRCS.
Commission
Report: No report.
Employee Association
Report: Sandy Hutchison is the new president
for the Employees Association. She
related some of the recent events concerning the status of the Employees
Association as far as employee reps needing to attend their meetings on their
own time and dollars unless it was a small part of another training meeting,
and the fact that their association is being considered a lobbying organization. Due to this the dues paid to the Employees
Association cannot come from state funds.
The next meeting for the Employees Association Board will be in late
April or early May.
Old Business:
Steve Radcliff, Beverly Dometrorch, Bruce Biermann and Peggy Lemons
reviewed the recent NACD National Meeting they attended in
The legislation to make Districts eligible to participate in
LAGERS retirement will not be introduced this legislative session. The Chair of the Senate Committee for
Retirement issues was not comfortable with the proposed way to cover the
liability to LAGERS should the sales tax not be renewed or a Districts becomes
disestablished. Until the liability
issue is settled there will not be any legislation introduced. George Engelbach suggested we look into the
possibility of getting Districts set up with taxing authority similar to
Watersheds.
The Board reviewed the FY-2010 and FY-2011 DNR budgets and
discussed the information that would be presented at the Education Seminar
later in the day. The pie charts are now
showing the categories of Administration and Landowner/Operator to show the
40/60 split of expenses. DNR feels the
administration of the program should be no more than 40% of the budget. The administration numbers they use include
the Grants to Districts, Research, the Program Office administration and other
costs. The Landowner/Operator numbers
include Cost-Share, SALT Cost-Share and Equipment Incentive numbers. For FY-2010 the percentages are 35.01%/64.99%
and for FY-2011 the percentages are 37.8% and 62.2%
New Business:
The Board discussed the 2010 Training Conference and the proposed
agreement from Tan-Tar-A. They are
proposing a 3-year contract with the room cost and meal cost included in the
contract at the same price for all 3 years.
The resort fees will now be included in the room cost and all rooms will
have Internet access as well as access to the other activities and areas of the
resort that normally had to be covered with an additional resort fee. Some activities have additional costs in
addition to the resort fees. The 3-year
contract holds the dates of Monday through Wednesday following Thanksgiving for
all 3 years. A motion was made by Tom
Lambert to approve signing the contract, Bruce Biermann seconded. Motion carried unanimously (8-0). The Board also discussed the idea of holding
a live auction and some other activities where the proceeds could be used for
legislative education costs and kept separate from the other MASWCD accounts so
that those expenses will not come from any of the dues contributions. A motion was made by Beverly Dometrorch to
pursue the live auction and pay down for the conference this year. Kenny Lovelace seconded. Motion carried unanimously (8-0). J. R. Flores offered for NRCS to do a
workshop on Soil Health at this year’s conference.
The Missouri River Team that provides input to the MRRIC
committee needs to have a representative from each of the states that border
the
Steve Radcliff reported that the North Central Region had
asked Missouri to put together a proposal for hosting the regional meeting this
summer, but when the submitted proposals were discussed on a recent conference
call the other states in the region could not commit a sufficient number of
attendees and the board decided to not hold a regional conference this
year. The region board will continue to
meet during the NACD meeting in July in
AREA Reports:
Bruce Biermann reported he had talked to all his districts about the
needs assessment and the task force DNR is proposing. All his districts felt the same way about
both issues. A couple of the districts
felt it was good to let DNR know the amount of work still needing to be done
through the needs assessment, but needed flexibility in the resource
concerns. He asked his districts about
the Area Meeting for this summer, 8 preferred a day-time meeting, 2 preferred
night and 2 said made no difference. He
related an issue his own county had gone through in getting approval to hire a
new district technician to fill the vacancy when their Tech II left. He was not happy with the lack of response
from DNR to their repeated requests during the process.
Tom Lambert stated that his districts feel that all the new
rules and processes are interfering with the district work. He stated there was a district technician in
his area they lost to suicide which he felt was partly due to the stress of the
job.
Kenny Lovelace said his districts feel the task force is a
bad situation. He said that as soon as
the weather breaks he is not sure if they have enough contractors and equipment
to handle the work waiting to be done.
Several of the contractors in his area are also farmers and will be busy
planting as well.
Beverly Dometrorch said her district’s manager retired and
their SALT manager also left and they had a real ordeal getting approval to
replace at least one of them. She said they
sent letters, called and sent faxes and finally got approval to hire one
employee. She had been in touch with the
districts in her area and they feel that no one should come in and tell us what
to do. They are upset due to being
promised to be able to move the funds in the silos but that didn’t happen.
George Engelbach reported he had attended the
Montgomery/Warren meeting. They had been
having difficulty in getting their cost-share distributed and had been at the
January Commission meeting requesting to change amounts in their resource
concerns but were not approved. One of
the
Ben Gorden read a letter he had written expressing his
concern about recent events. He stated
his local district felt there was not much of anything that could be done to
make things worse and encouraged him to go ahead and send his letter to
whomever he wanted to. He also had been
in contact with the districts in his area and they feel the task force is all
busy work to keep DNR staff busy. What
would happen if the districts quit working?
Sharon Gifford stated her area districts have all gone
quiet, nobody is saying anything. She
feels it is due to events happening to
Steve Huber stated his districts feel that not being able to
transfer funds in resource concerns is crazy.
They also feel the task force to look at district staffing levels is
crazy. They are not sure who we need to
tell about their concerns.
Correspondence:
An e-mail was received with an invoice for dues to the Missouri River
Team that provides input to the MRRIC committee for
Other Business:
The web page has been constantly running at maximum space available for
the past few months. The 2 solutions to
this issue would be to purchase increased space on the web page server, or
delete some of the older files from the web page such as older years of minutes
and award pictures, etc. A motion was
made by tom Lambert to purchase the additional space on the web page server to
increase the space available to 2500 MB.
Kenny Lovelace seconded. Motion
carried unanimously (8-0). Also to go
along with this, the laptop currently used is over 4 years old and is also
running pretty close to capacity with all the files needed for maintaining the
web page as well as newsletters and other files. A motion was made by George Engelbach to
approve purchase of a new laptop and software to replace the current one. Sharon Gifford seconded. Motion carried unanimously (8-0). Since the Employees Association is now
looking for a way to maintain their web page that is not connected to the state
computers or the state web page or software, a motion was made by George
Engelbach to donate the current laptop to the Employees Association after the
new one is purchased. Sharon Gifford
seconded. Motion carried unanimously
(8-0).
A motion was made by Kenny Lovelace to have the letter read
earlier by Ben Gorden addressed as the view of MASWCD and send copies to the
Governor, DNR Director Templeton, Soil & Water Commissioners, House
Appropriations Committee Members, and Charlie Kruse of Farm Bureau. Bruce Biermann seconded. Motion carried unanimously (8-0). All the other letters being received on the
concerns of the task force and needs assessment should be sent to the same
people.
The topic for the Speech Contest for 2010 was
discussed. A motion was made by Tom
Lambert to use the current national stewardship & education theme of NACD
(Conservation Habits = Healthy Habitats).
Kenny Lovelace seconded. Motion
carried unanimously. (8-0).
The date for the next regular meeting will be set at a later
date. A conference call may be needed if
issues arise before another regular meeting is scheduled. The Education Seminar will begin at 7:00 p.m.
this evening. There being no further business
the meeting was adjourned at 5:15 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
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____________________________ Peggy Lemons, Executive Director |
___________________________ Steve Radcliff, President |
