Miami Valley FOOLS

Hosted by : Miami Valley CTC / Lowell Swanson

 Meeting began 1905 by Sec Scott Henry

Welcome to new guest, Lt Jim Cunningham, Kettering Fire

Treasurer’s report of aprox $400.00 in the bank plus $60 of checks to be deposited

Dues to the International will be due soon and we still owe Doug Cope $200 to pay for the old green FOOLS shirts.  OK to pay Cope all moneys owed to him. 

Scott Henry gave a report of his experience with the Central Ohio FOOLS meeting.  They are reforming and really looking to expand and do it right.  The Northern Ohio FOOLS also attended the meeting and REALLY had their shit together.  Discussed the option of joint events at various times of the year, both training and social.

As of today we have 117 members on the roster and yet had only 26 dues payments in 2009.  Seven members have already paid dues for 2010.    Dues (yearly) breakdowns from the International are as follows:

1 – 50                 $50 min

51 – 100              $100

101 – 200            $200

201 +                  $300 max

Dues are due to the International by JANUARY 31^st, 2010

We are going to make a new application/membership form and email it out ASAP.  Any member that does not pay/respond by January 15, 2010 will be purged from our roster.  This will allow us to not only lower our membership to a lower number / cheaper price, but also to have a roster of actual active members.  The membership form will be updated to be more of an informational flyer, ie… this is what your membership gets you. You can download the membership application HERE

As many have already heard, Jason Kirby, a Washington Township Volunteer Firefighter and sales manager for Lion, passed away unexpectedly last week.  He leaves behind a family that includes a wife and two young children.  Next week, Wednesday December 23^rd Beef O’Brady’s Family Sports Pub in Centerville will be hosting an all day fundraiser.  Opening extra hours (7am to 11pm) Beef’s will donate 10% of the days total to the Kirby Family Fund being administered by Lion Apparel.  All that is needed is to bring in the flyer below.  Print it out and/or email it.

As attendance has been somewhat lacking lately, we have decided to change our meeting format slightly.  We will be moving to a quarterly educational meeting, Lowell Swanson has offered the use of MVCTC as sort of a FOOLS home base for us.  These will be meetings with an educational aspect, either lecture of hands on, with CUEs being given.  We will also be having/hosting social meetings in the off months.  These can be events such as a motorcycle ride, poker night, etc.  Mindi and Ron Wynne will be acting as our social activity chairpersons for the year.  I’m sure we are all looking forward to helping them out to the best of our ability.

2010 E Board positions –

President – Brian DeVilbiss

V P – Scott Henry

Secretary – Lowell Swanson

Treasurer – vacant

Trustee 1,2,3 – Doug Conley, Scott Hall & Greg Sherwood 

We discussed rewriting the bylaws to have board members serve a 2 year term with the Pres and Sec on a cycle and the following year the VP and Treas on another cycle.  This will allow there to always be members of the Eboard with some experience.   Passed pending a re-write of the bylaws.

Lowell Swanson, MVCTC, gave a great presentation on Abandoned Building Safety in honor of the 10 year anniversary of the Cold Storage Warehouse fire in Worchester, MA.

Next meeting (a training/educational meeting) will be held Thursday March 18^th, 2010 at the Miami Valley Career Technology Center – Adult Education Building, 1900hrs.

                                                 (just in time for Scott and Mindi’s birthdays)