Gaylord Area Jaycees
General Membership Meeting Minutes
January 3, 2002
Lori called the meeting to order at 7:05 PM.
Present: Norm Cohrs, Lori Dobosy, Traci Klein, Sally Kuzmik, Mariah Passingham, Wendi Percha, Matt Smith
Motion by Mariah, second by Traci, to accept the minutes of the December minutes as printed in the newsletter. All in favor. None opposed.
Chairman of the board, Norm, presented his report. He let us know we are off and headed in the right direction and thanked us for doing a good job. We are further along than we were last year and he is glad to see this. We were down to 11 members in July and we are up to 28. He feels that he owes us an apology for his absence the last few months. He was burned out and was working a lot. As chairman, he plans on stepping aside and letting the new board run things and he will be here to help. He wants us to have fun and get back to the basics.
He did mention a problem that was brought to him. Former member, Courtney Quenneville called him and is upset that we are using Jen to DJ our dances and not him. Mariah suggested that he meets with us and we may be able to use him for other events or when Jen is busy. Traci stressed that he needs to meet with all of us and not just Norm. Norm said he would let Courtney know.
Management VP, Sally, had nothing new for her report. Like everyone, Jaycees went on the backburner with the holidays.
IDVP, Wendi, resigned her position. Matt expressed interest in the position, but we did not have enough members present to hold an election. Wendi will let the membership know of her resignation in the next newsletter and let them know Matt is interested in the position. She will encourage other members to run for the position and encourage them to attend the next meeting so we can have a vote. It was decided that we will except mailed in votes if members are unable to make the meeting.
Community VP, Mariah, told us our name is out in the community and people know we are here. Pam Dukowski has approached her for our help on upcoming projects.
Membership VP, Traci, said we need to keep working on getting new members. We will be loosing several members in the next few months.
Secretary/Treasurer, Lori, presented the treasurer's report. Motion by Mariah, second by Wendi, to accept the report. All in favor. None opposed. Lori also reminded everyone that the deadline to get something on the agenda for a meeting is the Monday prior to the meeting.
Newsletter Editor, Wendi, reminded us the deadline for the February newsletter is January 15. She also expressed her disappointment in the board members who did not submit articles for the January newsletter. Norm reported that Michelle, our member from Hawaii, is still planning on getting information together for an article. The holidays and family problems prevented her from getting her article together for the January newsletter.
Moving into old business, Traci reported on the high school dance we had on December 29. We had a good turnout of Jaycees and she thanked BC pizza for delivering the pizza and equipment during the snowstorm. Despite the snowstorm, we had an okay turnout and will try and run this project again next month. She has heard that advertising on the morning announcements at school worked for 9th graders, but not senior as they usually don't hear the announcements. Her solution is to get flyers sooner to our member, Jennifer Mazza, who teaches at the high school.
Wendi reported on the Kiwanis food baskets. She and Matt went to the school and picked up a van and a carload of food to fill baskets. When they went to drop the food off at the location the baskets were being assembled, they were being treated poorly and were not allowed to back up to the door to unload as Kiwanis members were. Also, the next day an article came out in the paper thanking many organizations for their help and our name was not listed. This discouraged Wendi and she didn't fell the need to call members and remind them of the basket assembling day. Mariah showed up at the assembling and there were more than enough people there to help from the community.
Mark was not present to talk about the garage sale. Lori has a couple of boxes of stuff for the garage sale but needs a place to store them. Norm offered to store them at his place until the garage sale.
Mariah reported that we have been approved to make snow sculptures on the lawn at Winterfest. The children's games will be on Court Street on February 2 form 11:30 - 12:30. Each team will be given two barrels of snow to build their sculpture and there will be one grand prize for the winning team. She will try and get rules and team applications printed in the Herald Times. Michelle will also be built into a 6 1/2-foot snowman after she lost the membership challenge. Mariah would also like to offer coffee and hot chocolate for donations. This will be done either in a tent or an igloo.
Norm White was not present to report on the Winterfest Team Sports. Traci will contact him and see if he has made any progress.
Wendi has not taken any action on Halloween age limits. She will work on getting a survey in the newspaper in April.
Sally was busy with the holidays and has not made any progress with the celebrity night. She is not sure the project will work because the restaurant in Wolverine is small. If the celebrity night does not work, Wendi suggested contacting Little Caesars to see if the Jaycees could come in and make pizzas to sell at $3.99 to raise money for the Wolverine playground. Wendi feels the price would encourage people in Gaylord to buy the pizza regardless of what the money was raised for. Norm also suggested that Tosty's bar in Wolverine may be another idea for a fundraiser. He knows a band that plays there and we could get a band to play and collect a cover charge.
Moving into old business, we talked about a middle school dance. Lori told us that Mike, the Community Center Director, came to the Jaycees and would like us to put on a joint dance with the Community Center with Jen as the DJ. Traci informed us that a date for this dance had been set for January 25 from 7 - 9 PM.
Mariah told the group she would like to organize a project at a grocery store where Jaycees go and pull pop tabs to donate to the Ronald McDonald House. This is an easy project so she will decide a week in advance and let members know when and where we are going to meet and we can pull tabs for a couple of hours. Lori volunteered to be on this committee.
Norm had a few suggestions for the chapter. At the end of each meeting, he would like to ad a feature called "For The Good Of The Chapter." This would give each member 30 seconds to say anything they wanted about the chapter. He also suggested and ID project that is very easy. Everyone at a meeting puts his or her name in a hat and a name is pulled out. The person whose name is pulled out gets 3 minutes to speak either about themselves or something they know about. Another way to do this is have someone assigned to talk for 3 minutes so they have time to prepare what they want to talk about.
Motion by Traci, second by Matt, to adjourn the meeting. All in favor. None opposed.
Meeting adjourned 8:02 PM.
Respectively Submitted:
Lori D. Dobosy
Secretary/Treasurer
