October 2025 Board Meeting Notes

Bartlesville Astronomical Society

Board Meeting Notes October 28, 2025

In attendance:

Officers--

Evan Zorn

Denise Gregg

Luann Wright

At-large Board Members--

John Grismore

Craig Brockmeier

Previous past president--

John Blaesi

The main focus of the meeting was how to handle things that would normally be done by the Club President, since we did not elect a President at our October meeting, as well as the ongoing transfer of Treasury-related functions and Club accounting from Evan Zorn, our previous Treasurer, to Luann Wright, who was elected Treasurer at our October 6 Club meeting. 

Duties normally handled by Club President:

John G wrote up a document with what the BAS Bylaws state as the duties of Club President, plus what he has done over the last year as Club President.

Meeting host and meeting agendas: 

·       Luann opened the meeting by asking who would be host for meetings and compile the meeting agenda.  There was wide discussion on this topic.  Luann proposed having one Board member do it for a quarter.  Evan said he could do it for first quarter 2026.  Evan is now Vice President but he did not want to take this on for an entire year. 

·       John Grismore, most recent Club President, said that he would not be able to prepare an agenda even for the November and December meetings.  We discussed using a “generic” agenda that could be used from meeting to meeting—so someone wouldn’t have to come up with one every month—but there would be a risk then of forgetting to discuss at a given meeting topics that wouldn’t come up every month, such as planning a meeting for something like the library display.

·       Denise mentioned possibly creating an appointed position of meeting host, and solicit a Club member to fill it, but we decided not to do that.

·       For now, we agreed that Evan would host the November and December meetings.

·       We don’t have a meeting host at this time designated for January 2026 and beyond.

Club laptop:

We discussed who would keep the Club laptop.  Evan has it now, and we decided he would continue to keep it, at least for the time being.  We discussed giving it to a different person each month (to whomever would host the meeting) but decided not to do that.

Club A/V coordinator at Club meetings:

Evan and Pat have been doing this for the last year or so.  We aren’t sure if Pat is going to continue to be available to do this. 

Evan asked Craig if he could do this—he has done it before and has gotten some of the tools like microphones and pointers that we are now using.  Craig agreed to do it.

Program Chairman and programs for upcoming Club meetings:

·       We discussed the Program Chairman position.  The Club used to have an appointed Program Chairman.  The last person to fill it was Bob Young, but around 2020 when the pandemic started, he was unable to dedicate the time needed to the Program Chairman position. 

·       Other people then began arranging for speakers for our meetings, especially Craig, who has a wide range of networking contacts.  Denise has arranged for speakers from the Night Sky Network.  Others have also arranged for outside speakers, but there is still no designated Program Chairman. 

·       We didn’t appoint one of the Board as Program Chairman at the meeting.

·       Denise mentioned that since people can think of the job of Club President as typically including being Program Chairman, that could discourage people from being willing to be Club President.

·       We have our main presentations set for November (Brian T, “How a Harem Opened the Universe”) and December (Denise, on meteor showers).  John G will contact Daryl about doing Cosmology for 10-minute Astronomy for December, and Denise will do Comet Nomenclature for 10-minute Astronomy in November.  John G said that Holley Bolinger might come to do a 10-minute Astronomy presentation in December, but we’re not sure.  (After the meeting, Daryl told John G he will do Cosmology for 10-minute Astronomy in December.)

·       Nothing has been set yet for main programs or 10-minute Astronomy, starting in January and going forward.

Scheduling Club meetings with the library:

·       John G started doing this last summer at the library’s request.  They wanted Club Presidents (as opposed to multiple people in a given organization) handling Club meeting requests.

·       This is now available to do online.  John G started doing this, and now Luann is doing it, and will continue to do it going forward.  With the new system, you even get a last-minute reminder that you have a meeting room booked!

·       Luann will write up how to do this and send to Denise.

Bvilleastro+President email address:

John G and Denise will continue to see this.  We decided to leave it as is at least for now.

Listing of Club President in organizations:

·       Denise brought up how we should list ourselves in various organizations, such as the Astronomical League, MSRAL, the Night Sky Network Club account, and others, since we don’t have a Club President. 

·       We decided she would list the President’s position as “Vacant” or “TBD” (Vacant, if possible) and use the generic Club email address for contact. 

·       For the Astronomical League and MSRAL, we can also list Denise, as she is the AlCor. 

·       For various organizations, if she has problems trying to list a position as “Vacant”, she will bring that back to the Board for consideration.

Approving Club meeting minutes:

·       Denise has traditionally run the Club meeting minutes by the Club President before posting. 

·       She mentioned just posting them now without running them by someone first, and we agreed that she should do that.

Transitioning of Treasurer roles and responsibilities from Evan Zorn to Luann Wright:

·       These functions include our Truity Bank Account; Arvest Bank Account; Post Office account; PayPal account; Club insurance; and government and tax-related responsibilities.  Evan and Luann have already met to start working on these.

·       Denise asked about the transition of handling COP and P66 Volunteer Grants for volunteer time; Evan and Luann are also working on these transitions.

·       Luann will get from John Grismore the keys that he has to our storage room and our post office box.

·       As we discussed the transition of Treasury functions from Evan to Luann, we discussed traditional “Treasurer” jobs that Denise started doing over the last few years, and we decided to have Denise continue to do them.  Denise has kept up the Treasury Excel file, the AlCor file and also has been updating the Night Sky Network Club members’ list. 

BAS Retention Requirements:

Evan and Luann made a document listing the types of paper files that he has had as Club treasurer.  We discussed retention for various types of documents.

Keep indefinitely:

·       Club incorporation documents

·       IRS determination letter(s)

·       Audited financial statements (we have none)

·       Board meeting minutes (Denise is in charge)

·       Legal records (documents such as deeds, mortgages, expired insurance policies)

·       Tax Returns (we have 512-E)

7-year retention:

·       Supporting tax documents, such as receipts and invoices

·       Annual tax filings (such as IRS Form 990 and state organizational forms)

·       Payroll records (we have none)

·       Accounts payable and receivable (we don’t have)

·       Major contracts, such as for storage, after expiration

Other retention periods:

·       Records for non-tax purposes (such as bank statements, financial reports at meetings, etc.)

·       We decided to keep these for seven years.

Up for discussion:

·       Old membership applications (we have these dating back many years).  Denise said that before we destroy any very old ones, she would like to match them up with the current Treasury file and update the time of joining for members who are still current, where this is not noted in the Treasury file.

·       She also brought up everyone signing the BAS waiver form.  Evan and John G said that all current members have; they had an initiative to make sure this has been done over the last couple of years.

·       Attendance sheets (November 2018 and forward).  Denise said that she doesn’t think we need to keep these, since meeting minutes summarize how many members and visitors we had at each meeting.  (She doesn’t distinguish in minutes how many were in person or via Zoom; she just gives totals of members and visitors.)

·       Agendas (don’t have that many).  Denise said she would like to keep these until she can see how far back meeting minutes are posted, so we can have a full list.

·       Denise said we should keep a list of all past addresses for Ken Willcox.

·       Evan also mentioned that the Bartlesville Area History Museum has offered to keep Club documents for us.  Denise said that she has some things at home, such as newspaper clippings of when we donated a telescope to the library, that could go into the history museum.

Nonprofit booths event at the mall on November 6, arranged by the Kiwanis

·       Denise saw this listed in a recent B Monthly magazine.  A lot of nonprofits are participating, including some that are not traditional social-services nonprofits.

·       Denise saw Karen W with the Kiwanis recently and told Karen she hadn’t heard about this before she saw it in B Monthly.  Karen said we could still enter and she would arrange to have materials emailed to us, but we haven’t gotten these.

·       Denise said that the one-page BAS summary up in our display case at the mall is the one before the BYA stopped meeting.  We should replace it before November 6.

·       Luann said that she saw on the “About” page of our website that the BYA was listed as still meeting.  (The Youth page itself says the BYA is on hiatus.)  Denise said she would fix this!  (She did, after the Board meeting.)

Quick setup sign - corrugated A-Frame or Flag type? 

This is still a work in progress. 

Luann showed a prototype design that she had made with a dark blue background, with a telescope in foreground, our Club QR code, and a backdrop of the Milky Way.  She has been working on this using VistaPrint.

Craig also brought the prototype he has been working on with Staples.  That one wouldn’t be as portable but would be sturdy, as the design is intended to be used outside all the time, not just at a special event.

We discussed 24 x 36 as being a good size for a sign, and we could get a sandbag to help hold it up in wind.

One of the initial purposes of the sign is to have something that announces what we are doing so that, for example, if the Police Department is making evening rounds and sees us outside, they would be able to tell that we are having an organized Astronomy Club event.