Meeting Minutes – January 22, 2022

Present: Richard Bleiler, Donald Christ, Willard Dellicker, Harold Handwerk, Eugene Handwerk, David Keller, William Mantz

Donald Christ called the meeting to order, 9:05 AM at the Lynn Township Office Building and presided over discussions of the following topics:

1. ELECTION OF OFFICERS – 2022, A motion was made by W. Mantz, second by D. Keller to nominate the existing officers for 2022.  Motion approved by acclimation.
Chairman D. Christ, Vice Chair H. Handwerk, Secretary W. Dellicker, Treasurer E. Handwerk.

2. MINUTES: The September 30, 2021 Minutes were accepted as written.

3. TREASURER’S REPORT:   The bank statement of January 21, 2022 for the Memorial account at New Tripoli National Bank shows a current balance is $180,676.46.  To Date, $276,466.76 in cash has been raised. Motion to accept the report by H Handwerk, 2nd by B. Mantz, approved by all.

4.  WEBSITE:  https://nwlehighvetsmemorial.org.
The annual Analytics report was discussed.  This report shows activity for our website.  Wayne Kessler, our site manager, summed up the report as follows:
In general, traffic was up over 2020, although a lot of that increase was from out of country visitors.  We have been seeing this a lot in 2021 for clients, as other language search engines in other countries have been including English language content more and more.  The big growth has been in mobile usage of the site, as it went from 29% to 37% of the sessions in 2021.
The other thing I thought I’d mention is that it appears that Facebook referred visits to the site went down in 2021 while Google traffic more than doubled.  The Google referred traffic is now more in line with what we should see going forward.

5. PROJECT DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION DISCUSSION:

• A chart showing construction costs, forecasted costs and funds raised to date is attached. The chart shows total cost of the project is $524,492 which includes all purchased labor and materials plus all in-kind services donated to the project.
• Note that $175,000 has been donated by the Memorial Committee members in cash and in-kind services!  This is a significant fact that shows the personal dedication and commitment by the committee members.
• The chart shows that we still need to raise $90,000 to cover all of committed costs to complete the project.

Ron Jerdon sent these notes about construction progress:

• Wenz Memorial has the granite pier caps and misc. pieces in their warehouse at this time. The panels are being finalized for fabrication.
• I am waiting for a reply from the mason contractor regarding the installation of the pier caps when the temperatures rise enough.
• The electrical contractor is standing by and ready to install the light posts as soon as pier caps are in place. Then we will have permanent lighting operational.
• Paver installer can obtain the clay pavers in 2-3 weeks. Confirming he has obtained all approvals needed from Chris Brown.
• Remaining landscaping and reseeding to take place in the spring.

Additional notes
First Generation (Bill Carmody) gave a verbal for a $1,000 donation. I am arranging to pick it up.
The Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce is planning an event at Eight Oaks in May. They are considering the memorial as the recipient of all funds they raise on that day. I’ll keep you posted.

• The first proof reading of the engraving drawing was completed and returned to Wenz last week.  The corrected copies are expected the week of 1/24 for final approval and sign-off.  Final approval will be completed and returned in a few days after receipt.  This will put our engraving job in the queue at the Rock of Ages quarry.
• It was suggested to ask the NWL school to have a “Name the Eagle” contest to include the students in the memorial project.  We will be working with the school to give them some guidance about the significance of the eagle and criteria for naming it.  Consensus was to proceed.
• The Kiosk has been designed.  Drawings will be taken to a local welder for fabrication.

6. FINANCE COMMITTEE AND FUNDRAISING:

• To date, Don Christ has taken orders from donors for 9 trees.  There are 18 deciduous and 7 evergreen trees shown on the landscape drawing.
• We still need to approach our area businesses to raise $90,000 to cover the remaining expenses.
• Bill Wenz was asked if he would consider mentioning our memorial project in his radio commercials on WAEB.  He said he would talk to Bobby Gunther Walsh of WAEB/790 about including our memorial as part of the commercials he does for Wenz on the radio.  This will give us a lot of exposure in the Lehigh valley and may result in some donations.

7. DEDICATION PROGRAM AND BOOKLET

• Dave Keller is organizing adds for the Dedication Souvenir Booklet.  To date he has 37 ads, if all qualified doners want an ad it would be 50.
• The booklet is currently at about 120 pages. The estimated cost per booklet is $19.50.  Dave is working with Mastercraft Printers to optimize cost with color/black and white printing, binding type, number of pages and quantity.
• Dave is working on the correct tabulation for all of the donors for recognition.  Those who gave several donations at different times will be combined for a total sum.  We have 300 cash donors to date.
• Consensus of the committee was to put full page ads in for all four Townships to recognize their contributions.
• March 15 is the deadline for booklet contents so they can be printed in time for the dedication.
• Attached to the email for these minutes are documents showing the Cash donation categories, a Draft Dedication Ceremony Program Agenda, Summary of the Souvenir Booklet Content.

8. DISCUSSION:

• Committee members were asked to think about a dedication time and if we should schedule a rain date…to be discussed at the next meeting
• Committee members who are veterans, please submitted a short bio and picture to be included in the booklet GET YOURS INCLUDED!

9. ADJOURN:  Motion by E. Handwerk, 2nd H. Handwerk, adjourned at 10:35 AM.

10. NEXT MEETING:  February 19, 2022 9:00 AM