MINUTES OF THE NEADC EAT AND GREET

WEDNESDAY, July 5, 2006

Informal meeting at the home of Angela and Barry Rabinovitz

Present: Rick Rosa, Scott Matey, Al Bozza, Trish Katzman, Steve Whitford, Anna Krowczynska, John Feehan, Val Feehan, (Joy Marzolf, photographer)

Absent: Julia Cichowski, Alicia Lenci, Robert O’Neill

Meeting Chaired by Rick Rosa (see attached Agenda)

OLD BUSINESS

Newsletter – final decision and timeline – board decided due to the expense of the printing, and the new expense of having to pay a liaison, we can no longer print the newsletter. It was decided August would be our final paper copy of the newsletter, and September 2006 will be our first edition of our electronic newsletter. Steve will put a notice on the web site, and there is to be a notice in the August newsletter that August will be the last print/paper version. Both notices will remind members to update their e-mail information online. We will continue to print and mail out the trip information and calendars at the start of the dive seasons, however.

There was some discussion as to who would be producing the electronic version. Al mentioned Robert has on a number of occasions indicated he would be happy to let someone else take on the role of the newsletter. Joy Marzolf indicated she would be willing to take it on if Robert was no longer interested in continuing. It was agreed that if Robert didn’t want to do the newsletter any longer, we could have an interim election at the next regular meeting to vote Joy in as the newsletter editor. Joy has also indicated she currently has the software necessary to produce the online version.

Prior to the minutes going out, John will send an e-mail to Robert to update him and ask if he is still interested in doing the newsletter.

Aquarium Liaison Position: still an open issue that we need to resolve. The position must be someone who works at the Aquarium, and no one is coming forward. We would prefer a diver so that we once again can have a good relationship with the aquarium via this liaison, but that’s obviously not something we can control. The position needs to be paid since aquarium staff who volunteer for off-hours work are currently paid according to a set scale, based on the activity and amount of time. It is a large expense for us to incur, and could easily be 1/3 of our total expenses each year. We are going to try to negotiate some options with the Aquarium to see if we can get this resolved quickly. If we do not have a liaison, we cannot have meetings.

Rick will work with Marla to coordinate another meeting between the board and the Aquarium to work on resolving this issue. He’ll try for something the week of July 10th.

Boat Dives, Whale Watching, Upcoming Trips: the boat dives are nearly booked per John. It’s been extremely tough to fill them, no one seems to want to go, or are not making decisions until the last possible minute. Unfortunately we cannot wait until the last minute as we have money already down and cannot afford to lose it because we don’t fill the boat. John will work to re-schedule the seal dive that was cancelled due to Captain Rob’s going out of business.

NEW BUSINESS

GAFC & Picnic 7/15/2006: Rick wanted to know what the status of this event was in terms of volunteers, etc.

John and Val are coordinating the Back Beach dive; Alicia is coordinating the Halibut Shores, Anna is coordinating at Plum Cove, Randy is coordinating Folly Cove. There was some discussion as to collateral materials—would we have any to hand out? What about selling items like t-shirts, water bottles, etc.? We do not have any collateral materials as the Aquarium has had our brochure to review for a month now and has not been able to respond with their proposed changes, so we now have nothing to hand out. Rick asked Scott to see about getting t-shirts. Al may have some water bottles, and we want to look for tank stickers (Julia has them but probably is in London on the 15th, unfortunately). Trish will put together a generic membership application that we can print and take with us.

Any other new items: none

Meeting adjourned at 9:15PM

July Business.doc - 2 -