General Meeting of the Villages Woodshop Club

October 11, 2016

Laurel Manor Recreation Center

Meeting called to order at 7pm accompanied by the recitation of the pledge of allegiance by President Jim Spallone.  A moment of silence was held for one of our founding members, Charlie Shark who passed away last week.  Announcement of the funeral Mass for Charlie scheduled October 22^nd at St. Timothy’s as well as the memorial service for Thomas Labbe scheduled at St. Mark’s this Friday.  

Welcomed the three new members in attendance. We did not have any visitors. 

President’s Report

Jim Spallone, President 

· October is a heavy month for new member growth. In the past we’ve averaged 30 to 35 members during this time. As of today, 15 new members have joined our club since October 1^st, bringing our year to-date total to 113 new members and 920 members. However, we have 26 inactive members, who have either left the TV’s, resigned their membership without notification or have passed away, giving us actual active membership of 894 members.  

·  We continue to attract interest in TV’s with 75 guests visiting our club. Again, as mentioned in previous meetings not all visitors sign our guest book, and the monthly visitors continues to grow as well.  We welcome and encourage all members to help give tours and to talk about our club with visitors. This helps the front desk volunteers, who are very busy this time of year.

· We have begun this year’s drive for the Special Olympics Christmas tree. If you are willing to donate a tree hanging item or something that will fit under the tree, there is a collection box for these items by the front desk. Linda Samson advised she needs donated items by Thanksgiving, because our tree is due at the Waterfront Inn by December 1^st for the auction.  In the past, this has been a successful endeavor with positive public relations for the club. We hope that this year will be as good as all the previous years, if not better.

· Once again we are participating in Colonial Days to be held on Friday, January 20^th 2017 at Brownwood.  Mike Borfitz, PR for our club, advised that we have a larger and better location, than last year, for the coming Colonial Days. A committee meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. Stay tuned for more information and volunteer opportunities.

· Our budget process has begun in earnest. Each department head has been given a copy of what Doug Parks, Treasurer and I have put together for their respective areas. The November 17th Board Meeting should complete this whole process.

· Please mark your calendars that during the Holiday season the Board of Director meetings are held on the 3^rd Thursday of the month and not the 4^th Thursday. Therefore, Board Meetings will be held on Nov.17^th and Dec. 15^th.

· One of our most active areas this month has been IT and Mike Borfitz will provide us with an update.

Department Reports: 

Vice President – Harm Borfitz – Is presently working with the Tool Crib Dept, Bob Behrens and team of volunteers, in updating the tool crib processes.

Shop Administration & Maintenance – Dave Adamovich: No report

Certification and Monitor Training – Dick Bessler:  The mentoring program is in need of more volunteers, please see Dick if interested in volunteering. Certification training is held the first and last Thursday of every month.  All 13 paid new members are scheduled for their training. Five members underwent training last month and five are scheduled for the following training date.  Certification trainers are needed, please see Dick if interested. Monitor Duty training is held the 1^st and 3^rd Wednesday of the month in the evenings. Monitor Duty trainers are also needed, please see Dick if interested.   Dick is working with John Herega, Safety to set-up a review for the class instructors on certification training, to ensure that instructors are update to date with current certification training.

Lumber – Stephan Yovan:  He and Bob Bell recently purchased $1,800 of turning lumber. Some of the wood had to be sold quickly (fire sale) due to some of the wood being infested with bugs.  There is plenty of wood in supply.  Lumber does carry wood for carvers as well.

Office Administration – Anne Bell:  October 1^st starts the whole cycle for payment of member dues and signing of waivers.  Asked members to sign and return their Waivers as soon as possible, so that front desk check in computer doesn’t get backlogged with members waiting to check in. Reminded exempt members that they can wait to pay dues, since they are not assigned monitor duty.  Reminded those who have special needs and can only work in the tool crib, to pay their dues ASAP, so that they can secure the tool crib monitor duty dates, before they get filled up. October 17^th marks the date members can start to pay dues, select their monitory duty dates, confirm and update their personal information.   Reminded members to pay dues with cash or check. We still don’t accept credit cards.  Thanked members for helping with visitor tours. 

IT, Video Production and PR Mike Borfitz:  The Daily Sun’s Thursday newspaper’s Recreation News section will be listing VWC ‘s general membership, turners meeting dates as well as special event dates. Our recently purchased server has been installed and has made a tremendous difference in the speed of the computer systems and programs. This server will enable the club’s computer program to grow over the next five years.  A special acknowledgement and kudos to volunteers, Bill Pappas, John McGowan, John Scott, Anne Bell, Stephan Yovan and Jim Spallone for their time and effort and for making this great working team.  Mike introduced a new program “Free Money for VWC” using Amazon’s special program “Smile Amazon.com. This program, Smile Amazon.com, will contribute 0.5% of your total purchase to our club as a charitable donation. These contributions will help keep our dues low, help fund the making of toys and for the general maintenance of the tools and equipment. Mike gave slide presentation of how to use the program and provided a handout’s of how to use the Smile Amazon.com.  Non-members can also request that 0.5% of their purchase be donated to the “The Villages Woodworkers Club”. 

Special Projects and Website:  Han Zassenhaus:  On September 30^th we had over 50 volunteers attend Special Build night. We built 500 cardholders, 20 slant and domino boards, which should last until Thanksgiving.  We anticipate holding another Special Build night the first week of December to build items to sell at Colonial Days.  Since our last meeting have sold 160 pre-made items and completed 45 repair projects.  We have a lot of small projects that need to be done, if any one is interested in helping, see John Justice or Bob Thompson in the Special Projects area in the shop.  There is no news to report on the Website – if anyone has any suggestions, please send an email to the VWC web master for consideration.

Toys – Conway Williams: In the month of September we made an additional 499 toys bringing our total production for the year to 5,279. We’ll be selling toys at Sumter Landing Square on Thursday from 5 to 9pm.  All are welcome to come and volunteer their time in selling toys.  We’ll be selling toys at Lake Sumter Landing on 10/13, 11/10, and 12/10 and at Spanish Springs on 11/21 and 12/21.  The next three months will be very busy in delivering our donated toys we’ve made throughout the year, to various organizations throughout the tri-county area.  

Chairman Board of Directors -Bill McGinnis: No report.

Carver’s – Bill McGinnis: Wood is available for carvers. Carvers have educational books for anyone interested in learning how to carve. You can contact Bill who is at the shop on Tuesday and Wednesday’s or sign-up for a class Dominic Attili, on basic wood carving.

Education Bob Matthew: No report.

Turners - John Herega: Next Turner’s meeting is Tuesday Oct. 18^th at 7pm. Ron Browning will be demonstrating how to make Christmas ornaments.  John reminded turners to make sure that their wood chips do not spill out into the general isle, for safety reasons.   Tom Miller advised that he and Bill Ahlgren would like some help videotaping the demonstrators at the Turner’s meetings and if anyone is interested to see him.

Safety – John Herega:  The Safety Committee continues to reinforce the use of face shields throughout the shop. Looking for someone to spend 1 hour per week updating the scrolling message board at the front desk with current information.  There were two accident’s, involving a lathe, wherein member turned the speed down to zero verses turning off the lathe.  Second accident involved a member being hit in the head, because they did not wait for the miter saw blade to stop before lifting up the blade, thus having a piece of wood kick out of the blade. Showed a photo of member’s injury who did use safety glasses at home to illustrate what can occur. 

Member Apparel – John Herega: Is working with our new supplier of shirts and hats, Custom Apparel located in Southern Trace shopping plaza.  Members can purchase club apparel directly from Custom Apparel verses from the club.  John has changed the color of club shirts from green to tan. Clubs inventory of green shirts will be on sale. There will be three different style hats to purchase, as well as polo shirts and tee shirts with and without pockets.  The cost of the shirts with the name and club logo is a few dollars less than the previous vendor was charging. The hats will cost a few dollars more.  The club will continue to sell smocks and aprons directly to the members. John will be working out the details with Custom Apparel on club logo and member’s names being placed on these items.

Committee Announcements:

Christmas Party – Sandy Moraco: The party is set for December 10^th at the Savannah Center and we’ll have room for 400 people this year.  Last year we had over 300 attend and some had to be turned away.  The ticket price is $10.00 each and member can bring one guest.  Tickets will be sold at the front desk, same as last year. Members will have a choice of salmon or chicken dinner.

Christmas Party Raffle – Alice Bessler:  She will begin placing raffle items in the display case and will begin selling raffle tickets no later than October 20^th. The deadline for submitting donations will be after Thanksgiving. 

Questions:  Jim Spalllone called for any questions or concerns from those attending and no one proposed any questions or reported any concerns. 

The club acknowledged and celebrated Jim Spallone’s birthday early, with cake and a card.

Show and Tell Items:  John Herega, showed slides of the pantry he made for his home. Tom Miller showed a bowl made via ring master and salt and pepper mill. Leif Drexler showed a segmented platter he made in Stephan Yovan’s class and thanked all who have helped him with his turning projects. Andy McTear showed inlayed bowls he made, after attending Maryland Campbell’s classes and Andy will be holding two classes this fall sharing his knowledge of how to make inlay bowls.  He also brought in a segmented wooden golf cart steering wheel he made for his cart.

50/50:  Ron Gammon reported $144 was taken in for the 50/50 raffle.  Three tickets were drawn resulting in one $26 winner, one $24 winner and one $22 winner and the remaining $72.00 donated to the club.

Jim Spallone, President, adjourned the VWC General meeting at 8:31pm.

Minutes prepared by Patty Porter, Secretary VWC –October 12, 2016