The final quarterly SRMGA Board meeting was called to order by Board President, Koben Shigeta via web conference at 6:00 p.m. mountain time December 21st, 2018.

In attendance were board members – Koben Shigeta, Patsy Walrath, Terry Watts, Samantha Davis, Autumn Davis, Lisa Baldwin and Donna Newman.

Old News:
The non profit status of the SRMGA with the IRS is still undecided. The hope is that by the beginning of 2019 the paperwork will be approved. As of right now the SRMGA is a non profit with the state of Idaho. Koben, Dan and Patsy have worked diligently to get this done.

Koben said his family may be able to do trailer modifications to help organize and secure items in the trailer for transport such as the snow cone machine, etc. It has been a blessing to have the trailer for not only the board members but also Mrs. Ortega.

Patsy said Dan Walrath is working on the end of the year finance report that will be posted to the website as well as sent on email for members to see.

New Business

After the meeting with the membership some of the board voiced their concerns about the decisions made at the meeting. Some of those concerns were the lowering of the numbers for the production sale but keeping the amount each breeder can bring the same. Koben and Autumn were concerned that by doing that if every member chose to bring 8 lots it would only pertain to 15% ish of the membership. Sam and Terry explained that in previous years typically most breeders don’t choose to bring 8 lots and that even if we opened the sale up to even more lots (over 120) it would still, based on Koben and Autumn’s concern, only cover less than 50% of the membership. And it was also brought to attention that the membership voted for those changes so the board will comply. If there are members upset by the change the only thing the board can do at this point is encourage them to participate in the October meeting.

Koben and Autumn suggested doing a spring sale where if participants participated in that sale they could not participate in the September Sale. Patsy brought up the fact that if we did the sale it would have to be in June as that’s the best time for all the help. However, there are many shows, sales, and ABGA Nationals in June so when would time permit? The board agreed that there needs to be something done to help more of the membership and potentially other portions of the membership (commercial, wether stock, etc).

Terry brought up online sales. It would be something where the SRMGA would organize the sale through a website and do the marketing. Only SRMGA members would be allowed to participate in the sale. We could do a spring club animal sale (wethers, wether dams, wether bucks), and also a spring production sale (show stock, brood stock, etc). This would allow members to sale from their home and not have to travel. It would be financially feasible for the SRMGA and also give opportunities to other sectors of the goat industry. It would also for the first time open up a sale to wether producers within the SRMGA. We don’t know enough about this right now but it was agreed upon to look into this and do some research for 2019.

Koben then brought up a commercial jackpot show for adults and youth. The SRMGA cannot host an ABGA sanctioned show but we could do something different. It would be a one day show where participants could sign up their animals and admission costs would pay for venue and judge and then after that the money would then be put into a jackpot and paid out to participants in the classes. We could also do other awards as well. Maybe do a potluck type lunch/dinner and a corn hole tournament. We will contact Ken Eytchison as he is local and a great fair judge and see what his charges would be to do something like this. We would also need to see what ABGA shows were going on to avoid conflicting times with those. The show would likely be in May or June – more leaning towards June.

Dr. Tanya Percifield DVM is now in Ontario, she is buying Eastern Oregon Animal Health in January of 2019. She is working on writing up some informational pieces for the newsletter. The hope is in 2019 we can really get that up and off the ground. Dr. Tanya Percifield is also committed to the SRMGA as an on call show vet, educational resource provider as well as the vet for our Production Sale.

Hopefully some of these ideas will benefit the entire membership here in the future.

Koben said scholarship applications are ready for the 2019 board to offer whenever they’d like, January was recommended. Only youth memberships are eligible for scholarships.

The new 2019 board members are Koben Shigeta, Stacy Herriman, Tyler Windom and Samantha Davis. Koben said he’d give that information to Dan to send off to the State of Idaho to keep us in good standing as a non profit. Closing the elections in the middle of December will work for the State of Idaho paperwork. We discussed concerns about the survey monkey and allowing membership to vote for less than the number of seats available. It is something that the 2019 board will have to consider. Right now survey monkey has been the best for allowing the membership to vote from afar for board members. Membership meetings were discussed and if it was beneficial to only show persons to attend if we held them at shows. Koben explained that we started doing this to get more membership input and to help those members who didn’t want to drive 9 hrs away to just attend a meeting to have the opportunity to have a voice. Sam agreed that ALL paid members should have the right to speak their opinions at a meeting and it’s simply more convenient for the out of state people to have the meetings at the shows where they are likely to be. Those who live nearby can easily drive over if it’s important to them to participate in the meetings. It was agreed upon that having meetings at the shows or on show weekends is the best for both worlds and as a board all we can do is encourage the members to attend. It was also brought up that even if members could not attend they certainly could send their input to the SRMGA in an email for us to add to agenda items either at board meetings or at the membership meetings. Thus far the SRMGA has received no input from members for any meeting. Koben said in 2019 the board really needs to try to do a better job in communicating with the membership about meetings and that’s something the 2019 board will have to do but the times the board did communicate they received nothing from the membership for items to add to meeting agendas.

Certainly the SRMGA is building a much stronger foundation and even though 2018 was a tough year the SRMGA board and the membership did accomplish a lot. Hopefully in 2019 all lose ends will be tied up and the SRMGA will be operating better than ever.

Meeting was adjourned 9:00 pm.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years,
Respectfully submitted,
2018 SRMGA Board