Subject / SRA board meeting
Date and Location / Thursday, October 06, 2016 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM, Sparta Village Office
Attendees
Message / Meeting called to order at 7 pm.

Kent County, MI

Meeting Agenda

Oct 6, 2016 at 7:00 PM

Sparta Township Office 160 E. Division

Public attendees:

Julius Suchy, Elizabeth Morse, Tim Driscoll, Kristi Dugan

  1. Call to order: 7:05 pm
  1. Roll Call

Maier / Steffens / Pinckney / Cowdrey / Peak / Whalen / Guerra / Christie / Gordon
X / Absent / X / X / X / X / X / X / X
  1. Approval of Minutes
  2. Last meeting conducted on August 4, 2016
  3. Motion by Guerra to approve minutes, second by Peak. Motion carries 7 - 0
  1. Additions or Corrections to the Business & Consent Agenda
  2. Morse calls for SARA spending policy; add item C under new business.
  3. Peak calls for discussion of adding irrigation system back into phase 1 scope
  4. Motion by Maier to add above items to New Business, second by Guerra. Motion carries 7 - 0.
  1. Public Comment
  1. Public Hearing

None

  1. Unfinished Business
  1. New Business
  2. Roles, Responsibilities, & Implementation of SRA
  3. Certain grants that may fund the park require Parks Plan updates completed in CY 2017.
  4. Discussion around SRA board contributing to that update.
  5. Peak bring a parks wish list to the next SRA board meeting
  6. Board will then refine that list for grant submittal
  7. Discuss Audit Services Bids
  8. SRA is required to have audit expenditures and income
  9. SRA is considering pursuit of grant(s) that require SRA be audited
  10. Proposals for audit services range from $1500 to $5000
  11. Cowdrey offers to explore options for lower cost services
  12. SRA audit is overdue
  13. SARA spending policy
  14. Questions about timing of SRA draws from SARA account, minimum SARA balance maintained, portion of donations allocated to SARA operations costs (fundraising, marketing, office supplies, etc.)
  15. Motion by Pinckney for SARA to make a monthly deposit to SRA while retaining $3000 to fund on-going operations, second by Guerra. Motion carries 8 - 0 (Gordon joined the meeting).
  16. Consent of the board to establish a SRA marketing line item in next year's budget.
  17. This line item will fund the emerging Sparta Schools / SRA / SARA partnership and marketing effort Cowdrey is leading.
  18. Understand SARA spent $5000 on marketing in the last year
  19. Motion by Pinckney to authorize Communications / Operations committee chair to spend up to $1000 (per incident) without SRA Board approval and report all spend at following SRA board meeting, second by Maier. Motion carries 8 -0.
  20. Consent of the board to have SRA to take over responsibility for writing checks; SARA has been writing checks on occasion.
  1. Request to add irrigation system back into phase 1 scope
  2. Recall that the construction committee is authorized to contract work only when the funding for that work is in the SRA account.
  3. Recall that the board authorized a number of value engineering cost reductions to the Phase 1 project scope.
  4. One of the items removed from scope was irrigation.
  5. As construction progressed, Peak has approached the construction committee requesting irrigation be included in phase 1 scope.
  6. Motion by Peak to put irrigation back in Phase 1 scope, second by Guerra. Motion carries 7 - 1.
  7. Driscoll recounts that park cost estimate from Viridis is $1.9M "pure construction cost", after we reduced scope thru the value engineering effort.
  8. SARA committed to raise $2.1M
  9. Contributions to date less expenses leaves $1.1M for construction.
  10. Savings during phase 1
  11. $120K realized (Driscoll has the list)
  12. 95% sure we'll see another $180K (Driscoll has the list)
  13. Leaves SRA $460K short to complete phase 1 as scoped after the value engineering.
  1. Committee Reports
  2. Construction committee (Steffens, Pinckney, Guerra)
  3. Recognize SRA is $460K short to complete phase 1 as scoped after the value engineering.
  4. Construction committee will prepare a letter petitioning Sparta Village Council to exempt SRA from the parking lot paving ordinance (allow rolled curb, number of paved spots, timing of paving)
  5. Below, find notes from recent Construction Committee meeting

SRAConstruction Meeting

9/6/16

Present: Pinckney, Steffens

Also Present: Peak, Morse, Driscoll

As of today, there is $345,000 unencumbered available construction dollars in the bank.

There is an expected $130,000 pledged dollars that are expected yet this fiscal year.

Consensus to release $193,152 of the Afton Contract to finish work on expanding the entrance drive, storm water system, parking sand & gravel with the addition of $5,500 to clear the north property line for the Consumers Power line to relocate to the north end of the property.

Next on the list is the grass seed bids, which are expected back in a few days. Once received, Driscoll with recommend seeding just the banks (to see if we can eliminate retaining walls) or the banks AND the fields. There are other options to seed the fields and pricing will determine which route is recommended.

Next items for construction include:

Fencing (a revised bid package with some Value Engineering will be going out this week)

Sewer and Water (working through this process)

Concession (need to find suppliers of materials, working on construction labor and cement pad labor as in-kind)

Power – Hope to have in-kind for moving of the power lines secured this fall

Need to evaluate the retaining wall needs (from value engineered new slopes) after grass seeding to see how much retaining wall is needed. Spring 2017. Has $110,000 project line item, hoping to cut that down significantly if seeding takes.

Agenda Requests: Terms on Fence with company and to reevaluate decision to eliminate irrigation

Pinckney will put together rest of construction items discuss above into a timeline for internal use.

SARA is hosting another tour event day to pull in prospective donors on Sept. 27.

Steffens requested nextSRAmeeting for regularly scheduledOctober6 at 7:00 pm .

  1. Finance committee (Whalen, Maier, Cowdrey)
  2. Preparations for next year's budget are beginning.
  1. Fundraising committee (Peak, Steffens)
  2. The VIP tours continue to build excitement for the project among potential donors. Liz asks for everyone to continue contacting potential donors.
  3. Met with Bossed and Cheslek who submitted a letter to SRA calling for "project plan that show the construction plan with completion dates for the different phases with costs and how that fits in the funding we have raised? Please include any in kind donations that you expect."
  4. New signs have been installed, one left to install.
  5. SARA fundraising campaign now has a $2.4M target (vs $2.1M feasibility study target)
  1. Communication/Operations committee (Christie, Cowdrey, Gordon)
  2. On-going work needed on the policy manual.
  3. Below, find Carrie's summary of SARA / Sparta Schools agreement for SARA marketing effort

Good Morning,

Hope everyone is doing well! The fantastic news is that we are in an agreed upon "partnership" between Sparta Area Schools and SARA. I'd like to have a Communications/Marketingmeeting to create/discuss what that looks like. Is anyone available to meet before theSRAmeeting next week?

Items to discuss:

-SARA Informative Booths: We have been approved to hold Booths at any Sparta event. The following items need to be updated/prepared before an event calendar is created.

-Volunteers to man the SARA booths

-NewMarketingmaterials that direct people towards SARA's website, events, etc. (In our Partnership with Sparta Area Schools we are not allowed to ask for donations or exchange any monies on school property. That's a standard policy)

- Need a web designer for the SARA website. I have been asking around. No one is popping up...anyone know of a web designer that would commit to this project? Hiring vs Inkind? Hiring someone might be the better decision of the two.

-Banners? Any updates on theFootballstadium banner or indoor banner?

-Sparta/SARA Partnership article in the Sparta paper (Gordy, Liz, and Matt Spencer collaborate) What is the most important point SARA would like to get across?

- what other upcoming activities in Sparta can SARA get involved in?

-For 2017... what activities can we start to plan to transfer over to SARA? XCountry team/ Sparta Schools is on board with holding future meets, etc. What steps need to be taken? (Exciting!)

- Athlete of the Month/Week...Sparta currently has a program but would like to mirror the SARA idea...work in progress, I'll be setting up meetings with Kelly/Matt in the next coming month.

Decisions that need to be made now...

-Homecoming October 15th: We have been approved to have announcements during thefootballgame making sure all wording pertains to "partnership" they approved my

-Host a Booth

-Approved to have logo'd SARA/Sparta footballs thrown into the stands by the Sparta Cheerleaders. We would need to order those now to have in time for October 15. Do we have the budget? Who would order footballs and who needs the logos?

Thank you all for all you do!

Carrie

  1. Communications
  2. Letter from Jim Bosserd and Tim Cheslek re: fundraising
  1. Public Comment
  2. Regarding the potential need for irrigation; SRA park is the same distance above the water level as Balyeat field.
  1. Adjournment - Meeting adjourned 9:05 pm