MEETING MINUTES

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Black Hill Ranger Station

Attendees:

Gabrielle Oldham Dori Murphy

Ron Anderson Kathie Jarmon

John Bennett Tom Frederick

Michael Morgan

Treasurer’s Report:

Submitted by Tom Frederick

Financial status was discussed by board members.

Gabrielle will send out a request letter to the Elkton VFW to fund a donation to NRCC student scholarships. Thanks to Ron for setting this up.

NRCC Interview:

The Board interviewed a highly qualified candidate for this year’s camp. Gabrielle will contact the student of her selection and Dawn to reserve the spot for Cecil County.

State Association Meeting Report:

Gabrielle and Tom attended the meeting. Jim Bardsley could not attend due to family issues.

Joli McCathran ran the meeting very well.

Don Van Hassent reported that the Forest Service budget and personnel situation is stable at this point. He also went over several pieces of legislation affecting the Forest Service.

Gary Allen introduced the two Mel “fellows” funded by the Foundation. He also asked for support from the Boards on a bill to support financial assistance to Green Schools. He talked about the Sustainable Forestry Act, Healthy Forests-Healthy Waters and encouraged Boards to meet with their local Soil Conservation District Boards.

The meeting attendees were broken into groups to discuss different issues concerning the task of developing an operational manual for the Local Boards. Anne will put this input together for review.

Dawn Balinski gave the Treasurer’s report for the Foundation.

Joli gave the report for MUCFC and the Big Tree Program Slide show.

Glenn Ferenschak updated the meeting on the Chestnut seedling program and Scholarships.

Gabrielle presented a program on NRCC.

Next State Association Meeting will be Saturday, October 26^th.

Update on Big Tree Program:

John has had a busy month working with the Hudock’s on measuring trees in Elk Neck State Park. Many County and a few possible State champions have been measured. Pictures were presented on the more impressive trees.

He shared an article written about Jim Bardsley and a Big Tree on his property.

John went over the current assignments on getting permission forms in Cecil County.

John, Dori, Kathie and Gabrielle are going to try to measure trees on March 17^th at Mount Harmon Plantation. This has been cancelled a couple of times because of weather.

John has also travelled to a couple of other Counties to help measure trees. And has some others scheduled.

Website Update:

Ron has added Cecil Big trees to the local Big Tree website as he receives them.

He also took some pictures from the same view of the historical pictures of Black Hill and posted them next to each other. It is pretty good start to the history page he has added to the website.

New Business:

Michael said that he attended the Penn-Del ISA conference and reported that quarantine restrictions for wood waste are pretty stringent now for Spotted Lanternfly.

He also reported that the new County Park on RT 213 (the old golf course) may have some pretty large trees on it. Unfortunately the County is removing some trees in a random way. He may discuss this with some of his contacts with the County.

Kathie attended the Philadelphia Garden Show.

Tom passed along a request from Bryan Lightner, Cecil County Land Use Services, to use our tree id display at the 11^th Annual Cabin Fever held at a church on Blake Road. The event has become well attended by local groups in the County. The Board agreed and expressed some interest in providing brochures and some members possibly attending.

Also Bryan is possibly planning an Arbor Day event at North Bay that would qualify the County to receive a PLANT Award. The Board may want to get involved, at least to present the PLANT award to the County Executive.

Next Meeting: April 3, 2019