January 2020 Board Meeting Notes

BAS Board Meeting Minutes Jan. 28, 2020

In attendance: Craig, Bob, Duane, Denise

Evan, Rick Buck, Mike, Rick Bryant, Daryl, Karen, Derek and Kristi were unable to attend.

BYA Report:

Bylaws: We discussed whether or not the BYA Bylaws that Rick Bryant proposed in 2016 had ever gone into effect. Duane said that as far as he knew, anything that was legally required was approved, and the rest was left to whatever the BYA wanted to do. Craig said he would need to talk to Rick Bryant more about this.

It was mentioned at the last library display committee that some organizations have prospective members indicate whether or not they wish to have their photograph published, especially for youth, when they apply for membership. We said that what we are doing right now for the Club library display is get permission if clear pictures of youth are used. Further discussion of this was tabled to a later meeting.

Funding and Expenditures

The agenda for a recent BYA meeting last year said that the BYA would be selling crafts, kits and other items, and the proceeds would help to defray the cost of things that Rick Bryant has bought on behalf of the BYA and paid for himself. This has generated some discussion of how the finances of the BYA are handled. Rick Bryant contributes a lot out of his own pocket toward BYA activities. Duane thought it would be OK if Rick Bryant just submitted his expenses to the Club to pay. We discussed possibly setting up a separate BYA account with Evan, our Club treasurer. This might be of help if the BAS/BYA were ever audited.

Restrict access to minutes on Google groups: Was this done? We don't believe this has been done yet.

Last names in minutes if minutes are public accessible? Denise checked right before the meeting and these can be seen in standard Google group searches. If meeting minutes are public-accessible, then last names can be seen.

Duane mentioned that as a nonprofit organization, we have to make meeting minutes viewable. We decided that for now, going forward, Denise will continue what she has been doing with last names in minutes. She doesn't list them for Derek, Abby or other youth. She sometimes lists them for others, especially where finances are involved, or for the name of the main presenter at the meeting, if it's not a youth member, or if more than one person in the Club has the same first name.

Up until now, we don't think that any club member has stated a specific wish to not put last names in meeting minutes, other than to leave them off for youth.

Who has access to club email distribution lists? Mike Woods and Rick Bryant weren't at the meeting, so we didn't discuss this.

Replace Abby with Virgil for Astronomy News: Do we need to approve? Those present approved of Virgil doing the news!

Replacement for Derek: Suggestions? There were no suggestions made at the meeting for who would replace Derek. Kristi recently emailed Craig that she will be unable to replace Derek going forward; also, she will need to stop being the ALCor representative for the Club, and someone will need to take over that.

Denise said that Derek has taught her how to post meeting and event notes, and she will continue to do that going forward, to ease the burden of whomever takes over Derek's position as Web Wizard.

Proposed trips/programs:

Gary Nealis - NASA program at OLLI. Craig mentioned this as a nice opportunity to learn about what Gary did in his years at NASA.

Cosmosphere - This wasn't specifically discussed at the meeting, other than we would like to do it at some point.

Speaker from NW Arkansas: Expenses - Do we cover?

An opportunity has come up to invite a speaker from NW Arkansas to present at our Club. He would expect to have his expenses reimbursed. We discussed precedents for this in our Club and there weren't many, but we have occasionally paid for speakers to come in the past. We didn't discuss an amount of money for an honorarium for the speaker from Arkansas.

TASM planetarium - Not specifically discussed, other than we would like to do this.

Share programs with Astronomy Club of Tulsa?? Didn't discuss this.

Jenks planetarium February 18--Some of us are already planning to go; will discuss this at the Club meeting Feb. 3

Sunfest--Denise has submitted the application and fee for Sunfest, which is May 29-31.

Proposed trips/programs in general: Craig brought up at the meeting the idea of having a person or committee take the lead on arranging trips and programs apart from monthly meetings (which Bob does) and star parties for Club members and the public (which Rick Buck works on, assisted by some others).

Last year, Craig was the one who organized the TASM planetarium visit, and he is also familiar with the Cosmosphere. Craig said that he enjoys working on such events, but it would be nice if we could designate someone to take the lead on these types of trips, and then that person could recruit others to help with specific events, much as Rick Buck does now with star parties. Another recent example of someone working on an event is John B. taking the lead with organizing Astronomy Day. John B and John G also were the initial contacts with Nick at Osage Hills.

Speaker mugs? Not a lot of discussion on this, but seems to be a good idea

Expenditures:

Do we want to buy Telescope? Binoculars?

Deferred these discussions for another meeting when more board members can attend. Craig did discuss getting a 2-inch eyepiece for the Club Dobsonian with Duane.

Planetarium projector? Deferred this discussion for another meeting when more board members can attend

Inventory of items in storage: Continuing to work on this. Has slowed down after the initial efforts last summer.

Name tags: Rick Bryant sent Craig, Rick Buck, and Denise some sample layouts, and Denise passed out a sheet of these at the December BAS meeting. We need to tell Rick Bryant which layout we prefer.

T-shirts: The group present didn't have interest in doing T-shirts; we will discuss this at a Club meeting.

MSRAL 2020: Any updates? Are we involved?

Denise mentioned that she had looked this up over the Christmas holidays and didn't see any dates posted; while preparing these minutes she did see that dates are posted (June 12-14) and there is more specific information about the event. Here is a link: http://msral.org/

Library display window - April. Progress; Ideas - get with Abby

We discussed that this project is moving forward. The display will include historical information about the Club; telescopes and images of objects in the night sky, including banners and individual images; a running display loop on a laptop; and art work that the BYA have done--the subjects of the art work will be various images we have taken that Lashawn has posted.

Outreach programs

Star parties and other programs:

Do we want a guidelines handout? Denise wrote up a couple versions of a handout, and a list of questions, which she sent to Board members last November. She's revised these since, and gave copies to the board members present.

We discussed not having star parties for outside groups if alcohol is served. (We do this now for our own Club events.) Duane said that he wouldn't be categorically opposed to alcohol being served at an event where we do a star party, if the organization sponsoring the event made provisions such that people who were drinking wouldn't approach the star party area. Others pointed out that you wouldn't want people who had been drinking walking in the dark to where telescopes were, and possibly falling, or tripping on telescopes.

We also discussed liability. Right now we don't put liability statements in announcements of public events we host, nor do we ask outside organizations who ask us to participate in their events to put in our liability statement. Duane said that we have insurance to cover those kinds of situations. We tabled further liability discussion to a future date.

We also discussed the Club possibly buying small red lights that would illuminate telescope and tripod bases and also any other obstacles in the area of a star party.

Social time after BAS meeting at Braum’s: Worthwhile? Yes!

Do we want to have scheduled board meetings? Yes!

When/how often/what day? Craig is thinking of every three months, starting in May, on the third Tuesday of the month. (That would put Board meetings in May, August, November, February.) This would avoid most holidays.

That seemed like a good idea to those present.

Have Lunch informal meetings? Yes! Craig suggested doing that on occasion with those in the Club most involved in a particular project or topic, and the others seemed to think that was a good idea.