Present:  Sue Wilkins (President), Craig Drake (Vice President), Meg McCann (Treasurer), Walter Fowler (Secretary), Cliff Carroll (at large).

Sue presented a financial report of the Country Breakfast held on 9/20/14.  There were 189 “diners” paying a total of $1351 for tickets.  A detailed expense report teased out breakfast expenses from building/kitchen maintenance expenses, and the overall profit from the breakfast came out to about $1000 with half going to the NHIA and half to the NHFD.

Sue also presented information on the rental rates for NHIA building.  On Friday and Saturday the rental rate is $100 for a full day and $50 for 3 hours or less.  On Sunday through Thursday the rent is $50.

Meg presented a Treasurer’s Report including the first 3 quarters of 2014, which did not include the final information from the breakfast.

We then discussed the election to be held at the membership meeting scheduled on 10/28/14.  The NHIA Articles of Incorporation and By-laws as interpreted by a lawyer familiar with NC General Statutes (chapter 55A, under which NHIA was incorporated) mandates that the household of each paid member is entitled to one vote.  For the purposes of this election, adult members of each “paid up” household will be given one ballot and they will need to decide as a group on how to fill it out.

Paid up members who do not attend this “election meeting” will be able to vote by proxy.  Ballots with “proxy forms” to sign will be sent out by e-mail and will be available by request prior to the meeting. The proxy form will be presented to Craig Drake for validation. Each proxy must be delivered to the meeting by a paid up member, and each such member can deliver only one proxy to the meeting.

E-mail notices about the annual meeting (as well as all routine notices about NHIA events) will be sent to the entire e-mail list, including both current members and non-members, to encourage participation by everyone who has expressed interest in the NHIA in the past.

Ballots will be counted by a group of three attendees and at least one will be an “outsider” who is not eligible to vote him- or herself.  Ballots will be maintained for at least a year in case reevaluation is needed.

At the election meeting, which is also the annual membership meeting, the only official report will be the Treasurer’s Report.  This will be followed by statements from all the candidates for officers and at-large Board seats.  They will introduce themselves and state why they are running and what they will bring to the Association.

The upcoming New Hope Turkey Run scheduled for 11/8/14 was discussed.  Sue expressed concern that the limit of 106 people in the NHIA portion of the building might be exceeded during the awards ceremony following the race.  Walter assured her that the maximum number of entrants in the last few Turkey Runs was about 115 and the number of people present at the awards ceremony was always significantly less.  We agreed to be aware of how full the room gets and ask people to move out to the porch area if the limit of 106 persons is approached.  Walter agreed to rent 2 Port-a-Johns for the race since the septic system is nearing capacity .Fire Chief Mike Tapp requested that the Board consider hiring an EMS unit to “stand by” during the Turkey Run which would provide additional safety but would cost $300.  Walter pointed out that races in this area of similar size did not typically take this extra precaution, and Cliff responded that we could request that the EMS unit relocate to the NHIA for the Turkey Run with the understanding that it would have to respond to any call that came in.   The Board decided to make only the changes detailed above for this year’s race and other changes will be considered for future races.

Cliff has talked to Mike about the possibility of linking 2 porches on the back of the building so that a rebuilt NHIA porch will have access to the existing stairway on the NHFD porch.  They will take this design idea to the county building inspectors for approval before we can consider getting bids.

The next Board meeting was scheduled on Weds 11/5/14 at 7 pm.