Suncoast Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation
Meeting Minutes
March 11th, 2010
Location: Angry Pepper
Duhme Rd, St Petersburg, Fl
Call to order 7:15pm by Jessica
Elections.
Per National Nominees run to get on the board then there is rotation within that structure of the board
Thomas Paterek has been nominated.
Anyone Else?
Thomas nominates Jimmy Hoffman for the board.
By a show of hands, Thomas Paterek and Jimmy Hoffman are voted by members present to the board. They will be receiving copies of the Chapter Bylaws which they will need to read and sign off on. Thomas will be acting Chair.
Website update: New webpage for chapter is up. Had some domain name trouble. Transfer in the works. Updates will be handled by Jake.
When the website is fully live then the chapter will order new business cards.
Greenfest and EcoFest coming this Spring. The chapter is invited back for the 3rd year in a row to both events.
Greenfest is in Indian Rocks Beach hosted by Coti School and Crunchy Mama Organic Foods.
EcoFest is in Largo, hosted by the city of Largo and Barbara Stalbird.
Both are good tabling events for the chapter.
Bradenton Beach Cleanup for the Adopt a Shore program, clean the beach 3x a year. 1st Cleanup in the Spring is April 17th, Saturday. 9am-noon. Julie will be there with tent, flags, around about 8am. Amanda down south will pick up the pickers bags and t-shirts. Keep Manatee Beautiful is a pleasure to work with. This year Disney is sponsoring Give a Day, Get a Day and this clean up is one of the dates available. Disney capped the volunteer tickets at 1 million. Just before the meeting Julie received word from Disney that 1million volunteers stepped up in 3 months time. So if you registered before now, you should be in, and if you didn't, better luck next year.
In August, we'll schedule the 2nd clean up...usually this one is a butt count...and then the 3rd cleanup is in October. When we participate then we get invited to SandBlast which happens in November, it’s a sand castle (art) building contest. Loads of fun but needs lots of people on the team.
Macys to team up with dune plantings. More details to follow.
Tampa's School of International Design is teaming up with Surfrider for the Bradenton Beach Cleanup.
We're $20.00 shy of making up what the chapter spent on the "not the answer.org." black t-shirts. 88 shirts left. It was suggested that we outreach to other chapters on the t-shirts since we seem to be the only chapter that actually made shirts for the Hands event.
Jake offered to ship the T-shirts if we decided to put them on the website. The price for shirts on the site would be $25.00 which should cover shipping charges as well as the price of the shirt.
Fertilizer Campaign: Tampa-Hillsborough County is what the campaign is working on now. We're staying involved by collecting information and facts.
Thomas on the LocalS Campaign: It’s an outreach program, a code of ethics. On Gulf Surf Forum recently there was a post of a diagram about Etiquette. They already have a diagram of ethics posted in some surf spots on the East Coast of Florida. It was suggested the chapter try to do the same over here on 5 different peaks along the Gulf Coast. It was also suggested that maybe we get some of the local surfshops in on the LocalS program as sponsors for signs.
ISD is June 20th. The chapter is talking about maybe doing the ISD event this year down south at our adopted shore in Bradenton Beach. Thomas will be the point contact for that event. There are usually sponsored contests and one of the prizes is to get your picture in Surfer Magazine.
Thomas is running Facebook page for chapter.
Katy Swanson from Jacksonville spoke about Repower America...it’s the 40th Anniversary for Earth Day and so Repower America wants to do something special this year so they have a program running called "40days till Earth Day". They are pushing to get legislature passed on using clean energy alternatives. Sign the petition and they are focused on Senator Lemuix in pushing for incentives for solar energy. By a show of hands of members present the chapter voted to team up with Repower America in clean energy solutions.
Not the Answer.org is Surfrider's stand on Off Shore Oil Drilling. Check out Noththeanswer.org for more bullet points on the drilling issues.
Hands Across the Sands in February was very successful event. Nearly 200 people showed up a Upham Beach. All along the Gulf Coast there were hundreds of people. Jake is working on the video. Having technical difficulties.
Upham:
Rob Young report still not in.
Do we want to continue with the campaign?
Report Submitted in August says Upham is going to cost $17.45 million dollars. The other beaches needing money, Honeymoon Island asked for $35 million and TI and Sand Key asked for a couple of million.
The chapter decided to try focusing on the financial aspect. How can the gov't justify spending the money on Upham to put rocks on the beach.
We're at a standstill with the science part of the campaign.
The board will be asking for a lot of help from chapter members to do the research and really help out on the Upham Campaign.
In June 2010, there will be a fill and fix project going on Upham beach.
The Army Corps of engineers is staying out of the Upham debate.
Thank you goes out to Jason Morey; 3 years of service as Treasure...the reports are the best detailed.
Thank you Julie and John Pappas for all the work you've done for the chapter over the 3 years.
Thomas suggested the chapter get an intern to work on the marketing strategies for the chapter. Have the intern work w/us on the summer session. He's going to look around for one.
Mark Hayes stepped up at the end of the meeting and became a new member and bought a "not the answer" t-shirt. Thank you Mark...welcome aboard.
Meeting adorned: 8:30pm.