Wisconsin Wastewater Operators’ Association

BOD Meeting – Kalahari Resort, Lake Delton, WI

August, 2015

  1. CALL TO ORDER, ROLL CALL: President, K. Zimmer called the meeting to order at 10:02 am on Wednesday, December 3, 2014. Roll call was taken. All present.
  1. AGENDA CHANGES AND ADDITIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE:

Karen added an item to New Business and asked to table the Review Closing Books 2014 until October meeting. Books not finished yet as tax accountant had been out on maternity leave.

  1. APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Motion to except minutes from the April 15-16, 2015 meeting made by K. Freber, Second by J. Bratz. Motion carried
  1. FINANCIALS: Financials were reviewed for April through July, 2015. Motion to except financials as is made by J. Bratz, Second by K. Freber. Motion carried.
  1. KALAHARI Director of Catering Meeting (11:00 am Wednesday)
  1. We walked through the BEO’s and made changes as required. Christie Bishop will send Karen an updated BEO next week.
  1. COMMITTEE REPORTS
  1. Nominations: K. Freber reported that the following people were running for the Board of Directors: Vice President-Jeff Bratz, Director-Jeff Smudde, Jeff Simpson and Kris August. Assuming Jeff Bratz moves to Vice President we will have 3 Director Positions available and all positions will be two year terms.
  1. Promotional items: J. Johnson reported that he Promotional items are on the new website. He will be taking current reduced price inventory to regional shows, hoping to s ell some. All of the 2015 BOD director shirts have been delivered. Jim asked what the Top Gun Hat was and for whom. He reported that the Operator Competition shirts will be Pink for the participants and Burgundy for the Judges.
  1. Membership: K. Harter/No Report
  1. Scholarship: D. Lintner reported about that this year’s scholarships will be to Heidi Lieffort – Crane Scholarship, and the two WWOA scholarships will go to Anthony Beno and Wayne Castle. The will be no new NCL Labs scholarship winner this year. There was one other person that applied for a scholarship but was not majoring in the wastewater field. Don reported that we had one tuition reimbursement to Dale Passehl.
  1. Executive Meeting: K. Zimmer/No Report
  1. Clarifier: J. Butt/No Report
  1. Career Development: J. Smudde No report
  1. Awards: L. Lutz advised that all regions, except Southern, had submitted their selected nominations for Regional Operator of the year. The Southern Region is working on securing their nomination.

Three nominations have been received for the Service award.

One nomination for Koby Crabtree award.

As of this BOD meeting, there has been no nominations for the Bernauer Award.

Discussions on the 2015 Region of the Year award ended with Jeff Simpson putting forth a motion to award North West Region with Lyle Lutz second the motion. Motion passed.

  1. Operator Training: D. Linter/J. Smudde reported that the CMOM training they did with Chris Groh was a big success. The sessions were held around the state staring in May and ending in July.

Another training opportunity was held in Plymouth WI on August 19th. It was titled Operating Efficiently – Energy Conservation for Small to Medium Wastewater Treatment Facilities. This was co-sponsored by WWOA and Seventhwave (formerly The Energy Center, WPPI Energy). There were 39 people in attendance and the feedback was very positive.

  1. Directory: K. Harter reported that she is looking at purchasing USB drives from PC nametag. She is not going to get the credit card drives like last time as no one liked them. Karen asked how many she should purchase. K. Freber suggested 250 and since PC nametag would load the USB’s with data free of charge. Everyone agreed that 250 was a good number.
  1. Publicity: J. Johnson No report but J. Johnson did ask what was expected of him at the conference. Discussion followed regarding the taking of pictures of the award winners and then helping them with their press releases. J. Simpson said he would go over all of it with Jim.
  1. Regional Coordinator: J. Simpson reported that he had attended several of the Regional meetings since the last BOD meeting. He was impressed by the attendance at each. We should continue to stress that regional officer’s get their Regional meeting DATES on the website, even if the agenda is not set. This helps members plan their schedules. Jeff also stated that we should all stress membership at the meetings we attend. This is important as there is more to the Association than just meetings for DNR CECs.
  1. Government Affairs: K. Freber/D. Lintner/J. Smudde WWOA led the planning efforts this year. The Kick off meeting is October 14, 2015.GAS will be held at the Marriott Middleton Convention Center on February 26, 2015.
  1. Biosolids Symposium: L. Lutz No report
  1. Central States Liaison: J. Simpson
  1. Web-Site: J. Bratz reported that the website went live on June 24, 2015. Conference registration also opened in conjunction with bringing the website on line. This is going well and Webfitters is on top of fixing anything wrong. On the horizon, additions to the web site include Regional meeting registrations with credit card payment. Karen is getting a quote and will present it at the Regional Officers Meeting in October for a vote. The regions will have to pay for this to be done by Webfitters. Jeff reported he feels there will be more changes as we move forward, but for now the site looks awesome and it is working well.
  1. Technical Program: S. Thieszen reported that she was going to send out speaker reminders to get their presentations into Karen before the Conference. Evaluations will be done by Becher-Hoppe. Sharon would like to downsize the evaluations as they are fairly lengthy. Prior V.P.’s have made changes in the past so she should look at it.
  1. Exhibitor Committee and M&C: T. Mulcahy/C. Strackbein K. Harter reported for the Committee that we are at 132 booths at this point. Tom Mulcahy believes that we will sell almost all of the booths will be sold. He is happy with the sales so far.
  1. Operators Competition: J. Bratz reported that we currently have two teams officially. He has verbal commitments for two teams from North Central and one team from Southeast. He is waiting on UW Stevens Point, it’s too early as they have not started school yet.
  1. Local Arrangements: Karen reported that the bus contract has been signed. K. Zimmer advised that everything was ready for the plant tour. A sign-up sheet for 60 people will be at the registration office for the plant tour.
  1. Golf Outing: Randy Herwig No Report
  1. Sporting Clays: J. Thalke No Report
  1. Permanent Arrangements: D. Neis No Report
  1. Resolutions and Bylaws: J. Leonhard No Report
  1. Historical: T. Crouse No Report
  1. Others: No Report

A motion was made by J. Bratz and second byS. Thieszen to accept the Committee Reports as presented. Motion Carried.

OLD BUSINESS:

  1. NEW BUSINESS:
  1. Abstract: Offer a larger gift card to Amy for her additional service of having to redo the abstract for the website. We neglected to tell Amy that we were not printing the Abstract this year. J. Simpson made a motion to do so, seconded by J. Bratz. Motion carried.
  2. Future review of Technical abstract (each year) should be reviewed by at least three or more people (Executive committee). All agreed this was a good idea.
  3. Job posting for a proposal. K. Harter had a request to post an actual proposal to the website from a member. After much discussion, it was agreed by all that this would be ok. J.Simpson asked we add a disclaimer regarding the accuracy of these proposal/job postings so WWOA isn’t held accountable for missing information. Karen will work on this.

Adjournment Motion to adjourn made by K. Freber, second by J. Bratz. Meeting adjourned

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