 four hours later, I'm like, oh, I should have asked them this. Well, don't worry. Here's our contact information. We're here to help. And so if you have questions that come up or clarification on anything, you know, please feel free to reach out to any of us. We are here to help. Hey, well, I think that's all the health keeping items and introductions that I had. Jody, do you want to take it away? I will take it away, Hannah. Is correct. I'm going to speak about conservation plan of work and the dart report. I'm not going to get into the nuts and bolts of how to put a conservation plan of work together. If that's something that you're really interested in, I would suggest that you attend a leadership academy. We do talk about that. Or you can visit with me independently. You could also talk to Hannah. So Hannah, if you could forward to the next slide. Keep going. So I promise you, my presentation is going to be about 10 minutes long. And then we will open it up for questions if that's okay with Hannah. So first I'd like to talk about the conservation plan of work or as I refer to it as the annual plan of work, APW. Next slide, please. My recommendation is don't go to loan. I've heard a lot of conversation about supervisors requesting that the district manager or the district clerk develop the plan of work and then presented to them and they rubber stamp it. The district board should be involved in the planning of this conservation plan of work. However, we live in reality and you only meet with your supervisors typically once a month. So I have a couple of suggestions. Go ahead and develop a rough outline and then send that off to your supervisors ahead of time before you have that plan of work meeting. But ask them for their assistance. So you might want to ask for things such as what are some of the tasks that go underneath the goals and objectives? Benchmarks because we have to evaluate our plan in some fashion. Are there any resources that are needed? Who is the responsible person? Are there associated costs, timelines, things like that? One thing that should not occur on the annual plan of work is that your name is under every responsible party column. This needs to be spread out a little bit, involve your supervisors. If you have a district tech, a watershed coordinator, bring them into the fold. This can't fall just on your shoulders. You might want to use the previous year's annual plan of work as a guide. Now, saying that doesn't mean you take the 2023 annual plan of work and you just put 2024 on it. There needs to be a review of it and evaluation. Did you meet your goals? Obviously, the plan of work isn't going to drastically change, but there should be some perhaps some different objectives or tasks that go in, maybe some different resource concerns. Where do those resource concerns come from? If your district held a local work group with NRCS, there should have been some resource concerns that came up during that work group process. Or maybe you have conversations with your conservation partners. Perhaps you held a meeting where some community stakeholders showed up, gave their two cents on what they thought was a concern. So really involve your stakeholders from your district in this plan of work. Next slide, please. You may also contact your program coordinator for assistance. Unfortunately, we just have one program coordinator at the time. That's Hannah. She's in area five. That doesn't mean if you're in a neighboring area that you can't call Hannah and ask for some help. I can also assist in this process. So don't feel like you need just to wade through this without any idea of what you're doing. You might also want to use the smart goals planning process. That's something that we talk about quite frequently at the Leadership Academy. It's a very step by step based process. It's fairly simple to fill out. So if you're looking for some guidance, go ahead and get that smart goals process as part of what you're doing for your annual plan of work. We have an Excel template on the SCD Google Drive. Everybody should be familiar with how to access that. I do know that in my signature block as well as Hannah's, we have the link to the SCD Google Drive. So please, if you're not familiar with it, just one of these days when you have a little bit of downtime, click on that and just peruse it. But on the Google Drive, we have an Excel template that it's basically a form with the smart goals planning process that you can download and you can just fill in. It's pretty simple. I've gotten a lot of good conservation plan of work using that template. If you want different examples of soil conservation plan, contact me and I can get those out to you. Because there are different ways to do it. We just encourage the smart way of planning because it seems to make sense. Next slide, please. Why do we ask for the annual plan of work? Well, it doesn't come from our office specifically. It's actually stated in the century code. So if you look at statute 4.1-20-24 and go down to letter H under powers and duties of districts and supervisors, it does state that SCDs are required to develop comprehensive plans and that these plans must specify in detail possible acts, procedures, etc. That means not only do you have your goals and I would say three to five goals is reasonable, but your objectives, the task, how are you going to achieve these goals? Do you have benchmarks? How are you going to evaluate it? And when I mean benchmarks, do you want a percentage of individuals to show up at your workshop? Do you want to have three workshops? Do you want to have six workshops? So you're putting some numbers in there or do we want to have it by this deadline? Also, it is requiring that it's current. So be sure that when you are sharing your plan of work, it says 2024 and it has been evaluated or has been reviewed. And then of course, you want it as detailed as possible. Next slide please. If you read further into the Century Code, it does say and to publish such plans and bring them to the attention of the occupiers of the lands within the district. Basically, you want to have this available to the public and there's a couple ways that you can do it. The simplest way is to put it on your website. Then you've already met the requirements of the Century Code. If you can get it onto your Facebook page, that's great. You can have a copy of it sitting in your office desk. You can have it on your computer. If somebody comes up to you and says, hey, I'd like to see your annual plan of work, you are required to show it to them. Just make a copy. It's very, very simple. Next slide please. Okay, we're going to segue over into the district activity reporting tool. So if you have questions regarding the annual plan of work, just hold on to them a little bit longer. We're going to talk about Dart. And first, I'd like to start off with the purpose of Dart. You need a little bit of history for those of you that are new. Dart is the outcome of a legislative management study that was done back in 2017 to 2018. And the reason for the study was the state legislature was asking to see so conservation district results, output, data. They were asking questions, well, what are the districts doing? Should we be funding the districts? What is the SSCC doing? We want some hardcore data. At that time, all that we have were qualitative reports. So way back when a district was applying for state assistance funds, you had to submit a narrative as well as some other documentation. That really wasn't sufficient for the state legislature. So 15 soil conservation districts got together. They worked with Sarah Tungi and a programmer. And basically the result was a quantitative report or Dart. And it is a way of basically demonstrating soil conservation district output. It is also a requirement for state assistance funds. That's how we rank the districts. So it's really critical that when you're filling out the district, the Dart report in the very beginning of the biennium when we start asking for how many acres are in your county? What's the population? What is your mill levy? How many employees? What is your operating budget? Be really, really specific and accurate because once that information is in there, it can't be changed for two years. Another thing I wanted to mention is the nice thing about the Dart report and the state assistance fund, it removes subjectivity. So the state soil conservation committee isn't swaying the report one way or another. It's very, very objective. And we think that's very critical. At this point in time, the legislature is content with this process, which is good. So we kind of went through a period where there was a lot of doubt about the soil conservation districts and the Dart report kind of satisfied that worry at this moment. Next slide, please. Now, what's the value of Dart to your district? Well, it is a really great way to demonstrate progress and show others your output or the progress that you are making. So I would utilize the Dart Activity Report, print it off and send it to your state legislator, your senator, your representative, do it on a quarterly basis or at least an annual basis. Send it out to your community or have it available if they want to see it. Share it with your county commissioner and your county auditor because then they know what you're doing. And when you are involved in that process of wanting to raise your mill levy, they know that you are actively pursuing conservation. Now, Dart is not meant to track every minute of the day. So if you're taking phone calls, you don't put that into Dart. You have to be somewhat reasonable. It's whatever you had input into Dart, that's what you track. This is a way to a guide, so to speak, a way to achieve your conservation goals and objectives. You can use it in conjunction with your annual plan of work. If, for example, you feel like I'm doing so much work to achieve our conservation plans and I can prove it through the Dart report, I urge you to print it off and share it with your supervisors and say, hey, we can use another employee and let me show you why. Or I would like an increase in my salary. I can prove that I'm putting a lot of work forward. So use it as best you can. I don't know if people are familiar with the fact that in Dart you can set parameters and you can print off those parameters. So if you're interested in how we did the last quarter, you can go into Dart. There's a section on reporting and you can put in the specific dates and get that printed off. You can compare one biennium to a next year to year. So it's really, there is value in it, you just need to utilize it. Next slide, please. Along with Dart, where I should say, at the beginning of every biennium, we do send out a fund dispersal form so that Carissa is sending this out to all 54 districts. This is, this notifies you, the district, of the amount that you're going to receive for the biennium. And during that, and in that form, it does need to be signed by the board chair, as well as the district clerk or the district manager. You can agree to all the money that you're being received, that you are receiving, or you can decline all or part of the funds. The most important thing is you need to return the document to Carissa. If you don't return it, we assume that you don't want the money. And I would say 99% of the time, almost everybody wants their money. So it's really critical that you, that you fill this out. Next slide, please. By signing the fund dispersal form, your district is agreeing to submit various required documents. That's really important that you and your board chair understand this. So within the century code, there are certain, there are certain required documents, for example, the annual plan of work. In addition, the century, the century code allows the state civil conservation committee to require other documents, which they do. And those include things like meeting minutes. That's also an open records, open meeting minutes law. We require the supervisor training report. Oh, equipment inventory list, things like that. So know that this is similar to your signing a contract. The state will give you money. In return, we would like to have these documents. And honestly, the documents are there for your benefit, not necessarily for our benefit. So if your computer would crash, if you had a fire, and you lost all your documentation, we would have some very valuable information that we could provide to you. So know that this is something that we are doing within the century code, these requests. Next slide, please. I want to end with some tips for the district activity reporting tool. The thing that I cannot stress enough is input data on a regular basis. So if you do it weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, continue to do that, get in that habit. It's very similar to Facebook. Make sure you update Facebook on a regular basis so it doesn't get out of date. Consistency is the key with Dart. I'll say it again. Consistency is the key. If you always include XXF, whatever, under accounting, continue that practice. Because if you change the way you input things, then your Dart activity report really isn't going to make a lot of sense from quarter to quarter or year to year. So just be mindful of that. We do not have a definition sheet for Dart, and we've been asked, could we possibly put something together? I spoke with Sarah, talking about this, and Sarah's response was, we do not have a definition sheet because we want Dart to remain flexible. So you can determine what this means to your district rather than us determining it. I would say the only thing that we want consistent is when you're filling out the Dart report at the beginning of the biennium, and they ask for operating cash, it's the cash that you have on hand to run your district. That's the one time where we say, please be, everybody be on the same page. It's not the money that you have in reserve. It's not the money you're saving for a truck or a new tree cooler. It's the money you have to get through, to run an office basically. When you're also filling out Dart, do not save the document unless you mean to. If you accidentally save it and you didn't want to, you're going to have to contact Sarah Tonghi by email so she can unlock it for you. Use draft as long as you possibly can so you can continue to make changes. Also when you code employee activities, do it to match the Dart reporting system. So it goes a lot smoother. You're not having to think, okay, what did this employee do and how does it match what we have in Dart? Try to streamline that as much as possible. Next slide, please. Okay, I am finished. And again, if you have questions, I would say start with Carissa. Carissa is very wise and familiar with Dart, more than I am. Also Sarah Tonghi, she helped develop Dart. So again, if you run into a problem where you're locked out or let's say Carissa doesn't know the answer, go ahead and get a hold of Sarah. And I've provided you with her cell phone number, or excuse me, her phone number and her email. Just remember, Dart is all about accountability and transparency. And it's very critical that all the districts are involved in this, regardless of whether you're not, you accept the Dart money. It's just a really good tool to use for your district and to provide others who make important decisions on conservation. I'm finished. And if there's any questions, shout them out, raise your hand, contact me later, put it in the chat. Everybody's doing a good job. And I'll probably be contacting districts, or Carissa will if we don't have an updated plan of work. So, you know, we'll give you some time. If you have any questions, just give us a holler. Thank you. Thanks, Hannah. I'm just going to chime in one more thing about Dart. I can also change your status. If you accidentally put it in final status, I can change it back to draft for you. Also, in Dart, there's the supervisor training report. We still have the old one in there. The new one did not get updated this year, but we will get that updated for next year. And so please remember to use the new form that's located in our Google Drive, instead of the one that's on Dart. Hey, Carissa, what if I'm a new employee and I can't find my model for me? Can you look at books of that? I would maybe contact Sarah for that one. Yeah, Sarah will be the person. Be persistent with Sarah. She's very busy, persistent and patient, I guess. She'll get back to you. And if you run into any trouble and she's not contacting you, just give me a holler and I'll reach out to Sarah for you. All right, I guess I get to continue. So I'm going to be talking about oaths of office and the reorganization form. Next slide. And again, so oath of office is another thing that's in the North Dakota Century Code under chapter 44-01. Oaths of office aren't just for soil conservation district supervisors. They're for really any public office. So the supervisors for soil conservation districts are in two groups. We have the elected supervisors and the appointed supervisors. Elected supervisors are elected for six years, so we only need a new oath of office at the beginning of their six-year term. We don't need another oath until they become re-elected. And the oath is effective January 1st following the time that they're elected. For appointed supervisors, they are appointed annually, so we do need a new oath of office signed by the supervisor every year. And that oath is effective the date that it is signed or they're appointed. Neither type of supervisor can perform any supervisor duties until that form has been signed and is on file with the secretary of state. Next slide. So here's a sample of the oath of office. It is in a fillable form. I do have that linked on the slide. Please be sure to complete it in full. I have an example. So I, Carissa Kittlesen of Fargo, North Dakota, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of North Dakota that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of supervisor of the best soil conservation district, blah, blah, blah. You get the point. Then I would sign it in front of a notary public. Maybe some of your staff members are a notary public. Otherwise, I have this later on. A good tip is to invite a notary public to your board meeting and have them sign off on the oaths at that time. Next slide. So your oath is signed, notarized. What do I do with it next? The original is going to be mailed to the secretary of state to Jess Martinez. I have her address up on the slide. Again, we will share this information. It should be in the email that I sent out earlier as well. And you can email me a copy. So I get the copy. Electronic version is fine. You don't need to mail it to me, but Jess does need the original. Next slide. Just a few tips. Be sure to use the fillable form. When people are signing, it's hard to understand their signature. I know mine is illegible as well. So if we have it typed out nicely, we can be sure that the name is spelled correctly. Complete the form in advance. If you know you're having a board meeting, have the fillable form completely ready to go. So the supervisor just has to sign and have it notarized. And again, invite the notary public to your meeting. Next slide. On to reorganization form. Next. Again, this is one of the forms that need to be completed annually. You'll notice this year it was updated just slightly. Be sure that you are completing the reorganization form in full. There's a little note in gray kind of above the district staff information just to have an asterisk by the board chair just so we have that record on file as well. It might be handy if you do have any staff or supervisor changes to maybe not refill out this entire form, but have it saved and then update it with any changes and then send that to me as well. Next slide. On our new form, we have alternate information. This is on here because of, you know, the possible government shutdown. If the government is shut down, we won't be able to contact district staff. So we want to be able to contact them in case of any sort of emergency. Again, the reorg form can be emailed to me. The reorg form is in our Google Drive. You will need to download a copy of it in order to edit it. I know we've had a lot of questions on that and requests to edit. We want to keep the original in the Google Drive so if you can download it, save it to your own computer, fill it out and then send it back to me. That would be fabulous. Next slide. Just a few tips. Verify everything has been completed correctly. That just is a time saver. I mean, if there are fields that are incorrect and I have to go back to you or if we try to send something out and the email address is incorrect, then it gets returned to me and I'm not getting that information out properly. The little asterisk by the board chair, it's kind of a sneaky little bugger. So just wanted to highlight that and then having that alternate contact information just in case there's some sort of emergency. We won't use that information any other time. It's just emergency use. And I think that's it for me. Any questions? I guess I'm up. So my name is Andrea Bowman and I'm going to visit with you about meeting minutes today. I'm doing an overview of meeting minutes, but before we talk about meeting minutes, we're just going to do a review of the open record and meeting laws. So you have a basic understanding of that and you'll understand how it ties into what your meeting requirements are. So I think you can advance, Hannah. So the open meeting and record guide. Everyone should have a copy of this with you. Some more close all the time. Every supervisor should have a copy of the open records guide and the open meetings guide for reference. And so essentially these two guides summarize the sunshine laws in North Dakota. These laws make it that all government records and meetings are open to the public unless there's a specific law that authorizes a record to be withheld or a meeting to be closed. These laws apply to all agencies, businesses, or nonprofits. Thank you, Carissa, for sharing that link. That received public funds. So soil conservation districts because you are receiving taxpayer funds, public dollars are subject to the open record and meeting laws. And while maybe you don't sit in the hot seat like some other organizations that are subject to these laws, it is important that you follow them. Remember that anyone has the right to attend your meeting, but it's not open. It's not a public meeting. They're there to attend, but you don't have to allow them to participate. So the link is in the chat. There is a guide, like I said, that goes with the open record and meeting guides. There's also, those guides are just double-sided. There's also about a 40-page manual that goes with each of them as well. The Attorney General's website is a great option. You can advance, Anna. So when we look at the open record laws, if you look, if you happen to have a guide in front of you, the first thing that they both do is define what a record, this one defines what a record is. And a record includes all recorded information regardless of physical form. So this includes paper, email, computer files, photographs, audio tape, or recording video text message that has a connection with how public funds are spent or with the public entity's performance of its governmental functions. So any time you are doing business as an SCD, and that could be just text messages back and forth, if you're talking business, that is a record and it could be requested. So keep in mind, you know, it's not about the platform you're sharing the information on, it's about the information you're sharing. So if it's on your personal phone, that doesn't matter. It's public information that you're sharing about the board. Hannah, you can advance. So I'm not going to talk about open record so much anymore, move into the open meeting laws. And the open meeting law says that all government records and meetings must be open to the public, again, unless otherwise authorized by a specific law. And both of these are based on the public has the right to know government functions, how government functions are performed, and how public funds are spent. So when we look at the meetings, the definition of a meeting is any gathering of a quorum of the members of a governing body of a public entity regarding public business. Now remember, this includes committees, subcommittees, informal gatherings or work sessions, and discussions where a quorum of members are participating by phone or any other electronic communication. So that's the definition of a meeting. The open meeting guide goes on to explain how you have to notice your public, your meetings, and when they're going to happen. And all of this is covered more in depth in the ethical leadership micro lesson. So if you want to tune into that for a recap on open record and meeting laws, you can as well. Hannah, you can advance to the next slide. So on this open meeting guide on the backside, it tells you what your meeting minutes must include. Can you define a quorum, please? Okay, so a quorum of the meeting is whenever there are enough members present, typically it's over 50% of your membership or supervisors to conduct business. So for example, if you are at a non-district event and you have a quorum, say there's five supervisors there and you start talking about business, then you are actually having a meeting. You have a quorum present of your district and that is a meeting and it therefore should have been published. So everybody knew that you were meeting. So if you have questions about any of this, I'm happy to visit with you one-on-one. Afterwards, please feel free to contact me by email or a phone call. Happy to review that. So getting back to the open meeting guide, I want to save Hannah time at the end here for her portion. It actually states in there, it says that you are required to take minutes and these are the records of what happened at your meeting. These are the items that are listed. Of course, you need who was there. It's kind of the who, what, where, and when. Who was there? When did you meet? What did you talk about in a description of each motion that was made at the meeting? So in order to fulfill that part, you would say, you know, Bob moved to purchase the no-till drill might be an example. You're going to know who it was seconded by. You don't have to list all of the discussion. You just need to say that the motion was approved or not approved. If it is something controversial, maybe a big dollar amount, and you do a roll call vote, you need to make sure that you're listing each member's vote, each member supervisor by name and what their vote was. And this again applies to all government bodies, including committees and subcommittees. Sometimes we forget those. But Hannah, you can advance to the next one. You know, the meeting minutes are their notes. Therefore, they're a record so people can track what happened at your meeting. So they need to reflect on any business that happened. They're a great resource for new supervisors coming in, as well as staff to go back and look at the history on what has happened. So you only need to record the facts. You don't have to talk about opinion. You might say there was lengthy discussion on something, but you certainly don't have to list all the discussion. And like Dodie talked about earlier, they're really there for accountability and transparency. And you need to submit a copy to the State Soil Conservation Committee. Now, we had some discussion the other day, whether it should be a draft or an approved set of minutes. And I think consistency is important. So whichever you are comfortable with, any of you have questions on that, you can certainly visit with one of us. Just make sure if you're submitting draft minutes that they are labeled as draft so that it's clear that they are not official minutes. However, it does state in the open meeting guide that if someone were to request meeting minutes in draft form, those need to be provided. And again, that's just the State Soil Conservation Committee. They're dispersing public funds. And so their need to be responsible to make sure that the funds are being used appropriately. And that's why in combination DART and the meeting minutes help them ensure that. You can also put your minutes on your website or share them with partners. You can advance to the last slide, Hannah. There's a handout that will be shared after this. I believe it's in the Google Drive. It goes over meeting minutes of what they should include. And this is just an example. It's easy to start with a template that you can use for every meeting and just fill in. Sometimes I get in trouble when I copy and paste things because I forget to change dates and things like that. But it's really easy to start with a template and go from there. Take your agenda and build off of there any action that's going to happen. Read minutes from other districts what they're like. Maybe give them to someone that wasn't at the meeting and make sure that they can understand what happened. Some entities are required to publish them in the newspaper, so conservation districts aren't. I was reading some the other day and they weren't very complete. I couldn't even tell what matter they were discussing. Make sure that they're clear enough that everybody knows what is happening. Are we required to have and record a motion and second to adjourn? That's a good question. Every board handles this a little bit differently. If every item of business on your agenda has been addressed, typically the chair has the ability to adjourn the meeting. Now for common courtesy to everyone on the board, lots of organizations will ask for a motion to adjourn. If you have not can address everything on the agenda, then you are going to want a motion to adjourn. So I hope that's clear. If you want to err on the side of being cautious, you can have a motion to adjourn. The other thing I wanted to note, you may want to record the minutes so that you can go back and listen and fill in details that maybe you missed. That's fine. If it is an executive session, and we don't really have time to talk about that now, but remember there's only certain reasons why you can go into an executive session, but if you do go into executive session, that does need to be recorded either audio or visually and you need to keep that on file. So I'd encourage you not to do that on a personal device, like your personal cell phone. You want to do that. It might be a good investment for your district to purchase a little device to record meetings so you can store that safely in the district office. Hannah, I think that's all I had. If anyone has other questions, I'd be happy to. Dodie has her hand raised right now. Do you want me to take that now? Yes. Actually, it's more of a comment than a question. It was something that you mentioned about sending in draft minutes or approved minutes. I have requested draft minutes because oftentimes a district may take a month off and then I don't get the minutes for two months, sometimes three months. And by the time I read the minutes and I do read the minutes, my question is a moot point. So I'm requesting draft just so I have a general idea of what's going on and it's more current. And we are not providing these minutes to anybody. We realize that if minutes need to go out, they need to be approved. So if there was a request for minutes for a county from us, we would go back to the district and request approved minutes. It's up to you and your board, what you want to do. As Andrea said, just be consistent. I'm okay with that, but I just wanted to explain my reason for asking for the draft minutes. And I believe there's a question for you, Andrea. Before we jump to the question, Dodie, do you want to explain why you take the time to read people's SED minutes? Are you going to catch them making a mistake or what's going on? The only way I can keep up to speed on what's going on with 54 soil conservation districts is to read the minutes. I like to know what's going on with conservation. A lot of times I can help districts with funding opportunities or maybe a speaker. I recently offered a speaker name for a district that is going to be doing a workshop down the road. So it's just a way for me to keep in touch with the districts because it's hard for me to to visit all of them. And that's really all it is. I do appreciate it. And if your board doesn't want to send draft minutes, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that. Yeah, in case someone can't see the chat, the question was just to clarify an executive session that those do need to be recorded. And they do. If you look on the back side of your open meeting guide, it has procedures for closed meeting or executive session. One, you want to make sure you have a legal reason to go into executive session. And just because you don't want other people there isn't one. It has to be one of the six listed. So you convene in an open session, you announce why you're going into executive session. You pass that motion to hold the executive session. And number four listed is record the executive session electronically. Remember, the only thing you can talk about in executive session is the reason you went into executive session and you cannot take action in executive session. No motions can be made in executive session. Those need to be made in the open meeting. And if you have any other questions on that, please feel free to ask. Another question brand new here, how do you get the minutes approved at the next meeting? Good question. So you will present a draft of the minutes to the board before the meeting so they can review them. And on your agenda, you will have like the sample one here, we have minutes approved. You could do secretary's report. It can be called different things. When you come to that item of business or that line item, then the board chair will ask for the minutes to be approved. If there's any questions, they may be asked there or additions that need to be made, corrections, it can be made there. Recorded meeting, are recorded meetings official documentation as well? Yes. Any recording is an official document and can be requested. Now what I've been told is that if it's an executive session, you might want to consult your local state's attorney as to whether you would have to share executive session. They have to have a valid reason to request executive session minutes is my understanding. Again, if you ever have questions on any of this, your local state's attorney is your resource and the attorney general's website has a lot of great information. Earlier, Andrew, you mentioned how some SEDs, they record the audio of a meeting just to go back and fill the plane. Do they need to keep a copy of that audio once they've updated their minutes or when they need to read back on it? I think that it's always probably good practice just to keep it as long as you know you have it. I hope you feel popular, Andrea, because you obviously there is a need and people have questions about meeting and if that really is the music. Good thing we have you on today. Thank you. Yes, so we're just here to help you succeed. So please feel free to ask questions. I'm going to round out the four of us and everything and I'll wrap things up by overviewing the equipment inventory sheet and supervisor training reports. To start with, I have received questions as to why the NDSNCC requests an equipment inventory list and how I've explained and answered that question is part of the committee job is to increase SED capacity and an equipment inventory list is one of the foundational record for any business. We need it for insurance purposes and in general it's just good to have on hand to help you be aware of what inventory you have and it can help you assist in making financial planning and purchasing decision. Like Jody mentioned earlier that it may be requested copy to store in case the file they're lost or need to serve as a backup but we don't compare one. SED is the list to another SED collection or that information. We like to be the best of the service to all of you, right? So what could be included on your equipment inventory list? Basically whatever information will be helpful to your SED when making a decision including that equipment purchases repair or maintenance. What is showing on this slide are suggestions for what you could include on your equipment inventory list and that they include you know the date that you purchased that item what the item is in the item description. General notes those could be maintenance notes or to just whatever that whatever kind of note that you would appreciate being able to add an expert for it, right? It can include an item description, general notes, the serial or the number, purchase price, where you bought that item, the physical location that it stored, the equipment condition, maintenance schedule or photo and so on and so forth. We or the NPSF we see doesn't have any set requirements for what to include or not to include on this list. We leave that up to you as an individual district. So in summary include whatever information that would help your district function at its highest level and be at a reference in case documentation would be lost down the road. I'm all about tips and tricks and so a couple tips that I wanted to share as far as equipment inventory list goes is that if you are sorting from square one this can feel very overwhelmed, right? And so I would encourage you to break it down. Maybe the first year your list just includes a list of here's all my equipment, right? My tree planter, barber, barrier layer, you probably look my words here, but you just list the equipment right enough or we have on your list. And then you decide that the next year maybe you add photos of each of the equipment or write a note about what type of condition that it's in. Now don't feel like you need to create that list all at once either. Break it up month by month or season by season. Make it more manageable for you. I would also encourage you that once your list is created, updated or for needle, right? It's a lot easier to add new equipment and the needed information as it is purchased than running around trying to collect and gather that information down the road. And finally, you might be chuckling at me and wondering, well, how can I make this a board bonding experience? Well, don't feel like you need to create this list on your own. Involve your supervisors. Maybe after a monthly meeting, have them assist you in recording some of that information. They also might have ideas about what information they would like to see recorded for future reference. You shouldn't have to think of everything, right? Well, speaking of those supervisors, I'm going to talk about supervisor training report next. I know how much supervisors look forward to those annual training requirements. Kitty, I know they're not always everybody's favorite thing, but everyone on the soil and watershed leadership team is working to provide additional training opportunities to make these requirements easier. We understand how the busy everybody is, and so we're trying to think outside the box to figure out how can we provide training in a timely and considerate way, right? Okay, let's start with why do supervisors need to compete their annual training? The tough love response, and I think something that we have hit home at multiple points throughout this webinar, is that it's required in the North Dakota Century code. End of story. It's kind of hard to argue with that. I prefer taking the approach of let's get folks on board with this idea. And so with that in mind, I would just say that the purpose of an SCE is to provide and promote conservation related practices to area constituents, right? And training is meant to keep supervisors up to date with relevant conservation practices, along with strengthening their managerial skills that they need to supervise the employees that they hire. Now, we want to keep learning and once we stop learning, that's when you start running into trouble, right? Okay, so now that we kind of understand the why and hopefully everybody is on board, what is the yearly training requirement exactly? This differs depending on if you're a new or returning supervisor. For new supervisors, they're expected to fulfill the following training requirements. So that's a year one training. It's kind of like an introductory training. And then they're also expected to fulfill their annual training requirements. Those are for new supervisors, a little bit extra training that that is asked of them. For a returning or current supervisor, whether they're elected or appointed, they are asked to fulfill an annual training requirement. Okay, now, what exactly are you talking about when you say an annual training requirement? Well, we've got options, right? If supervisors are looking for a one-in-one approach, they can attend one of these five options, right? That includes a leadership academy, level one or two, and that's available whether you're a new supervisor or you've been around the block a time or two. You can attend the NDASCD convention, an area annual meeting, or if you're looking for a team approach at your monthly board meeting, everyone can watch and discuss the micro-lessons that are sent out. You must watch at least four of the eight videos and discuss the follow-up questions of the board for this option to be out, okay? You don't get to go over the grades fully with due book reports. One person doesn't get one person doesn't get to watch the micro-lesson and give a book report at the annual meeting or at your monthly meeting. You need to watch it together as a group. There's also a mixed vague approach where supervisors can mix and match three of the following to meet their annual training requirements. These include attending a local event hosted by the SCD or Extension. They can watch a conservation webinar. They can individually watch a micro-lesson or listen to an agriculture-applied-more-than-dirt podcast episode, okay? So the one disclaimer is that you can do no more than two out of the category. Now, I know I just spoke a lot of words at you and everything and I like examples. So I wanted to run through a couple examples to help you wrap in mind around what I just talked about. We have three supervisors. Alrighty, so Meet newly elected supervisor Hannah. She's excited to be serving on our local SCD board. To complete her annual training, she attended the leadership academy level one to fulfill her initial training required, right? Now, to fulfill her annual training requirement, she attended a local shop talk that was discussing covered crops and she watched an excellent webinar about soil conservation districts in terms of opportunities and then she attended another educational event about soil health facts, okay? The next supervisor that we have is returning elected supervisor Jody. She's been serving on our board for 20 years and it's hard for her to commit to all the events. As a result, she attended a shop talk on cover crops. She lived into a riveting podcast episode of agriculture-applied-more-than-dirt where they discussed challenges that SCD supervisor faced and finally she attended a lead local event hosted by her local NDSU extension office. That's one option or the other option is that you can go, Chris has left. She is a returning appointed supervisor that's been serving on her local SCD board for four years. She likes to check things off all at once and so how she met her training requirement did by attending the NDASCE convention. Alrighty, so those are three ways that those different training requirements will be available and hopefully gives you a better idea of what that looks like. I've got one minute so I'm going to quickly go through these final tips and tricks is make sure to review training requirements with superintendents. I've created a handout that summarizes what I just went over. Of course, it doesn't have the fun commentary that I was able to add in but I can trust that you can add your own square. Help them understand that this is really a requirement to help them grow as supervisors and make the power of them to increase their local SCD copy. Keep a training tracker sheet in supervisor fighters and figures. I understand that employees are really busy and it can be hard to run down supervisors. Go ahead and print off a copy of that trapping sheet and include it in that binder or that folder and I can serve as a gentle reminder to supervisors that training is something that they're supposed to be prioritizing. Finally, make it a board bonding experience. I know, I know, I am the conveyer one of the bunch. But seriously, events are so much more fun to go to if there's a core load goal. If you're going to a neighboring SCD event, invite your supervisors to come up or encourage your supervisors, maybe ones that have been around for a while to welcome a new supervisor and then have them invite them to an event. I was just at an SCD meeting and we were talking about podcasts and training and all of a sudden the supervisor was like, oh, well, I listen to podcasts and webinars all the time. You know, I'm waiting for the water to on thought. I watch a webinar and it just led to this great discussion about what, how there are some really great educational resources out there and they were going to start sharing webinars and podcast episodes. So if training doesn't have to be something boring, it can be something that can be fun and kind of create, bring folks together. So without being said, are there any last burning questions that we need to address? Hannah, while you were presenting, I answered a couple questions and I just want to run this by you. Since you are leading the webinar, it was asked if we're going to send out the presentation slides and I said that they'll be uploaded to the SCD Google Drive along with the webinar. Is that correct? Yes, and I think HRSA and I had discussed, right, HRSA emailing out the PowerPoint to everybody. Yeah. Okay. And then there was a comment, what if your supervisor or supervisors don't want to do training? I did respond and say that the State Soil Conservation Committee is going to be addressing that sometime this year. You can also call me and I'm more than willing to talk to the chair of your board about the training requirements. Oh, good question. Lido, we are at the top of our hour and everything like that. Again, I will look back to the original page that has all of our contact information and everything and we are all more than happy to help answer any sort of questions that you have or resource within the health. And, you know, they'll be to reach out. Thanks, Anna. I just wanted to add something to what Jodi kind of started the webinar talking about in that, you know, some of these things are required for the state legislature. Right now it's a positive relationship there. But let's not let that change. You know, we need to keep advocating for districts and sharing the good work you're doing. And so by supervisors not wanting to attend training, that doesn't shed a positive light on districts. And keep in mind we'll be looking at some different leadership at the state level. So we need to keep those lines of communication open and share with your local representatives what's happening in your district. Thank you, Hannah, for organizing this. And I appreciate the districts that attended. Thank you, everyone. But good luck finishing up all of the, I know there's finishing up the documentation and getting that into Chris and everything. She does a lot of hard work kind of reaching out and kicking all that stuff organized. So we really appreciate the work that she does and we appreciate the work that each and every one of you do. Yes, I second that. See everybody. I was Andrea, I was just talking with Lynette yesterday about the legislature.