Emergency meeting regarding Financial Priorities (Remote Meeting Held on Zoom) As everyone is aware we have had our monthly meetings stopped in this time of Covid 19 Pandemic, as per Health Authorities have mandated.This Zoom meeting was arranged and set up by Doug VA7QZ. We thank you Doug for making this possible.
‍
Members present :
VE7JFX, VA7QZ, VE7KPB, VA7BAJ, VE7GSJ, VE7LOC, VE7TGA, VE7MRP, VA7ZYQ,VE7NEK, VE7JBE, VA7CSH, VE7CRX, VE7RWD
‍
AGENDA:
Urgent Financial expenditures Financial rundown by Ken, VE7NEK, treasurer. Recent increase in our Liability Insurance will require extra monies being spent, over and above past Liability Insurance needs. For this reason an emergency meeting was called, as club members need to authorize this expense.A quick rundown of the clubs finances was given to those present. That rundown was as follows.Club Liability Insurance $720.10, Maximize account, $6472.81. This account was formed many years ago from the sale of surplus radios to supply a Community Watch program with radios. This account started with over $10,000 and is depleted a little bit at a time over the years, to it's current status.Current dues collected, $447.27. Collected dues are not enough to cover this payment. Club has sold an HF Rig for $375. This combined with dues collected will cover out liability Insurance. Which will cover all of our repeater sites. Other payments required; Maintenance $225. BC Hydro $268.26, RAC membership $45.Motion to accept the financial report was moved and seconded, Report accepted.

RAC Membership
A quick rundown of some of the benefits to RAC (Radio Armatures of Canada) The clubs insurance costs, with RAC ( the best price that has been found) is about $15 per club member. The insurance is discounted by $13. per member registered with RAC. To help our club it is asked that all members also take out a RAC membership, it goes a long way in helping the club stay viable.

EKARC future
As can be seen our club is struggling to stay alive. To keep our club alive and strong we have to find ways to bring the paid membership numbers up (with new members), raise the club dues, (which was pointed out during this meeting that there have been NO dues increases for over 35 years.) or go the way no one wants to see, and let the club fold up.A motion to bring this up at our next meeting (also probably another Zoom meeting) to the membership for a vote)

Baker Mountain Repeater:
Randy VE7CRX is our club tech expert. He along with Doug VA7QZ, have been running the repeater upgrade and replacement project. It's been a long haul for both of them and we thank them very much for the time and effort they have put into this.With Randy's job he has better access to our mountain top than the rest of us and has been up there a few times since the installation of the new repeater and has done what he can to work out a few bugs that still exist. Unfortunately on any trip up there he has been without the programming needed for some of the bugs.Using one of his commercial clients as a guide he has figured out that for us to contract out to an outside tech, would kill the club. Aprox. $4000 for a helicopter going up and back plus his fee of about for labour.The Invermere repeater was bought up and will be discussed at the meeting and the repeater commit y from that area will continue to do what the can to keep it going and to maybe find an alternate site. We do prefer it remain where it is if that can be worked out.

Future Zoom Meeting
It was moved by Ken VE7KPB to have VE7NEK present a proposal on dues structure or increase to the next meeting and vote on a fees hike for the membership.It was felt this meeting was a success and right now we will most likely be setting up the meeting in Feb. 2021which will also be with Zoom.
The meeting was deemed a success and halted. Again we thank Doug VA7QZ for setting things up and chairing the meeting.Also we thank Randy VE7CRX and Doug VA7QZ for their work, time and effort for the repeater system.