Those Present: Tom Anderson, Dawne Howard, Claude Eans, Vince Perrotta, Keith Schoonover, Lori Schoonover, Dave Barrow, Bruce Phillips, JoAnn Hunter, Mike Kay

Numerous members arrived early to interview Alex Demiray and Henry Saathoff for the NRCC Program.

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

2. Membership: Bruce received his commission as a new member to the Forestry Board. Welcome aboard Bruce!

3. Treasurer’s Report: Claude relayed the following. We received $.20 interest and $500 from the MUCFC program for the Rock Creek Project. Claude also mentioned that he submitted a $450 check for Emily Cook’s NRCC tuition. Claude had a $25 check to reimburse Dave Barrow for the Hood College Green Fest application fee but Dave declined the check. Claude will destroy the check and credit $25 to the account.

4. Logging site exams: One plan was submitted near Gambrill that Mike distributed. Mike made plans with Claude to visit the site this Wednesday, 3-13-19.

5. JoAnn Hunter was on hand to talk about a project she is developing as part of her participation with the Master Naturalist Program. She wishes to develop a program that highlights many of the positive environmental activities that are going on throughout the county in a multitude of settings be they urban, suburban, rural etc. This program would attempt to mirror some of the essays Aldo Leopold developed in his book “A Sand County Almanac”. JoAnn hopes to incorporate an artistic element into this with poetry, music, painting, writings etc. JoAnn asked the Forestry Board to help by presenting ideas for site visits or program development, spread the word on the course, and participate in the program. JoAnn anticipates that the program will begin in 2020. Mike will send members JoAnn’s email information to open the lines of communication.

6. NRCC Interviews: Members discussed both Alex Demiray and Henry Saathoff and thought they were good candidates. Mike mentioned that the NRCC committee asked boards to conduct their interviews by the end of March and choose up to 3 attendees. After that any new applicants would be placed on a waiting list to attend camp. A motion was made to accept Alex and Henry to camp which was seconded and passed by those present. Mike will notify the applicants and Dawn Balinski and Claude will send $900 to cover tuition.

7. Green Fest: Dave enrolled the Board into both the Thurmont Program (April 14, 2019) and the Hood College Program (May 4, 2019.) Members coordinated with Dave when they would be able to help staff the table. We discussed selling trees at the Hood event but decided against doing so. Another option is to simply place a donation jar on the table which is what we intend to do.

8. Joint Frederick County, Washington County Workshop: Mike was introduced to a potentially good speaker on Lyme’s Disease and he made contact. He is still trying to set something up. (It may be an issue for this person to travel out our way from Annapolis.) After some discussion we came to the conclusion that any program would have to be held in the summer or next fall. We will continue to look for speakers.

9. Winter State Association Meeting: Tom, Claude, and Mike attended. We all thought the meeting was interesting and attendance was fairly high with about 50 people present. Some of the highlights of the meeting were learning about the state of the Forest Service, learning about the various Bills in Legislature that affect forestry and the natural resources. The reports from NRCC, Big Tree and MUCFC committees. And, an exercise we conducted to learn about proposed changes to the Forestry Board operations manual as it relates to our Treasuries, Record Keeping, MUCFC and timber harvest reviews.

10. Sustainability Commission: Tom mentioned that the February meeting was cancelled due to weather. The Sustainability awards were handed out nonetheless. Frederick City Office of Sustainability was given an award as was an Urbana Science Teacher and George Rudy posthumously. Mr. Rudy spent a lot of time cleaning up hazardous waste sites including sites at Fort Detrick. Mr. Rudy died suddenly earlier this year.

11. Nature Notes: Lori indicated that she sent most of the articles to Sue and she could use some more. Lori and Dawne also said that the paper would like to separate the Garden Tips portion of Nature Notes and place them in the Garden Section of the paper. A suggestion was made that we rename this series of articles so that it does not contain the word “Garden”.

12. Web site: Dave Barrow said that he will look into possible submission of the Arbor Day poster for the website after contacting Anne Gilbert and the family of the poster applicant. Dave also relayed how a Facebook post for a Myersville story resulted in nearly viral spread of this news across Facebook. Dave mentioned that he would look into the idea of using Facebook for Forestry Board matters.

13. New Business: Mike relayed how the Gambrill Office is still not finished and we will probably have to meet at the Friends meeting house once again in April. (Dave Hunter reserved the room for us.)