Minutes from the Winter 2003 KT SAF Executive Meeting
January 29, 2003
Attendees: John Rennie,
Laurie Smith, Diana Gennett, Jerry Crow, Kerry Schell, Joe Burckle, Jay Kutack,
Jeff Stringer, Dwayner Turner, Wayne Clatterbuck, Dave Walters, Richard Evans,
Gary Schneider, John Perry, Red Anderson, Dave Buckley, Bruce Kauffman, Wilbur
Hitchcock, Jason Utley, Jason McClure, Jeff
Holt, and Mark Young
Chair Gary Schneider called
the meeting to order at 7:51 PM CST at Fall Creek Falls State Park in
Pikeville, TN.
Jay Kutack, National
President, discussed his schedule and
goals for the year. He is going to try
to attend as many state meetings as possible.
He is also trying to develop another Leadership Academy. His main task is to find a new executive
vice president. A committee of 9 was
established to review candidates. They
will pick the top three and then the president will make the offer to the top
candidate. We should have a new vice-president
by June. He is working toward a
resolution of the RN/RF situation.
There will be 3 or 4 field forester seminars. Jay is trying to get more people interested. Jay wants additional mentoring of
students. He is also going to tout the
advantages of certified forester program.
2002 accomplishments
v
Publications are leading
the way for promoting forestry.
v
Through a partnership
with Hogaloft, SAF is hosting field forester seminars.
v
The Certified Forester program
has been enhanced with an exam now required.
v
SAF members are often
asked by legislators to provide advice.
v
There is a landmark
forestry item in Farm Bill for addressing fire.
v
The Journal of Forestry
has anew item “focus on”.
v
The National Convention
in Winston- Salem with over 125 poster session and over 500 presenters, was a
premier education event.
HSD Representative Tim French was unable to attend, but
spoke with Gary Schneider. SAF’s
financial health was within budget.
v
SAF was hoping to have
the leadership academy in 2003, but is looking unlikely and will likely be in
2004. HSD feels that Leadership academy
should not be supported by the budget, but should be self-sufficient.
v
Forest policy - 2002
Farm Bill was a supreme effort on behalf of forestry by HSD and Michael
Goergen.
v
Media efforts focused
mainly the fire issue.
v
Core values have been
accepted and should be used every time we speak.
v
Student members- We need
to ensure student chapters have an energetic cadre of active professionals. We should find a way to send student
chapters to the National Convention.
v
2003 presidential field
forester award deadline is May 31, 2003.
v
Strategic plans for 2003
-04 have developed core items: a strong forward thinking organization; enhance
service to employers, enhance service to society at large, development and
sound stewardship.
Jeff Stringer questioned
whether the national office will be looking at funding for leadership training
from an endowment and whether there are sub-categories for CF. Dave Walters asked whether national office
received the money they were requesting from past attendees. Jay said that they did receive some, but not
enough yet. They are still working on
it.
v
A committee was formed
of past alumni that had attended the leadership academy to develop funding for
the academy.
v
Federal employees are
prohibited from serving as an officer of outside organizations. It varies by Region Forester and Forest
Supervisor. The Chief has counseled the
Regional Foresters that there needs to be more flexibility.
v
It was recommended that
SAF make a back to basics campaign. Develop a message that is simple and
straight forward, but scientific based that can be relied on to share with the
public. HSD recommended that this be
looked into further.
v
HSD has recommended that
if a professional that did not receive a degree from an accredited school or a
candidate school or a substantial degree from a non-accredited school be
allowed to become an SAF professional member with the following stipulations:
they must have 10 years of forestry experience, 120 hours of CFE credits within
3 years in category 1 and a letter of recommendation from 2 foresters that are
SAF members
v
The Denver meeting put
SAF in the hole $400,000. The insurance covered $350, 000.
The summer executive
committee minutes were distributed for review.
Jeff Stringer made a motion to approve summer executive committee
minutes. The motion was seconded and
approved.
Seventy-five people had
committed to come. Forty were
pre-registered. There should be 21
students from UT, 7 from UK, and 7 from Sewanee. The TN State Forester will not
be here. David Todd will be taking his place. The meeting tomorrow begins at
8:30. Bill Harmon will be the speaker
for the awards dinner.
Budget - Jerry Crow put together budget for the last 5 years and it shows
that deficit budget have been passed before.
2002 was projected to be -$2536.73, but ended the year +2040.54. The checking account balance is $11,882.88.
Discussion of Forester’s Fund request for National FFA convention. KT has asked council to think about supporting activities such as this at the National Level because a society can only receive funding for the same project 3 years in a row. Kerry said we might want to keep it local because it may end up costing more money with the National Level involved.
Red Anderson spoke about the
Leadership academy and how everyone that has attended speaks highly of it. Red asked to raise budge for it from $500 to
$750 at the summer meeting. Red is
asking that the membership consider raising the funding to $1000. Dave Walters suggests sending $1000 to
National Office to support the Leadership Academy and also keep the $750 for
someone to go. Richard Evans suggested
setting up some sort of challenge between state societies to help raise the
remaining dollars needed. Red commented
that he liked that suggestion because it would give focus to KT’s effort. Kerry believes it is a good investment for
organizations such as the Forest Service, state forests, companies, etc. Kerry
feels we need to sell the idea for employers to support their employees in
attending the academy. He suggested
sending money that we send for foresters’ fund to the leadership academy. Jeff Stringer made a motion to change
Leadership Academy (delegate support) to $1000 and Leadership Academy
(contribution to academy) to $1000.
Dave Walters seconded. Kerry
called the question. Motion
passes. Jeff suggests that Red send a
letter to the Forestry Source saying we donated this money to the leadership
academy to challenge. Wayne suggests a
letter to the state societies instead.
Red will call Mike Lester telling him what we would like to do with this
challenge and see how we should do this.
Jerry continued reviewing the budget.
Budget with the amendment will be -$1237.84.
Membership - Dwayne Turner
KT has 405 total members in
Dec 2002. We did not meet our goal of
433.
UK - down 13 members to 6; UT
up 2 member to 24; Sewanee decreased 2 to 0.
Hazard Community College-0. Some
of these numbers don’t make sense.
Four hundred-seventy five newsletters were mailed. In May, we began distributing newsletters via e-mail to 2/3 of the members. The cost per issue is now $93 instead of $240+.
Web Master - Mark Young
The most popular area is the
news section. It is biased towards
Knoxville/Oak Ridge because that is where the information is coming from. The website came in a little under the
budget because he didn’t purchase any software. Mark’s goals: encourage the committee and chapter chairs to use
the web site as a means of enhancing communication with their groups; continue
to promote the website within KT to increase use among membership; restore
password protection to the “members only” section; add our members directory to
the site; and do a better job of collecting usage statistics for the website on
a monthly basis. Marks’s suggestions
for improvement: increase use by our various chapter and committees to
communicate with their groups; greater involvement by members in contributing
web material; increase the amount of informative and educational material for
general public; and use the web site to share our perspectives with
constituents.
Jeff was program chair for
the two meetings in 2002. It was
requested that summer meeting occur in west Kentucky to boost chapter. He is stepping down as program chair and has
not done anything for 2003.
Awards
The awards will be
distributed this evening. Gary reviewed the report from Pam.
History - Wayne went over Rick’s report.
Public Affairs &
Communication - no report
Education Committee Report was distributed. Laurie requested information about educational opportunities to
share with members and reviewed scholarship recipients.
Policy Committee
Jeff handed out list of task
force for Daniel Boone Forest Plan Task Force.
The plan should be available for review in March or April. There needs to be some coordination between
the Daniel Boone and Cherokee Task Forces so the response is consistent. We need to keep Red out of it because he is
also the Planning Team leader for the Cherokee.
The East Kentucky’s policy
statement was presented at summer meeting and sent back to revision. They did not address the issue with item
1. They also need to take West Kentucky
Chapter off the position statement.
Gary had asked several people to review the statement. KT had reservations of state park employees
discussing forest management. It was
questioned whether this was feasible of even if we would want them to do it
given their preservation views. Gary
questions whether #3 is getting into the legal end of things. Jeff thinks they are getting at the Right to
Practice Forestry Act. Gary suggests
editing a few words such as “ professional foresters will provide input to the
legislators so they will pass laws that are positive.” Red suggests that some folks from TN look at
the policy statement and do some word smithing, provide suggestions and submit
back to EKY. Effective Forest
Stewardship in Kentucky Policy Statement was approved with minor changes.
Nominating - John Perry
Chair-elect: Jerry Crow*,
Rudean Reynolds
Sec/Treas - Jeffery Lewis
Voting turnout was low, less
than 50% of last year’s. 2002 voting
turnout was 67. 2001 voting turnout was 134.
It was suggest that the ballot be sent as the body of the e-mail and
have Richard send it out instead.
Auditing - no report
CFE Credits
Participants will receive 7
CFEs for this meeting.
UT has been very active with 24 members. Nine members attended the national convention. Chapter members participated in the forestry conclave this fall
University of the South - no
report.
UK - Jason McClure said the
chapter meets every other week.
Membership is down. They are currently trying to get a student drive
together and meet other foresters to get some hands on experience and money by
working with them. The chapter worked
the Reforesting the Bluegrass effort that is one of the largest reforestation
efforts in the country. They also want to promote the SAF through this
project. The chapter is working on
developing some events for Earth Day and Arbor Day. Members also want to get some fire training and experience. They are trying to keep the experimental
forest off the chopping block and are trying to establish revenue that could
come from managing forest in sustainable manner. It was suggested that perhaps getting the student chapters
together aside from the KT meetings would be helpful. Kerry suggested that the university professors contact students
when they drop out of membership.
West KY – The summer meeting was held in Paducah and
sponsored by MeadWestvaco with a field trip to fiber plantations and mill tour.
SAF was presented with a plaque from FFA for their support for over 35 years of
participating. The FFA convention was
held Oct 30-31, 2002. Ken Arney has a
report of FFA convention.
East TN – The chapter meets the 1st Wednesday of the each
month at Shoney’s restaurant on Clinton Hwy. in Knoxville. They also had a one-day seminar on GPS with
12 participants.
SE TN – The chapter held 4 meetings. They included the topics of logging systems;
road standards and stream policy; wildlife management and forestry practices on
State Forests; and an ethics class. The
meetings had CFE credits of 1 credit for each meeting to help increase
attendance at meetings.
Kerry mentioned that he had a
conversation with someone that felt that the KT chair ran the society. Kerry tried to explain that the chapters
have to bring problems and ideas to the KT.
Glen Smalley wanted to bring
to attention that because of budget cuts; the Office of Forest Management
position (Ken Smith) at University of the South may be abolished. The university has approximately 8000 acres
of forestland. Management of this land
may be contracted out. Does KT wish to
write a letter to the university? Kerry
made a motion to have Joe and Glen write the letter and KT sign it. John seconded. Wayne said that letter should go through the Policy Chair and
then to the Chair. He also said that
you better write a good letter because UT may need to use it. Motion passed.
West TN is using cost sharing to help defray cost of
membership. The chapter had a field day
for deaf children.
Middle TN - no report.
They haven’t met this past year.
The Forest Plan task forces
were already discussed.
Washington State wants to
create an avenue of trees and requesting a tree from each state. Richard told them to buy the trees and send us
the bill for $45 for each tree.
Last year HSD approved buying
pins for years of membership 10 yr., 20 etc.
Do the chapters want these, if so how many? Kerry made a motion that the
Society supports the use of pins. Red
seconded. Motion passed.
Position Statement EKY -
already discussed.
Foresters’ Fund request for
PLT T-shirts EKY. Foresters’ Fund
contributed 370.50
·
The National Membership
as of 12/2000 was 17268. In 12/2001 it
was 17068. In 12/2002 it was
16842. We have lost 562 over 2
years. Eight of those died. Wayne
mentioned that the number of foresters being hired has gone down. Jeff says that if the % of foresters in SAF
has gone down, then we need to be concerned.
·
Laurie will take care of
the treasurer signature cards.
·
Ethics - John Rennie
Licensing requirements in
some states requires 1 hr CFE of ethics training. There is a book that goes with the SAF code of ethics. John said that an hour each winter session would
provide a good service. John would
volunteer for another year or two. We
need to know ahead of time who will attend so they can have handouts and
certificates.
·
There has been a problem
getting the election results to Louise on time by early December. Mark suggested using the web to get
nominations and ballots. Diana said we
need some clarification of when items are due.
We need to nag the chapter chairs to get the results.
·
There is a problem
updating handbooks. We need someone to
volunteer to update them.
Summer Meeting
Middle TN - June 12 & 13
@ Holiday Inn Express, Huntsville
Winter Meeting
West KY - 2004
FFA Convention – KT will
apply for another Forester’s Fund Grant.
Appointed people for vacant
Chairs - Auditing Chair - Red Anderson; Nominating Chair - Kerry Schell;
Program Chair - Bruce Kauffman; UK Student Advisor - Jeff Stringer.
The meeting was adjourned by
the chair.