A meeting of the District 11 (BCARES) Board of Directors was held on Tues, 30 July2002 from 19:00 to 21:20. The meeting was held at the Boulder Police Department.

The meeting was called to order by Jim Kubitschek, chairman. The following board members were present:
BARC - Jim Andrews
LARC - Pat Lambert
RMVHF Len Koppl
At Large #1 - Dale Scott
At Large #2 - Pete Goldman
At Large #3 - Jim Kubitschek.

Absent were:
OEM - Larry Stern
BCSO - Chuck Pringle.

Also in attendance were alternates, Grant Killey and Jack Ciaccia.

The minutes of the 26 June meeting were read and approved.

Old Business:

• Jack announced that he had talked with Greg Schlender, a ham lawyer. Greg agreed to review our revised by-laws for legal completeness.
• Dale Scott reported that per the Colo Secy of State, we are required to have a corporate seal. He has researched the cost and a simple rubber stamp corporate seal can be obtained for about $25. A motion was made and passed to authorize Dale to purchase a corp. seal.
• Discussion was continued about the missing electronic copies of our various documents. Len said he thought he might have some of the missing documents on his computer. His computer recently crashed and he would try to get copies to Jim K. after he rebuilds his computer.
• On the issue of the web site, it was decided to appoint a committee of Pat Lambert, Rich Ferguson and Grant Killey to create a new web site on QSL.net. Pat was appointed the chairman.

Reports on recent District 11 (BCARES) activities

• Pat Lambert discussed the MS-150 bikathon. He said it was combined D-10, D-11 and D-22 activity covering all off Saturday and Sunday July 13th and 14th. A total of 42 hams helped with communications over some difficult terrain which required the use of both the 147.27 and 145.115 repeaters. He could have used more help.
  A major criticism was the lack of training of some hams. Two of those people are no longer with ARES as a result of their disregard for established procedures.
  Pat also expressed disgust for the bad attitudes displayed by many of the 2,400 bicyclists, particularly with regard to obeying rules regarding riding on public highways.
• Jim K. announced that we supported the Longmont Police Department at the Longmont Riverwalk festival in July. We helped them show to the public their new Incident Command Vehicle (ICV). Multiple TV cameras were set up to demo the TV capability of the new van.
• Jim K. reported that 9 District 11 (BCARES) members assisted D-10 at the Big Elk Meadows fire. The main ham activity was providing communications for the Salvation Army food trucks. A nice article appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on (date ?? -- lost my copy of the paper, left at BPD on table) about the hams helping with the fire. (Filled with inaccuracies of the logistics - pl)
• Jim K. reported that District 11 (BCARES) was paged out on Friday night, 19 July, to assist with the Lee Hill / Wonderland Lake fire on the west side of the City of Boulder. This was the first callout for a forest fire District 11 (BCARES) has had in over 10 years. The OEM requested that we provide TV pictures of the fire to the command post. We were only able to field 2 cameras due to the response during the callout. Exceptional infra-red views of the fire and smoke patterns allowed the Sheriff and fire chief to better understand the behavior of the fire.
  Jim K. reported that a telephone call-out was made of the entire roster of TV trained hams in District 11 (BCARES). Only 6 hams responded. Some of board expressed displeasure in the poor response from the District 11 (BCARES) members contacted. This membership response was especially curious in light of the recent criticisums received about District 11 (BCARES) only supporting law enforcement and many members saying they only wanted to help with natural disasters, such as fires. Jim K. said he would write up a complete after-action report on the fire and post it on the web site and send copies to the BARC & LARC newsletters.

Upcoming District 11 (BCARES) activities

• Pat announced that he has been asked to head up communications for a Boulder County triathlon on the last Sunday in August and also a Biketoberfest in Leadville on sat. Sept. 14th. He will need 8 hams for the triathlon and 15 hams for the Biktoberfest. He anticipates needing to use HF radio for the Leadville event.
• Jim A. said that we have another CU football season starting in Sept. District 11 (BCARES) will again be assisting the CU Police with TV coverage. Home CU football games are on Sept. 7, 14, Oct. 5, 19, 26 & Nov. 16.
• Grant announced that he will man a BCARES recruiting table at BARCFEST.

Main Business Items

• The main item of business for the evening was a discussion of the various Memos of Understanding (MOUs) which we have with our various served agencies and the local ham clubs. Jim A. had old hard copies of all but one of these. Some of these were missing from the president's records box. Electronic copies have been lost. Some were recently retyped by Doshia. We have MOUs with BRCC (now dissolved), OEP (now OEM), Longmont Police, CU Police, Longmont, Avista and Boulder hospitals, Red Cross, BARC, LARC, RMVHF and NTS.

• Pat Lambert said that the most recent MOU between District 11 (BCARES) & OEM was signed by him and Lt. Lary Stern in 1999. No one has been able to locate the copies. Jim K. will contact the OEM secretary and go thru her files to see if it can be retrieved. It was agreed by the board members that most of our MOUs are outdated and all of them need to be carefully reviewed and modified as necessary. The key MOUs were deemed to be those with the OEM and Sheriff. Boulder Police will also be included.

• Jim K. appointed a sub-committee of Jim K., Jim A. and Dale Scott to rewrite these 3 MOUs and bring them to the next meeting for discussion by the entire board.

• The board discussed key items that it wants to see covered in the MOUs. They included commitments by District 11 (BCARES) for:
  • number of people or stations that we can staff in both the short and long term
  • response time (non emergency - no red lights and sirens)
  • equipment cache and equipment maintenance
  • available repeaters
  • screening of new members by Sheriff
  • issue of health & welfare (H&W) traffic

  From our served agencies we will ask for commitments for:

  • board representation
  • liasion contact people
  • funding
  • paging
  • maintenance of some equipment
  • dedicated operating positions in 911 center and ICVs
  • workman's compensation coverage for injuries suffered by BCARES members during operations or sanctioned training exercises

• Jim A. & Pat L. were instructed to contact BARC and LARC respectively to inquire about their willingness to assume responsibility for handling of emergency H&W traffic, which would be primarily an HF operation.

Next Board Meeting

Jim K. announced that the next board meeting will be held sometime in September. Date to be announced later. Location will be the Boulder Police Department. Time: 19:00 - 21:00 The main topic for discussion will be our MOUs.

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Jim Andrews, WA0NHD, District 11 (BCARES) Secy.