Executive Director’s Report – May 2008
Office Issues. Our official move date is Friday, May 23rd. UM-Flint will help us with the logistics of moving furniture, but if anyone has some burning desire to move boxes, please feel free to join us.
Programs. Most of my time and energy went into our spring programs this past month. Benthic Monitoring and the Flint River (and Community) clean-up are complete, and GREEN will wrap up today. We would love to hear any and all feedback on what went well, what didn’t go so well, and ideas for improvements so we can continue to grow and improve these programs.
Website. Sara, Sue, and I attended the presentation of a UM-Flint student who built an interactive map for our site that allow users to click on a GREEN or benthic site to obtain past year’s data, photos, directions to the site, etc. She did a great job, and is now working to incorporate some changes and suggestions we had for making it even better. This will be an exciting new feature of our new website.
I have retained the services of a web designer who will help us build our new site. We are scheduled to have major renovations complete by our next board meeting. But new pages will go live as they are created, so please feel free to take a look at our progress starting in the next couple of weeks. As I stated before, I hope to have our new and improved site completely up by the end of June.
Flint River Corridor Alliance. I continue to attend the general meetings of the Corridor Alliance as well as the Hamilton Dam committee meetings. I am still working with the University and representatives from the City to determine how we can most effectively integrate REP’s recreational study into the city’s study. That process hit a snag, but seems to be underway once again.
Events/Outreach.
- Sue did a great job organizing this year’s Earth Day at MCC. We had great participation from Darren and Jack for staffing the FRWC booth, and Diane for lending us her wonderful bugs!
- I attended a planning meeting for the Ortonville Creekfest. They are moving along in their planning, and we have a duck to paint (which Brent has generously agreed to handle). We will have a booth at this event, so anyone interested in attending (June 7th) please let Sue know.
- Sue and Jack staffed our booth at Wild Lapeer. We had a wonderful spot this year (many thanks!) and got lots of interest in our organization.
- Jack, Bob, and I attended a public meeting regarding the landfill adjacent to Halloway Reservoir. The DEQ and the owner of the landfill have come to an agreement on expanding the landfill in order to pay for the necessary clean up from the old cells. Understandably, there is a great deal of concern about this plan. We will submit comments on behalf of the FRWC.
- I have been invited to serve on a Flint City Parks advisory board. I will meet with Carolyn Simms later this month to discuss my participation on this body.
- Sue will have a FRWC display at the Flint Farmer’s Market Flower Day focused on water conservation.
Staff Development. I attended a Strategic Panning Through a Freshwater Lens seminar sponsored by the Midwest Program of the Land Trust Alliance. While much of the session focused on how land trusts can focus their efforts in order to better protect water resources, there was a useful session on how watershed coalitions and land trusts can more effectively work together. I also obtained many tools that will be useful for future program planning at the FRWC.
Fundraising.
- We were able to raise all the funds needed for Clean Up t-shirts. Many thanks to those of you who made personal contributions. The t-shirts seemed to be a hit; though, as usual, we have a lot left over (I think clean up attendance may have been down this year).
- We have finalized the contracts with the Drain Office for GREEN, monitoring, and various outreach efforts planned this summer.
- As previously mentioned, we received a $22,000 grant from the Ruth Mott Foundation to conduct a Hamilton Dam feasibility study in conjunction with the city of Flint.