[SMCARA] Meeting new business discussion

[Ren Ramirez]

Afternoon everyone,

I am going to propose another new item on a club capital purchase 
Thursday and I wanted to give the group a little time to read and mull 
on it a bit before then.  The capital purchase is Gene Talley's portable 
mast system.

Background:  At field day it was brought to Boz and my attention that 
this would be the last year that Gene would supply the mast for personal 
reasons and was going to list it for sale.  We talked to him about it 
and he has agreed to let the club have first chance at it for a reduced 
sale price of $1,700 dollars.  Trust me, he can get a lot more for it 
from the open ham community!  With this 1,700 bucks we get the whole 
setup, instruction manuals, and training for a core team of club members 
on how to SAFELY set this up/take down.

Discussion:  I feel that this is an awesome opportunity for our club to 
acquire this item.  Not only for field day but also for SES events, 
emergency activations, or anywhere else the club would like to set up an 
HF presence with the beam.  Gene's offer is reasonable and technically, 
we have the funds to cover this but, it would effectively cut our 
reserve in half!  An idea Boz brought up is that the club finance 900 
dollars of the cost and the members of the club make donations to cover 
the rest.  As of today, we have 74 paid up members on the books.  IF 
(big key word here)  IF all 74 members put up 11 dollars, the mast is 
ours!  Realistically, I doubt that but some of our more active and 
generous members may put in more to achieve the goal of acquiring it.  
There are other issues with the purchase of this item but they are all 
logistics and can be worked on after the purchase.

Folks, they don’t make these anymore.  This mast is as rare as hens 
teeth and if the ham community gets word that this could be up for sale, 
it will command a MUCH higher price than what is being generously 
offered to us so as a club, we should not allow this opportunity to pass 
us by.  Think really hard about this as well as supporting the motion to 
move on this or at the least, get a discussion group going at our next 
meeting to seriously consider acquiring it.  Think about it everyone, 
and think about being generous with your donation to purchase this item.

Thanks for your time and look forward to seeing you all (WITH YOUR 
DUES...) on Thursday.

73

Ren W3BNY (Treasurer)

PS.

Im open to start the discussion now via the reflector if everyone is 
good with that (click the reply all or change the reply to the reflector 
address)

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