Minutes: November 8, 2022

Attendance

Board Members:
Emina Darakjy, Anne Fenker, Beth Valdez, Nick Harvey, Emily Spillett-Brownlie, Nancy Sappington, Laura Burnett, Mona Cummings, Magen Shaw, Daniel Kump, Gordan Mann (joined late)

Staff:
Nancy Hughes, Deb Etheredge

Absent:
Sarah Gaskin (on vacation), Bob Blum

Action Items

  • Review, Approve Agenda, Consent Calendar
  • 2022 Conference Planning
  • Vice President vote

Summary

12:07 PM Call to order

12:07 PM Reviewed & Approved Agenda

12:08 PM Consent Calendar

  • September minutes – no additions/corrections
  • ED Report – Nancy S. – bookkeeper that Nancy knows and will provide details
  • Comms Report

12:09 PM Approved

12:10 PM Old Business

  • conference update
    • don’t have the final numbers – should have them available
    • sponsors have now all paid & Nancy is still receiving expenses from speakers
    • close to breaking even
    • well-received event
    • good feedback overall
    • silent auction – pushing $3k
  • Nancy is doing the taxes
  • Board EDI statement subcommittee update
    • Sarah G on vacation
    • Emily says it was her job to pull everything together from the documents provided by Sarah & Mona.
    • Emily sharing a draft EDI statement and what makes a good statement – see screenshot – Emily will finish the statement and share it again at the December meeting.
  • CAL FIRE update – Andy Trotter at WCA has stepped in for management & oversight on the grants that are in question, sent teams out to geo-tag trees, take photos of them, and implemented tree care and watering teams in those cities that are not, or unable to take care of the trees that were planted.
  • Conversations with each city, and what the situation is with each tree and plant replacement trees for those that are drought stressed or have disappeared (we had a small amount of theft). Great stories coming back on the impact of those programs with the cities involved and getting CAL FIRE to look at the work done and see the benefits.
  • We do not have someone from CAL FIRE working with us directly.
  • Emina had questions – how many trees? when the work took place? why are the cities not stepping up and planting new trees or watering? What is the process we went through with follow-up and maintenance? CFR program – the city would plant two trees for every tree removed.
  • WCA was doing follow-up visits and making reports which were not immediately acted upon by WCA.
  • What is Walter’s issue? question from Nancy S.
    • a number of points
    • NDCA issues
    • trees captured on the list were not on the approved list, for example, crape myrtle – which led to a review of what species of trees were planted
    • the definition of the NDCA %
  • submitting a new tree species list – cities are requesting different trees that were not approved
  • WCA was not fully paying attention to the specifics of the grant on occasions
  • Nancy H – one of the reasons it took a while for the taxes as Nancy needed to go back & remove prior WCA invoices that would not be paid – with the corresponding invoices in the system
  • Beth needed to leave at 12:30 pm due to dropping the internet.

12:38 PM – Board Recruitment

  • Sarah G has two people
  • we had another application online.
  • update our brochure with our current programs

12:40 PM Follow-up brainstorming session SD – no update

12:41 PM Fundraising campaign

  • Deb outlined our peer-to-peer campaign that will be coming Friday.

12:47 PM – regional workshops that are local and in-person and could include lunch
– Miranda will talk about funding from the Inflation Reduction Act in a March webinar
– can we also live-stream?

12:49 PM – Santa Rosa/FountainGrove II Arbor Day event to plant 200 trees went well

12:50 PM – Wells Fargo requirements for signers on the CaUFC accounts

12:53 PM – vote on Nancy S. for Vice-President
– need to call a vote as our VP – all in favor – all on call
– vote on adding Nancy S. to the Wells Fargo letter & remove Emina – Gordon made a motion to add the new officers to the accounts

12:57 PM – comments from Gordon

  • CAL FIRE issue is about changing admin midstream
  • CAL FIRE has a bad history of delaying payments to the grantees & try and work with them to do that
  • Rotate annual conference with annual meetings from the regions
  • Fundraiser – ‘we need trees & trees need us’ – Gordon whats to change ‘we’ to ‘humans’ or ‘people’ – change to ‘people need trees & trees need us’ – doesn’t want ‘we.’ 

1:01 PM Next in-person meeting

  • Nancy can do a poll for the next in-person meeting
  • January 18th?
  • Meeting in SF at Nixon Peabody
  • Usually 10 AM to 4 PM

1:04 PM – Nancy H. is going to the Partners Conference in Seattle next week

1:05 PM – Adjourned

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