SARA MEETING MINUTES - January 10, 2007 (approved February 14, 2007)
Call to Order: Meeting was held in the
County Annex Building, 198 Neel Avenue, in Socorro, and called to order at 7:30
PM by President Vern Leavitt. Welcome to Mike Finn, already a member, but
attending his first meeting.
Approval of Minutes: Minutes of the November 2006 meeting were
accepted as posted on the web site.
Treasurer’s report: As of January 10, 2007 the bank balance was
$3375.12. $280.08 is TARA's.
ARES/LEPC report:
The LEPC is focusing on getting a first draft of the Emergency Operations
Plan out. It will include flow charts for decisions whether to activate the
Emergency Operations Center and/or the ARES communications trailer.
Spargo recently had a meeting with Bob Tacker of ISD at Tech to revisit
and refresh the agreement for placement of a weather radio transmitter on M
Mountain; the agreement stands as before except that there is an output
power limitation that we did not know about before. It should be feasible to
reduce the transmitter power from the usual 100 watts to 50.
There is a grant proposal in the works to go to the BNSF Foundation, for
funding the local weather radio transmitter, which would benefit the
railroad as well as the local area. Also various funding sources are being
studied for improving weather radio coverage all over the state, working
with Emergency Management Association (EMA).
Thanks to Glenn Mauger for getting together the proposal to Don Scott,
Chairman of the EMA, and a member of ARES, for equipment for our part of the
backbone network; the proposed equipment budget for Socorro is around
$23,000. (Jon Spargo, KC5NTW)
December Meeting: The December "meeting" was a latke party
at Vern's, moderately well attended - by those who were able to find it - and a
good time was had by all.
Hamfest reports and discussion:
We apparently need a four-week lead time for mailing flyers; this year a
lot of people got theirs in the mail just after the Hamfest. Ticket prices
were again discussed; raising the price of the drawing tickets would seem to
make sense, given the increases in costs. The question was not resolved.
Kalman thanked the members of the VE team, Al & Sandy Braun, Seth
Price, Jim Harrison, and Luis Aguilar. He reported that 15 people took
exams, and that one failed.
Ed Wood estimated the attendance at 440 people.
We sent out 3767 flyers for $989 in postage. Dave Johnson suggested that
we add Springerville and Show Low next year.
It was noted that the Chamber of Commerce billed the City for
"planning assistance".
New Business:
Glenn Mauger opened discussion on several issues, including pros and cons
of having ARES or RACES or both, the idea of a contract between ARES and the
county (which the county attorney would like), and ramifications regarding
use of the meeting room and other facilities. No decisions were made, but
these matters will be studied and discussed further.
Glenn also brought up the matter of Bob Sparks' 70 cm repeater, and
suggests that the club buy it and operate it.
Kalman Oravecz talked about FCC rule changes, notably dropping the Morse
code requirement; if anyone with a codeless Technician license wants to
upgrade to General, we can do a VE session, perhaps in April. Also noted
that there will be a new question pool going into effect on July 1.
Jim Oty brought discussion back to Bob Sparks' repeater, and said that Bob
would like to get rid of it. Consensus was to go for it.
Adjournment: The meeting recessed with an interesting talk by Keith
Hayes KD5KH of the National Weather Service, and adjourned after that; time not
recorded.
--
Submitted by Eric Bear Albrecht, W5VZB, Secretary
