Minutes of The
February Regularly Scheduled Meeting of
The Virginia Master Gardener Association, Inc.
February 9, 2002
Call to Order
President Pat Reilly called the meeting to order at 0958.
Introductions
Pat introduced Guy Mussey, the agent for Stafford, Fredericksburg, King George, Caroline, and Spotsylvania, and Lin Leong, the president of the MGACRA. Lin welcomed the VMGA, explained what was in the information packet provided , and introduced the other MGACRA members that were helping with the meeting.
Others present then introduced themselves.
Minutes
The minutes of the December meeting were approved as corrected.
Treasurer’s Report
Treasurer Sybil Przypek reported a total balance of $19,092.47. The endowment fund has been set up. Diane Relf’s donation is to be changed to the endowment fund. A motion was approved to move $1000.00 from the checking account into the endowment fund. The Treasurer's report was accepted as presented.
President’s Report
· Pat Reilly presented stars to Debbie Williams for work on the membership directory and to Walter Przypek for photographs that were taken at Master Gardener college and used on the Master Gardener College CD.
· Thanks to Sarah Lineberger, Pat Reilly got a communication from Bonnie Appelton. Dr. Appelton is at AREC at VA Beach and is an author of some renown. She has a new book “The New York, Midatlantic Gardener’s Book of Lists”. She will be at MG college this June and has proposed a book signing to go along with when she speaks. She would like to set it up so that proceeds from her book sales at MG college would go to the VMGA. Pat suggested that it go into the principle of the endowment fund so it can keep on giving.
· The CD on MG college has been sent out to agents and coordinators along with a letter from Pat and information on the endowment fund.
COMMITTEE
REPORTS
Ann Gorrell reported that the next event “Gardening with Nature” will be held March 16, 2002 at Sandy’s Plants in Mechanicsville (near Richmond). Sandy will do an afternoon session on perennials. Mary Casebolt from Spotsylvania, a National Wildlife Federation Backyard Steward, a wildlife mapper with the VA Game and Inland Fisheries, and soon to have the title of “Naturalist”, will have the morning presentation on “Gardening with Wildlife”.
Flyers will be out shortly and it will be up on the web.
Newsletter
Pat announced that the newsletter will include an announcement on “Gardening with Nature” and will go out today or Monday.
Florace Arnold volunteered to be the new editor.
Membership
Julie Cochran announced that the membership booklet was mailed out. An insert with additions will be included with the newsletter.
Membership forms are available on the web site.
Membership, as of 1 February 2002, stands at 350 members, 51 of which are life members.
Consists of Kerry Goldmeyer and Frank Reilly.
There has been no activity to report since the last regularly scheduled meeting.
Many of the Units have not been keeping their Unit Representative information current. Please convey your current Representative contact information to Jim Scibek. We plan to make this information available through the web site.
Communication Committee
Members: Julie Cochran, Cheri Haggerty, Alice Nicolson, Shelby Snyder and Chair Frank Reilly.
2.) Since the December regularly Scheduled Meeting, the web page has been updated on 39 separate occasions.
3.) The most visited page since December (other than the front page vmga.net) has been the forum page (1978 visitors), which inexplicably seems to be broken at the current time. We will dump the current contents at the end of next week to rebuild that page. Virginia Beach’s page within VMGA.net was very popular (1460) until it was removed – they now have their own service provider. Some other interesting patterns include 466 visits to our history page, 458 visitors to the member’s pages and 403 visits to the public pages. 226 visitors visited the current minutes page, More people read the by-laws (145) than the minutes from October (47 visitors).
4.) We have been listed in several major search engines, and that is paying off. We have received 29 referrals from Google.com, 26 from Microsoft Network (MSN.com), 23 from Ask.com, and I can’t really explain this one but 21 referrals from Petersburg.com. Why is this important? One of these folks who visited us was a reporter from the Washington Post, who later called me to ask some questions.
5.) Alice Nicolson is currently accepting changes to the calendar. This is also a very popular page, having been visited 233 times since the December Regularly Scheduled Meeting. However, we have not been receiving very many calendar updates. I know your Units have activities, and this is advertising that is free for the asking. The more dates we have, the more people will visit the page, and perhaps your events. If you find submitting calendar updates to Alice too slow or cumbersome for your event, you are always free to place announcements on the VMGA.net forum page. You can find a link to that on the front page.
6.) Cheri Haggerty maintains the links page. If you have any interesting gardening links to add, send them to her. She’ll vet them, and edit the page accordingly. Currently we are reciprocally linked with MasterGardener.com. Visit the links page for information, and check out their site. It has dates, and contact information on MGs from around the nation, and even a few international links.
7.) Shelby Snyder has started a MG On-Line Photo album. Please send her scanned pictures via email, or even hard copies of pictures. She will scan them and get them back to you. We would love to see what MGs are doing around the state.
8.) Membership Applications are available on-line at the Membership page. This is the time to print some out and distribute them to your new classes. Julie promises to have a change of information form on the membership page as soon as the dust settles from her other big projects.
9.) The Communications Committee has also prepared a CD Presentation of MG College. They are here for you today. Those units that failed to send a unit representative today will get theirs through the mail. This was a large project with many photos from Walter Przypek and a very few others, but the lion’s share of the work and the creativity were contributed by Julie Cochran and her own master irritator Scott. We will show the CD later today.
State Fair
Evelyn Parker announced that this year’s State Fair will be from 26 September thru 6 October, 2002 and from 10:00 o’clock in the morning till 8:00 o’clock at night. She has a sign up book and the deadline for sign up is the middle of August.
Pat Reilly reported that a package went out to all agents and coordinators regarding the nomination of up to two MG volunteers for scholarship to MG college. The first of March 2002 is the deadline for submission.
Karen Sacasky reported that the next deadline is 10 March 2002 at which time they will advise the Board of Directors of the slate of candidates.
Karen Sacasky reported that the committee will have recommendations on officer elections by the April meeting..
Extension Liaison Report
Sarah Lineberger reported the following:
1.) The state record keeping system will be complete by June.
2.) She talked to Dr. Umberger about the “Trees of Strength” program (put together by NC State) and it was determined that there was not enough interest to do as a state program but it could be done on a local level.
3.) MG college – All speakers have been confirmed. Information will be going out in March in the Leadership Newsletter. Forms will be available from agents and coordinators on April 1st.
4.) Master Gardener College will be June 20th thru 23rd. Registration is $100.00 or $40.00 per day. Service discounts apply. May 1st is the deadline for service awards. Master Gardener college registration deadline is May 31st.
5.) The Southeast Master Gardener Conference in Raleigh is May 20th to the 22nd and hosted by NC State. Cost is $120.00.
Unit
Reports
Units present presented brief reports on what their individual units are doing.
There was no unfinished business.
There was a discussion on staffing clinics based on a question by Alice Nicolson. Most units partner an intern with an experienced Master Gardener.
Lin
Leong started a discussion on officer pins.
Is this something we want to pursue?
Announcements
The next board meeting is Saturday 13 April 2002 in Gloucester.
The official meeting was adjourned at 1330.
A
Jim Scibek
Secretary
VMGA, Inc.