St Charles County Master Gardeners

Master Gardeners of Saint Charles County

Steering Committee Meeting Minutes

March 14, 2014

 

Meeting was called to order at 9:35 a.m. by President Dave Barylski. Present were Dave Barylski, Russ Reed, Scott Killpack, Mary Carey, and Kevin Minard. Absent: Joe Walker

Constant Contact:

Dave Barylski commented that there may be some confusion when replying to Constant Contact e-mails. Elaine Fix is the editor for the state wide Constant Contact e-mail. She tracks statistics as to how many e-mails are sent, how many replies, etc. Dave felt that readers would use the reply button on the e-mail to respond to items in the e-mail. This would send an e-mail back to Elaine Fix and she would then need to forward to the appropriate Master Gardener.Dave requested that Mary Medina, who sends the St Charles County Constant Contact, put e-mail addresses of persons to contact for articles at the head of each article.To protect the integrity of information that goes into the St Charles County MG Constant Contact, Mary Medina may accept information from steering committee members only. Other MGs may send info to steering committee members. She requests that information be sent to her by 6:00 p.m. Sunday evenings.Constant Contact is being used on a trial basis and will be re-evaluated in 90 days.

 

Russ Reed made a motion to approve February Steering Committee minutes. Seconded by Kevin Minard. Approved unanimously.

 

Dave Barylski made the financial report in Joe Walker’s absence. Our checking account balance is $5936.16 at the end of February. New furnace for the greenhouse was not included in this balance.

 

At Joe Walker’s request, Dave Barylski included a survey in the weekly e-mail he sent out Monday, March 10. Joe will create a report from the results. The response was to the survey was not very well, 7 replies, so it will be sent out again on Monday, March 17.

 

A draft of the March General Meeting was reviewed. Scott Killpack will discuss horticulture questions he has received. Allen’s Tree Service will provide a speaker for the meeting. Val Mertz suggested that we send handwritten thank you notes to speakers. Dave Barylski stated that this should be done by the Speaker lead, Val Mertz.

 

Marketing Update:

Dave Barylski spoke with John White, President of the St Charles County Council, about how to expand knowledge of the Master Gardener program and the extension and has yet to hear back from him. Mary Carey has volunteered to be the Marketing Lead.

 

The system to report MG hours worked is still not operational. Dave Barylski has requested one more change and expects the system will be working within a week.

 

MG web page:

It was suggested that we have a “What’s Blooming in the Garden” weekly article.Scott Killpack pointed out that it is redundant to have the ‘Become a Master Gardener’ on the extension web page and the MG web page. The info on the MG web page is out of date. It was decided to remove the info from the MG web page and just add a link to the extension web page.A security sign in will be added to certain pages on the MG site so that we may add information for master gardeners only, not the general public.

Dave Barylski is following up with the programmer for the state system to see if we can use the login to the state reporting database as the login to our website to eliminate creating another log in id and password.

 

Kevin Minard has agreed to be the contact to collect pictures of the garden and people that have been taken over the years. Scott will provide two portable hard drives for storing these pictures. These will be available for use by MGs and the extension.

 

There is to be a gardening “event” at Walmart in Harvester on March 22 and they have asked if the MGs want to participate. This is the same date as our second Early Season plant sale. Dave Barylski will contact the Walmart manager for more information and ask for volunteers once the information is received.

 

We will not participate in the Recycling Event in St Peters as Elaine Fix had proposed to Dave.

 

Scott Killpack gave an update on the MG Level 1 class. There are 25 students. Colored slides of the class presentations, formerly in black and white, are now available on the extension website in PDF format.

 

Scott also reported on the 100 year celebration of the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 that established the Extension Service. The St Charles County Extension was established in 1915. There will be a celebration June 28th at the extension. Scott requested that we have a few MGs at the gardens for tours and answer plant questions. St Louis, Jefferson and St Charles will have another celebration at Faust Park in St Louis County on August 23. This will be added to the March general meeting agenda

 

Meeting adjourned at 11:10.

Respectfully submitted by Mary Carey.