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Minutes for July 9, 2024

La Plata Conservation District

Regularly Scheduled Board of Supervisors Meeting Minutes

Date and Time: Tuesday, July 9, 2024, at 2:00 PM

List of Attendees:

Board Members:

  • Debbie Lee, President – excused absence
  • Ginny DeJong, Board Supervisor √
  • Kent Grant, Secretary/Treasurer √
  • Elena Simmons – excused absence
  • Morgan Wagoner, Board Supervisor √
  • LPCD Bookkeeper: Kelly McCaw (not present, not a regular attendee)
  • NRCS - Ed McCaw, District Conservationist and Resource Team 7 Lead (not present)
  • LPCD Seedling Sales Program Contractor: Barb McCall (via phone for AAR only)
  • Special Guest: Elicia Whittlesey

Call to Order: 2:11 p.m. by Ginny DeJong, LPCD Vice President

Welcome and Introductions: Ginny

Guest Presentation: Elicia Whittlesey, Coordinator, FLC Farmer-In- Training Program

  • Elicia works with Beth LaShell out at the Old Fort. The Farmers-In-Training Program (FIT Program) – beginning farmers are interested and needed more information. Get credit through FLC – classroom education and earn farmer training certificates. First generation farmers generally don’t have access to land via their families. Looking at 10-year renewable land leases. Not all who enroll in the program will want to become farmers. Many are FLC students who have environmental and sustainability interests. Considering including people who don’t want to become farmers into FIT Program. Soil health curriculum, crop and produce farming – vegetable products. Beth is also working on developing a ranching training program. The FIT Program grows and sells a lot of produce and people are paid largely through grants. Ginny believes we might be able to “feed” people from this program into NRCS since the agency is having difficulty finding employees. Details for doing this would have to be worked out. Elicia has worked with other entities to get funding for people. The FIT Program has a website. Her husband is the Director of the Mancos CD. Old Fort Lewis tours start on Thursday, July 18th, at 10:30 a.m. and will run every Thursday for six weeks. Perhaps FIT Program could partner with LPCD to get USDA grants? Can’t do this on their own. Trying to partner with Colorado Land Link to help people do the matching with farmers and ranchers. This has a land listing database. Ginny commented that our Watershed can partner with CACD to get big non-profit grants. She is also definitely interested in working with the FIT Program and getting a conservation Technician for NRCS/LPCD here in Durango. There are financial questions on how to make this happen. Note: 8/25/24 is the CSCB grant deadline to apply for funding for a CD Conservation Technician.

Approval of Prior Meeting Minutes:

  • The minutes from the June meeting were distributed by Kent and were reviewed by the other Board members. Morgan moved to accept the minutes, Ginny seconded, and the motion passed.

Financial Report:

  • Kelly had prepared and districted the financial report documents to LPCD Board members. A question was raised about LAP CO distributions since we hadn’t received one is some time. Kent was going to check into this. Morgan moved to accept the financial report, Ginny seconded, and the motion passed. Kelly had submitted an invoice for her bookkeeping services for the past quarter with her financial report and Kent will issue payment.

Unfinished Business: Note: Ginny moved that we move the seedling sales program After Action Review toward the end of the meeting (at the end of New Business), it was seconded by Kent, and the motion passed.

  1. IT
  • Website has to be accessible by July 1st. Ginny has been working on it. It has to be accessible to everyone. Streamline has developed a check on this – every time there is a new page or update added, it checks to see if it is accessible. Ginny couldn’t go back and reformat anything. Do directly on webpage is the easiest to do. Ginny will do template for meeting minutes and send it to Kent for future use.
  • Transparency – CORA policy. On LPCD OneDrive and not signed. Streamline is really good at helping with this.

New Business:

  1. CSCB Technician Grant
    • 20% hard cash match required for obtaining funds from this grant and must be a CD in good standing. August 25th deadline for this grant. Some reporting is required if we sere to get this grant. Ginny will have Ed review with the package.
  2. 9/5/24 Watershed Meeting
    • Ginny will attend. Resolutions we want passed by CD and send onto Watershed. Meeting will forward resolutions to CACD if passed for it to handle. CACD Board nominations – would also go to Watershed and be acted upon at the meeting.
  3. Insurance
    • Special Districts Association of Colorado insurance coverage. Ginny motioned to go ahead and get this, Morgan seconded, and the motion passed. Kent will check into adding the Zircon to our coverage.
  4. Seedling Sales Program After Action Review (AAR)
    • Kent and Ginny will double check seedling program expenses. Seedling and survival suppliess cost $24,277.38 and sales totaled $18,865.88. There are still Scotch Pine, Southwest White Pine, Austrian Pine, Lilac, and a bundle of Golden Willow left. Mountain Studies Institute found homes for a lot of leftover items, including Southwest Conservation Corps, Fire damaged area in Mancos, Dolores fire restoration, and City of Durango for its River Trail. Website worked well. Barb said people had a good experience with the online store on our website. Next year we will try to minimize surplus by starting program earlier and turning back seedlings ordered that we did not sell. Barb can put word out about what we currently have that is surplus and Ginny can list on our website. Pretty much all conifers at this point. Potential purchasers would need to contact Ginny to see what is available and to make arrangements for pickup.
  5.  La Plata County Fair
    • Kent mentioned we needed to decide if we wanted to do a fair booth or not at this meeting. He will see if the booth has to be manned fulltime. If not, it was decided we would go ahead and do a booth again and man it as we can. Kent will arrange to get the booth.
  6. NRCS Report – Since Ed McCaw was not present no NRCS report was given.

Next Meeting - Tuesday, August 13, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. at the USDA Ag Service Center, 31 Suttle St, Durango.

Meeting Adjourned: 4:07pm