OREGON PERMIT
TECHNICIANS ASSOCIATION
Quarterly Meeting
January 16, 2008
11:00 AM
Newberg City Hall, Newberg, OR
CALLED TO ORDER – Meeting was called to order by President Nomie at 11:00 am
Attendees: John Nomie, Julie Hollister, Linda McDermott, Bonnie Lanz, Kathleen Dzialowy, Debra Anderson, Michele McManus, Debbie Knox and Jane Phifer.
Absentees: Bonnie Deets and Angela Hughes
1) Opening Comments
q Mail was distributed to by Bonnie Lanz to Linda McDermott and Jane Phifer. Linda announced OPTA has a balance in the checking account of approximately $19,000.00
q Copies of the OPTA Membership database was distributed to John, Jane, Michele and Kathleen.
q Jane will deposit checks received and forward deposit slips to Linda. Linda asked for a breakdown of the money’s received from the fall conference into dues, conference fees, and products. Bonnie said the original was mailed to Jane and a copy to Linda. Linda will work with Jane to get the breakdown to get copies of the original deposit slips which were itemized indicating what the deposit was for so Linda can update the software.
q Bonnie announced that on the bill received from the Red Lion for the fall conference, room and meal charges for Elizabeth Happala’s from Scappoose were added to the bill which OPTA already paid for. Linda said she will contact the finance department at Scappoose, figure out what happened and get reimbursed.
2) Membership
q Michele handed out a flyer she would like to email out to the membership giving them a heads up that the 2008 membership applications and an OPTA calendar will be mailed soon. Michele asked Bonnie to have the OPTA group email sent to her so she can send the flyer out soon. Jane and Michele said they would work with Bonnie to figure out a way to send all the email address to Jane and Michele through outlook.
q Michele passed around a post card she created that listed all meetings and conference dates for 2008 – 2009. This postcard was intended to be mailed with the membership applications. Jane said the cost was very expensive to print the post cards; over $2.00 each and that is why we decided to email the post card rather than mail hard copies. John said he would rather send out hard copies and he would pick up some cardstock and print them and cut them at his office. It was agreed that 350 postcards would be printed. John said he could have them completed by the first part of next week and Jane agreed to pick them up at his office on January 25th. Jane will print off the labels and 2008 membership applications and mail them by the end of January which will include; the 2008 membership application, OPTA calendar and post card.
q Michele said she has a list of non-members that she is working on but does not have it completed. It was agreed that Jane will send out the 2008 memberships first to the current members on the database and Michele would send her a completed non-member list later.
q Bonnie said she has been receiving calls and emails from different jurisdictions inquiring on when the membership applications will be mailed and Beaverton called to get estimated costs for conferences and dues so they can get that number in their budget. Debra said Beaverton has really turned around supporting OPTA and their permit techs.
3) Education / Conference
q John announced that we are very pleased to have the spring conference at the Driftwood Shores in Florence. He said after the fall conference he worked with Eric Rines, from Florence and Jane and got it booked right away.
q Jane said the Driftwood needs to know as soon as possible on how many classes will be held each day so they can arrange for the rooms.
q Kathleen said we are looking at two tracks each day. Mary Dickson has confirmed for a two day class, 1st day intermediate and 2nd day more advanced for plan review.
q Bonnie said Matt Rozzell, from Happy Valley, has confirmed for 1 full day for more of a play role class on submitting plans, calculating valuations, fees, filling out permit applications based on the plans, quick overview of plan review, quick overview of required inspections and issuing a C of O.
q Kathleen said the other proposed classes were. State of Oregon Archives for ½ day class other ½ day State of Oregon E-Permitting and other departments. She will be contacting to see what can be offered.
q Kathleen said the other proposed class is the Outreach Class that Guy Sperb teaches for OBOA. John and Julie said it was only ½ day class so we would need one more ½ day class. Debbie said it would be a very good idea to have Guy teach a class for OPTA because he gets around a lot and is very involved with other groups and would portray a positive image of OPTA. Julie agreed. Further discussion of other ½ day classes that could be offered.
q Kathleen discussed the last survey and said there were a lot of people that said they would be interested in a code change class. It was briefly discussed and agreed that Kathleen would ask Guy Sperb to teach ½ day class on Public Outreach and ask if he could put together a class directed to Permit Techs on code changes.
q The cost of the conference was discussed among the group. The concern of not getting the number of attendees to the Thursday night dinner banquet / business meeting and ways we could encourage members to attend. It was finally agreed to increase the conference fee’s from $100.00 per day to $125.00 per day and have the dinner banquet / business meeting as an OPTA “host” dinner and not as a separate cost. It was suggested that on the conference flyers to add an additional line item for the dinner if a member would like to bring a guest or spouse and pay an additional $30.00 for the cost of the meal.
q Jane suggested having a social. Julie agreed that we need this time for networking. Jane said we could have a no host bar and Linda raised concerns of liability because alcohol was involved. Jane said with a no host we release ourselves from the liability and all agreed to have the class till 4:30, no host social from 5:00 – 6:00 and host dinner banquet / business meeting from 6:00 – 8:00.
q Jane said she would get a menu from the hotel and forward it to us next week. All agreed to keep on the full breakfast rather than a continental breakfast.
q Bonnie stated that Laura Scott and Patty Bond extended the Rewards Points Program report, which was due December 31, 2007. Bonnie agreed to complete the report and send it to ICC. She indicated at the very least we could receive free training and the potential to get a free training day from ICC depending upon how many points we gain throughout the year. And briefly explained how the points system works.
q At the end of the meeting Kathleen indicated she failed to mention that Southern Oregon ICC would like to co-sponsor a two-day training with OPTA on February 26, 27th and 28th. It would be no expense to OPTA and the Southern chapter would forward and profits to OPTA. Part of the class would be on archiving. All agreed and Kathleen will make the arrangements.
4) ICC Permit Technician Ad Hoc Committee Update
q Bonnie gave a brief update on the ICC Permit Technician Ad Hoc Committee indicating they were making some very positive changes as follows:
q Increasing the profile of permit technicians nationally; creating a National Permit Technician Newsletter; looking at identifying the description of a permit tech; proposing to ICC to create another certification level of a permit technician to include simple plan review such as decks, accessory structures; revising the current ICC Careers in Code Enforcement brochure to include permit technicians and create a new ICC brochure (Bonnie handed out brochure) specifically for a permit technician to present to ICC to produce and have on their web site and to make the ICC web site more user friendly for permit technicians to navigate.
q Debra expressed concerns as to the other permit technician certification and said it needed to be separate from the plan reviewer and in order to get this second certification the individual would need to have the current ICC permit technician certification.
q Bonnie indicated the next meeting was in Palm Springs CA on Feb 19th – 20th, 2008.
q Bonnie requested to have several group pictures taken of the board of directors to include in the National Newsletter she also requested to have everyone forward her past pictures that were taken either for conferences or meetings to include in the newsletter and also to forward to Michele to include in the OPTA newsletter. John agreed to take pictures after the meeting.
5) Newsletter / Organizational Chart
q Michele handed out her rough draft of the 2008 Newsletter and indicated we would not be sending out the newsletter until after Bonnie returns from the next ICC ad hoc meeting so we can include that information from the meeting in the newsletter. She briefly went over the newsletter and brought up key points. Michele also handed out an organizational chart and asked to have committees clarified by the group. It was agreed on the following:
q Certification – Julie, Debbie and Kathleen
q Education / Training – Kathleen and Bonnie
q Membership / Dues – Michele McManus
q News – eliminate this committee
q Combine Hospitality and Peer – Debbie
q Newsletter – Michele
q Website – John
q Scholarship – Bonnie asked for volunteers from the floor to chair this committee and Linda agreed to accept. It was further discussed that Linda research and propose some sort of scholarship fund and maybe do something on the same line as the ICC rewards program. Give points to members for volunteering, getting certified etc. Linda said she would put together some sort of proposal.
6) Previous Meeting Minutes
q John indicated that Angie Hughes forwarded him the minutes for the last two several meetings but he left them at the office and would forward them to the board for review via email.
7) Web Page
q John explained the problem with the web site was the search engines between Go Daddy and our web page and assured they are almost completely finished fixing the problem. Should be just a few more days.
8) Old Business
q John asked to set up a meeting with the accountant Affordable Accounting, Julie, Linda, Jane and himself soon to go over the transition between OPTA handling the accounting and Affordable Accounting taking over. No date was set but John said he would organize it. The cost for the accountant would be about $400 - $500 per year. All agreed this was a very reasonable fee.
9) New Business
q A NSF check was received from one of the members at the Fall Conference for the purchase of an OPTA sweatshirt. Julie said she has left numerous voice mails for this individual and there has not been any response from this individual. She also said we needed to set up a protocol for the future on other NSF checks. There was some discussion on the process and a final agreement was made to do the following steps:
1. Linda will contact the individual via phone to make arrangements for payment.
2. Linda will invoice the individual to include the NSF fee that the bank charges OPTA.
3. If OPTA wants to charge an additional NSF fee the fee would need to be noted on the registration and new membership forms.
4. If the individual does not respond to payment arrangements, Jane is to be notified and the individual is not allowed to attend the conferences until payment has been made.
5. If, as in this case, there is no response after several months, OPTA will notify the individuals building official of the problem.
q John announced he received notification from ICC that they are looking for individuals interested in applying for a Governess Review Ad Hoc Committee. To review the processes of ICC in communication. Debra agreed to apply for the committee.
q Julie suggested revising the election of officers to stagger the elected officers every two years so we did not have to vote on new officers every year. Bonnie suggested that the current bylaws do not specify an election each year, and did not think we needed to have an election for officers until the max two year term was up. John said he would review the bylaws and bring it to our next meeting for discussion.
Meeting was adjourned at 1:00