WCFA Board Meeting Minutes Online Zoom – May 21, 2024 – 1500-1700

Meeting called to order on May 21, 2024, at 1500 hours by President Todd Graves. Roll call: Danielle Sims, President Graves, VP Greg Bailey, Board Members: Jake Burkhart, Tim Logozzo, Reed Gracie, Will Judkins and Dave Rains are absent.
Danielle said the minutes were sent to all board members to read. President Graves asked if the minutes can be approved as read. Motion to approve, Greg Bailey, second Jake Burkhart. Todd asked for a motion to approve the minutes as read from our last meeting, Greg made a motion, Jake seconded, motion passed.
Next item is the treasures report. Danielle shared the Balance Sheet that will be presented at the general meeting. The Profit and Loss was shared briefly to see if the board had any questions before the general meeting. Everyone said it looked good.
Danielle also talked a little bit about changing banks just because there’s a little bit of instability in some of the corporate banks and I had read some articles about Wells Fargo being one of those banks that might have some severe or well some critical shortcomings and all of our assets here. The checking and savings you know are all in that bank and our savings account on the profit and loss only earn like you know $0.14 a month. We talked about the possibility of maybe moving our money into the Spokane Teachers Credit Union. Credit unions pay a higher percentage on average, just for your daily balances without it being anything special. Maybe we should make a move, or maybe we should just move our savings into the Spokane Teachers Credit Union, so it has the potential to grow a little bit and then also being a more secure bank. Additionally, credit unions aren’t under the FDIC, they’re under the National Credit Union. They have their own funding for all the banks that is different than the federal government. Danielle asked the board to consider the proposal of moving banks. Some discussion followed about researching the new bank and its ability to connect to our QuickBooks and PayPal. The board said if the move would benefit the WCFA and work with everything that they felt working with a smaller local bank would be better. It was decided to bring up at the fall meeting after more information has been investigated. We plan to share with the membership that we are looking into moving banks.
Jake asked if the VP or anyone looks at the bank statements. Danielle shared how things were set up when she first started in 2009, the VP was supposed to view the banking for accountability, it is in our by-laws. Jake asked if this is something that could be sent to the VP. He also asked if any board member has looked at these? Jake also asked if the numbers in the Profit and Loss could be manipulated. Danielle said no, the bank information is downloaded into QB and cannot be changed, only calorized. All transactions are reconciled to the bank statements. More discussion followed. Todd asked if we want to consider an annual or bi-annual transparency of the accounts. Danielle read the by-laws to see the way it is set up. Jake said it would be good to have accountability. Todd asked if we need an outside auditor. Jake said it would be good to have the board involved in an overview, nothing complicated. Danielle said the 990-tax filing is an audit and explained how those forms have to balance from year to year. Danielle suggested having different board members zoom with her to go over all the finances. Jake said just pick 2 board members and rotate it. Danielle continued to share a possible plan to review. Greg interjected and we need to move on. Todd suggests that we try to comply with the by-laws and do a bi-annual audit.
Next item to pay President Graves for the previous year’s work. Reed motioned to approve paying Todd, Greg seconded. Motion approved. A check will be written and sent to Todd.
Next item was the 990 filing. Danielle shared that it has been accepted by the IRS and a link was sent to the board members to review.
Next item was to discuss a raise for Danielle as Secretary, Treasurer, Training Coordinator, and Records Inspector. Greg motioned to approve raise; Jake seconded. Reed suggested that we re-visit in the fall to see if we need to raise it again. All approved. Danielle returned to the discussion and the board informed her what they discussed. Todd gave the board some of the numbers that I had done some rough math on. We had a discussion and took a vote to raise your annual salary from $24,000 a year to $30,000 a year. Danielle was truly touched by the generous raise. Todd added that Danielle was worth every dime of it, and we appreciate her, and we wish we could do more. Danielle asked if her raise was retro-active starting now or for next year. The board said to pro-rate from May 1st-20 at old scale and then 21st-31st at new scale. Revision: Danielle contacted the board June 1st and they revised the raise to start it May 1st, 2024.
The next item on the agenda is the Training Committee. Danielle shared that the instructors are currently making $30.00 an hour and noted of the last time they had a raise was in October of 2021. She would like to talk about perhaps raising that to $35. Todd recommends that we go to the membership to approve the raise because most of the board are instructors. Greg asked if we need to increase class fees. Danielle said that nearly all the training income had come in for the year, so we have enough money to pay the instructor’s the new rate without raising class fees. Danielle said the raise should start for the next training season. Todd said the board should recommend $35. Greg asked if we should raise the unit instructor rate as well. Todd suggested $30, Jake agreed. Greg said you are giving the unit instructors a bigger raise than the instructors. Danielle said that’s why I wasn’t suggesting that much. All agreed on the same $5 raise to $22 for unit instructors. This will be presented to the membership for approval.
Danielle discussed that recently, an instructor didn’t get some of task books turned in for a class and we were wondering how we deal with making sure that the students passed the class. So, she created a form that’s similar to the form that instructors sign that says They’ve attended a refresher. She changed the words to say that all the students in the class passed. She asked the board if they would consider using a form like that for future classes and not rely on the sometimes-incomplete TB’s. We would use it for all the classes except RT-130. Todd and Greg said to go ahead an make the forms available to be sure we are compliant in case of an audit.
The next thing on the agenda was that Danielle is thinking about moving the Sultan class to Snohomish, but there was going to be more people at the general meeting that that affects and hopefully we can ask them what they think about it. She also would like to send a card to the church we have used for several years with a donation and thank you. Reed shared the way John Shalo has help facilitate that over the years. Todd asked if anyone would like to make a motion to send a card and $250. Reed made the motion, Tim Logozzo seconded, motion passed. Danielle will send the card and check.
Danielle shared the next item that the S-219 update was on the agenda and that’s just letting the board know that all the pre-coursework has been sent out. She has only got back one completed S-219 online portion and I need to get the rest of those in the next couple weeks before the class. Payments for the class will be taken when we know who will be attending.
Next item Todd wants to discuss the WCFA Trainings Standards and then I’ll let him share what he has. Todd just wanted to bring up to the board that he has some recent concerns about the quality of the training that some of the other Associations or MOU trainers have. A lot of times these people have inadequate training or questionable training or are not documented correctly. When Danielle gets questionable documents, she has to contact the region. The region gives inconsistent answers and doesn’t seem to be making any steps to investigate the problems presented. Danielle does her best to make sure that the WCFA training is quality and meeting the standards and the region knows we are following the rules.
Jake shared that he had an employee who had a FFT1, RT-130 and packtest on the same day, Danielle caught it and sent it to Aaron Almos and he didn’t accept it. Aaron also said to keep sending these so they will consider those contractors when the MOU’s are reissued in 2025. Danielle shared that she had a student tell her that he wanted NWCG logo on our training certificate otherwise, Region 5 wouldn’t take it. She called Todd and he said that our MOU forbids us from putting that on there because we’re not NWCG. She also called Aaron Almos to be sure nothing had changed. It is not allowed but Danielle said that she sees several certificates from other providers with NWCG logos.
Todd also wondered if we are we losing students to other training associations, especially the one we have close to us in Omak. Danielle feels that we are, but they’re mostly non-members. We used to train a whole bunch more non-members and so I don’t know if they’re getting DNR training and if they weren’t VIPR contractors, but we used to train a lot more.
Next item is old business. Danielle shared that database updates are referenced but they’re just ongoing. We talked about it in the fall, some stuff that Dan wanted to get done but he thought we didn’t have money because that was the 2020 and he hadn’t ever heard anything new. So, he’s moving forward with continuing to update the database like the employee page. Todd asked if we can we do a better job of having Dan notify the board for the changes he is making. Danielle said he doesn’t do anything without me telling them, but sometimes he gets it wrong. She gave a few examples. Todd restated to do our best to make sure that when an order goes to him for a change that the board approves it.
Next thing on the agenda is the committee reports and probably could just forego that since you’re going to share the same stuff at the general meeting. Todd said that there’s not a lot of committee reports other, and he’ll share that he had a fire defense committee meeting yesterday. Also, we’re still working on the bylaws. Todd has been busy, but we’ll try to get that done by fall. Some discussion followed regarding some updates to the by-laws.
We want to remind the Members about getting their FLC’s by next year because all the water handling, especially that’s going to be in the solicitation because it was in the recent ones. You must have FLC pending or have one to even present a quote.
Any other old business?
Jake asked if you want anything from him on the political action committee or just want me to wait for the membership. We will wait for the members meeting.
New business is election of officers, President Grave’s 2-year term is up, EB #1 that Jake was fulfilling to the end of a three-year term. He needs to be elected for a new 3-year term. Do we need to know now if you each of you will accept the nomination, or do we talk about that the next meeting? Todd and Jake said they would both accept a nomination.
Danielle shared that we have three memberships to review: Steelhead Enterprises, I guess Todd met them in Reno, Wildland Warriors-Liberty Wildfire, Buck Smith bought out Gordy Reynaud and is basically taking over so he has to join as himself, and then Chilton logging used to be an associate member, they didn’t continue as a member, but they did continue to have Kevin Curfman train them through the WCFA. Now they want to rejoin as a member with an agreement. Todd will share this at the next meeting.
Danielle stated that’s all that she has for new business.
Greg asked if we should we set a date for our fall meeting. Danielle said we could do that at the fall meeting.
Todd asked if there was any new or old business. None.
Todd asked for a motion to adjourn, Greg Bailey motioned to adjourn, Tim Logozzo seconded, meeting adorned at 1624.
Danielle asked Todd and Jake to stay after the meeting to discuss how to implement financial audits. No recording was made.