Appalachian Cave Conservancy

May 21, 2005 board meeting minutes

This meeting of the ACC Board convened at the Perkins field house in Hayters Gap, Virginia at about 11am. Board members present were Robbie Spiegel, Don Feathers, Tanya McLaughlin, Jason Lachniet, John Wilson, Tony McGee, Gary Fielden, and Terri Brown. Also present were Survey Director Paul Gaskins and Don’s guest, Jeff Crawford. Joel Stevenson, Bill James, Mary Wilson, and Renee Gaskins were absent.

The minutes of the February 12 meeting, as submitted by Secretary Renee Gaskins, were approved as moved by Robbie and seconded by Don. The Chair asked Terri to serve as secretary for the day. Tanya reported that the Treasury contained $1094.30 on this date.

I. New Business

John reported that visitation to the ACC website (www.acaves.org) had increased markedly in February and the months since, and that he had offered to host a website for the Bosteds’ (Ann and Peter) cave photography. The Bosteds made a photo trip into Perkins Cave April 9, resulting in many beautiful photos for the website and ACC brochure.

A magazine article introducing the ACC was published in the April issue of the NSS News, along with an advertisement of our special membership offer during the 2005 Huntsville Convention.

Cave Reports

1) Don reported that Milton Starnes, owner of Daniel Boone Caverns, had accompanied the Bosteds into Perkins. Mr. Starnes liked the current version of the draft licensing agreement pending some simplifications.

2) Jason stated that he is trying to re-establish contact with the manager of the Lathams Cave property after that person recently moved.

3) Tony and others agreed that they were waiting on the brochures to be printed and distributed before contacting any new cave owners.

Perkins Survey

Paul discussed the continuation of the re-survey after the meeting and showed the group the new station marking kits he planned to leave at the cave sign-in/sign-out register. John brought up the need to re-mark the trail routes and noted that the recent heavy traffic in the cave had marred several formations. Part of the problem is that the old trail markings have deteriorated and are hard to see. To prevent future problems, John proposed that we clearly mark the trail with heavy nylon cord, which he had brought in great abundance.

II. Old Business

The group worked on simplifying the Daniel Boone Caverns licensing agreement and deleted redundant or confusing language with unanimous approval. After legal review, the revised agreement will be forwarded to Mr. Starnes and his attorney.

Membership

John and Terri will record existing and new memberships through an Excel spreadsheet. Several potential new members were named, and it was agreed that the new brochures would greatly assist the recruiting effort. John reported finding a great low rate on brochure printing and layout through a Montana company he contacted on the Web.

Fundraising

Discussion ensued about our failure to get any cooperation from the 2005 Convention staff. The ACC Board had planned to sell lanyards, tee-shirts, and caps at the convention registration desk and had gotten informal permission from the chief of the NSS convention committee, plus an understanding that we would have exclusive right to sell lanyards at this convention. The committee reneged on this agreement by offering its own lanyards as part of the registration package. Since our plans had been thus sabotaged, we discussed alternatives. The cost of our own sales booth was deemed too high. Instead, we decided to proceed with a scaled-down plan to print 100 shirts, using Paul’s logo and Don’s color scheme, at $5.00 per shirt. At Convention, we will work the Howdy Party and other opportune openings, offering a free one-year introductory membership with a tee-shirt purchase. Don is looking at hat prices, but we will skip that expense for now. We also expect to sell some shirts at the Virginia Highlands Festival (August) and VAR (September).

Board Vacancies

Several possible candidates for vacant Board positions were mentioned and it was agreed that we would boost membership a bit more before asking new folks to serve on the Board.

The meeting adjourned at about 2pm. Most Board members prepared to enter the cave for trail maintenance and survey.

Minutes by Terri Brown and Robbie Spiegel