Minutes

June 2020 Minutes

 

Amber calls the meeting to order at 7:07 pm.

 

Christopher Morris, Howard Kalnitz, Amber Yuellig, Kevin Zachary, Benjamin Tobin, Barry Adams, Bob Gulden, Sarah Arpin, Sean Vanderhoff, Phil Franice, Patricia Kambesis, Sheila Minor, and Preston Forsythe in attendance.  Rich Kline joined late in the meeting.

 

Announcements:

  • Amber talked about the changes to the board. Explained the new positions of Christopher Morris as Secretary and Patricia Kambesis as Member at Large.
  • Speleofest has been cancelled.
  • Bluegrass Grotto is meeting at McConnell Springs tomorrow evening.
  • July 11th, Cincinnati Grotto is holding a meeting at Eden Park (5:30-7:30 is climbing practice) and then meeting afterwards.
  • Pete Miller passed away in late March or April.  His funeral is coming up in Cincinnati.

 

Reading of the Previous Meetings (Amber)

  • Meeting took place in private (closed session).

 

Treasurer’s Report (No Report)

 

Data Committee (Sarah Arpin)

  • 5 new requests, 4 of which were commercial.
  • Noted that it was quiet on the request front during the Covid-19 shutdown.
  • Bylaw changes went through and are on the website.
  • Kevin Zachary is joining the Data Committee

 

Emergency Response (No Report)

 

Membership Committee (Sheila Minor)

  • 88 members as of today.
  • 2 new life members in May for a total of 55 life members

 

Grant Committee (Amber Yueling)

  • Granting a survey grant for equipment.

 

KSS Expeditions (Amber Yuelig)

  • On hold due to Covid-19.

 

Annual Meeting (Sean Vanderhoff)

  • Looking to get feedback because of the current climate.
  • Can we have an outdoor meeting instead of a virtual meeting?
  • Sarah noted that we have provided food in the past and we may not be able to do that this year.
  • Amber noted that we could be back at Lonestar or at Great Saltpetre.
  • What do we want to talk or present about at the annual meeting?  Let Sean know if you have any ideas.
  • Bob Gulden & Christopher Morris noted that there should at least be an online option and it be live streamed.
  • Pat Kambesis noted that Hamilton Valley could be used for the annual meeting and has room, internet and social distancing that is approved by the NPS.  Discussion ensued.

 

Old Business

  • Face to Face meeting on June 28th was cancelled due to Covid-19.
  • Regional Coordinators
    • Howard Kanitz explained the idea.
    • Grouping County Coordinators under Regional Coordinators.
    • Sean Vanderhoff went into more detail about the latest thoughts and how we are trying to break the areas up more evenly.
    • Sean noted that we continue to discuss it at the Data Committee meetings.
    • Ben Tobin noted that this could be a way to get more grottos and people more involved in the KSS and recording the data.
    • Kevin Zachary asked how someone becomes a county coordinator.  Ben explained the new thought on Regional Coordinators and what that entails.  Essentially working with the Regional Coordinators.  Kevin also asked if there was an application or process to become a County Coordinator.  
    • Howard explained that we had a lot of County Coordinators that were doing nothing, so we were looking to get more involvement.
    • Sarah Arpin also noted that we were shifting where data was stored and how it is accessed.  We made these changes to make the data more accessible to the membership so we can have more active people.  Sarah went into GSuite and relational database ideas.
  • Howard noted that he is starting to get more time now and he would like to work more on the Access Database.
    • Sarah explained that she had a meeting with data people from the State Nature Preserves and had an informal conversation to understand all the data and what we have and what can be done.
    • The state people noted that ArcOnline is great and that we should maintain that.
    • Sarah noted that no matter what, we have to have data in a format that is easily accessible to the membership.
    • The next data meeting is scheduled for June 24th.
  • Phil Francis noted that his sole reason for being here is for offering his data services to the caving community.

 

New Business

  • Amber brought to discussion to make Christopher Morris the editor of the annual.
    • Sean noted that he already does it so might as well make it official.
    • Ben made a motion., sean seconded.
    • Passed unanimously.
  • KSS Interns - Ben updated us.  
    • One graduated in May, so we are down to one intern.
    • They have gone through all the paper files that were filed by the county.
    • The interns are now going through all the data on GSuite and adding keywords for all the files.
    • She has made it through half of Carter County.
    • Right now they are trying to cross trace with springs and dye trace data from the state.  Making sure that the datasets can talk to each other.  So they are trying to get the aqua numbers from the spring dataset in the cave dataset.
    • Our intern's name is Gillian.
    • As for the financial side of it, we have spent just over half of it.
  • KSS Logos
    • Sean stated that it looks good the way it is.  That the membership committee could look into this.  He sees no need to change the logo or spend time on it.
    • Sarah agreed with Sean

 

Sarah motioned to adjourn at 8:20 and Sean seconded.