Marine Education Advisory Committee Meeting - November 18, 2020

or please thank you all right well welcome everyone to the marine education center advisory committee meeting um it's a reschedule because of veterans day i'm glad most of us could make it today i think we actually might zip through the agenda in quicker than an hour but we can use the whole hour if we need it [Music] this would mark the last meeting of this calendar year for us i think before the next bot meeting which p so we're going to talk a bit today about um committee terms and such but b

efore we do that can i ask if anyone else has other business they wanted that i hadn't put on the agenda that i can plan for timing-wise anything else no okay great so why don't we uh dig right in then victor did you have something no i i'm sorry i i i just put christy uh on for that update i don't know where you have him or the agenda but um i have i have you under the staff report i thought you might want to hear kyle's staff report christy but if you have to go you're welcome to go first um i

have a little bit of time so okay great so kyle why don't you um why don't you lay on us the uh the staff report for the for the month please all right um so what's going on um oh i'm sorry i'm gonna interrupt you i took notes diligently last time who's taking notes this time and ann are you doing notes yeah thank you man appreciate it didn't have to twist any arms there that was good no problem i am muted i'll take i'll take them thank you man appreciate it okay kyle sorry to interrupt you go

ahead yeah no worries um the um the closet is getting winterized so i could keep the water going all winter which is not good that should be done this month um i am just got contacted about a week and a half ago by the ryneck school district and they want all k through 12 to either come to the center or do virtual um presentations with them so that's cool um that will be for next year i'm just starting to plan with them uh what kind of lessons we'll be doing and all that hopefully everything get

s back to normal soon so they could come down but a lot of it's going to be virtual um and that's about 1600 kids which is cool and then um what else the tanks are slowly coming back i'm watching a blackfish a big lady blackfish um right now she's she seems to be doing okay she's been in there for three weeks um but she's got that eye fog so i'm not putting any fish in just yet i'm kind of just waiting to see what happens to her and everything else is good the robots um was a little delayed uh b

ecause of me being quarantined for a little while so we're going out this weekend to launch it and then he's putting it into a um science fair in two weeks so that will be cool um that's about it lots of lots of boring other stuff but those are the big things well that's all right not too boring um so now that we've got kind of go ahead and please i was gonna do i push ray's hand or do i raise my mind you go ahead we're not a big group today kyle are you getting people coming through yeah actual

ly um a lot i've been closed for a little while again because i've um been quarantining waiting for my test results but um they when i'm there like fridays are really busy i actually have to keep people from coming in um the cleanups are crazy busy i know i've been there yeah yeah yeah that's been cool they go out in like their own pods we don't go out together um right okay great and i got that net out in i don't know if you saw two there were two you the second one yeah the second one was hard

that second one was i'm sorry i tried there was a net just quickly there was a net that came down the river and kyle was instrumental for helping get it out and i sent her a picture because all the fish are migrating and i tried to get it out but so thank you yeah and then a week later another net came down they were more like a construction net i think from all the road work they're doing but it was about 40 feet long and there was bunker yeah oh really yeah yeah it was i went with a kayak had

to hop in it was stuck under a rock it was a whole ordeal well do you think that came from the the um uh something that was put up river to stop the um no it looks like i don't think so um yeah i think it probably came from the road but i don't know you might be right it had stakes in it so that might yeah yeah okay yep but all right just asking thank you again kyle yeah he's come through well yeah you do such a tremendous job with the trash pickups thinking um i don't know if it's totally warr

anted but you know the mamaronic river is massive and the watershed is really big and obviously eliminating or trying to eliminate the floatables and trash that make their way into the river would be like a goal but um has the village ever thought about since we are the down the furthest downstream before the mamaroneck discharges to the harbor they ever thought about putting up a boom or something along those lines to catch some of the marine debris or river debris before it turns into marine d

ebris and kyle's out cleaning it up like the one that the bronx river um you know i i glad you brought that up i am working um with like a temporary one with the girl scouts um to put at the mouth that will just be floatable it won't have any net or anything it will just be the floatables and that's for again for to see if the robot can go out and kind of clean it up um each day it will see yeah and i'm using like old buoys and everything too and i was gonna volunteer brendan he could go clean i

t every day but it'd probably be better to use the robot that's a much better idea if we don't have access to the the idea is if we don't have access to the robot for a day it will like pull in by itself and bring everything in so it's um it's a work in progress but it will be temporary and i you know it's just uh in the making i haven't gotten approval or anything but yeah i'm sure there's some permits we need to do that yeah we got a couple hands up oh maybe sarah first i'm sorry sarah go for

it um historically i don't know how many years ago but the um uh the harbor alliance what what is what and what was that what's the group that brought you into us that's what i was going to comment the harbor island conservancy yeah they they donated a i think they called it a leaf um uh something or other but it was like a boom and they covered they put it in the river um between um the two bridges uh the one at the at the train station and then and then is it phillips well will you go down you

used to have that motorcycle place but you know where you walk and and it caused an enormous problem huge huge things got caught in it and it was as there was about ten thousand dollars donation i don't know where it is somebody may have thrown it out yeah that's what i was gonna comment on sarah is that i have i just happened to have a meeting with june and i was telling her about this piece she was wondering if it was that boom but it was the cost oh yeah the cost of it was far exceeding that

amount and she under thought that it was still there and she was wondering if what came down the river kyle was part of that i couldn't think of the name the boom oh yeah this looks like it you would if this was in the river you'd have to get a permit from the dc the one that i'm making is just floatables this one would have went completely down to the bottom and disrupted anything coming through or up yeah and even just a boom might require a permit yeah just uh this one was just going to be l

ike see what comes down in 24 hours have the robot go out just for data you know right now i love it it's great but it might be something to work with you know the the bot and maybe even dpw and others and make it a project because the mamaronic watershed like i said is massive i'm not saying the village is contributing all that trash but it's at the it's at the end of the river and it's catching it all as it comes down and i'll be bringing people on soon so i'll have more time to do so my recom

mendation would be to touch base with christian murphy at the bronx river alliance i don't know if you know him but he pretty much oversees their boom over the bronx river and they do a lot of really good um data analysis on what they pull out and like volume and mass and all of that so christian murphy um and then if you can't you'll catch him he's a good guy and you can find him michelle lubke is the other person that works on the boom at the bronx river and they'd be really good to talk to ab

out how they do it the permitting what was necessary etc christian what was it sorry murphy murphy got it i think dan sarnoff would know about the that other boom that that was yeah and look into what what might already be available what's around when that happened yeah okay victor yeah okay very briefly i'll just pick it up i'll talk with dan sir enough and kyle let's work together i'll i'll help the liaison to make this project work okay i'll i'll pull in i don't want too many people but i wan

t uh jason you with between you and jason we take it to jerry we get this and we get this moving we'll put we'll make it we'll make it happen next year and of course we have christie we need some permits let's move on it let's of course we have we have the conservancy so let's keep this conversation i'm very interested in moving this forward i think we could make a big dent on it this year has been the water quality has been great but floatables have are are skyrocketing out of control yeah yeah

out of control so i think we all realized that something has to be done good especially with the kids out of school they're all in the parks i mean i've noticed a ton in the rivers it's um it's unreal and people are like it must go down i'm like it's it's crazy this year how much is coming out of there so it's a good project to queue up any other big updates for you before we kick it over to christy any questions for kyle that people might have not now she's going to be with us for the rest of

the meeting maybe we'll let christy um talk to us about donation and funding and then we can always loop back with you kyle thank you so much hey victor is there anything you wanted to start with before i dive in oh you want me to just dive in okay great um so victor has asked me and i was actually approached as well by helen rafferty before about soliciting donations for the marine education center um so initially when we were looking at it the idea was of possibly creating a non-profit um a fr

iend of mine yeah i actually i don't know your background i'm sorry i'm terribly sorry oh oh i'm sorry um i'm the deputy village attorney for the village of america so i work under bob's falcino he is village attorney um so that is my connection i apologize i i didn't realize that wasn't known i should have started with oh that's fine thank you so much of course um so we were looking at the possibility of creating a like is that a non-profit where donations could be funneled through the nonprofi

t um again it would be called the friends of the marine education center but during the call about the nonprofit some questions came up about is it possible to um add a link to the website for a paypal account to solicit donations or whatever it may be helen had also mentioned that they had previously done a letter writing campaign um so when that was initially discussed my understanding was and this was an error that she had it was part of the village that had done this this donation drive and

so i was like well that's odd that you can send out letters requesting donations but you can't put a link on your website right so then i sort of dived in um through the totality of it to get a good understanding of what can and can't be done is it possible to create a paypal account can we create a link to that how can we go about um soliciting donations what it what are the guidelines for it so i don't have unfortunately great news um so in terms of donations the office of state comptroller ha

s stated that municipalities are not permitted to use solicit donations and there's really only two ways that municipalities can so one way is through state statute which in this case would be the general municipal law and the village law neither of which permit the municipality to to solicit donations the other idea is through fair market value which essentially means that it's like an exchange of i don't want to say goods and services but it's essentially you i'm going to give you 2 000 and yo

u have to give me something equal in return so um that context came up i saw in terms of advertising so let's say the village on the mec website slotted out certain spaces for advertising so td bank says i'm gonna give you four thousand dollars you need to give me your biggest banner the problem with that and this is something that i need to explore a little bit more is in order to allow advertising and not be in violation of the first amendment i think anybody that wants to advertise would be p

ermitted to advertise and so that could possibly be an issue because you may have an organization that you're not you know it's a little bit iffy it's maybe not something that that carries mec's cause or whatever it may be and also at that point you would have to confer with the village about that being permitted because i know i talked to dan sarnoff about it as well who's the assistant village manager he said that they've generally avoided advertising i don't know if maybe i'm not creative eno

ugh to think of other ways and other services that could be exchanged some people do bake sales but that's not you know that's not going to get you the donations you need no one's going to give you 2 000 for a pie and that's not fair market value um so we're sort of in a situation where we're back to this idea of a friends of um i think that's going to be your greatest route you can proceed with these letter writing campaigns which helena talked about but it has to be from individuals so each of

you or whatever group you get together could send out letters but not on village letterhead it would have to be totally on your own saying you know i support the marine education center they do great things within the village we're having a fundraising drive and we will provide those donations um so that that is one route and then like i said the other route that i think will likely work best is that non-profit so moving forward with establishing the non-profit um using that creating a separate

website creating um the whole kit and caboodle to be able to have the freedom to fundraise like you want those donations that you garner through the friends of mec will have to be gifted essentially to the village and then the board of trustees as the normal processes with any donation for mec will receive those gifts or agree to accept the gifts so unfortunately it's kind of a tricky situation because you are associated with municipality um that we have to go about these these kind of odd rout

es to to get the donations chris they have one question about the advertising on the site um is there uh is there a exact definition of what advertising might look like or could it be if we got some sort of corporate donation from td banker or whatever i believe was the example you had that it's essentially just like a collection of logos at the bottom so i'm you know i thought about that as well and i truthfully this is something that i came across more recently so i need to explore it a bit mo

re to see what that what those boundaries would look like um like i said what really popped up to me most was the idea that you may have people requesting advertisements who you might want on your website um even if it's just a logo it's something to be mindful of um and again like i said it's something that i need to explore a bit further i think i i don't know what i guess the idea would be is that fair market if they're giving you five thousand dollars and just their name is on the website um

maybe it is that how that often happens when you're looking at nonprofit websites right that it's whatever it may be it's just a small small logo so um it is something that i would have to explore a little bit further if it was something that nbc was interested in great thank you victor i see you hada yes if if the letters go out from individuals but there would be the letters would say if you're interested you don't need to change the check because i think what part of the problem is the metho

d payment they say you can go to paypal they set it up this is this so the residents set it up and of course the paypal will will you know identify or break down which who donated when 200 50 10 20 and then let's say at the end of the month or the next month the board of trustees could say as we do every second week or so you know for a bench or two hundred dollars or something for the for for our uh for the fish tanks or something right we could say you know we we got this list and this all the

se donations could be accepted so how about this method of collection is that is that doable one once you figure out the solicitation and not making can can as can that work so i think the question with that is if i remember correctly because i believe helen might have asked augie about this but um augie fusco the clerk treasurer he has some knowledge on this as well um the idea was that i think whoever maintains the paypal it would like we'd i don't think the village necessarily would be able t

o maintain the paypal account because of tax purposes so i think it would have to harken back to like i said a friends of mec organization so if the friends of mec were running it they could collect those paypal donations i believe helen had figured out a way that it could be once a month it sort of takes all your donations together and then take sen would send it to the board of trustees so i unfortunately in terms of the technicality of that i i'm not entirely sure but i think as long as you h

ave that paypal set up like i said through friends of mec because again of those tax purposes that i if there is a way to do it so that the village is just able to kind of accept those donations then it's permissible yes i think you're on mute yeah i'm per um thank you i'm so with the with the paypal if you could just note it because i i've dealt with this in the past is that whenever you set it up there's a very specific way to reduce the fees um if you're setting it up with the non-profit that

they don't let you know up front you have to ask for it it's like a hidden uh thing uh notice about with the paypal i'm still just i know it may be a little premature but it's certainly worth an asterisk to to keep in mind who and when you're able to set it up because it has to be done at the time of the origination right the fees are substantially less uh that it would add up over the time and that's something um like i said that augie might be helpful in assisting with when it gets to the sor

t of coordinating how we're gonna funnel that money and so maybe if the friends of mec is created we go through that route augie can can work with who's ever on this committee and see if they can set up that paypal so that it funnels those donations properly and gets those those uh non-profit benefits that makes sense i have a question uh two actually one uh i think maybe christie you mentioned that the friends of the emmys if they form like a 501 3c um they would have to solicit funds and then

specifically tell people they were going to the village in their solicitations um you know that's a good question my assumption is that you know you i don't know if you would have to say the village of mamanic but you would say that the funds would be going to the marine education center um yeah in terms of clarity i'm not sure if you would specifically say marine education center owned and operated by the village of america probably to to be totally transparent so that people know exactly where

their donations are going and i don't mean to put it out there but that could deter some people i know it is a tricky situation i think i and i know that that was that was something um prior that there was a concern that people don't want to donate to what they think is the village but i you know perhaps it's it's phrased in such a way that it's marine education center first and foremost small owned and operated right um i think that more is sort of like an advertising but um i think it has to

be clear where your donations are going to whoever is writing the donation can make it a condition that the donation has to be given directly to the marine education center um so that's something to be mindful of it can be important yeah yeah it's it's like a condition of giving that donation must be given to the marine education restricted fund go ahead sir cause i think i forgot my second one but i have another one go ahead christie is is there a uh possibility of um people joining uh joining

becoming a friend of the um mec and as that that means like they have membership at the club i mean at the down at the mec not you know in other words that would be a way of donating that and get everybody not that you couldn't go in there without being a friend but it'd be a way of of doing it well so if you do establish the friends of mac there's really an and maybe i don't understand your your question directly but there's really no stipulation on your donation so it's not the same idea that

you have to exchange these these goods and services it's if you're going through the mec people can just donate directly to the mec for those funds to go back to the village so yeah i'm sure you could set something up some type of membership program for the mec with that money going to the friends of but you don't have to do that yeah i'm familiar with friends groups i used to be the president of the board of the friends of greenwich point and we did a lot of municipal projects with greenwich um

but you know it's always a little tricky like raising funds to pay for town staff and then like i don't know whatever so i actually also at one point thought that the staff for mec was actually funded through through through donations so you might want to clarify that it's not that you're not paying for like kyle to work there you're really paying for these big projects right so my understanding is like new tanks or whatever it is that you need to do i mean these and i think one thing to emphas

ize i mean this is really just my idea i would not my idea but a thought is i mean you really have the ability to grow you're in such a great point on harbor so maybe part of that campaign is to focus on these larger projects that can really grow the organization which i'm sure you're already aiming to do but and maybe explain your donation is not to staff it's not to you know it's not going to jerry barbaria's gas for his truck you know what i mean it's really specific projects for them you see

are you driving a big truck around these days yeah he has a picture on a question um i guess also it was a lot of it was like when we had to pay greenwich like rec staff to do projects at the point because they were the only people in the union able to do projects you know what i mean it gets a little tricky but the next thing i was going to ask was um which was something else have you seen this like where else does this exist so that that wasn't a good expensive greenwich point was like we wer

e we are ins that still is a group that does projects at greenwich point like that's their focus but have we seen a friends of group that supports a marine education center that's run by a municipality or would this be pretty unique you know i'm not aware of one the only way that um my personal involvement is i'm in part i actually just um joined a board where we filed for friends of status for an animal organization for animals in lebanon and so they have an organization called animals lebanon

in lebanon they're having difficulties with funds so i worked with a friend of mine to create this organization called friends of in the u.s in hopes of getting that funding to them so i have to be honest that in terms of other than that i'm not fully aware especially of a marine organization but that doesn't mean they don't exist i just don't i'm not totally aware of it a largemouth library has a friend's organization yes i believe there's a there's a few friends of libraries has a friend's org

anization mourinho does not need a friend's organization because it can it's not connected with the it's not it has a separate line the budget so it's not not a municipal uh library i mean it's got its own own funding and so it can it can raise its own but larchmont can't it's it's all uh so they could look into that as to the difference between them yes that's why i mentioned about being becoming a member because a lot of people like to be a member of the uh join the friends of larchmont where

they get a newsletter they get the notice of going to all this stuff and and it's 15 and they feel like they're getting something for it yeah that's a good point sarah and we brought that up in previous committee members uh earlier on in our advisory committee meetings remember and it was just decided we wouldn't do it through this committee but it would work great for a friend's group um doesn't mean that you'll become a friend it doesn't mean you can't you don't have to be a friend of the of t

he marine center to go into it no no no yeah no no it's just kind of like added benefits that come with it whatever those might be sometimes it's swag sometimes it's like special events yeah a lifesaver and a smile i don't want to belabor the conversation but chrissy one other question for you um through the friends of association or if we do a you know a non-profit or whatever is there any governor on what type of fundraising activity can be done in in my mind as we're thinking about benefits o

r things like that you know there's there's patreon or or uh gofundme where if you sponsored a certain level you get something in return so if you donate fifty dollars to get a tote bag a hundred dollars you get something you know a thousand dollars so it uh that would be maybe something that we might want to look at or through that non-profit if you will but it because there's an association with the villages is that not allowed or would it be allowed uh not that i'm aware of but i mean i don't

think it would say marine education center i would probably say friends of mec whatever that advertising would be would likely have to be that's my assumption i'm not totally sure but um i think it would be through the again through friends of okay so um but i don't see why there would be any limitation on doing something along those lines um if i remember correctly it's either the certificate of incorporation or the bylaws for the non-profit where you lay out how you're going to be doing fundr

aising or where you're going to be getting your funds from so i think that would be the only place where there would be maybe a limitation um if you didn't describe some route like for instance you want to you would if they want to go grants we should put that there would be applications for grants or whatever it may be um but otherwise i i don't know of any limitations along those lines all right thank you all right i hope it was somewhat helpful i'm sorry i didn't come with um paypal banners r

eady but it's incredibly helpful because it's something that comes up uh now and then and it's good to just hear it right from the source so thank you so much for joining and just giving it kind of telling us how it is you know we took fundraising out of the the um responsibilities of this committee um regardless but it's still something that comes up and we're interested in so it's really good to get the boundaries from you directly right and if you are able to put together a group of people um

like i said that are not directly associated with you but again i we talked to we spoke to helen maybe helen i know she had a couple people in mind that she'd be able to create a board go officers etc and kind of grow from there yeah and then who knows i mean the sky's the limit from there it could really change it could even change the dynamic of the center even a little bit but you know that could be way down the line um when you talk about bigger expansions and such right um okay cool well t

hat was that was really good i think there has one more yeah go for it i think that's the next step so i want to thank christie for coming on board i think she leaves lays the next step maybe for 2021 we can give it a try because i think we're ready to grow and you know it's it's a good time people want to do good things got good local things and combinations more people are working from home i mean it's a perfect time i think we could give it a try and we could have a joint meeting with them so

but but you you're you're the chair so no no you're spot on that's what we would do we would have a joint probably scheduled in at least twice a year i don't know i'm just arbitrarily putting that out there but we have kind of constant meetings scheduled for the year where we can meet up thank you christy thank you everyone it was nice to see you thank you hi see you at the harper oh yeah you guys have a harbor uh commission meeting tonight right uh okay great thank you victor for setting that

up that was really helpful uh i'm gonna pull up can i share my screen joe yes i can good uh i'm gonna pull up the committee terms that's the next thing we want to go over um is this big enough it's on my screen but it might be kind of small hopefully can you all see this yeah it looks good pete that looks good okay great thank you all right so here's looking at who's on the committee now so um i'm gonna point two things out one i'll contact jim but i have not heard from i don't know if i hope ji

m's doing okay and catherine i haven't heard from them for a while so we might want to touch base with him who does that should i do it as the chair be like hey how's it going you sure you want to okay and if he wants to roll off or come off early he just needs to write a short letter and submit it to sally i believe i think that might be the case i haven't heard from him in like six months has anyone seen jim in the last six months sarah no okay i hope everything's okay over at the deserts i'm

gonna give them a call um and i'll touch base with jim came to the center a couple of times peter but you've seen them good good i really love the desmonds i wanna make sure they're doing okay first and foremost uh seriously and then um eddie i know for a fact has mentioned that he's um got other things personally that the pandemic was definitely not easy on his business so he's he's ready to kind of come off too so those are two that are likely i'm not going to be on the board moving forward i

i didn't i well i did when i read this but my terms expiring but i've already written to the um to sally and the bots saying i'd like to continue on so i'd be honored and happy to do that if i get appointed um ann so i was mentioning to sarah i thought i'd ping them in the beginning they had a deadline of november 13th um but i just pinged her again the other day the treasure clerk treasurer making my request okay but i didn't hear back and i have to change my address because as of monday i've m

oved but i'm still in the village so i hope that i could be reappointed i'm happy so thank you for following up with them again though just to make sure that they receive the information let me thank you that you too and i can tell you from right now i'm going to nominate you too thank you so much for what you do thank you thank you look at my nomination i'm going to try to get a second okay thank you victor um sarah and i have talked sarah do you want to express where your head is now with the

with your term well i thought that i was uh my term was up and so i i didn't it was just i thought that meant that that was up but i realized i i it's it's up to me it's not up to the um so um at the moment i'm i'm sort of thinking about it because i i really didn't think i didn't think it that was that was what the point was i mean that i i thought it was and you i thought you were the one who had one more year right you expressed that so just think about it a little bit but i think they need a

n answer pretty soon because the december bo they probably sent a deadline like ann said but the um december well you're on anyways from 2021 excuse me i take that back but know that you don't have to like if things come up and it just has become uh you can write to sally and just say you know thank you but i'm not going to finish up this last year but then we just know that the slots open right okay great um we talked about jim brendan we're counting on you to stick through on your term for nex

t year you got it how awkward it would be if you guys was like nah nah that's my life i hadn't fully thought through how we would go through this process it's more of a roll call so um okay good to hear brendan it's a pleasure having you i believe doug really wants to continue on like i said he's just having trouble with wednesday's so we might just look to change the date for him yeah i talk to doug he definitely wants to stay on but it's impossible because of work considerations um so if we ca

n look for an alternative time then i i think that's one spot we can save on the on the roster yeah i'd like to keep him on you know what we could consider doing um is moving it like a little bit outside of your general work i don't know if i don't like know if doug if that's an issue if it's at four and not six or something um if that's an issue for him but we can we could talk more with them it seems like wednesdays also just aren't good yeah um he and i are getting together on friday we haven

't seen each other in a little bit so i'll chat with him on like what might work and yeah ask him to ping you or yeah could you please yeah that that would be great thank you very much um we'd love to have him stay on and like i said eddie um eddie knows i don't know if he actually if he followed through yet but he like i said is rolling off and uh he knows to either write bot or right sally to let them know i've been in communication with him on that already victor are we keep when do we know w

ho our liaison will be is that going to be you yet i have to talk with my colleagues to see if somebody wants to move me out right i'll see okay of course i know it's been a little i've been done i've contributed but i i hope if some of these things uh you know get some wind behind them i would i would love to see some things grow and some things happen so it's been a tough year because of of budget constraints and next year is not going to be different so that's where you need to find alternati

ves and but i am also interested in moving up kind of all the water issues finally kind of and i think now is the time so anyway i'm going to try i'm going to try you've been great thank you it's actually worked out really well with you on it's been a pleasure working with you as always so that's our those are our committee terms sarah you know to write sally if if you um with your decision everyone else is sticking on um and the next this kind of is a good segue then into the committee fair upd

ate um brendan you want to update people on that one you were on that committee fair yeah sorry uh committee fair update was good we had what two or three people joined um and uh you know i think there was some uh real interest in joining uh from from the two people that joined we had a third i don't know if she ever got back in touch a third person but um yeah no we uh you know peter did a great job uh introducing everything uh kyle did a great job talking about her work and i cracked a couple

of jokes here there so it was it was good but uh i i think if if both of the participants want to continue um through the process i think there'd be very good additions uh one gentleman's really good at grant writing for example so that would be huge um so i i think it's uh i think it'd be really good if they continue to join kyle you have any thoughts on that one you were kyle was with us as well oh yeah i i um like them both i know uh caroline really well so that's right that's right you know

caroline and her family i i found caroline's enthusiasm was infectious definitely like just really that just bringing that to the table would be great and any you know and we explained just having that characteristic alone would be phenomenal for this committee it's not all skill sets at all and i'm sure she's going to bring a phenomenal set of skills too and the gentleman i'm forgetting his name but he's also a social science professor at um fordham uh westchester is that what he said yeah and

he might be really good in addition to the grant writing which of course was like yeah i'm sure kyle was stoked on that he could be really good about doing like qualitative surveys and kind of assessments of our visitors and he might be really useful for that kind of work because he probably works he does he works in that sphere of qualitative data and surveys and kind of um social stuff so that could be really kind of useful for us too i would think so we'll see hopefully they both submit their

letters and uh we have them uh join us in december i think at this point it's a little bit out of our sally's not with us right now i'm sure that they got a follow-up like thank you but i think at this point it's on them just to submit that resume and letter and then the bot will look to appoint them thank you both for doing that that was it was fun i i really enjoyed it it was it was just good to talk talk it out all right i'll keep an eye peter i'll keep an eye i'll keep an eye on it thank yo

u thank you and if they have any questions make sure that they get to us if they're asking us directly please i don't have their contact information i know i should know this just from the raw math how many we have three slots open right now let me pull it back up we're gonna have one definitely two opened up and i forget how many weeks oh gosh i forget what our cap is i should know that victor do you remember if there's a cap on the committee on how many people we can have i think it's in our u

m it's like a range yeah we have at least at least two okay i'll check that thanks what were you thinking you have someone else in mind that might be good i i just depending on what that number is how hard we you know try and recruit uh additional people outside of it so um just want to see how many people i need to put the blast on thanks for asking um i'll try to pull that up actually while people are talking about a couple other things i might have it in my files i'll probably do um all right

great so ann in the speaker and i'm sorry you had emailed me about this and i didn't get back to you um so why don't we just talk out this speaker opportunity it doesn't have to be in december whenever it happens it happens but why don't you let us know where you're at and then if we can all come together on a plan that'd be great this is our woods hole oceanographic institute speaker well that's the whole thing is like he never gets back to me i mean even like you said uh we're gonna push it o

ff but i s he agreed to do it and then i asked him excuse me for his bio or some brief so we could get some uh advertisement uh you know some um banner oh i'm sorry my mind is blank today you know like i may uh yeah i start advertising it an advertisement and then i'm like a little short on that because i just don't have the like an adobe or a uh type program to do that so why i see brandon are you would you be the best that we could work if i pinged you when we do have a speaker are you the bes

t to put something together oh no i've always had staff that did that stuff i don't know how to do any of it oh yeah that's where i'm stuck at i mean i did one originally uh my son did it but he doesn't have adobe anymore so i i don't know how i can uh where are you going to have it well you know that's my other plate is that i i'm not such a zoom person this is the only zoom program i participate in so i'm not um it it's hard for me to concept you know have the concept of doing all this right l

ibrary be willing to to do that and i mean they um and you can't have a gathering can't have more than 10 people in a building right i didn't mean that they would be willing to push you know be the sponsors yeah we we talked about doing it via zoom but they might be the library might be up for doing the sponsors joe could you help out on this one actually from the village perspective um i think it's rich that actually sets these meetings up but who on the village could help with just setting up

a zoom slot if we did want to do that um i mean i could do it already even sally yeah well i asked sally and then she reverted me back to kyle that's where i was confused like i didn't know i would email sally and joe do you have joe's emails on our invites and yeah they can help set up a time i do more of like that you know the tech side but i mean i could set up a slot or you know point you guys in the right direction if that's what you're looking to do so i i don't know one is how to get a fl

yer or something together i just don't have the program i can try to do more of it i'm not a tech person at all um so i i need a little help with that but then how to how do we um advertise or where would you advertise that's where i think brendan might be able to jump in and help out a little bit on the advertising side right brandon yeah well if we want to go far and wide i i assume that they're they're newsletters within the town that the town pushes out we can do that um and then uh you know

we could certainly try and you know ping reporters to talk to them about it but it's you know kind of like a zoom meeting a program that they wouldn't be interested in so my thought is that it would be back to you know whatever advertising mechanisms that the village has in place uh newsletters or what have you if it's done through the library yeah i know the library i'm on the email that i get weekly from them so there there could be ways that we activate the community on that front yeah it's

a good call and then kyle i would think our constant contact list would also be um somewhere we could send out a constant contact ask about it e-blast and social media lmctv lmc tv certainly i'm going to make a recommendation if we put it out far enough like if if we don't tr what i've seen happen too often with these type of things is like oh we're gonna do it in three weeks all right we're gonna do it in early december yeah there's not enough time if we say all right we're doing it in the spri

ng and we get a date in the spring i i can guarantee you that we'll get it on social media kyle can has plenty of time kyle i'm sorry i'm talking for you but to put it on constant contact and then we could just get it through the libraries it's just getting the date getting the things set well in advance i don't think as a group we'll have trouble advertising it and getting the word like first out all do you or does anyone know any type of like adobe or how how to make up a flyer i would even i

would just do it in word i would just put it on yeah and then save it as a pdf you know make it a half page you know and just keep it pretty simple so i just didn't know how to follow up with this man i didn't want to be troublesome to him but i have pinged him you know every couple weeks and he hasn't gotten back i hope there's something hasn't happened because he did respond early on saying he would have loved to do it he would do it and then he said you know i'll send you the information and

then i follow i've followed up more than two times already and you didn't come through you know honestly we could pick someone else we don't have to we don't have to use him what were we asking him to talk about specifically yeah he's a he's a um he's like an ichthyologist so he's like a fish researcher and he does a lot of work with sharks which is what um i've seen him talk about in the past tagging and he does some really cool rov programs where like they follow the shark tags and film it's p

retty incredible work actually um but you know we don't have to we could get someone else for what it's worth i got a really good friend who is a department chair of marine and environmental programs for the university of new england uh he owes me a couple so there you go i don't know kyle if you've ever run across him his name is noah perlitt okay he's a good guy but you know maybe maybe it could be a discussion between kyle and noah or whoever but i'm happy to ping noah and see if he'd be inte

rested i think that'd be great what would he talk about do you know what his focus is uh he he used to be an orthologist he discovered he studies marine life uh he's he's kind of a no ornithologist you have me there man there's a lot of people that love birds we brought in an ornithologist that focuses on marine like waterfowl and such i'm sure it'd be a yeah i think it'd be a good conversation given kyle's you know former life uh he was an ornithologist for four years in in in the bird world bu

t uh you know so uh yeah i'll look at his research for a little bit but i you know i could definitely say hey would you be interested in doing this um because he does study that kind of like cycle on the flows of of marine life and see if he'd if he's got like a stock presentation that he gives and most of them do most of them definitely i can speak for i have like three so most of them have stock presentations that they can give yeah that would be great and then it makes it me more comfortable

just like pushing forward that way someone to respond to because i didn't want to work on something and then the man the person's not responding it's sort of oh yeah yeah and i'd encourage you to take brendan up on that follow up with him thank you brendan don't even don't include me on that you three can just take that away um thank you but yeah again just get the speaker get the time and then everything else is gonna fall into place i guarantee you just give yourself plenty of time maybe we sh

oot for the spring now give yourself give ourselves plenty of time make it like a spring thing um and then um once you have a date a speaker you could get the ad and then we can just start pushing it out as in many places as possible perfect okay i'll pay i'll follow up with you brendan thank you all right that sounds good yeah and i have a feeling save the sound i'll be happy to help out a little bit too especially because it's you know new england kind of focus long island sound focused i'm su

re we can help a little bit too with getting the word out all right we've got about five minutes yeah victor at that point we should not worry about a flyer or other small things the village will will we we can talk with jerry and we can get we can get you know those things done so once we have all the other pieces the big ones that should not limit us yeah good point victor i think i make sure a blurb and a time are the most important and then the rest of it can just fall into place really easi

ly um okay so last up on the agenda unless there's other business is the bio extraction project i put it under education i just wanted to let you know we're almost done with the permitting on that that's going to be the sugarcalp project i was talking about last month and i will follow up with brennan and kyle brendan and kyle on that and hopefully we can get maybe some press out on a boat like we talked about it's going to be out there from december to may um so maybe we shoot for like a januar

y or february date um after it's somewhat established and on one of our monthly checks we could go out together kyle and maybe bring some press press does like to get out on the water and see projects so it could be a cool opportunity for us to do that together so still ongoing and it's happening can uh peter can you shoot me all the background information just that we might have on that just so i can formulate you know proper pitch to the report absolutely yeah and uh uh i'd just like to reiter

ate that i want to go on a boat too so multiple times so let me know when i can join you you're welcome to come too absolutely i've got a kayak any time you want brendan uh we've got a couple in the backyard that i have yeah yeah i i stayed quiet about the uh the trash because it's uh really bad in coyote creek it's the worst that i've seen in the six years that we've watched that's where we get most of it but it just keeps coming is it coming from beaver swamp brook guy and creek or is it flush

ing into that area i think it's flat creek yeah i uh if i if i see anybody with a milo or balloon i'm going to pop it several of my horrible thing i said i said i'm going to take out my bb gun sorry birthday crashers yeah just go popping kids birthday videos it's good there was a kayak floating in it the other day yesterday too so yeah all right all right well we are pretty much a wrap anything else in the last few minutes before we go i think i have december 9th is our next meeting why don't we

victor when's your bot meeting when is the bot meeting i think it's the inc oh really perfect timing 7th to 7th okay good so we'll have an update from the bot by then yep on the on the slate okay good all right thanks everyone have a nice evening see you thank you thank you everybody okay take care