Society of American Military Engineers

Robins Post

Society of American Military Engineers

Board Meeting

18 May 2016

Board Members:

President Mike Coats Present

Vice President Bob Staib Present

Treasurer James Griffin Present

Secretary Esther Lee-Altman Present

Directors

Membership Ervin Walker Present

National Liaison Nancy Manley Present

Programs Joe Ballard Present

Education and Mentoring Griff Cox Present

Justin Knight Absent

Financial Kevin Long Absent

National Security Louis Young Absent

NCO/Sr Enlisted SMSgt Mary Dearman Absent

Events/Small Business Judy Middlebrooks Present

Others N/A

Mr. Mike Coats, the Post President, initiated the meeting at 1110 hours.

Upcoming Meetings:

The next General Meeting has been scheduled for 15 May 2016.

Programs/Program News:

Mr. Joe Ballard has already set up presentations for the remainder of the year: For the presentation today, Mr. Ballard will be speaking about the Consolidated Mission Complex (MILCON) project for HQ AFRC; in June, we will have a presentation on the Peachtree City Model City; in July and August, there will be program reviews for CE and HQ AFRC. Mr. Ballard reported that Mr. Louis Young will be setting up the Emergency Preparedness presentation in September which will have the 78th CEG Emergency Manager speaking about Natural Disaster Preparedness at Robins AFB. In October, we will be having our annual scholarship golf tournament and in November, we may have a joint meeting with our Student chapter.

Mr. Ballard stated that he has already started on setting up presentations for next year in that GA Power has notified him that they are interested in speaking at SAME but if anyone else has ideas for presentation, please speak with Mr. Ballard.

Finance:

Mr. James Griffin stated that there was a lot of activity this month in terms of the Post’s finances. Based on the Treasurer’s report, expenses include payment to the two scholarship winners, reimbursements for purchase of items for several Earth Day activities such as the Photo contest, Earth Day 5K run, and a Bat box competition, and purchase of the American flag. There is also a pending expense of two partial tuitions (totaling $600) for two students to attend the Summer Engineering Camps. Mr. Griffin asked about if we will need to purchase anything for the upcoming Air Show that the Post plans on volunteering for in October. The answer was unlikely so but we will know for sure as we get closer to the event. Mr. Griffin also asked if the plan was still to withdraw funds from the investment account to supplement our checking account. Since the Financial Director, Mr. Kevin Long, was not present in today’s meeting, that topic has been tabled until a later time.

No update on the investment account was given.

Post Membership:

Mr. Ervin Walker stated that he has been working on getting the Sustaining Members POC list up to date as there have been a lot of corrections needed. Once he’s got it finalized, Mr. Walker will send to the Secretary and the Emergency Preparedness Director a copy of the completed list so they can update their files accordingly. Mr. Walker has also set up the Sustaining Member Spotlight for June.

Emergency Preparedness:

No update was given.

Education and Mentoring:

Mr. Griff Cox stated that both scholarship winners for 2016 have received their checks. Mr. Cox will write up an article to highlight our winners for the newsletter. He also stated that we did not have a local student to sponsor for the engineering summer camps but we did have the option to partially sponsor two students from some other posts. The board decided that was the best option so two $300 payments will be submitted for two students to go to the AF Summer Engineering Camp.

Mr. Cox also notified the board that he will get in contact with the Student Chapter to see if they need any assistance with their chapter. As it is the end of the school year, it may not be until the fall that the student chapter will need our assistance though. The board had a discussion on the success of this chapter and it was said that due to its inactivity this past year, we may want to reevaluate if we wish to keep this student chapter going for the future years.

Events and Small Business:

No update was given.

SAME National:

Ms. Nancy Manley stated that a new streamer requirement is to host/sponsor some type of engineering camp. There was discussion on how we could accomplish this and it was said that we could possibly tag along with the Museum of Aviation’s day camp program. The board will further discuss this initiative at a later meeting once Ms. Manley finds out more information about the day camp program. Another option that was suggested by Mr. Cox was to setting up some sort of engineering camp with the Boy Scouts. Mr. Cox stated that the Boy Scouts do their STEM activities through the NOVA program and working with them may be an option for the Post.

General Topics:

Mr. Cox gave the board an update on the Boy Scouts and stated there are now 20 boys in the troop. On May 17th, they held their Spring Court of Honor/Awards Ceremony where 6 scouts advanced in rank, 18 merit badges were awarded, and 6 other scout recognitions were presented. Mr. Cox stated that there was a change in leadership ceremony as well since the old scoutmaster will be PCS’d this summer. He also stated that he was recently contacted by the base Youth Center and suggested that this may be another outreach avenue for advertising our scholarship program.

SMSgt Tony Bourdeau will be attending the JETC for our Post and will collect our streamers for 2015.

There has been some discussion about ways to raise some funds for our post and one way the post could do this is to volunteer to assist some vendors for the base Air Show scheduled for this October. SMSgt Bourdeau has been attending the committee meetings and stated via email that the only way the Post can participate is to be a registered Private Organization (PO). In the past, the post has talked about becoming a PO on base but at that particular time, the board deemed it unnecessary as there was no real benefit for becoming a PO. But in light of this potential fundraising event, the board may want to become a PO. The board voted unanimously to become a PO. Mr. Coats will be the POC for this initiative and will send our POC the required paperwork to become a PO.

Bold = Board decisions Italics = Tasked actions to be taken