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Archived Minutes

The minutes of other meetings can be retrieved on the Archived Minutes Page

 Virginia Master Gardener Association, Inc.

Bi-Monthly Board Meeting

October 13, 2007

Green Spring Gardens – Fairfax County

(Draft)

Attendance

(Alexandria/Arlington) Vivian Ballard; (Bedford) Patty Gamache, Bob Gamache; (Chesapeake) Pinky Derieux; (Fairfax-Merrifield) Martha Anderson, Bill Anderson, Adria Bordas, George Graine, Amol Kaikini, Sally Recinos ; (Green Spring) Nancy Bradley, Joan Richards, Steven Wertime; (Hanover) Christy Brennan, Cheri Haggerty; (James City County/Williamsburg) Angela Cingale; (Loudon) Pat Martin; (Newport News) Anita Smith; (Norfolk) Don Snipes; (Northern Neck) Edward A. Munns, Jr.; (No. Shenandoah) Fran Gregory, Bud Gregory; (Powhatan) Chuck Miller; (Prince George) Mary Vinsh, Cheryl Sebera; (Prince William) Frank Reilly, Janet Scott, Bill Scott; (Roanoke) Kathryn Debnar; (Rockbridge) Ted Jenks; (Virginia Beach) Mary Ann Kincaid, Jim Kincaid, Fran Shelton; Betty Villers; (York) Jackie Lohr. 

Call to Order

President Cheri Haggerty called the meeting to order at 10:00a.m.

Introductions

George Graine, Fairfax Master Gardener Representative, welcomed everyone, thanked the hosting committee and told us about the arranged tour after the meeting.  Adria Bordas, VCE Agent, welcomed us and gave us some fun facts about Fairfax.  Sally Recinos, President of the Fairfax MG unit, welcomed everyone and introduced Sandra Reichert, Green Spring MG Coordinator, who gave a brief history about Green Spring Gardens Park and the historic manor house.  Introductions followed around the room

Minutes – Angela Cingale

The August minutes were accepted after changes were made in the attendance area.  Updated minutes will be posted on the website.

Treasurer’s Report – Ted Jenks

Treasurer’s report was handed out to the membership, explanations given, and accepted as read.  Report is attached.     

COMMITTEE REPORTS

Education - Fran Shelton, Pinky Derieux, Co-Chairs

No report. 

Newsletter - Florace Arnold, Editor

Florace has retired as Editor of our newsletter.  November will be her last newsletter but will help someone get started for the January edition.  Ted proposed that a committee be formed to assist with the newsletter.  MaryAnn Kincaid, Membership Chair, stated that there may be potential members who expressed interest in volunteering their time with the newsletter when they signed their VMGA membership form.  She will give the names to Cheri. 

Membership – Mary Ann Kincaid, Chair

As of October 11th, there are 487 members of the Virginia Master Gardener Association.  Of these, 327 are Active members; 5 are Auxiliary members; and 155 are Lifetime members.  This is an increase of 23 members since our August meeting.  The total number of members who did not renew is 146.

Communication/Unit Support - Frank Reilly, Chair

Unit Support Members: Pat Reilly, Karen Sacasky, Kerry Goldmeyer, Pinky Derieux. No activity to report since the August meeting.

Communication Committee Members:  Cheri Haggerty, Kathryn Debnar, Shelby Snyder, Betty Truax, Tom Bolt, Paul Campbell, George Alapas, George Graine, Bob Schmidt

Since the August e regularly scheduled meeting there have been 2,152 visitors to VMGA.net.  Nearly all the visitors looked at 7,728 or 3 pages each during their stay with several minutes spent on each.  The Calendar of Events link is the most popular and is a very productive place to make announcements, and why most new messages are mentioned there.  The other most popular viewed pages are Related Links, where other links and resources are listed, with Membership being the 3rd.     Useful links is also where you go for the Hort Updates, Minutes, Unit Reports, MGPW, College, Stewards and News.  Approximately 71% of the visitors arrive through the front page which has the most important information and newsworthy items.  The site is updated about 75 times a month and takes a lot of effort by volunteers involved with the website.  Members are encouraged to send their special events to Kathryn Debnar at k2garden@cox.net.   

Finance Committee:  Bill Scott, Chair

Bill reported that the committee roster was being re-organized.  He will provide news in December.

Special Committees

Education Endowment Fund – George Graine, Chair

George made the announcement that the committee was formed and consists of the following members and district: 

Jackie Lohr - Northeast, Bud Gregory - Northwest, Don Snipes - Southeast, Leslie Paulson - Northern, and Jean Bainbridge-Central as alternate.  He stated that no changes would be made to the guidelines already in place.  All committee members have been recipients of a MG college scholarship.  The MG scholarship is a once in a lifetime award. 

Fundraising Committee – Betty Villers, Chair

Betty reported that the MG T-shirts are $10.00 each and a sale was made recently to a Georgia MG due to no state mentioned on it.  License plate frames are $3.00 and Decals are $2.00.  The unit reps were encouraged to buy them sell them in our units and that Betty will fill the order.  Since MG College a total of 117 decals, 113 frames, and 47 shirts have been sold.

State Fair – Christy Brennan, Chair

Attendance was up 13.5% at the State Fair this year and the VA State Fair Committee loved the enthusiam and expertise that was brought to the “Horticultural Pavilion” which is also Virginia’s largest outdoor classroom.  There were 15,196 students on school tours and 166 MG’s from 15 units that volunteered for the 11 day event and educated more than 10,556 people.  The new contact form was used and worked out well.  The figure was doubled from last year but is still low because it’s still difficult to count all the attendants when school groups are going through the area.  She had special ordered Green Lace Wings in different life cycle stages.  The students also loved seeing caterpillars in different stages on the curly parsley.  All the displays were very well received.  She thanked everyone for all their hard work and teamwork.  Christy read a special note from Lorene Blackwood of the VA.State Fair who commended Christy and all the MG’s for their time and efforts.  She will ask for a copier and a Kiosk for next year’s fair to expedite needed handouts as we run out of copies.  Small cards were also handed out with the VMGA website, VA website, and the listing of the different handouts that can be ordered.  Christy got a round of applause for a job well done in coordinating this event.

Extension Liaison - Dave Close, MG Coordinator

Dave was moving into his home today and was unable to attend our meeting.  Cheri read his report as follows:   AAG –State Garden Contest Awards ceremony was held on Friday, October 5 at the VA State Fair. Bonnie Appleton was the main speaker.  Dr. Mark McCann was on hand to present plaques to 17 of the 19 category winners. VA’s Commissioner of Agriculture was also present for the event and gave a few remarks. The result of the contest was the lead news article for Friday’s Virginia Tech News and Update.  “Summer In-Season” newsletter is posted on the web. The printed version was not mailed out.  MG College Advisory Team met in September and outlined the list of potential speakers. More information will be going out through “In Season” and VMGA in the coming months. The dates are June 17-22, 2008. The Steward Theme this year will be Land Care with an emphasis on fire wise landscaping and home composting practices, along with other pertinent Land Care topics.  Tour of VA – since the August meeting, Dave has met with the Luisa MG unit for the first time.  Handbook Revisions – two student workers are currently updating the chapters received up to this point. Dave thinks we are still on track for a fall 2008 of the next edition.  Misc:  He and Dawn Lerch and made endowment visits in theTidewater and Richmond area including a formal presentation to the Henrico MG Executive Board.  They have made a corporate contact with Scotts and will continue to pursue them. Additional corporate contacts will be made including Dominion Power. They have a target date of June 2008 to finish out the endowment. There is renewed urgency in funding the endowment due to the state budget shortfall. Over the next two years, the College of Ag and Life Sciences alone will be paying back at least $2.7 million to the state. Dave is asking to please bring contact names and suggestions forward for them to pursue. Kathryn Debnar has been contacting the remaining units who have not contributed their minimum $100 donation toward the endowment. This has resulted in at least one check being written.  Other news:  a. Operation Rejuvenation Swarm – had to be postponed due to lack of interest. Fell short of the minimum needed by 10 participants. We will likely try again next year.  b. New contacts reporting forms – thank you to the units working on implementing the new reporting.  c. Opportunity with Fine Gardening to raise $10/new subscription for the VCE MG Coordinator Endowment program and will run through May 2008. Details have been worked out and the banner is posted at www.hort.vt.edu/mastergardener and will also have it posted at vmga.net. The key for this promo is that all new subscriptions must be made online through the promo offer. That is the only way Fine Gardening can track what state gets credit for the new subscriptions.  d. Dave received a contract from the National Park Service to upgrade the Land Care Steward materials into an actual book. Dave has until the summer of 2009 to deliver the finished product.  e. He met with my fellow colleagues on the National Consumer Horticulture/Extension Master Gardener committee and National Program Leaders of USDA CSREES (Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service) in Washington DC to discuss the national presence of the Extension MG program. We are looking to do a national assessment of the MG program. Bill Hoffman has taken over Jim Green’s responsibilities. Jim was the former program leader for plants in USDA CSREES. Dave’s impression of Bill and his commitment to helping consumer horticulture and the MG programs is very positive.  f. The National MG Coordinator Conference (intended for state MG coordinators and County level coordinators (specifically paid coordinators)) will be in northern VA in October of 2008. More details to follow. It will be an opportunity for the VCE MG program to shine as host of this meeting. The meeting will also involve a congressional reception on Capital Hill (likely at the National Botanic Garden).  g. Dave will be attending the Horticulture Forum III in Davis, California in November. He will be finalizing some details for the public launch of eXtension which is scheduled for February, 2008.

Unit Reports

Regular reports were given and unit reps were requested to also in send their reports to the secretary.  They will be posted at www.VMGA.net and printed in the next newsletter.

Unfinished Business-

Fine Gardening – We were encouraged to ask our units to take advantage of this opportunity to raise $10 for every /new subscription for the VCE MG Coordinator Endowment Fund.  Details have already been worked out to have a banner posted at www.hort.vt.edu/mastergardener and at vmga.net to obtain a subscription.  The funds will go to the MG Coordinator Endowment Fund.

Maymont Booth - Cheri stated that every year VMGA volunteers have partnered with Hanover MG’s at the Richmond Maymont Flower & Garden Show Booth with an education booth.  The cost of a booth for the 2008 is $175.00.  VMGA volunteers staff half the booth and Hanover the other half.   The other side of the convention center will be open in 2008 for a home and it should bring in additional contacts to our booth.  A motion was made and seconded to expend the $175.00, from our treasury, and split the education booth costs and have a presence at this event.  The show opens at 11a.m. and closes at 5p.m. and there will be eleven shifts for manning the booth.  Ted will send a check to the Hanover MG’s for this event.

Search for Excellence – Cheri is looking for a team to work on the Search for Excellence project to put together a document with criteria which gives parameters on how a unit should follow the guidelines for putting their brag boards together for MG College.  We want the units to share their successful projects with the “Search for excellence” under the categories of Sustainable Land Management which is used by the judging panel to choose a winner that best exemplifies an MG unit  project’s success and what is necessary to make it educational for all the attendees.  The committee can start putting together the document in January and disseminate it to all the units upon completion before the June MG College “Brag Board” might.   Bud Gregory offered to chair this committee and Angela Cingale volunteered to assist him.

VMGA Logo –  Patty Gamache, Chair

Since our last meeting, Patty Gamache, Committee Chair, has received several contest entries.  She encouraged everyone present to either enter the contest or ask their own unit MG’s to create a logo.  The deadline for submitting entries was extended to December 1^st.  .  A suggestion was made that we go to Office Max and they would create 2 designs with 2 revisions for $239.00 and then we could choose one.   We were asked to submit designs of our creation and to encourage other MG’s members of our units to lend their creative ideas for this project.  The artist does not have to be a VMGA member or even be a Master Gardener to participate in the contest.  The deadline was extended to December 1, 2007 and samples can be shown at the December meeting in Williamsburg.  If anyone has questions regarding submission, please contact Patty at rgama37@aol.com, by telephone at (540)587-0524, or by mail to 1714 Kingston Circle, Bedford, VA  24523.

MG Coordinator Endowment Fund – Pat Reilly, Chair

Pat Reilly was not present to give us a report; Frank Reilly gave the report on her behalf.  The endowment now has $220,000.

He discussed various ways of donating money to the endowment fund which included the possibility of a donation of $100 from each unit.   

If every unit donated, it would give us 100% participating and would be a good tool to use when soliciting funds from commercial enterprises.  Other possibilities include donating to the endowment fund thru charitable gifting of retirement or 401K funds or a challenge.  Frank discussed the “Reilly Challenge” which meant that for every unit that invites a member of the endowment committee to give a talk about the endowment, they will donate $250.00 to the fund.  The unit reps were asked to inform their members of the various ways of donating to the MG Coordinator Fund. 

Old Business

VMGA Membership Directories - A discussion was opened by Cheri regarding format and costs associated with printing the directory.

After a consensus, it was decided to keep the format the same but to give the directories to the unit reps for distribution to members in their unit.   If a member cannot be reached for accepting their directory, the rep can give it to Maryann Kincaid and she will mail it.  This would save us the costs of mailing.  Directories were given to the unit reps for distribution with the member’s name on a master sheet and envelope to give out at their next meeting.

New Business

America Anniversary Gardens Neighborhood Awards – The winners were announced by Cheri.  The winners will be posted at the AAG website. 

Cheri made an announcement that one of our unit reps, Don Saunders, had a heart attack and cards would be welcomed.

North Carolina MG Conference- Betty Villers gave a report on the conference.  She shared a lot of ideas which could be used for MG College and she will share more of them with the MG College Committee.

Nominating Committee – Jim Scibek, Chair

A committee will be formed to make nominations of officers for the 2008-2009.  If anyone is interested in serving on this committee, they can contact Jim or Cheri.

Announcements

Next VMGA meeting will be held on December 8 – Williamsburg at 10:00 a.m.  

Meeting adjourned at 1:30 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Angela Cingale, VMGA Secretary

 Virginia Master Gardener Association, Inc

Treasurer’s Report

October 13, 2007

Virginia Master Gardener Association, Inc

Treasurer’s Report

October 13, 2007