Friends of Santa Teresa Park Meeting, 10/4/18

 

    • Attendees: Mike Boulland, Steve Crockett, Greg & Roxanne Koopman, Gus Letona, Ron Horii, new: Guillermo Martinez
    • Mike will be giving a ghost tour the Sunday before Halloween.
    • There has been lots of changes among the rangers in the Parks Department. We need to meet with them. Senior Ranger Frank Weiland left to take a supervising ranger position. Lisa Pappanastos is acting senior ranger temporarily, then Bryan Lue will be acting senior range for a few months.
    • Kelsi Ju needs help with the landscape maintenance around the Bernal Ranch. A host is needed at the ranch house to keep it open, guide visitors, and do light yard maintenance.
    • Greg and Roxanne are tending 2 of the garden boxes at the Bernal Ranch.
    • We got our Beautify SJ Cycle 2 grant. We requested $2380 total:  UNSCC membership: $200, Website hosting: $180, Newsletter/publications/communications: $450, PO Box: $100, National Night Out and other events: $1300, National Night Out insurance: $200.We need to submit the final report for our Cycle 1 grant by 10/31/18.
    • Treasurer's report: Our balance was $2142.83. A $400 check is outstanding for printing, patches, and mail. The balance is now $1757.31. 
    • We need to partner with the County Parks department. To do so, we need to be a 501c3 non-profit. It protects us legally. We can raise funds and ask for donations and grants. It costs $800 to file for a 501c3 application. We could borrow money to apply for it. After we get it, we can fund raise to pay back the loan. We have a draft 501c3 application from Mike's other organization. It needs to be checked and modified to make sure it applies to FOSTP. Kim and Steve will review it.
    • La Fuente is from 12-4pm on 10/27/18 at the Bernal Ranch.
      • La Fuente replaces Fandango. Kelsi Ju is organizing it.
      • There will be an ofrenda in Barn 1. It will be a Dia de las Muertos altar, which honors the memory of ancestors. It will have pictures of people who have passed, candles, food, and water.
      • Kelsi needs help with setup, activities, the welcome table, and cleanup. Setup involves setting up tables, chairs, and A/V equipment, sweeping the buildings, and removing litter. 1 table and 2 chairs will be provided for each partner organization. Guides are needed to show people around the ranch house, talk about the timeline and ofrenda in Barn 1, show the agricultural equipment in Barn 2, handle cattle-roping and branding, and tell the Legend of Santa Teresa at the spring. Cleanup involves putting the tables, chairs, and equipment away, removing litter, and helping partner organizations load up their vehicles.
      • Volunteers need to sign-up on Samaritan.
      • Greg & Roxanne can come. Kim can't. Ron can help with setup and cleanup and take pictures. 
      • We will have our booth to pass out newsletters and information. We won't have games.
      • We need written instructions for people working our booth.
    • We need to plan next year's events. Ron will do his spring photo class and wildflower hike. We should do another hike on the Stile Ranch-Mine-Fortini Trail loop. If we do the events through the Parks Department, we don't need event insurance and permits, which we would need if we did them as private events. We have insurance coverage for doing events that go outisde the parks.
    • Ron has been to the County Parks Volunteers Office at the Muriel Wright Center several times. There is still construction going on. They don't appear to be nearing completion. The Volunteers Office isn't going to move until their new office at Vasona is ready. There is nothing happening at Vasona at the moment.
    • Ron taught his outdoor photography hike on 9/30 at the Bernal Ranch. Joan Murphy helped out. A couple of weeks before the class, only 6 people had signed up for it. Ron made flyers for the class. Kelsi posted them at the ranch. We handed them out at National Night Out and Viva Calle SJ. Ron posted a notice about the class on the FOSTP Facebook page and Nextdoor. The class sold out. 22 people signed in, though more may have shown up. Ron took a survey, asking how people heard about the class. The numbers were: 1 saw the poster on the park mapboard, 1 saw it on the Play Here guide online, 2 saw it on the County Parks' website calendar, 1 heard about it at Viva Calle SJ, 2 heard about it by email or word of mouth, 9 saw the notice on Nextdoor. Ron posted it on Nextdoor around his neighborhood (East Santa Teresa Foothills) and surrounding neighborhoods. It includes the neighborhoods around the Santa Teresa Hills, including the Almaden Valley and New Almaden. It reaches over 16K neighbors.
    • Ron will be leading a hike at Little Uvas Creek Open Space Preserve on 10/10/18 for the Morgan Hill Senior Center. 
    • Greg talked about the power poles along the Rocky Ridge Trail leading to the microwave relay station that was knocked down. Who owns them? Who can remove them? They aren't in use anymore and are an eyesore. Mark Frederick should know, but he is retiring in October.
    • On 9/23/18, we had a booth at Viva Calle SJ in front of the Edenvale Library. Mike, Ron, Kitty, and Greg helped set it up. Greg provided the canopy. and brought beanbag toss targets and wooden blocks for a jenga game. At our booth, we had newsletters, park maps, Bernal Ranch flyers, Ron's photo class posters, La Fuente flyers, and other park information. We had the model of Rancho Santa Teresa. Kitty and Mike staffed the booth at the start, then Greg, Steve, and Gus manned it later.There were other booths, food trucks, a climbing wall, jumping poles, and the city's Makerspace van at the site. Councilmember Sergio Jimenez, who had his own booth, stopped by and wore one of our T-shirts.
    • Ron showed pictures: our booth in Viva Calle SJ and activities at the D2 Elbow and Martial Cottle Park, the ice cream social for County Parks volunteers at Vasona, Ron's photography class at the Bernal Ranch, burned areas and plants sprouting along the Norred Trail, garden boxes at the Bernal Ranch, Stile Ranch Trail hike led by Ron, views from Coyote Peak, rainbows and sunset at the Pueblo Area.
    • Mike Cox, Mike Boulland, and Kitty Monahan will be giving a presentation about New Almaden at the Ainsley House in Campbell on 10/12 at 6:00 pm. It's called "A Taste of New Almaden."
    Return to the Friends of Santa Teresa Park Home Page

       Created 9/13/18, updated 10/4/18 by Ronald Horii, secretary of the Friends of Santa Teresa Park