FOLA Board Meeting December 3, 2015 Notes

1. Call to Order

2. Treasurers Report-

a. All $ has been moved to Seacoast Bank- Total is $8,179.98

b. 2 waves of membership; via email or US Mail

3. Old Business

a. FOLA Archives- Completed through the middle 70’s now; this will be archived at UCF; will be one of the largest archive programs that they have

a.i. Student that is doing this will come to meeting in January

a.ii. Need to determine the budget for this

b. Acquisition Hull Island- Jim met with SJWMD people; will be writing an application for a grant for this. The owner is anxious to sell and SJWMD has agreed to help with negotiation. There are not a significant amount of wetlands, but there is archeological value.

c. Habitat Enhancement Project, North Shore

c.i. This project has been put on hold for now

c.ii. Will spend some additional time getting SJWMD information regarding the project and what we want to accomplish

c.iii. There are Federal Regulations in place that would restrict plantings or other items that would attract new birds and restrictions to planting new trees that would attract nesting; Dennis Renfro from Florida Fish and Wildlife is going to look into regulations as they have a number of projects going on; these rules have been on the books for quite some time; probably can find a way to work through this as the regulations were written for a different purpose but need to sort through this before we determine what our plan is.

c.iv. Also some concern regarding the toxicity of the area and having people working at the location; concern is essentially surrounding the soil work; not necessarily the water; would look to work with SJWMD to test the area

c.v. Interim project of focus will be on Educational Center (would like to have this located in a place where there are 4-5 acres available for an Upland Park) and c.vi. Working towards collecting and growing the plants that are needed for the enhancement project

4. New Business

a. Ecotourism Coalition- meeting must be during work week; Jim working through timing and this will have to wait until after the 1st of the year; Jim to work with the city of Apopka people so we determine how we are working together

a.i. Should be a project where we do planting at the Pump House on the North Shore

a.ii. Audubon is putting some additional signage/identification at Magnolia Park, and on the wildlife drive with the funds they have already received

b. Newsletter- need to get a newsletter out by the first of the year; need to finalize approach for mailing- should this be the last one that is mailed and notify people that going forward things will be digital

c. Organization of Public Meeting- needs to be scheduled

d. Tour of North Shore- call for a field trip after the first of the year for another tour; to help with planning for planting near pump house

e. Design New Flyers- Identifies FOLA- covers what the main priorities; need a volunteer to work on this to create a new flyer

f. Booths at Birdapalooza- February at Magnolia Park; need a new Poster; need people to be able to talk to what we do

g. Membership Drive; will do a drive in conjunction with the Newsletter

h. T Shirts- found 60-70 old T Shirts from the early ‘90’s. Completed by SJWMD $ advertise as Vintage FOLA project and will see $25 each- will have available at next FOLA Board Meeting and then possibly annual meeting; or possibly at Birdapoolza- not sure if we can actually sell things; Mike to look into this (but probably not enough shirts to worry about)

i. FOLA Literature- where is the QR code and is this on the information/flyers for FOLA (we should have this on any hand-outs or information that is distributed)

j. Can we get Dr. Shortell on a tour of the North Shore?

k. Water levels- gates are closed on Apopka; there is some flow through the NERF (sp)

l. Kayak Launch at pump house will not proceed; the launch will go to the park in Lake County m. Airboat tours- these will potentially still go North even though this will impact the birding- if they go South; it will impact residential locations and this isn’t the “view” that people want to see.

m.i. Now Airboats need to have muffling systems; some of the noise is not from the engines