The Vermont Paddlers Club

Id

17

Mtgdate

2007-03-07

Purpose

Executive Committee Meeting

Officers

James Raboin, Tony Shaw, Brent Osborne

Others

Dan Beideck (via telephone), Norm Staunton

Agenda

Upcoming Bow & Stern (B/S)
VPC Clinic
Summer BBQ
Winooski R. access
Outfitter Discounts for VPC members
North Br Winooski land purchase
UVM Pool Sessions
Spring Schedule, Summer Schedule
Spring General Meeting
VPC Website

Opening

The meeting was help at Tony Shaw's home and was called to order by James Raboin at 7:00 pm.

Newbiz

B/S: Content will include a president's letter, report from safety and education director. N.S. still waiting to hear back from his contact regarding a safety and rescue class for 2007. The letter from the activities director will include a wrap-up of last year's activities as well as anything relevant on this year's activities. This will include the success of the UVM pool sessiosn and a call for additional trip leaders for both spring and summer trips. This report may remind people of the VPC rental program which avails equipment to members after July 1st. B/S will include a financial report, a schedule of events, the typical list of trip reports, and perhaps an article on the evolution of the vtpaddlers.net website. J.R will put together the content of this B/S and will sent to T.S. who will convert it to .pdf and send off to members vial email.

Spring Meeting: This year's spring meeting will be March 18th from 5-9pm. J.R. will give a brief "State of the Club" introduction which includes a mention of new members, and a reminder about the fall elections. Charles Fish, author of "In the Land of the Wild Onion" will be the guest speaker at March 18th's meeting. D.B.'s wife Anne will give a brief intro. Charles will speak for about 45-50 minutes with time for Q&A afterwards.

Oldbiz

CLINICS: The novice clinic will be held June 2-3 and the class II clinic will be held June 23-24. The class II clinic will be at the Deerfield R. in western Massachusetts and is the same weekend as Zoar's DemoFest. 3 campsites have been reserved at Mohawk Campground for this weekend. T.S. added these events to the calendar. On May 27 there will be an instructor clinic held in order to facilitate proper teaching of students during the novice and class II clinics. This will most likely be held on the Winooski R. from Middlesex to Waterbury. All 3 of these events will be registered/insured through the ACA. Norm Staunton is the prime contact for these events.

July 15th was decided on the date for the summer BBQ. Some debate was had over the location of where this event should take place. We discussed whether or not this should include a paddling event of some sort, or if the location would have access to boatable water. Nothing was decided. Location listed as TBD for now.

Winooski R. For the B/S, it was decided to have an article stating the status of the ongoing relationship with the City of Winooski regarding access to the river. Currently, there are access issues on the Burlington side of the river, but Winooski has welcomed use of it's banks to access the river.

Outfitter Discounts: A list of local outfitters who currently give VPC discounts was discussed as well as a list of outfitters whose status was unknown. J.R. agreed to follow up on this list and include in the upcoming B/S.

North Br Winooski. The Vermont River Conservancy is looking for letters of support to purchase a parcel of land which abuts the North Branch of the Winooski River. There is a form letter available. We discussed (1) whether to offer a letter of support, and (2) if we did, whether to submit the form letter, or write our own unique letter. We informally agreed that this was a worthy cause (clarification was made that the request was simply for community support and the VT River Conservancy was not soliciting funds) and J.R. agreed to follow up on this.

UVM Pool Sessions: Every session thus far has been profitable for the VPC. The club needed to bring in ~$80-90 for each session in order to break even for the night, and on each session held, that threshold has been surpassed. 3 more session are scheduled for this season, 1 of which is instructional.

Spring Schedule: Can we put it together by March 18th (the deadline for B/S)? D.B. is still in need of a lot of trips from members in order to put a decent schedule together. All present at the meeting agreed to send at least 2 trips apiece to D.B. asap, and some interest will be recruited from members. The spring season is usually defined as April-May (memorial day). We will work hard to support D.B. in putting a spring schedule together so that it can be included in the B/S that gets distributed at the spring meeting. It was suggested that some members be approached directly and asked to lead/co-lead a trip. This would help to cultivate a higher level of engagement for members who have participated in events in the past. J.R. agreed to mention in his "letter from the president" in the B/S a warning about ice and cold water during early season paddling.

Summer Schedule: We need to start thinking about summer trips. D.B. recommends having a number of novice-friendly informal trips starting after the novice clinic in order to foster novice clinic grads to participate. The focus of these trips would be to practice flatwater strokes, get comfortable with eddylines, etc. (Which is practice all levels of paddlers would benefit from)

Closing

We closed the meeting with an informal review of the vtpaddlers.net website and it's improved capabilities. T.S. facilitated this review. While there are still some glitches here and there, most are very simple to fix. We are nearing the 1-year anniversary of the 'crash of the website'. T.S. has worked very diligently to prevent such crashes from occuring again. He is currently looking for someone to apprentice him in managing the site who will eventually take over full responsibility of the site management.

Meeting was officially adjourned at 9:15pm.
Next meeting is to be held at Dan Beideck's home.

Nextmtg

2007-04-10

Author

Brent W. Osborne

Postdate

2007-04-17

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