Those Present: Tom Anderson, Keith Schoonover, Ginny Brace, Tyson Rose, Vince Perrotta, Steve Thrasher, Andy Driscoll Claude Eans, Mike Kay

1. Call to order: Vince called the meeting to order.

2. Membership: Vince presented Keith with his reappointment form. Congratulations Keith!

3. Treasurer’s Report: We received $.34 interest for May. Tom received a $100 grant for NRCC. Tom deposited the $500 donation from the Nancy McCartney family.

4. Logging site exams: No plans were submitted.

5. NRCC Camp: Mike indicated that everything is a go to send Max and Joe to camp.

6. Merit Badge Program: In a turn of events both the Frederick and Washington Boy Scouts canceled their 2015 programs citing conflicting program issues. We will touch base in 2016 to see if the Scouts are interested in this training.

7. Office of Sustainability: Tom indicated that a Sustainability Program is being planned for October 16, 2015 at Frederick Community College. Tom will be delivering a presentation at this event. Tom also reports that the Sustainability Commission is providing grants up to $5,000 to make homes more energy efficient. These grants can be used to insulate homes and upgrade heating systems. Tom later supplied information that the County’s Power Saver Retrofit grant program has already started, but is nearing full capacity for allocating all of the available funds.

8. Nature Notes: Lori Schoonover has begun her stint as Editor of Nature Notes. Lori is just getting up to speed now but she has made edits and submitted numerous articles to Karen Gardner already. Lori will try to come to our September meeting to discuss Nature Notes. Ginny mentioned that she now has time to draft articles for the column.

9. Web site: Tyson mentioned that the site is up to date. Tyson thanked Keith for the photos he recently sent.

10. New Business:

• Big Tree Program: We discussed the status of the measurements we need to make for the Big Tree Program. Mike indicated that he would send an email to select a date to conduct some of these measurements. (We have selected Thursday, July 30, 2015 as the initial measuring date.) We will try to measure all of the trees around Frederick City during this time.

• Invasive Species Control workshop: Now that the Scout training has been cancelled we discussed the possibility of hosting an invasive species control training. The idea behind this training was generated by a landowner in Sabillasville who is very active controlling invasives on his property but his neighbors are not. He would like to approach these people and suggest that they learn more about control options, and the resources that are out there to help them with this control. After much discussion it was decided that we would further investigate doing this program with a possible October or November time frame. The Thurmont Library seems like the best location to accommodate interested parties around Sabillasville. Ginny volunteered to touch base with Extension to see if they would help us promote this program.

We have now entered our summer recess period…… As such there will be no meeting in August.