2024 Annual Friends’ Meeting
By Blake Tollett, Secretary, Friends of Deep Eddy.
The Board of Directors (BoD) of FODE and our friends came together for our annual meeting on Tuesday 7 May 2024 at 6pm at Eilers Park. Folks in attendance were Paul Bardagjy, our President, Haley Moberg, Karen Kelly, Blake Tollett, Billy Apt, Christina Flores, our Vice-President, Benjamin Serrato, Randeen Torvik, Jeanette Scott, Maureen Coulehan, Tom Fornoff, Shelly Hardeman, Barak Benaryah, Jeb Mershon, Kalie, Emily Vorspan, and Heidi Gibbons VIA telephone. From the Parks & Recreation Department we had Mark Nixon and Gabe.
We began by introducing ourselves, then turned to official business.
Maureen gave us an annual Treasurer report; we have $63,578 in the bank (our balance in 2023 was $63,532) with minimal receipts and disbursements over the last year, mostly related to sales of t-shirts by Heidi. Thank you, Heidi. The requisite annual financial information has been filed with the IRS.
We next addressed the minutes submitted by Blake from our last annual meeting, and with corrections from Paul, and on motion from Tom with Maureen seconding, they were accepted.
Continuing, the following slate of directors were elected to serve for this coming year:
Christopher T. King Tom Fornoff
Shelley Hardeman Sarah Searight
Blake Tollett Vickie Tatum
Maureen Coulehan Laura Acklen
Paul Bardagjy Haley Moberg
Joe Luke Jeanette Scott
Heidi Gibbons Randeen Torvik Ragan
Benjamin Serrato Christina Flores
Billy Apt Jeryll Adler
The following officers were re-elected to serve another year:
President: Paul Bardagjy
Vice President: Christina Flores
Secretary: Blake Tollett
Treasurer: Maureen Coulehan
Events Coordinator: Benjamin Serrato
Paul next reviewed all the work PARD had done for Deep Eddy over the past year (new lighting, well maintenance, replacement of the dividing wall and general rehabilitation of the facility) and asked us to reach out to PARD individually to thank the aquatics staff and leadership for these efforts. Things have been going smoothly lately with the ability of the upstream wells handling most of the water duties thus eliminating the need for the wells closer to the lake to be used at their high-end capacity. The wells closer to the lake are basically drawing lake water as opposed to the upstream wells drawing more filtered water; the cleaner the water the less algae being a noticeable benefit. We discussed monitoring water flow from each well, something Mark tells us is doable. It was noted that Tommy Dunn had designed and fabricated some signage for the pool related to swimming etiquette.
We discussed FODE t-shirts and it was decided that we would reorder, this coming year’s design being a replication of one of our early images and that Paul would search his files for the relevant templates. Ben and Christina volunteered to work with our salesperson of the year Heidi on this.
Tom talked about his recent work refreshing our website. The emphasis is a celebration of the pool itself, its history and what the facility is about. Of course, FODE’s association with the pool since our formation in 2001 is relevant to where the pool is now, but the patrons over the last 100 years also have stories to tell. The website is actively soliciting these anecdotes.
Christina discussed with us her vision of what FODE means, that we represent the pool’s character, its public face. She has prepared a brief statement of conduct that those who are members of FODE should aspire to. After discussion, those members present adopted the statement of conduct. Paul will attach the statement to these minutes for distribution to the FODE membership e-dress.
Christina further talked with us about revegetating the area of the lawn just below entrance with native xeriscape plantings. This will all have to be coordinated with PARD and will require some dedicated manual labor to prepare the site correctly for planting (I.E.-we need to put on our work gloves and pull weeds). Those interested can sign a volunteer sheet in the octagon; this will be an ongoing individual task at first, and per PARD guidelines, volunteers will need to sign releases of liability amongst other requirements before getting to work.
At 7pm our great friend Jim Moy arrived with his world celebrated mango water ices, just the refreshment we needed after covering so much ground.
Paul related that he has had discussions with the historical architecture firm of Limbacher-Godfrey about Eilers’ Park and what can be accomplished there. PARD has done significant rehabilitation work already but there is potential to integrate the park more closely into Deep Eddy and the Ladybird Lake trail.
Paul continues to work with PARD to address our parking concerns.
Having gone past our anticipated hour, and with folks getting hungry, we adjourned.
Blake Tollett, FODE Secretary
