The 3rd quarterly SRMGA Board meeting was called to order by Board President, Koben Shigeta via web conference at 6:00 p.m. mountain time September 2nd, 2018.
In attendance were board members – Koben Shigeta, Patsy Walrath, Terry Watts, Samantha Davis, Autumn Davis, Lisa Baldwin and Donna Newman.
The verdict of the 900 is in that the SRMGA will have their sanctioning removed for a year starting August 9th as well as affiliation removed with the ABGA. Terry Watts said she called the ABGA for clarification why and they would not explain why other than we didn’t provide enough information about the complaint itself. Koben got the letter from the judge for both Saturday and Sunday stating they heard nothing from George Newman but the ABGA CEO Larry Duncan said to Terry Watts we needed to provide more information that we did more than that. As a board we feel as though we did not have enough information moving forward to ban George Newman from SRMGA shows as any issues he had with Gabe happened at a show that was not sanctioned by the SRMGA and that during the weekend in question George Newman had no complaints against him given to the SRMGA during or after the event even after facebook posts and e-mail.
Patsy said she is working on the paperwork for complaints in the future that way if this were ever to happen again we would have hard copies of complaints to send to the ABGA. Likely those hard copies would have prevented us from the 900 verdict.
By providing information to the membership, like Koben and Terry thought information was leaked to the public. That started a war on facebook of half truths and rumors as well as nasty emails between members. Children unfortunately have become involved in it. Koben and I can work on the email now to make a separate group for youth member emails so that the children are no longer involved in the adult politics. Everyone was in agreeance with this decision. We will put this into effect immediately.
Dan Walrath gave us a letter from a law firm in New Mexico asking for the associations IRS information as well as non profit information. Koben said Dan said he is working on the paperwork for IRS, it’s not an overnight deal and we got our tax exempt status updated with the State of Idaho. He said that we had lapsed on sending in the information on new board members because the State was asking for it in December and we didn’t know until January. Something we may need to consider changing as far as elections go to fix this. The SRMGA is now again a non profit with the State of Idaho and in the process of being a non profit with the federal government. We cannot provide the New Mexico law firm with information about being a 501C3 as we do not have it. And we by State law do not provide any information about our association unless it is asked for by a paid member. The letter did not state who this lawyer is representing so we by law are not going to respond.
Koben said he contacted Claire Askew about the non profit status of the association. She did not have any information other than we had it once. Koben then met with an accountant and they searched for information about the SRMGA being a non profit organization, even if it hadn’t been for years there would still be record. The accountant could not find that information in the database and the IRS also has no recollection of the Snake River Meat Goat Association being a non-profit with the federal government. Koben said the IRS told him all they had was that the SRMGA has an EIN number as an organization but no non profit status has ever been requested or granted. We now have to assume that the Snake River Meat Goat Association has only ever been a non profit with the State of Idaho. Koben went through the records of meeting minutes as well as association documentation with Dan Walrath and said that neither of them could find information about the non profit status with the IRS or any proof that we had been filling out the cards to send to the IRS at the end of the year since the beginning of the association. Dan and Koben are learning now what needs to be done, and are awaiting paperwork from IRS. Once the paperwork has been approved the association will have to provide information to the public yearly which will be posted on the website. Dan and Koben will update with that when it has been completed.
The production sale is coming up. We had some issues by allowing checks and paypal for the production sale reservations. In the future we will make a date during the work week and also maybe on form of payment. We had just a few checks come in but had to accept them because they came in that day this year. So we went from 120 lots to over 130 to accommodate them. We also need to discuss with the membership about youth participation in the sale. Some of the membership are angry they haven’t gotten a lot when there are families with youth members (under 18) who have requested max lots plus youth lots. This will be something we discuss at the October Meeting with our membership. This year people have taken the time to take better pictures. YAY! And the catalog is looking much more completed before the sale date so that is a win! We are also projecting finances and it’s looking like having increased the reservation to $50 instead of $30 a lot of the costs are paid for and likely consigner fees will be significantly lower this year. We will see what happens on the 15th.
We will need to discuss what we will be doing in 2019 as we will not be allowed to do shows before August 9th, 2019. We’ve had some individuals contact us about money donations towards their shows. Because of what’s going on with the SRMGA and the 900 and because of the hostility with some of the members and non members we feel it’s in the best interest of those shows that the SRMGA not donate money towards their sanctioned shows. If they have youth shows with no affiliation with the ABGA sanctioning we can certainly donate that way.
Meeting was adjourned 7:45 pm.
Respectfully Submitted,
Donna Newman
Board Secretary