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Annual Membership Meeting Minutes – October 11, 2018

Annual Membership Meeting Minutes
Oklahoma City, OK – October 11, 2018

Chair Julie Cunningham welcomed all to the meeting while calling the meeting to order at 8:00 a.m. Board members in attendance were Julie Cunningham, Chair, Brian Atkins, 1st Vice Chair, Amy Shallcross, 2nd Vice Chair, Drew Dehoff, Treasurer, Ed Swaim, Kirsten Wallace, Heidi Moltz, Earl Lewis, and Jen Orr. Member entities represented at this Annual Membership meeting included: Alabama, Arkansas, SRBC, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Tri-State Water Resources Coalition, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Wyoming and UMRBA. Several of ICWP partnering firms as well as the USGS representatives were also in attendance. A quorum was confirmed.

Julie noted that ICWP is in a time of re-invigoration and transition. The Board of Directors met in August, 2018 at Estes Park, CO for a planning and strategy meeting. Many of the ideas developed at the Estes Park meeting are now being implemented. A new logo has been selected and a web designer is working on updating our icwp.org website. It should be ready to launch in the next month or so. Julie encouraged the members to become active in the committees and build the strength of our organization.

Executive Director’s Report –Sue Lowry

Sue Lowry noted that she began her contract with the ICWP in mid-February of 2018. As she had been active on the board for a number of years representing Wyoming, she was pleased to be back involved with ICWP. Her full report is attached at the end of these minutes for more details, particularly related to the Estes Park planning meeting and membership outreach activities.

Treasurer’s Report—Drew Dehoff

Drew reported that current balance of assets as of October 1, 2018 was $83,320. The Commerce Bank account has been shut and assets are now held in a Wells Fargo account in Cheyenne WY. There is also a substantial amount in the PayPal account as most of the attendees for this meeting registered on-line. As of October 6, 2018, there was anticipated to be up to another $21,000 in FY19 dues that could be received. The overall financial health of ICWP is good. The Board was concerned over low carryover balances that had been experienced in past fiscal years and have developed a reserve policy to build carryover assets with a goal of approximately one year’s operating expenses being available in reserves.

FY18 Budget recap—Ryan Mueller left as Executive Director in November, 2017, so due to the vacant Executive Director position, some increase in assets were made even though membership dues receipts in FY18 were considerably less than the budgeted amount. Sue began in February, 2018; a surplus of $8,471 was realized in FY18.

FY19 first quarter—Dues income of $57,635 have been received during the first quarter of FY19 as well as Annual Conference registrations of $14,950. Total expenses for the first quarter were $14,880, as Annual Conference expenses won’t be paid out until the 2nd quarter.

Report of the ICWP Standing Committees:

Each committee chair described a list of the topics that may be addressed by their respective committee:

Legislation and Policy—Kirsten Wallace
Developing Roundtable agenda and speakers list—Get “ask” ready for congressional office visits
Legislation to track:
⦁ Budgets for USGS/USACE/NOAA
⦁ Infrastructure funding/authorization bill; prepare for WRDA 2020
Organize an ICWP meeting at the Hall of States to tap individual state resources/staff

Data and Science—Amy Shallcross
Review NAS recent report on USGS Water Discipline
Work on Flash Droughts topic
Whether to support USGS’s Next Generation Water Observation System plans and “Super gages” expansion
Webinars on more technical topics that may be of interest to ICWP members, such as hydrologic alteration guidance; quality of citizen scientist;
Expansion of WaDE beyond the WSWC states
Track IWRSS and the National Water model and provide review/feedback at appropriate times and serve as a pre-decision sounding board

Water Planning—Jennifer Hoggatt
Follow-up on several of the coordination topics raised in yesterday’s panel on Water Planning
Relationship of state water plans with state drought plans
Working with AWRA on National Leadership Institute
NGA interested in doing a workshop on state water planning

Interstate Water Management—Drew Dehoff
Reviewing Interstate Report from 2006
Review Interstate directory and develop target list for membership

All committees will be working on Policy Position statements to bring to the full Board for consideration and possible adoption. Committee membership is open to all ICWP members and please keep in mind that the state or interstate organization is the member, and other staff within that entity are welcome to participate even if housed within a sister agency.

Election of Directors and Officers

Jennifer Orr made motion to approve the following slate of officers and Board members. Earl Lewis seconded.

Slate of Candidates to serve as Directors, with terms ending in 2021:
Julie Cunningham, Oklahoma Water Resources Board
Brian Atkins, Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs
Ed Swaim, Arkansas Natural Resources Commission
Heidi Moltz, Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin
Andrew Dehoff, Susquehanna River Basin Commission

Slate of Candidates to serve as Officers in 2018-2019:
Chairman: Brian Atkins, Alabama DECA
Treasurer: Andrew Dehoff, Susquehanna River Basin Commission
Secretary: Amy Shallcross, Delaware River Basin Commission
1st Vice-Chairman: Amy Shallcross, Delaware River Basin Commission
2nd Vice-Chairman: Kirsten Wallace, Upper Mississippi River Basin Association

The 2018 Annual Membership meeting was adjourned at 9:05 a.m. CDT.

ICWP Annual Membership Meeting
Executive Director’s Report

59th Annual Meeting, Oklahoma City, OK
October 11, 2018

I started my contract with ICWP in mid-February of 2018 and it’s been great fun getting back into the swing of ICWP work. For those of you who don’t know, I was on the ICWP Board for many years in my capacity as a representative of the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office. I retired from Wyoming state government in June, 2016. Coming back as Executive Director has been fantastic and I am grateful to the Board for the opportunity.

Washington Roundtable: ICWP is continuing with what has now become a tradition of meeting every other year jointly with the Western States Water Council. As the ICWP Executive Director position was unfilled from November to mid-February, the bulk of the organizing of the Washington Roundtable fell to the WSWC and to Julie Cunningham and her staff. They put together a very informative and well attended meeting. In 2019, ICWP will hold its Washington Roundtable meeting on April 2-4, 2019. Please get this in your calendars now and let me know of topics you’d like to see us explore with our colleagues in the beltway.

USGS Streamgaging Appropriations Support: With the aid of the latest streamgaging program facts from Mike Woodside, ICWP developed a Fact Sheet on the program that we delivered to most of the Appropriations sub-committee’s offices during a visit in early April to Washington. A copy of the fact sheet is included in your OKC meeting packet. Although there is tremendous support for the gaging programs in Congress, I found that many staff don’t grasp fully the relationship of the cooperatively funded gages with the Federal Priorities gages. We will continue our visits and educational efforts such that the decision-makers on the budget side understand the importance of long-term, reliable basic water data to us all.

Board of Directors Planning & Strategy Meeting: I spent 2 very productive days in August with the Board in Estes Park, CO developing our re-invigoration plans for ICWP. We will be launching a new website soon that will afford us more control over our site and the ability to load content directly. We have updated our logo as well. Substantively, we are ready to launch the work of our four standing committees at this meeting. I encourage you to sign-up for the committees and also be thinking about mid-level staff from your agency or your sister agencies in your state to serve on the committees. We understand that travel budgets are tight and it’s just not realistic to send multiple folks to meetings, especially when our Annual Meeting is some distance from your home base. By serving on the committees, your staff can get to know ICWP and be prepared to move into leadership positions in the future. They also gain the ability to network with colleagues across the country.

You will hear much more about the planned work of the four standing committees at the Membership meeting. I encourage you to attend on Thursday morning. The four committees are:

Legislation and Policy
Data and Science
Water Planning
Interstate Water Management

Membership Development: When asked what they value most about their ICWP membership, we consistently hear from our members that 1) the ability to network and get to know colleagues in other agencies throughout the nation, and 2) the direct access to high-level agency and department decision makers at our meetings. Since our meetings are generally in the 50-60 participant range, it is possible to get to know the agency directors and approach them with your issues.

In your packet you will find a draft out-reach document we are developing. We would love to include additional “testimonials” or quotes from you about what you value about ICWP. These quotes will be loaded on to our webpage to cycle through as our page is accessed. Hearing from other members is the best way for our membership to grow and get even stronger! If you have contacts with other agency or affiliate groups you think would be interested in ICWP membership, please let me know.

Work with sister water organizations: As a small organization, we know we are stronger when we join forces with other organizations working on similar issues. We look forward to continuing our even-year joint Roundtables with the Western States Water Council. During the rest of the year, we work with the WSWC on a number of water policy issues. We also share interest in the Army Corps of Engineer’s water supply management with the National Water Supply Alliance and look forward to continuing to work with them. Lastly, several of our members will be attending the National Leadership Institute sponsored by the American Water Resources Association in Baltimore in November to discuss water planning topics of interest to both of our organizations.

Please plan now to join us at our 2019 meetings:
Washington D.C. Roundtable April 2-4, 2019
Annual Meeting in Mobile, Alabama October 8-10, 2019

If you have topics you’d like ICWP to address, please don’t hesitate to contact me at:

Sue Lowry
Sue.ICWP@gmail.com
307-630-5804