December 19, 2024 Minutes

Weld County Extension Advisory Council Minutes

December 19, 2024

IN ATTENDANCE:
Rick Bowen
Commissioner Perry Buck
Nicole Doyle-Horticulture Program Update
Pat Kindvall
Erin Mathews
Cindy Nosko-Minutes
Carole Pitre
Patrick Pulis
Gary Schaneman
Sean Short
Cary Weiner-Interim Director

ABSENT:
Amy Cooksey
Josh Docheff
Dr. Darin Lickfeldt
William Nelson
Mike Schwan
Lori Stevens

Before the meeting started, everyone walked around the office and chose their 3 favorite Christmas Door Decorations, then Sean Short welcomed the group and called the meeting of the Weld County Extension Advisory Council to order at 12: 15 pm. The board then went around, introduced themselves and talked about their Christmas plans. The minutes were approved by the board, unfortunately I didn’t catch who motioned for the minutes to be approved as I was out of the room.
Cary Weiner gave an update on Extension. The director position is currently open and has been open for a couple of weeks now. The search closes on December 30. The interview process will begin on February 3rd for the public and staff and the closed state interviews will be on February 4th. Everyone should be receiving an invitation for the interview on the 3rd. Rick Bowen and Dr. Darin Lickfeldt has volunteered to serve on the state search committee.
The Commissioners have generously approved increasing the Extension/Fair Admin position. Previously the position was part time for 9 months and full time during the Fair, and it’s been hard to find someone willing to work a schedule like that. So, it is moving to a full-time position with the help of Mikayla and Michelle’s strong argument that it would be more cost efficient.
Mikayla will be main one on the search committee for that position and serving as the hiring manager. Michelle and Cindy will be assisting on the committee also.
The other position is the Horticulture Specialist. Interviews have been held and is at the moment in process of choosing the candidate. They were interviewing 4 and one of them dropped out, so there were 3 that were interviewed.
The Mardi Gras event that was held in November brought in about $37,000 which was a record amount.
There was also a Camp Cloverbud scheduled for February 2025. It will be on February 1st at the Southeast Weld County Fairgrounds in Keenesburg. The theme this year is It’s a Wild Life. The wildlife ambassadors will include a red tail hawk, a bull and garter snake, a rabbit, a tarantula and scorpion, and a woodhouse toad, and cane toad.
4-H is taking 10 youth to Denver in January for a leadership development conference.
There is record book training for those individuals that didn’t pass the judging process that will offer them remedial assistance on how a record book is done and how it should look.
Patrick is doing classes on computer coding, paper making, and learning about the field of virology.
The scholarships are now open through March 1st.
The Farm Show is beginning to happen and will be January 28th through the 30th this year.
Kat will be having pesticide trainings in February for license renewal.
Green school is bringing on 8 new apprentices for the Master Gardener program.
Sheila, our FCS Specialist has been teaching a wide variety of courses from walking indoors to the Science of Chocolate, and she received a grant for her Dining with Diabetes program for 2025. Mikayla has been working to make online payments for fair vendors, getting contracts out and working on the Fair book, so the team is doing its thing.

Commissioner Buck gave us an update report. There’s a lot of things going on in Weld County. Working on the MOA (memorandum of agreement) that we have with CSU to work with them and hoping to get some good applicants for the next director, although Cary has been doing a great job as an interim director. We appreciate him being as involved as he has been.
Rick inquired about the progress on the new facility for Extension. Commissioner Buck stated that there is a master facility plan and it’s still in the works, although unfortunately it is a slow process. Our big concern right now is the court. It can only handle one more judge and with the population increasing, we are going to need at least 3-4 more judges. So, our priority right now is building a new justice center and considering we don’t ever go into debt, so we’re deciding the best plan, whether it be building it downtown or on some land. Rick stated that it’s a shame considering the shape of the Extension office and the space issue. If there were a larger facility, Extension would have a better chance of reaching out to more youth. It’s a frustrating process, but hopefully at some point it will go forward. Gary stated that there are a lot of important issues concerning the increasing population. If you read the report from Northern Water and the impacts it could have on Weld County and the water needs, it’s huge to see the needs of water in the future and how you could possibly see 1000 square miles of land drying up, it’s mind boggling.
There’s also an expansion happening at the airport as JBS is wanting to have 3 hangars, so the county and the City of Greeley are sharing the cost.
The Commissioners did approve a solar project proposed by Magnum Feedyard which could create enough electricity to power 187,000 homes with 590,000 solar panels across the landscape of southeast Weld County as it straddles the Morgan County line. The project has about 4300 acres in Weld County with another 4000 acres in Morgan County. Utah based Rock Power, which is developing the projects with Taelor Solar stated, while on paper the project is big, it’s size will also be contingent on customer demand for power.

Nicole, Horticulture program assistant, gave us an update on the horticulture program. She moved here from Chicago and started in the position about mid-September. Thankfully Allison in Larimer County has been a huge help and also Michelle Langston in the office helped a lot. We now have 8 new apprentice Master Gardeners and 52 current Master Gardeners. The apprentices are a great group this year. The rest of the group are trying to figure out how to get more younger people involved in the
program and this year we did get some younger volunteers present which is great. The Master Gardener help desk had a lot of questions in 2024 as follows:
• 41% tree questions
• 19% turf questions
• 12% insect questions
• 9% other gardening questions
• 6% vegetable/fruit questions
• 4% soil/weed questions
• 3% flower questions
• 2% native plant questions
The Master Gardener help desk served 365 clients this last year which was up from the previous year.
We have a tree team which is a group of Master Gardeners that have been trained and they provide home visits to help diagnose tree issues and provide solutions for Weld County. They had more visits this year than last.
We continue to do outreach at the Farmer’s Markets and the main ones that we’re provide the service at are in Greeley and Windsor. We are currently helping at the Greeley Winter Farmer’s Market.
We are also doing continuing education classes at Aims Community College in the Fall and Spring. We’re also doing continuing education classes at the libraries and have gotten requests from some of the Middle Schools to help them educate and create a new program for the greenhouse they have for the coming year.
Our demo gardens are still going strong and one of them is outside the Extension Office. There is also one at the Treasure Island Garden in Windsor south of Eastman Park.
The big project we had this last year was White Plumb Farm, developing and planting. We received a grant from the Colorado Garden Foundation. The Weld County Master Gardener volunteers were working with the City of Greeley Museums to create a complex of 6 permanent demo gardens to enhance the White Plumb Farm Learning Center on the property. This project is still in progress and the 6 different gardens are:
• Colorado native plants
• Colorado Proud plants
• Firewise plants
• A Heritage Garden
• Weld County native plants
• and Plant Select
The whole team continue work in these areas.
With no further business or new business, the meeting was adjourned at 1:00 p.m. The next Council meeting will be on February 20th, at noon at the Extension Office.