St. Louis County ARES® Minutes of the January 9, 2006 meeting

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Minutes of the January 9, 2006 Meeting

Steve Wooten, KC0QMU, the Emergency Coordinator, presided at the monthly meeting of the St. Louis County ARES^® group on January 9, 2006.

Steve said that St. Louis County ARES^® would have a table at Winterfest (January 28, 2006).

He stated that the first ARES^® exercise this year would be "Aftershock", a simulated emergency communications exercise, and that it would take place on February 18, 2006.

Gary Hoffman, KB0H, the Assistant Emergency Coordinator - Operations, said that Aftershock would be the largest training exercise St. Louis County ARES^® had attempted and urged all members to participate.

Gary went on to mention that there would be an emergency communications class tentatively scheduled to begin on March 11, 2006.

Steve read the new net "relay policy". Basically, it states that net participants are asked to relay only weak signals that the Net Control Station operator cannot hear. Participants are asked not to "proxy", or check-in people who are not actually on the air.

Craig Hirsh, K0CMH, gave the second of three short training sessions on handling formal messages. He handed out message forms to the attendees and read a practice message. The attendees asked some very good questions regarding the way messages should be sent and received.

Steve passed out copies of the proposed by-laws for incorporating St. Louis County ARES^®. There were many questions, and eventually it became clear that St. Louis County ARES^® and the proposed corporation, St. Louis County Amateur Radio Emergency Service, Inc (or SLCARES), would be separate entities. The structure of ARES^® groups is dictated by the American Radio Relay League, and is fundamentally incompatible with a corporate structure. St. Louis County ARES^® would continue to be the operational organization, and SLCARES would exist to support it by providing a legal entity to hold assets, accept donations, and so forth.

The fourteen attendees unanimously agreed to proceed with formation of the corporation.

Steve concluded the St. Louis County ARES^® meeting.

The attendees then called for an organizational meeting of SLCARES. Jim Conley, N0OBG, was selected to chair this meeting. Having read and discussed the by-laws (which had already been approved by ARRL headquarters and the ARRL Missouri Section), the attendees moved to accept the by-laws as-is and to proceed with the formation of a corporation. All attendees stated that they would join the corporate organization, and accepted that yearly dues would be set at $5.

The officers were nominated and voted upon, being -

Jim Conley, N0OBG, president
Paul Hinrichs, K0TPY, vice president
Craig Hirsh, K0CMH, secretary
Mark Biernacki, KB5YZY, treasurer

It was felt that the leadership of the two organizations (ARES^® and SLCARES) should not be the same, but that the Emergency Coordinator of ARES^® should be on the board of SLCARES.

Non-officer board members were nominated and voted upon, being -

Steve Wooten, KC0QMU (ARES^® EC)
Max Slover, K0AZV
Ben Shipman, W0BEN

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