MINUTES OF THE BARNES AREA HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION MEETING

OF JULY 20, 2006

 

 

Members of the BAHA present: Kurt Kuhlman, Dave Pease, Carol Pease, Bob Oberstar, Linda Oberstar, George Martin, Helen Ruprecht, Quentin Ruprecht, Jon Harkness and Lu Peet.

 

Chairperson Judi Scholz was unable to attend the meeting so Vice Chairman Dave Pease presided over the meeting. There was no formal agenda for the meeting.

 

Dave Pease called the meeting to order at 9:00am.

 

Motion (Carol Pease / Helen Ruprecht) to approve the minutes of the last regular meeting. Call for discussion. Carol Pease said that the dates of the flea market at the Hideout should be the 17th and 18th of June instead of the 24th and 25th. The secretary will make the changes. Motion carried with the amendment.

 

Treasurer’s Report: Treasurer Linda Oberstar gave the Treasurer’s Report as follows:

 

Checkbook Balance as of 6/15/2006                                                   $5,166.33

 

Centennial Book Sales                                                                        $  377.00

 

Flea Market Sales                                                                        $  907.96

 

Memberships (3)                                                                    $    65.00

 

Advanced Printing

             Notecards                                                                          ($    214.33)

             Banner                                                                                 ($      68.58)

 

White Birch Printing                                                                  ($1,568.00)

 

Bank of Drummond-Account Analysis Charge                           ($         .80)

 

Checkbook Balance as of 7/20/2006                                                   $4,634.58]

 

 

CD One for $10,000.00 matures on November 29, 2006, at 4.32%

 

CD Two for $10,000.00 matures on February 16, 2007, at 4.32%

__________________________________________________________________________________________

 

There was discussion on why we should be charged the bank fee as we are a non-profit organization. Linda Oberstar will check on this. Motion (Carol Pease / Quentin Ruprecht) to approve the Treasurer’s Report as presented. Call for discussion. Motion carried.

 

There was discussion on taking the money earned from the various flea markets and other fund raisers and putting this money into a separate Museum Account. Carol Pease felt that this would show that we are working towards a museum. Quentin Ruprecht agreed with Carol. Motion (Carol Pease / Quentin Ruprecht) to have the money from the fund raisers put to a separate account for the museum. Call for discussion. Linda Oberstar asked if this should be in the form of a CD. There was discussion on what to do. A Money Market Account could also be an option.  There was discussion on where the Jar Bars were located and should we put one at the bank. Bob Oberstar said we could leave the money in the checking account until it reached a larger sum and then put it to CD’s that would mature at different times as we would have to have access to the money for future uses. Motion carried.

 

The Silver Beach Elk Report: Quentin Ruprecht gave the following report on the Silver Beach Elk:

 

Elk Committee Report

 

July 20, 2006

 

This has been another busy month for the Silver Beach Elk project.

1. After I received Gary Sherman’s newspaper clipping on the elk-find, I responded with a “thank you”   and asked him for assistance in government grants for our museum. He referred me to David Obey’s office and Jeff Duhrandt, whose office is in Superior. Jeff indicated that he will be glad to work with BAHA any way he can. He indicated that there weren’t any grants available for general operating expenses, but there may be grants available for construction. He said he would help when we have building concepts, plans and the estimated cost of said structure complete. He also indicated that we must consider the general operating expenses for the museum, as there are only several museums in the nation that are self-sustaining. Thus, operating moneys must come from local and other donations.

2. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation called again to obtain more information and pictures on the elk-

find. They want to run an article in their Bugle Magazine. She is supposed to send us a copy when it is

printed.

3. The Sawyer County Record ran an article describing the grant of $136,000.00 by the Rocky Mountain

Elk Foundation to the State of Wisconsin. The money’s were granted to be used on 21 conservation

projects, including elk projects. Some of these grants are going for education, road warning signs, etc.

Maybe we could tap into some grants from the Foundation.

4. Dave Carlson’s segment on the Silver Beach Elk aired on his Northland Adventure TV program.

People that had seen the program were pleased with the presentation. I e-mailed him a “thank you” and

he sent me a CD copy of that segment. He indicated that he would be interested in running another

segment later on the museum.

5. Dr. Hudson made another trip to the elk dive site on July 14, 15 and 16. She had four associates with

her this trip to help work the site. Experimentation with hand-made equipment proved to work as

expected. They recovered the other jaw bone (teeth intact), the second bone in the tongue, three front

teeth, one ivory tooth and a small toe bone. She classified the trip as a success.

 

Respectfully submitted 7-20-2006

 

Quentin Ruprecht

Elk Committee Chairman

 

Quentin was asked if he thought Dr. Hudson would be back again and he thought she would be back. Quentin showed a picture of the young man, Jacob Voelker, who found the antlers last summer. Lu Peet said that KUWS was going to do an interview with her on the elk and our proposed museum this afternoon. Quentin said that he would most likely do an updated brochure this fall.

 

Bob Oberstar reported that he has been working with the Town. He had met with them on Tuesday night to finalize what they are offering us.

1. The Town has approximately 30+/- acres. They have measured off 10+ acres on the back of the acreage from the church to Barnes Road. (George Martin had a statement that you wouldn’t be able to see the site from the road.) This has been one of the first positive approaches to our requests from the Town.  Some of this could be worked out and we could do some planning. George Martin is still working on the Highway 27 and County Highway N site as well. We need to see what we should do on this.

2. Town Chairman Dick Collyard still has not gotten a response from his second letter to the timber company on the 40 acres in back of the Town land. He said he would contact them again. We are still looking at any alternative sites, as there are several in town. Bob Oberstar said that Fritz Barnes has made an offer of some land that he owns. We should see if we can deal with him. We want to talk to him, but need something viable. There was discussion on this. George said that Fritz also has 5 acres in back of the Town Hall area. Linda Oberstar said we should have the site for the museum settled by this fall. Then we can get going on the plans for the building.

 

Lu Peet passed out a pamphlet titled “Thinking About Starting a Museum?”.  Judi Scholz would like all of us to take this home and work on the questions in the pamphlet for the next meeting. Jon Harkness spoke on the site and grants. He has worked in this area in the past. He said that we have to have the documents, the mission statement that says what our museum is all about, our needs, etc. before we can go for grants. There was discussion that museums are of expanding importance. Informal scientific information would be available for educational grants for operations so that schools, etc. could come to the museum. Jon also had the impression that we are hung up on the process because of the specimen. Quentin Ruprecht said not really, as all research has yet to be done and this could be three years or more. This time frame is not as important as it once was. Bob Oberstar said that Cable hired a woman to raise funds and she has raised a lot of money there. We should consider finding someone like this if it would bring in a lot of money. Jon Harkness said we need to be open-minded. We can think big, but can always back off. Dave Pease asked who we would be targeting with our site. Are we going to benefit from the through traffic?  We have to have the site accessible to those we are aiming to attract. Quentin Ruprecht said that he has typed out some ideas and would get them to the group. There was discussion that we have to consider the Native Americans as well. There was discussion if there were other elk remains like our.

 

Carol Pease said that she had accepted some historical items for our museum. We need to set aside an area for these artifacts.

 

Our goal for the next meeting is to find out what we want for our museum. Everyone who received the booklet is to answer the questions it poses and bring it back to the meeting in August. Jon Harkness said that successful museums are interactive-touch and feel-hands on for children. For the schools, this could be a wonderful thing. Quentin Ruprecht said that his grandchildren have been very interactive with Dr. Hudson. There was discussion on how old the elk was thought to be. Quentin said that it supposed to be at least 8,000 to 9,000 years old.

 

Kurt Kuhlman, who said he was more into the history part of this, had ideas of what the museum should be. He is also in the process of following up on the Mallo Muskie. There could possibly be a reproduction of the musky for the museum. He will present a proposal at a future meeting.

 

The note cards are selling well. When these are all sold, we will make the second in the series. Donations of items for the flea market have been coming in. Carol Pease said that she has a file cabinet that she will keep for the museum and for the BAHA items. She said that Emily Davis’s “Nip and Tuck” will be featured on Northland Adventure this Sunday.

 

Jon Harkness said we should funnel the minutes to both Obey’s and Sherman’s offices. Quentin said that a note came from Sherman’s office that they don’t deal with grants and that he went to Obey’s office. The secretary will send the minutes to the two offices. There was discussion on getting information about Barnes and about our BAHA and museum efforts to the local press. Lu Peet will call Sue Amundson of The County Journal to see how we can get the information into the paper.

 

The subject of appointing an Historian will be postponed until the next meeting. There was discussion on where the membership forms could be made available to the public. Some could be left at the Town Hall. Each of us should try to bring in 5 new members.

 

There was discussion of fund raisers and grants. We should be prepared to come to the next meeting with ideas for all of this and the museum. There was also discussion on getting a letter out to the paper company on the land on 27 and N. George didn’t want to do it at this time. There was discussion on sending a letter to Mosinee on the land behind the Town land though.

 

Dave Pease discussed the February fund raiser. We have to get the raffle tickets printed up and start getting some of the door prizes now, as some of the businesses close up for the winter. The new name for our February fund raiser will be BAHA Big Cash Winter Fest. Helen Ruprecht has a general outline of what the Business Association did for the Big Bucks Picnic and will give it to us.

 

The next meeting will be held on Thursday August 17, 2006 at 9:00am at Downtown Barnes.

 

Motion (Carol Pease / Bob Oberstar) to adjourn the meeting. Call for discussion. Motion carried. The meeting was adjourned at 10:35am.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Lu Peet

Secretary-Barnes Area Historical Association