October LMA Board Meeting

October 8, 2022

Attendees:  Sue R, Terryl P, Tim R, Arlyss R, John M, Beth B, Melissa J, Nikki Johnson,

Missing:  Sue W, Greg P, Robbie D, Mike W, Chuck M,

Guests:  Bruce Patterson

Meeting Called to order:  9:01 AM

Treasurer’s Report:

• Expenses/Receivables:
• 2 purchases for AIS education:  Placemats - $1612.88 and coasters - $1451.57
• Reimbursements waiting for:
• Building operations - $3,033.30
• Water Quality - $12,001.37
• Total Expenses/Receivables:  $18,099.12
• New treasurer intro:  Nikki Johnson (will be taking over from Robbie) effective immediately.

Secretary Report:

• Motion made to accept with a few minor changes.
• John made the motion and 2^nd by Terryl.

Water Quality Report:

• The harvester is now in the garage.  Washed it up – took about 4 hours.  Oil changed.  Will need to order a few new supplies for next year.
• Replaced the main cutting bar ($950)
• Truck driver quit with a week or so left on the season.
• Load count:  65 (650 tons).

Weir’s Dam:

• The dam project is a go.  We asked to have it started before January.  The contractor wants to wait until the ground freezes.  Snow is not an issue for the contractor and their equipment.
• Not sure where all the rock is going to come from.  There are several county projects that have excess rocks that are available.
• We have a grant to help pay for this. If the grant deadline passes, we have been told that the grant will be extended.  Its’ a collaborative initiative between the DNR and Fisheries, Aitkin County water and soil, LID, Sportsman Club and LMA.
• How do we keep the beavers from plugging up the hole in the dam?
• The trapper has already caught 8 beavers.  The largest one so far was 60 pounds.
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Loon Nesting Report:

Greg has the (3) additional warning buoys in my pole building at the lake and the additional platform is ordered and should be available for pick up in February. We are partnering with St. Cloud Technical College again and having the students there weld the platform. I believe Sue mailed a check for the $1100.00 for the material cost. This gives us a fleet of 4 platforms, and I believe that is a good number to be able to cover additional areas of the lake. Banns will be a continued platform site. We will be moving the other 2 platforms to new sites. Perhaps looking for sites with more reed type weed cover but with more of a sandy hard bottom and less muck bottom like the Banns platform location. Thoughts are moving the Sportsman Club Bay platform out and to the north some to reed edge in the more open water area where we have noted the loons swimming / fishing in during the year, Move the Fire tower bay platform out to the reed island area more toward the narrow boating area, and place the new platform along the north shore that does not have any development on the way to the channel to Horseshoe Lake.

Lake Survey 2023:

Greg has been in contact with Fresh Water Scientific on conducting another full lake Survey next year in August / September. This survey will be a little different. The survey will cover the lake with an overall sampling / survey for any AIS vegetation. It will not encompass as many areas as in the past as this year as we will include a master driver to do underwater surveys to specifically look for AIS at the landings and concentrated dock areas. Most new discoveries of zebra mussels and starry stonewort in MN have been found by divers, so the combination of a boat-based search of nearshore areas and diver inspections at select boat access sites would give us a good likelihood of finding new AIS. I have attached the proposal. Diver inspection would include photo / video log and GPS coordinate locations of inspection sites. Cost would be based on the number of locations we want to have the dive survey conducted. I suggest 4-6. I believe the main DNR landing at the Craft house and the other main landing on the north / west side of the lake between the large new home and bright yellow cabin (down from Beth Blaylock). Other suggestions would be for areas of concentrated docks. Perhaps over by Tim and Arlyssa by Pat McGinns, along the curve in the shore where there is a concentration of docks. Timbershores landing is a possibility also. Savanna Ridge? I think we should try and choose sites for active boat landings and then additional sites in other areas of the lake with concentrated dock / lift locations.

For this meeting, we should vote / agree on the number of sites and the cost of the survey. I believe this would be an easy expense to submit to the LMLID. Boat base AIS sentinel survey is $1650.00 Master diver inspection is base cost of $730.00 with a $200 per site additional fee. If we did the boat survey and included (4) dive survey site, total would be $3,180.00 The last full lake boat survey from fall of 2020 was $2550.00 for comparison.

• Between board members at the meeting and on-line voting, the vote to accept the proposal was unanimous.

Memberships:

• Business memberships:
• Sent out a blanket letter to all business in the area – 100.  Got about 20 memberships. 
• Should we have two different thank you notes?  One for memberships and a different one for donations to the BBQ.
• How do we get the business recognized on the website?
• We will need to manually enter.  Terryl, Robbie, and Beth to follow.
• Could we put the business members on the kid’s t-shirt???
• Voted to
• Individual Memberships
• Have about 118 individual memberships to date.
• Will offer the new membership deal of a flag and membership for $50 at the BBQ.
• We still need to get alignment on the county list and our website.

Old Business:

• Kid’s T-shirt give away. 
• Voted to move forward with ordering the t-shirts now so that they are ready early.
• Decided to add business membership information on the back of the t-shirts.  Great idea Bruce (you can join us again!! 😊
• Beth to get Arlyss the business membership list.
• LMA Merchandise:
• Full zip jackets (a new item) have been very popular and have already been reordered.
• Report - Made about $3000 so far.  Have about $3000 worth of merchandise left and that will be all profit.
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New Business:

• BBQ 2023 – August 12^th. 
• Food donations have already been locked in. - Terryl
• Could we do a “welcome to the Lake kit”?
• LMLID -   Will be losing 2 members.  Need to locate new members and they must be residents of the lake full time.
• Needs to be no less than 5 members up to 9.

Meeting was adjourned at 10:04

John M made the motion and Terryl 2^nd it.