August Meeting Minutes
Meeting Minutes for August 6, 2024
Board Present: Dan McInerney, Dave Blocher, Laura Hayden, Jackin Jain, Jackson Skelly
Board Absent: None
Note: The Executive Board and General meetings were held via Zoom.
Meeting was called to order by Dan McInerney at 7:00 pm.
1) Treasurer's report: current bank balance is $4,111 with 32 members this year.
2) Dan McInerney discussed the following items:
a) We had several key discussions on regarding recent events which included:
⇒ The resignation of Mike Klimczak from the Board of Directors at O’Hare Airport Watch.
⇒ The Board of Directors met discuss his resignation and eventually sent out an email to the membership to explain the boards side of the letter. The board felt we needed transparency to our membership in in what happened. Our goal as a photography club is to include any person or group so we can expand our community. Several members of our group said that was not a good idea to send out that letter.
⇒ We discussed the purpose of airport watch membership and had a debate on the exclusivity of spotting locations for members.
⇒ Had a discussion on the importance of wearing vests for identification and its advertisement for our photography club.
⇒ Carol Braun’s eventually departure from the Bensenville Police Department as our liaison. Discussion on how we will handle future of new members and renewals will be discussed with her when she gets a firm date for retirement.
⇒ The board has two vacancies open and will need to have a special election to fill these positions.
⇒ A new order of vests came in and Dave Blocher will send out the vests that members already paid for.
3) Dan McInerney gave Mike Klimczak a chance to explain his position on what he said to the AVL guys. Mike reported that he did say to the AVL guys that they were “banned” in communication with them. However, he pointed out that he used a “poor choice of words during the discussion AVL. In addition to this discussion, he said he resigned from the Board to protect O’Hare Airport Watch. As a result of this incident, Mike said he will be pursing legal action against the AVL guys and has clips from their videos.
4) Upcoming Events in aviation:
⇒ Chicago Air and Water Show August 10th and 11th 2024
⇒ Gary Airshow August 17th and 18th 2024
⇒ Next O’Hare Airport Watch members meeting is on Tuesday October 1, 2024 at 7:00pm CT
5) Meeting was closed at 7:52 pm.
Respectfully submitted by Dave Blocher