September 2024 Board Meeting Notes

Bartlesville Astronomical Society Board Meeting Notes

September 24, 2024

In attendance this evening:

John Blaesi, President

John Grismore, Vice President

Evan Zorn, Treasurer

Denise Gregg, Secretary

Craig Brockmeier, Board Member At Large

Brian Turner, Board Member At Large

Pat Stefanopoulos, nominee for Vice President for 2025

1. Officer Slate - to be voted on at October’s Meeting

• President - John Grismore

• Vice President - Pat Stefanopoulous

• Secretary - Denise Gregg

• Treasurer - Evan Zorn

2. Members at Large

• Board Agreed to have two members at large for 2025.

  • Brian Turner

  • Craig Brockmeier

3. Bylaws and Standing rules

• Bylaws were reviewed and approved by the Board, to be voted on by the Club at our October 7 meeting.

  • There was discussion at the Board meeting about where and when Club meetings in general would take place.  We decided this would be a decision by the President or a quorum of the Board of Directors.

  • We reduced the time of notification to Club members about the Club officer election for the coming year from one month to two weeks.

  • Regarding family memberships, we decided to put in wording that a family membership would include “immediate” family members.

  • We increased the maximum amount of a Club individual expenditure not itemized in the budget that would require the approval of both Treasurer and President from $200.00 to $300.00.

  • We discussed audits.  For external audits, we decided to follow the requirements of state and/or federal regulations for 501c3 organizations.

• Standing Rules were reviewed and approved by the board - no vote is needed by club members.

  • There was discussion about what to do about Club meetings or events and inclement weather (weather not suitable for travel to/from a meeting).  We decided that, in the event of inclement weather for regular Club meetings, the meeting would either be held virtually or the following Thursday, as decided by the Board.  If Bartlesville schools decide to close on that day or move to virtual learning, the Club may choose to meet meeting virtually or reschedule.  If an ad-hoc event is scheduled on a day when there is inclement weather, we could choose to either hold the event virtually (if the event would be suitable for that) or reschedule.

  • For reimbursement of expenses by Club members, we decided that expenses should be submitted for reimbursement within six months of purchase.

• Both documents will be stored on Club website:

  • The MS Word version in a Board-accessible location if possible, to be used for future reviews

  • The PDF version made public.

4. Events

• Boys and Girls Club at Dewey (October 10, 2024 4:30 to 6:30 PM) - show up about 5:30 to setup

• October 5 - Dark Sky at Bollinger’s cloudy or sunny and maybe even raining - Denise will confirm with Bollingers if we will do this rain or shine (i.e. if we have to eat pizza inside.)

• October 12 - 2nd Saturday at Jo Allyn Lowe park - this is also International Astronomy Day - may pull out a few big scopes

• BAS will not do BooFest at Sooner Park.  (We have not done this in previous years; we would have to come up with a couple thousand individually-wrapped candies or other treats!)

• The Girl Scout evening at Wah-Shah-She on September 20 was a great event, in spite of increasing clouds during the evening.  The Girl Scouts donated $100 to our Club!

• We may do something similar for the Boy Scouts in November - no action has been taken at this time.

5. Other business

• The question has come up about Club insurance for sexual abuse and molestation claims.  Since no local mainline insurance company offers policies for sexual abuse and molestation claims, the club will not have coverage.

  • Craig B agreed to contact MSRAL (Peggy Walker) about what they or the Astronomical League may be doing in this regard.

  • Denise pointed out that she is emailing the City now when the last of us are getting ready to leave a star party at Jo Allyn Lowe; that way, the City knows that we are out of the park.  She does this regardless of whether we are staying past 11 p.m. or not.

• The Board voted to give $50.00 to Tuesday House for recent acquisitions (Celestron NexStar base and small projector)

• The Club will continue to have Zoom at main club meetings.

  • Evan Z and Pat S agreed to be tech hosts to monitor and run Zoom at our meetings.

  • Before our November Club meeting, Evan Z, Pat S, John G, and John B will get together for a knowledge exchange on running a meeting with Zoom.

  • Discussions were held around a device for tech hosts to use to monitor the meeting - the club may acquire an used iPad for this purpose.

    • Available online

    • Craig will check his sources of used P66 equipment

6. Telescope Inventory

• This is in process—John B and John G are working on it.

• A check out procedure will be created.

• The Club’s Celestron StarSense is at Denise’s house.

7. Text Blasting

• Options for this process should still be investigated--there should be a better way to do it—but no immediate action was taken at this time, apart from under “casual in your spare time” research.

• Denise will continue to use her iPhone and manual list for now.

• Pat mentioned an app called GroupMe at the meeting. 

8. Outside speaker meeting gifts

• Craig will buy 3 or 4 coffee mugs (depending if quantity discount is available) - estimated to be around $20 each.  These may or may not be “heat-changing picture” mugs.

• Some discussion occurred that if members are speakers, they should get some sort of “candy”—this might entice more members to give a presentation.

9.  Door prizes: 

·       We discussed door prizes. 

·       The general consensus is that it is OK if the prizes are donated to the club.  The Club should not use its own funds for door prizes, as these are funds that were donated to the Club without the intent to give them back to Club members individually.  We may get an accountant’s opinion on this later.

10.  Denise asked if we should continue to have Club officer’s names listed on our website. 

·       We had a recent instance of two emails (both flagged as junk mail) that “appeared” to be sent by John B to John G and Denise, using our bvilleastro+position email addresses, and mentioning the recipients by name, but that actually came from another email address. 

·       It was pointed out that should our youth group ever start meeting again, it would be helpful to have the names of Club officers listed on our website, so we decided to  continue to do this, and just monitor things if we start to get more unusual-type emails.

11.  Upcoming meetings:  Plans are in place for

o   Oct - Elections and game night

o   Nov - Telescope for Christmas or similar (John Land of Tulsa Club)

o   Dec – A Year’s Worth of Meteor Showers (Denise)

o   Jan - So you got a telescope for Christmas - now what. (note - no speakers have been assigned to do these yet)

§  Basically, a short presentation on how to set up equatorial, Alt/Az, or SeeStar

§  Maybe a review of how to use Star Walk 2 or Skysafari