Metro Mountain Bikers Meetings

Metro MTB Meeting Minutes - 08/14/2024

Melissa Clark — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 00:30:00 GMT

Metro MTB Meeting Minutes - 08/14/2024
August 14, 2024 | 7:00 PM
Metro MTB Public Meeting
Wheel & Sprocket Franklin
6 Board Members in attendance
35 Attendees

Mission Statement

Metro Mountain Bikers is a non-profit, volunteer organization dedicated to safeguarding the future of mountain biking through the preservation and promotion of responsible off-road bicycling opportunities. Which includes the education, sponsoring events, trail construction, and trail maintenance.

Board Members

Melissa Clark, Chair
Kevin Eccles, Co-Chair - not present
John Slawny, Treasurer
Kayla Weiss, Secretary
Michael Golden, Board Member at Large
Marion Gottschalk, Board Member at Large
Tom Hartman, Board Member at Large - not present
Ron Stawicki, Board Member at Large

Topics:

Thank you to our host, Wheel & Sprocket!

W&S generously offered 15% off full priced items in store.

Thank you, Trail Stewards

Kegel- Alpha: Scott Stevens
Heritage: Tom Hartman, Mike Vance
Minooka: Ron Stawicki, Bob Meuer
Pleasant Valley: Matt Weege
Port Washington: Dwight Maynor, Alex
Kletzsch: Craig Ruhland, Steve Giles, Nathan Allen
Tosa: Melissa Clark, Chris Cooper, Nick Meulemans, Bill Suechting

International Women’s MTB Day 2024 - May 6th - Recap

This event was the most successful women’s day event so far.
Huge thanks to Angela Brooks of Brooks Adventure for hosting a mini bike clinic.
Kayla Weiss hosted a long jump competition with two donated Ninja ramps for longest jump winners
Event also had a Women’s Bike Derby.

Metro Field Trip, Trek Trails in Cable - July 11-14th - Recap

Overall everyone had a really good time.
Rode trails, went to town to eat, and fire!
We would like to continue doing these.
Thank you, Dan Kutz, for organizing!

Tosa and Kegel-Alpha Trail Work Days

Have been meeting Mondays for a few weeks to get all the vegetation cleaned up
Thank you Melissa for coordinating and thank you volunteers!

Milwaukee County Update from Craig Ruhland

Craig has been the Trail Steward for River Glen Trails
Kletzsch Park Grand Opening
- 160 participants
- 4 County Supervisors attended
River Glen and Kletzsch Park combined have 2.6 miles of trail.
Craig Met with county supervisors. 5 of 6 are very enthusiastic about new trails.
Sledding hill is an unnatural hill and doesn’t drain well
Ten 100 Plan - Vision Plan for 100 miles of trails in 10 years.
- Need very active Trail Stewards to “own” the trail and coordinate.
- County is starting their Trail Network Plan. This happens every 15 years.
- Signature trail in the Metro area - We want something that people would drive an hour to get to. Looking at Bender Park and some other areas. Would probably need to be machine built. Looking to have 5 miles of trails.
New opportunities in Milwaukee County.
- Need to show that we are maintaining the trails we do have.
- Bike park at Doyne Park? MMSD has not been communicating timelines to anyone on when they will be done with their remediation.
- Potential opportunity at Havenswood - Trails on land that is just sitting there near a health facility. The health facility is interested in adding mountain bike trails. The land is currently being used by dirt bikers.
- Need for more volunteers

Waukesha County Update from Ron Stawikc

Agreement with the county is now renewed (Thank you Michael and Melissa.)
- New contract good for 3 years with a quick email to renew for up to 5 years. This will require less volunteer time renewing contracts in the future.
WORS Minooka on 6/23 - Recap
- It rained all day Saturday. Thank you volunteers that filled mud holes and helped drain the trail. Several comments from riders that they were surprised at how well the trails held up.
NICA race weekend coming up 9/13 - 9/15.
- This event will be as big or larger than the WORS Race . Good opportunity to show off trails and set up Metro tent. Reach out to Ron Stawicki if you’d like to help with the tent.

Giving Saturday 6/20 at the Tap Yard at Minooka Park - Recap
- 20% of all sales were donated to Metro from noon to 3pm. Metro brought in $200 of donations for our trail projects at Minooka. This was a great day to be outside with friends after a long rainy spring.
- Ron Stawicki led a social trail ride prior to the Tap Yard event, “Dirt Church-style.” Which folks really enjoyed.
Minooka Monday Night Maintenance starting Monday 8/19 at 5:30 pm until 7:30 pm.
- If you are interested in helping, reach out to Ron and Bob. Need help with vegetation, dirt work (tread rehabilitation sections), and we have some rock garden projects. We’d like to get a head start on the vegetation before the NICA race.
Ron talked about the “Metro Epic” where you ride Minooka, Kegel-Alpha, Tosa Trails all in one day via the Oak Leaf and other paved routes. If you drive to each trail, they call it the “Metro Tour.”

Pizza in the Park 6/1 - Heritage MTB Trails Fundraiser - Recap

Tom Smith donated time and materials to make pizza for attendees to fundraise for Heritage Trails.

40 people showed up despite the rain. Most attendees were dedicated volunteers.
We raised over $1,000!

Heritage updates from Tom Hartmen by John Slawny

The Heritage Trails Master Plan will be presented on 9/18. When the County originally gave us permission to build trails, they didn’t 100% understand what we were building. The Master Plan will formalize the trails and the plans for new trails.
Survey results - 1/3 of the people using the park are from outside of Washington County.
Parks in Washington County are self funded. Heritage has quadrupled the revenue for Heritage Trails County Park.
We were able to purchase new tools for Heritage from the Pizza in the Park funds.
Skills Area and Flow Rider completion possibly in 2025.
- We’ve had a couple setbacks. The Master Plan needs to be in place before we start building again and the rainy weather has set us back.
The Heritage Festival originally planned for 9/21 is being postponed until 2025. We need to get caught up on trail repairs and put our best foot forward. We’d like to have new trails to celebrate before the festival.
Overall we have enthusiasm from Washington County regarding the MTB trails. Heritage was their lowest utilized park with 250 parking stalls unused.
Heritage is now the #1 performing park after just 3 years of having MTB trails. For a park without bathroom facilities, this is impressive!
Kudos to Tom Hartman and Gavin, and Dirt Waves for their continued efforts of working with the county and keeping the trails open for business! Dirt Waves has been out countless times repairing the trails after heavy rain.
FlowRider Build - pictures shown.
Thank you, Tom Hartman, for putting together a formal grant submission for the Washington County Tourism Grant. We were not awarded the Tourism Grant but now we have the framework to submit for more grants.

Ozaukee County Update - Michael Golden

Port Washington is holding up well
Pleasant Valley has been closed most of summer. It just finally opened.
Rain has been a challenge
Pleasant Valley Trail Stewar, Matt Weege, would like to have a trail day soon.

2025 Board Elections

October Meeting - looking at holding it in Tosa
- Board Nominations
- - Treasurer
  - Chair

November Meeting - Rays in Waukesha Election

Melissa, Chair, will be stepping down after 3 years of serving as an Officer for Metro.
Kevin, Co-Chair, has been involved for the last 3 years. Board will be discussing transitioning Kevin to Chair.

Questions/ Comments:

If anyone is interested in helping trail groom- reach out.

We Need Support:

Manage An Event
Coordinate a Membership Drive
Support a Trail Work Day
Be a Trail Steward or Adopt a Trail Section
Approach Sponsors & Corporate Donors
Design & Manage New Metro Swag
Identify and Apply for Grants
Host a Group Ride
Expand our Social Media Presence
Coordinate with NICA
Become a Board Member this Fall!

Meeting adjourned at 8:30 pm

Metro MTB Meeting Minutes - 03/27/2024

Melissa Clark — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 00:15:00 GMT

March 27, 2024 | 7:00pm
Metro MTB Public Meeting
Ray’s Growler Gallery
5* Board Members in attendance

40 Attendees

Mission Statement

Board Members

Melissa Clark, Chair
Kevin Eccles, Co-Chair
John Slawny, Treasurer
Michael Golden
Ron Stawacki*
*Confirmed Board Member at Public Meeting

Topics:

Thank you to our host, Ray’s Growler Gallery!

Public confirmation of Ron Stawicki as Board Member at Large for 2024 year.

Ron Stawicki was elected by the Board of Directors in the January Board Meeting to represent Waukesha County for Metro. Per Metro Bylaws, Board Elected Officials to fill open positions need to be confirmed at next Public Meeting.
Board wants to ensure all 4 Counties are represented in leadership on the Metro Board. Board didn’t have a Waukesha County rep after Chris Shay’s term lapsed last year.

Metro MTB Upcoming Event:

Reminder to check our website ‘Calendar’ and Facebook Page for Event dates and Details:

April 6^th: Bik-E-Sha: A Social ride, casual pace in Waukesha to Fox River Park sponsored by and starting & ending at Magellan’s on Main in Waukesha. After free pizza from Magellan’s. Donations for pizza go to our trail projects at Minooka. Thank you, Magellan’s for being a long-time supporter of our trails at Minooka Park!

April 21st: Oak Hill Trail Clean Up for Earth Day: A great family trail work friendly event to put some volunteer hours in for your local trails. Litter clean up. Gloves, garbage bags, water and treats supplied.
May 4th: Women’s International Mountain Bike Day: Free all-day event with ladies (all-ages welcome) non-drop group rides, Bike demonstration by Brooks Adventure, ladies competitions, prizes, raffle, burgers, and drinks provided. Donations recommended. Event is open to all but activity sessions are just for the ladies.
June 18^th: Kletzsch Trail Opening Event: Come out Tuesday night for a social, ribbon, cutting, and ride Milwaukee County’s newest mountain bike trail. Metro will be grilling, and beverages will be provided. Donations encouraged.
June 20-23^rd: Minority Mountain Bikers: 4 days of activities:

Thursday at Trek
Friday at John Muir
Saturday party at Bayview Wheel and Sprocket
Sunday WORS race at Minooka.

June 22 & 23^rd: WORS Collectivo Classic at Minooka: Mountain Bike races for all ages and levels. Stop by the Metro tent and say Hi! Fun for racers and for those that just want to spectate.
July 11- 14^th: Metro Field Trip to Trek Trails at Mt Telemark (Cable, WI):

Join us in Cable WI and the Chequamegon National Forest to ride the premier new Trek Trails Powered by OTM and the Chequamegon Area Mountain Bike Association (CAMBA) trail system the weekend of July 11-14.
Trek Trails by OTM are a new machine-built trail system based in the Mt Telemark Village. The Trek Trails features 16 miles of cross-country, downhill, Enduro trails as well as a skills area and a pump track.

CAMBA is a regional XC trail system featuring 130 miles of pristine classic deep-forest XC trails in and around the Chequamegon National Forest. Ride for days and never do the same trail twice.

Metro will publish times for rider meet-ups of different skill levels over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Metro will host a fire-pit social at the Home Base at Mt Telemark on one evening, and, publish a time to connect as a club at a local tavern one evening.
The lodging and travel are DIY, to keep things loose.
Stay tuned to this FB Event page for additional details

Date: July 11-14, 2024

Places:
Trek Trails by OTM at Mt Telemark Village, Cable, WI.
CAMBRA trail system
Home Base at Mt Telemark - firepit social
Sawmill Saloon, Seely - a primary social hour option
Trek Trails by OTM at Mt Telemark Village, Cable, WI.

Who: All Metro Mountain Bikers and their peeps! There are trails to meet everyone's MTB sweet spot.

Respond to the Facebook Event so we have a feel for participant numbers. Book your lodging and camping options early for the best locations!

Our goal is to keep the weekend loose and informal, while providing the opportunity to socialize and explore new trails together

September 13-15^th: NICA at Minooka

February 2024 Trail Fairy of the Month goes to Tom Vomastic! Tom V has been out day after day to our Tosa Trails to clear Oak Hill 4 solely after the January storms. Thank you, Tom V, taking on and owning the Oak Hill 4 loop!!

Krist Crew Saw Blades Fundraiser! Melissa created a Facebook fundraiser to replace the saw blades for the famous Kirst Family Trail Fairies, that have been out clearing all the dead falls on Metro’s longest trail. The Facebook fundraiser raised over $1,200! And we presented the Kirst Family with a fleet of replacement blades. Thank you, Glenn and family for all your work!!

2023 Volunteers

275 Volunteers participated in 2024!
6,400 Hours!!! A Metro MTB record of volunteer hours!
Recognition of our 58 Trail Fairies for 2024 (Volunteers with 20 or more hours for the year):

Steve Schoen
Tom Hartman
Gavin MacLeod
Melissa Clark
Kevin Eccles
John Slawny
Mike Vance
Jeremy Deitzel
Glenn Kirst
Chris Shay
Bob Meurer
Andrew Kirst
Steve Giles
Craig Ruhland
Andy Van Sistine
Marty Weigel
Darrin Jaeger
Kyle Ferkans
Chris Cooper
Tom Vomastic
Kayla Weiss
Mackenzie Kirst
Lindsay Carlson
Ron Stawicki
John Schultz
Maddie Kirst
Matt Weege
Dan Kutz
Cole Pfeiffer
Nathan Allen
Steven Spenner
Armando de la Torre
Danielle Cychosz
Josh Pollack
Kollin Kozik
John Buran
Harold Schmidt
Joe Schuster
John Archer
Beth Cruz
Ben Jilek
Chris McArdle
Isaac Olson
Scott Phelps
Bill Nelson
Bryan Douglas
Dave Culbertson
Maggie Attoe
Nick Kelnhofer
Matt McKenney
Scott Zinky
Chris Wold
Dave Burch
Earl Gesling
Jennine Pufahl
Nick Meulemans

Heritage Trail Updates:

We finished 3 new trails with features in 2023!
Mike Vance is coordinating trail volunteers for 2024, If you’d like to be part of the Heritage Trails Volunteer crew, please reach out to Mike on Facebook messenger or at : mikevancegolf@hotmail.com
Future Trail Projects:

Finish the Flow Rider return trail
Build out the Skills Area (fundraised in 2023)
Improve Take on Me (the blue trail)
Return to Double Dragon

Fundraising is needed for Heritage to continue building.

Ozaukee County: Introducing our new Port Washington Trail Stewards: Dwight Maynor & Alex!!!

Milwaukee County:

Kletzsch Park! Our newest MTB trail:

THANK YOU: Steve Giles, Jennine Pufahl, Nate Allen, and Craig Ruhland!!
Approximately 1+ -mile of new built last fall and trail will be completed this spring
Awaiting final review with Park and Signage installation this Spring to Open

We Need Support:

Manage An Event (like tonight!)
Coordinate a Membership Drive (online, at a trailhead, or at a public event)
Support a Trail Work Day
Be a Trail Steward or Adopt a Trail Section
Approach Sponsors & Corporate Donors
Design & Manage New Metro Swag
Identify and Apply for Grants
Host a Group Ride
Expand our Social Media Presence
Coordinate with NICA
Become a Board Member this Fall!

Meeting adjourned at 8:30 pm

Metro MTB Meeting Minutes - 11/08/2023

Melissa Clark — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 01:00:29 GMT

Nov 8, 2023 | 7:15pm Metro MTB Public Meeting
Ray’s Growler Gallery
5 Board Members in attendance

40 Attendees

Mission Statement

Board Members

Chris Shay, Co-Chair – not present
John Slawny, Treasurer
Melissa Clark, Secretary
Kevin Eccles
Tom Hartman

Lindsay Carlson

Topics:

Thank you to our host, Ray’s Growler Gallery!

Trail Fairies Trio for the Month Award for August, September and October: Mike Vance, Jeremy Dietzel, and Darrin Jaeger!

These three guys have put in countless hours building and fine-tuning Young Guns, Double Dragon, Dirt Waves and Gunslinger at Heritage Trails County Park. To construct these types of trails, it takes a lot of experience and physical work. We cannot thank these guys enough for helping to make Heritage a regional MTB destination!!!

September Heritage Metro Meet & Social

We had a beautiful day to celebrate the opening of Dirt Waves. Thank you, Low Key BBQ (Rider Tom Smith), for donating & volunteering to cook up over 90 pizzas on site to help us fundraise over $1,000 for our Phase 3 Skills Area at Heritage! Thank you, Armando de le Torre, for the great photo captures!

Dig-In Campaign – Heritage Skills Area

We met and exceeded our $21,000 fundraising goal to raise $23,005!! Huge thanks to all 180 individuals that donated! We met our $5,000 minimum to receive our $5,000 match from the IMBA grant. A number of individuals donated more than once, and the majority of the donors were non Metro Members. We will begin construction on the skills area Spring/Summer 2024.

Heritage Trails Updates:

Our newest trail, Gunslinger, has just opened! This is Metro’s first ever double-black diamond trail and rated for expert riders only. Thank you, Gavin and Dirt Waves, for your latest masterpiece!
What’s next? We are working with Washington County Park on our Master Plan for our future trail projects. Gavin’s next projects include working the Double Dragon return, a new trail called Flow Rider, and the new Skills Area.

New Double Dragon T-shirts:

Congratulations, Katie B, for the winning Double Dragon t-shirt design competition! We have shirts here with us for sale, along with new winter hats (beanies). Stay tuned for pop-up merch sales on site at Heritage to get your shirt! Proceeds go back to our trail projects.

Bik-E-Shaw:

Thanks, Magellan’s on Main and Ron Stawicki for hosting another fun Bik-E-Shaw social ride on November 4^th. The ride raised $450 for our Minooka MTB Trails. For those that have not been to a Bike-E-Shaw, it’s a social casual ride on paved paths (some road riding) out to Fox River Park where there’s beverages and then the group returns to Magellan’s for free pizza and a social.

2024-25 Board Member Nominations: Accepting nominations for the Open Board Positions (Chair, Co-Chair, Club Secretary and 3 Members at Large positions)

Board Nominations:

Marion Gottschalk: Lives in Shorewood and coaches for North Shore NICA team.
Mike Golden: Lives in Ozaukee County and expressed interest in running.
Melissa Clark: Current Club Secretary announced she will be running for the Chair position.
Kevin Eccles: Current Board Member at Large shared he is interested furthering help the organization and running.

Minooka Update:

It’s Berm Rehabilitation Month! Final workdays scheduled for Sunday, 1112 and next Sunday, 11/19 from 9am-Noon. After we have volunteer, Ryan Edwards, grilling up brats and beverages to share.
NICA Race at Minook. A record 700 kids participated in the race at Minooka. We held a post card campaign at our Metro tent and had 150 post cards filled out to send to representatives to advocate for more trails. We did a second post card campaign at the NICA Trek race and got another 150 post cards filled out which we’ll send to the event hosts and sponsors thanking them. Thank you, Kevin Eccles, for organizing and leading our post card campaign!

Milwaukee County Update:

Kletzsch Park: Metro’s newest MTB trail is about to begin construction! Kletzsch is one of the eleven parks the County gave us to look at for the potential of adding mountain bike trails. Our first Trail Workdays are next week, Saturday & Sunday Nov 11 & 12^th. Please sign up on the link shared on our Facebook pages.
We have a 5-year renewal agreement completed with Milwaukee County which includes provisions for 3 renewals. This is a huge gain, as previously our agreements with the County were only for one year. Thanks to all our Volunteers, Marty, for putting in years of great ground work with the County to make this possible!
Kevin Eccles and Craig Ruhland are working to put together a bike trail opportunities for Milwaukee County.
Glendale ARPA Funds Meetings: Not a great response. They want any pump track or bike projects to have shared funding from neighboring municipalities (Shorewood).

Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, November 28th. If you work for one of the many companies that gives or does donation matches, please think of Metro. We are a 501c3 non-profit organization and all the money raised will go to tools and trails equipment.

Meeting adjourned at 8:30 pm

Metro MTB Meeting Minutes - 07/12/2023

Melissa Clark — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

July 12, 2023 | 7:15pm
Metro MTB Public Meeting
Wheel & Sprocket - Franklin
4 Board Members in attendance

40 Attendees

Mission Statement

Board Members

Chris Shay, Co-Chair
John Slawny, Treasurer
Melissa Clark, Secretary
Kevin Eccles
Tom Hartman – not present

Lindsay Carlson – not present

Thank you to our host, Wheel & Sprocket!

Thanks for letting us use their space for tonight’s meeting!
Thank you for tonight’s discounts for Metro MTB Members!
Wheel & Sprocket has donated $5,000 for our trail building projects!

Trail Fairies of the Month Award for June: Bob Meurer and Ron Stawicki!

The Bob and Ron duo started over a decade ago when they teamed up to advocate for dedicated mountain bike trails at Minooka Park. 10 years later, they’re still advocating for Minooka's MTB Trail, leading the trail maintenance and build activities.
June has been a special month for Minooka with the celebration of the trail’s 10th year anniversary, dedication of the Burch Barn and approval from Waukesha County Parks to build a new section of trail for the ‘Green Bailout.’ Wasting no time, Ron and Bob, organized and led 4 weeks of June Thursday Evening trail workdays to get this new section of trail cut and completed! All we celebrated and accomplished this month is because of these two outstanding Trail Directors!
Fun fact: It took 2,936 hours when Minooka was originally built, to build 5 miles of trail purely by hand!
Bob and Ron, thank you for all you do for Minooka and Metro Mountain Bikers!

Minooka:

New green bypass has been added. This was requested by NICA folks to keep the youth riders’ wheels on the ground. The green bypass was completed just in time for the WORS race to get thousands of wheels.

Milwaukee County:

This spring we were able to mark 1 new trail a Kletzsch Park. Potentially start building this fall, depending on environmental review.
Trails Coordinator, Jessica Wineberg, took a new position. They are currently interviewing to fill her position.
Right of Entry Permit will be issued to Metro MTB tomorrow.
Oak Hill 3 & 4 workday will be led by Marty on Sunday morning.
We took Milwaukee County Parks out to Hoyt to review where trails are caving in and flagged a reroute.

Ozaukee County:

We are looking for Ozaukee County Trail Stewards and Trail Directors. Please reach out if interested!

Heritage:

Our Heritage Trail Director, Steve Schoen, is working on the green trail
Steve and his crew are out working almost every weekend if folks want to get some trail work in.
Dirt Waves volunteer crew working on some hard-core stuff:
Young Guns trails just opened last weekend!
We had 200 riders out last weekend checking out the new trail!
Currently working on 3 more trails we hope to open this summer:
Gunslingers – a true double black diamond trail, for expert riders only.
2 more Intermediate Trails: Dirt Waves & Flow Rider
There will be a Grand Opening to the trails – probably this August once the trails are approved and opened.
Phase 3: A Progressive Skills Parks: Small intermediate skills for folks/ kids to learn these skills.
Metro has re-joined IMBA as an Affiliate earlier this year and because of this we are able to submit for IMBA grants.
IMBA has a program called Dig-In, a Matching grant which matches up to $5,000.
We are looking for a total of $21,000 to fully-fund the Skills Park.

Treasurer update: we have a New Treasurer, John Slawny!

Membership remains flat. We currently have 155 current members.

We need your Help!

We have more trails, more events, and have more to get done on more trails! Some areas where we really need more support are:
Events: Neon Nights, Heritage Grand Opening
Need Trail Stewards at Pleasant Valley and Port Washington Trails.
Approaching sponsors and donors
Coordinating with NICA
Membership mailings
Organizing and leading Group rides
Milwaukee County: especially – expanding our community engagement.
Becoming a Metro Board Member – Fall Elections for the 2024 Board!
We have an open position right now for Co-Chair. Position’s role is to assist the Chair with the Goal that the Co-Chair will be the future replacement of the Chair.

Expanding the number of Board Member positions

A lot of different rolls and a lot of different skills sets are needed to make our organization work.
Board will be voting to possibly add 1-2 more positions to the Board for 2024.

Meeting adjourned at 8:30 pm

Metro MTB Meeting Minutes - 5/24/2023

Melissa Clark — Thu, 25 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT

May 24th 2023 | 7:00pm
Metro MTB Meeting
Location: Milwaukee County Park's Wil-O-Way Underwood facility in Tosa
5 Board Members in attendance

Mission Statement

Board Members

Chris Shay, Chair
John Slawny, Co-chair
Melissa Clark, Secretary
Kerry Norman, Treasurer – not present
Tom Hartman
Kevin Eccles
Lindsay Carlson – not present

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Raised Grain Brewing, John Slawny, Nick & Shaunie Meulemans and Melissa Clark for tonight’s refreshment donations

Recent Events Recaps

April 22nd Earth Day Trail Clean Up

We had a great turnout of 30 volunteers to help us clean the litter up on our Oak Hill trails.
Trail Clean-up days are a great opportunity for families/ youth to get Metro MTB trail volunteer hours.

May 6th International Women’s MTB Day Event

We had at least 100 attendees and another 2-dozen or so Volunteers and vendors.
Event included: Pre-ride stretch with Today Wellness, Mini-women’s skills clinic with Revolve MTB, Long jump competition hosted by Ninja Mountain Bike Performance, Non-drop women’s rides for 3 skills levels (beginner, intermediate and advanced).
Minooka Night riders volunteered to do our grilling and food serving and bike maintenance. Thank you, Night Riders!
Event was hosted at Southern Kettle Moraine’s John Muir Trail this year, a non-Metro trail. Attendees were very pleased with John Muir trails being a great central location between Milwaukee and Madison. The trail system offered something for all levels/ all skills.
SKORR (the new Southern Kettles Off-Road Riders) group was there and the trails were in great shape! We encourage folks to follow SKORR and become Members to support these great trails! Note: Metro MTB and Leadership was involved in building and creating this trail system. Many of our Volunteers are also part of SKORR and maintaining the Southern Kettles trails.
An Event feedback survey was emailed out to attendees earlier this week. For those that joined, please complete the survey for a chance to win prizes from Ninja MTB.

IMBA (International Mountain Bike Association) - MMB is now an IMBA affiliate.
Metro was Charter Member of IMBA in the past. Why we left IMBA:

Cost was significant per Member to be part of IMBA. Much of the Charter cost was for their website, membership tools and insurance. When Metro became a 501(c)3 non-profit, we had obtained our own Website, Membership software and Insurance. So, we were double paying for these organizational expenses being an IMBA Charter Member.

Metro re-joined IMBA this month as an Affiliate Member.

Affiliate Membership allows us to manage and keep our Membership dollars and donations, while benefiting from IMBA’s expansive network of resources.
Important – IMBA is NOT taking over dues - all dues go to Metro, and 100% stays with Metro.
Re-joining IMBA allows us to submit for IMBA grants and utilize them as a resource.

We encourage Members to follow IMBA on Link-in and social media. A lot of great resources. Download the new book for Free from IMBA’s website- geared more for landowners.

May Trail Fairy of the Month: Kayla Weiss!

Kayla did her first ever trail work day at Heritage Trails MTB Trail at the end of last year and she hasn’t missed a weekend Heritage trail work day since! She currently holds Metro’s best Trail Work Day streak outside of our Trail Directors!! In fact, her new found love for trail work led her to creating a Facebook Group for sharing regional MTB trail work days: WI MTB Trail Work Network! Join and help sustain and maintain your favorite local trails!
For those that made our event at John Muir, Kayla was there with Ninja Mountain Bike Performance! She planned and led our longest jump competition! She also reached out to Athletic Brewing Company for the N/A beer raffle package and free samples for our event!
Metro is 100% Volunteers, and when a friend of Metro reaches out to say, “hey! Can I do some fun jumps competitions at this years event? And BTW, I’m reaching out to this company for a donation for your raffle.” - this is HUGE!

Milwaukee County Trails Update

We have a 5-year renewal with potential 15-year contact.
New clause in this year’s agreement for Metro MTB to use machines.
Parks gave us a list of 11 Milwaukee County parks to look at for future bike opportunities (trails, pump track)
Craig Ruhland has volunteered to be a new Trail Steward for our River Glen MTB Trails.
The County is working with us for trail expansion at Kletzsch park.
We would love to move more towards a bike preferred lines like we did with Kegel-Alpha 2.0.
We’d love for someone from group join Friends of Kletzsch Park to help approval process for more trails.
Milwaukee County Parks has budgeted for 2 staff to go this year’s IMBA summit. This is a great investment of staff for mountain biking trails.

Heritage Trails Mining Proposal – change of plan

Washington County and Lannon Stone are not moving forward with a mine at Heritage Trails Park. The mining project would have funded our mountain bike project. Now that there will not be mining revenue, Washington County has stated that they want to help fund mountain biking at Heritage Trails Park.
We have 3 flow trails we are finishing once we get the County to approve.

Waukesha County - Minooka updates

We have an approval for a Green re-route to the finish, the new “Green Bailout.” from Waukesha County. We have an okay to re-do redo some features.
Erik’s employees are volunteering to cut green exit.
Ron and Bob will be scheduling some mid-week June trail work sessions.
Next Tuesday Erik’s is hosting a Demo day at Minooka.

Club Positions – Help Wanted

Trail Stewards for Ozaukee County trails (Port Washington/Guenther Park and Cedarburg/Pleasant Valley)
Membership
Social Media
Events
Treasurer & Co-Chair Roles

Insurance Renewal

Overall insurance cost remained the same as last year.
Cost for Events (non-race events) increased considerably. Prior our Members were no additional costs for events, non-members were an additional $3 per event.
Our renewal quoted us a $8 per person cost, regardless of membership status, for Events such as Women’s Day and any social group ride we lead.
We listed 3 events for the year in our insurance renewal. We will be unable to host additional social rides due to the cost increase per person for any events and rides we host.

Non-Metro PSA’s:
June 17th – West Allis Bike Rodeo looking for children’s skills instruction and bike repair volunteers . 67th & National; 10am-Noon
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/8050d4facaf2ba5fc1-west#/

July 8-9th – WORS race at Minooka “Colectivo Coffee Bean Classic”
https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/wors/colectivo-coffee-classic/

July 18 - Ride to Ferda Balls (Minooka Night Riders) https://facebook.com/events/s/ferda-balls/211855168289818/?mibextid=Gg3lNB

Meeting adjourned at 9:00pm

Metro MTB Meeting Minutes - 11/16/2022

Melissa Clark — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 01:00:00 GMT

Nov 16, 2022 | 7:15pm Metro MTB Public Meeting

Raised Grain

4 Members in attendance

45 Attendees

Mission Statement

Board Members

Chris Shay, Chair

John Slawny, Co-chair

Dan Kutz, Treasurer

Melissa Clark, Secretary

Tom Hartman

Isaac Olson – not present

Lindsay Carlson – not present

Eric Hackbarth, Ozaukee County Representative – not present

Topics:

Ron Stawicki presented Metro a $920 check representing donations collected from the October Bik-e-Shaw social ride and June’s Bike for Bruch ride. Thanks for Magellan’s on Main Street in Waukesha for hosting these community social rides, providing pizza, to fundraise for our bike trails at Minooka.

Minooka Storage Shed is currently being permitted and precured. An image of the prefabricated shed was presented. The shed model and color was selected to go with aesthetics of existing park buildings.

Donations

Washington County have given Metro $13,000 this year for our Heritage Trails
Wheel & Sprocket has given a Metro a gift of $5,000 and continues to be a great partner
Metro received an anonymous $5,000 donation
Trail work at Heritage is currently mostly donated by our trail builder, Gavin.
We are currently at $37,000 in donations for the year which is phenomenal!

Hugh Jass Fat Bike Race Series overview

Started in 2014 for people to get out and ride in the winter months by Wheel & Sprocket
3.7” or wider tires needed to podium in the races. Narrower tires are allowed to race but you need to have a fat bike to win.
5 events per season
t’s the State of Wisconsin’s biggest fat bike race series
Usually, 200-300 riders per race
Hammerschlagen occurs after each lap (drive a nail into the stump at the end of each lap)
First race is this Saturday at our Metro’s Kegel-Alpha Trail in Franklin, flannel theme
$40 registration per race

Trail Fairy of the Month Award presented to Andy Van Sistine. Andy has been leading weekly night rides at Minooka for 5 years! All are welcome. Andy has hosted riders ages 3-72 on the same group ride. Social rider every Thursday at 7:30pm. Typically 20-30 riders/

Don’t Ride Mud Trails

The annual problem during this freeze and thaw time of year when the trails take the worst abuse.
Chris Copper shared a fantastic Facebook post about freeze thaw (copied below):

A reminder for those that have been around for a while and a little education for those folks newer to the best sport ever. Enjoy. Throughout the winter, but especially in the late Fall and early Spring, you'll often see Freeze/Thaw in the trail conditions. When the temperature is dropping at night, but near or above freezing during the day, the trails can be either fabulous or terrible, so please keep the following in mind:
• Most of the soil in this area is clay. When this clay soil freezes, the water in the soil expands. When it thaws again, the water contracts and the soil has been aerated. This aerated soil holds more water and becomes mud.
• When mud gets ridden through, tires push it to the sides of the trail creating ruts. When it freezes overnight then thaws again the next day, riders push the mud further to the sides, creating deeper ruts.
• After a few cycles of this, the trail is permanently cupped, holding water all the time. With every storm, it erodes more and then trail volunteers must spend valuable time repairing it.
• As soon as trails start to thaw, which can even happen well below freezing if trails are in the sun, they'll turn into a particularly soupy form of mud and do the most damage to the trail.
Please only ride the frozen trails early in the day or after dark and avoid anywhere you're leaving a rut and you'll be rewarded with trails that are fast, grippy, and fun. Your trail volunteers and fellow riders will thank you!

Snow Grooming Update

Metro will be snow grooming at Heritage, Minooka and Pleasant Valley this winter
Please speak with Bryan Douglas if you’d like to help with grooming: douglasbd14@gmail.com

Metro Winter Riding Event in the Works

Neon Nights – “Lets Glow Crazy”
Save the date for Saturday, January 14^th, at Minooka
Family event
Drinks, food, glow sticks
Different group roll outs at different times

Outgoing Board Members & Trail Director Recognition

Dan Kutz, Treasurer: Thanks DAN! Dan also led our insurance policy renewals each year.
Isaac Olson, Board Member at Large: Managed everything on our website, Trail bot app system, all our of on-line donations. Isaac has served 8+ years on Metro’s board. He is also one of the original trail builders at Minooka.
Eric Hackbarth, OCMB (Ozaukee County Mountain Bike) Club Leader for 6 years: Managed all our trail work in Ozaukee County. Our Trail Director at Pleasant Valley.

2023 Election Results

Kerry Norman elected as Metro's new Treasurer
Kevin Eccles elected as Board Member at Large

Meeting adjourned at 8:00 pm

Metro MTB Meeting Minutes - 10/19/2022

Melissa Clark — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 00:15:00 GMT

Oct 19, 2022 | 7:15pm

Metro MTB Public Meeting

Ray’s in Tosa

7 Members in attendance

62 Attendees

Mission Statement

Board Members

Chris Shay, Co-Chair

Dan Kutz, Treasurer

Melissa Clark, Secretary

Tom Hartman

Isaac Olson

Lindsay Carlson

Eric Hackbarth, Ozaukee County Representative – not present

Topics:

Finance and Membership

Metro is fundraising $6,000 for a storage shed at Minooka
Heritage fundraising for equipment upkeep and to continue building new trails

Memberships and Donations are our primary source of funding,

Trails Update

Milwaukee County:

Trail Work Day this Saturday, 8:30-11am to work on berms at Kegel-Alpha
Chris Kegel Foundation working on plans and fundraising on a trail and bike park at Washington Park in Washington
Conversations about bike trails development at Milwaukee County’s Doyne Park
Hoyt trail re-route from trail erosion from this summer’s flooding is waiting on Milwaukee County Parks’ plant review before trail re-route can be approved. May take weeks or a month. Once approved, the reroute will take a couple work hours and a couple volunteers to re-route.

Minooka

We are currently fundraising for storage shed, $6,000
A couple trail work days for entry re-route maybe a berm work session is fall.

Ozaukee County

New features at Port Washington Trails

Heritage

Our trail builder, Gavin, has been busy working away. He’s built a fly-over and working on a large cannon.
Built a bypass over the steep downhill and uphill on switch back on the blue trail.

Trailbot App for Trail Status

Metro has joined the Trailbot app, which has other Wisconsin and a lot of Minnesota trails on the app. The plan is to get out of the work of updating images on Facebook banners and to use Trailbot for trail open/ closure status.

New Wauwatosa Parks Project –116th Street Park

Has Public support
Open House, October 27th, 5-7pm open public input/ charrette on park design at the Tosa Department of Public Offices.

Washington Park Bike Park Loop/ Skills

In Milwaukee
Sarris foundation has earmarked money for this park
Median household income is $27,000 in around the park. We want to bring cycling to an underserved community.
Pump track, skills features, and also a green/ blue 1 mile loop around the park.
Brainstorm session Nov. 6th at Wheel and Sprocket – we will share with on Metro’s Facebook page.
Why Washington Park? The Urban Ecology Center is there and they already run youth programs and rent bikes out to the Community.

Membership

Join Metro and be sure to renew if your membership is expiring.

Swag (“Stuff We All Get”). Metro is currently taking pre-orders for 3 merchandise items. Proceeds from mech sales goes to our trails:

T-shirts
Carhartt stocking hat
Sweatshirt

New Board Nominees

1 Open Board Member at Large and Treasure position
Nominations are Open and we are taking nominations until Nov. 2nd:

o   Kevin Eccles was nominated.
o   Brent Railsback was nominated
o   Nick Meulemans was nominated
o   Ken Cole was nominated

Snow Grooming

Looking for folks to volunteer to operate snow dog
Will be grooming 3 trails: Pleasant Valley, Minooka and Heritage
Winter bike events in the works
Metro currently owns 2 snowdogs
Please contact Bryan Douglas at: douglasbd14@gmail.com or on Facebook if interested in joining Metro’s Snow Grooming Committee.

Meeting adjourned at 8:30 pm

Metro MTB Meeting Minutes - 7/28/2022

Melissa Clark — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 00:30:00 GMT

July 28, 2022 | 7: 30pm

Metro MTB Public Meeting & Kegel-Alpha 2.0 Opening

Wheel & Sprocket, Franklin

Mission Statement

Board Members

Chris Shay, Co-Chair

Dan Kutz, Treasurer

Melissa Clark, Secretary

Tom Hartman – not present

Isaac Olson- not present

Lindsay Carlson

Eric Hackbarth, Ozaukee County Representative – not present

Vote for Open Co-Chair Position: John Slawny voted in as new Metro Co-Chair

County Updates:

Minooka Trails

Gateway signage installed, re-directing trail entry through gateway.
Working on getting e-bikes allowed on the trail officially

Milwaukee County

Relationship well with the Parks Department

Kegel-Alpha 2.0 Update:

Original lap open 25 years ago. Realized that shortly after opening the that the trail that ran along the river was an issue as it often was flooded

Metro worked with the Parks Department, environmental analysis, and County Supervisors to get the revised lap open.
Downhill switchback were professional machine built by Gravity Logic when the Rock was looking at building a downhill MTB park
Trails are not done. We are getting feedback. We will be adding berms.

Doyne Park, 9-hole golf course which is now closed. County currently getting input for what to do with the park. Would be a great location for a bike park. Can read more here:

mkecountyparks.org/future-of-doyne-park.

Ozaukee County

Storage shed installed
Trails are in good shape

Washington Co

$20,900 forecasted contributions in 2023 for Mountain Bike trails from the County.

Heritage:

Single use, one-directional trail.
Fantastic relationship w/ Washington Co.
Opened Jump Line flow Trail on May 5th
New News:
Double Dragon extended another .5 mile on July 3^rd
Added another drop
Added 9+ jumps
Now total of 16 jump
New Section of trail opened last night back to the parking lot.
What’s Next? A Continuous jumpline along blue to the south. Mandatory progressive jumps, no ride around.
Heritage is fundraising priority this year

Treasure/ Budget Update: Most of this year’s expenditures are supporting Heritage, Snowdog and Insurance.

New Award:

Volunteer of the Year of Award 2021 awarded to James Mattox!
Introducing the Inaugural Volunteer Year Award, named after Marty Weigel. We awarded Marty Weigel with Metro MTB’s Lifetime Volunteer Award!

Meeting adjourned at 8:30 pm

Metro MTB Meeting Minutes - 5/25/2022

Melissa Clark — Thu, 26 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

May 25, 2022 | 7: 00pm

Metro MTB Public Meeting

Ray’s in Tosa

4 Members in attendance

Mission Statement: Metro Mountain Bikers is a non-profit, volunteer organization dedicated to safeguarding the future of mountain biking through the preservation and promotion of responsible off-road bicycling opportunities. Which includes the education, sponsoring events, trail construction, and trail maintenance.

Board Members

Chris Shay, Co-Chair

Dan Kutz, Treasurer

Melissa Clark, Secretary

Tom Hartman – not present

Isaac Olson- not present

Lindsay Carlson

Eric Hackbarth, Ozaukee County Representative – not present

County Updates:

Minooka Trails

o Trail head signage has been installed
o Metro Storage shed is in progress
o Metro communicated to Waukesha County Parks Department that we are not able to fund a parking lot at Minooka as previously agreed to. The Club targets raising $50,000 annually and a $200,000+ expenditure would preclude any trail development for about four years.

Milwaukee County

Oak hill 4 is completed. Signage will be coming in next couple of weeks
Kegel-Alpha
Scheduled works days to be announced.
3-hour works days, Saturday workdays starting at 1pm
Kegel-Alpha trail extension should be completed this weekend
Eagle Scout signage is ordered; signage install should happen in June. Eagle Scout Go-Fund me to be up and shared soon.
There’s only a few Milwaukee Co trails: Kegel-Alpha, Tosa and River Glen. All multi-use.
New Facebook group BIPOC of MTBers (now renamed MKE Urban MTB Connection) working to bring trails to more urban locations. Metro made a major push for Milwaukee River Trails years ago. Lots of tough obstacles. May be worth a revisit now.
Parks department announced they’re closing the golf course at Doyne Park. Milwaukee Co is seeking input on future use. Great spot for a multi-sport park including MTB, BMX, cyclocross and pump track. Central urban location may help with previous topic.

Ozaukee County

Storage shed installed
Trails are in good shape

Heritage Trails

If you haven’t been up to Heritage Trails, get up and ride the trails! The County relationships has been great! Mountain Biking is the #1 priority for Heritage Trail Park. Heritage has SE Wisconsin’s first flow trails and jumps.

We just opened the new Black Line, Double Dragon. The new flow trail getting all the attention which has 7 jumps and 4 drops!

What’s coming up this year?

Adding another ¾ of a mile this year to Double Dragon
Adding dedicated jump line
Take on me, steep decent will get a bi-pass bridge
Training features- on agenda to get added built like the wood features borrowed from Pleasant Valley for the International Women’s MTB Day Event
Winter grooming, adding bi-passes for the steepest assent and decent for winter groomed trails.

Thanks to Washington County Parks! Their Parks are 100% park admissions passes funded, zero tax dollars go the Parks.

Plan is to have our trails at Heritage built out in the next 1-2 years. Goal of Club, what is next after Heritage is built out? Where do we want to build trails next? What Counties?

Question about liability? Drops?

Safety is our Club’s #1 Mission. We were not allowed to open the trail until we had emergency markers every 8th of mile. Every jump had to be properly signed with bypasses. Part of it is us educating others, educating the community. County has the liability. The state of Wisconsin has recreational liability statutes. Metro doesn’t operate the trail; we donate to build and maintain the trails.

Treasure/ Budget Update:

Larger 2022 expenses:

Liability insurance
Heritage Trail Development
Gateway signage at the trail heads

Revenue

Donations double where we were last year, largely in-part of the second Snowdog purchase this year
Membership is essentially flat

International Women’s Day Event at Heritage: Great turn out! 71 riders, 15 volunteers. Had 7 join Metro MTB at the event!

Website Refresh: (see attached presentation showcasing website updates!)

Announcing our 2021 Trail Fairies! (see attached presentation) Trail Fairy awards go to Volunteers that put in at least 20 hours for the year. Thanks for all 200+ trail volunteers for 2021!

Grand Total for Volunteer hours for 2021: 4,408 hours = $125,796 in value!!

How can YOU help Metro Mountain Bikers?

Open co-chair position
Social media coordinator
Workday trail volunteers and/ or workday support (help with refreshments, food for volunteers)
Social events
Grant writing
Legal advice
Equipment operators, skilled excavators

Open position: Co-Chair position is currently open. Voting will occur at our next Public Meeting in July. Please send nominations to any Metro Board Member.

Meeting adjourned at 8:20 pm

Metro MTB Meeting Minutes - 2/3/22

Wed, 25 May 2022 00:00:50 GMT

Mission Statement

Board Members

Chris Shay, Co-Chair

Dan Kutz, Treasurer - virtual

Melissa Clark, Secretary

Isaac Olson – virtual

Tom Hartman

Lindsay Carlson

Eric Hackbarth – OCMB

Attendance: 25 in person + 3 Virtual

Minooka Update- Ron Stawicki

Snow has melted, trails currently icy, be sure to have studs. Hoping to schedule 6 trail work days this year. May host another clean-up work day before the trails open, early spring, to get folks amped up for year. If we have enough time after our trail work days, we may look at adding a couple of new features.

Be sure to have a Waukesha County Parks pass. This year Waukesha County Parks is going by license plates and will ticket folks that come in after hours that don’t have a pass.

Questions/ Comments:

• Request to bring back the old trail exit. Not everyone wants to go back up and do that new last bit of trail extension that was added last year.

• Can we add “an upper, upper powerline berms”? NICA does this for their trail races.

Event Updates: Melissa Clark

Photo slide show presented, attached.

Hugh Jass New Fane Race Snow Grooming

Waukesha Janboree Fat Bike Demo: Great turn out. We had about 80-100 folks out to demo fat bikes. Some folks had never been to Minooka Park before!

Pleasant Valley Fat Bike Ride: Good turnout of about 30 riders. Fermentorium Brewing was there offering beer samples.

Snow dog – Bryan Douglas

We have the second snow dog! See attachment for photos #SnowDog2022

Heritage Update – John Slawny

Digital presentation presented, attached

We are excited to bring in machine groomed modern trails to the area! Last year’s volunteer efforts have a combined value of over $60,000! Metro is working on a RTC DNR grant asking for $86,000 grant for further trail development and expansions. Opening of the flow trail is pending installation of signage. Official Opening Event will likely be in June or July to ensure trails will be dry and open. Trail work days cadence typically alternates Saturdays and Sunday.

2022‘s projects include the flow trail return line and bike park

Other future projects:

• Green line, “experiential features”. 10’ of armored climbed. Putting in skinny bridge.

Milwaukee County update – Marty Weigel

Oak Hill 4, built last year, will be finished this week. Typically trail work starts around April, figure 4 more trail work days.

Kegel-Alpha Trail: Kegel-Alpha 2.0 was essentially approved 2 years ago and trail work will begin this spring.

Reminder that all Milwaukee Co trails all need to be non-directional and multi-use trails.

Other Updates:

Third Space Brewing wants to do an event in the city. Reach out to Bryan Douglas on Facebook if you’d like to be involved in planning an event.

Metro is in need of a Volunteer Coordinator to track all our volunteer hours for the year. We need Operational Directors for the Milwaukee Co Trails.

Meeting adjourned at 8:20pm

Here is a complete PDF containing presentation materials as well.

https://metromountainbikers.com/resources/meetings/2022_Feb%203%20Metro%20MTB%20Meeting.pdf

We need another groomer!

Metro MTB — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 21:39:00 GMT

Demand is high for grooming our trails and it's tough to cover our widespread system with one machine. We're now raising funds for another SnowDog. Please check out the project page to donate!

October Metro Meeting Minutes

Beth Kazinski — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 16:42:14 GMT

October 26^th 2021 @ 7pm

Metro Meeting

Benno’s – West Allis

22 Members in attendance

Dave opened the meeting by reading our mission statement and introduction of Board members

Mission Statement

Introduction of Board Members

James Mattox, Chair (Absent)

Ron Stawicki, Member at Large

Dave Burch, Co-Chair

Isaac Olson, Member at Large (Absent)

Dan Kutz, Treasurer (Absent)

Chris McArdle, Member at Large

Beth Kazinski, Secretary

Election of New Board Members

Next Election meeting will be here at Benno’s on November 30^th here at Benno’s for 2022 positions. Positions available: Co-Chair, Secretary, and 2 Member at Large positions.

We would like to accept the nominations for the following positions. Everyone to say a few words on who they are, their background, and why they want to be on the board.

· Co-Chair - Chris Shay
· Secretary - Melissa Clark
· Member at Large – Bryan Douglas
· Member at Large – Tom Hartman

Floor opened for additional nominations. Bryan nominated Lindsay Carlson for Member at Large and she excepted via text message.

Treasurer Update:

Dan was not present to give update. Dave touched on a few key points of the financial report. One was membership at 163. Discussion on how to get membership numbers up. Ideas surrounding getting awareness out there, visibility, pride in belonging, supporting community, NICA, and social events. Trail pages are very visible, but Metro page is not.

Pleasant Valley and Port Washington Trail Update – Eric Hackbarth

Pleasant Valley:

The 5x6 storage shed is finally purchased and will be assembled and installed soon. Got both county and city to approve. It’s a small storage shed and testing to see if it will be vandalized – hoping not.

They will also be looking for new sponsor opportunities on their sign/board. This is done yearly.

The last several weeks a bunch more of the problem wet areas on the green loop have been patched and graded so water will run off the trail. So far, they are working well. These added patches to several similar patches from last year, the green loop is becoming much more sustainable. One more round of patching is planned for the beginning of November. A workday will be announced on the Pleasant Valley Facebook group.

Port trails:

Update will be provided on at the next meeting.

Milwaukee County Parks Update – Dave & Marty

Kegel 2.0 workdays won’t be until spring. Final review by parks is in December which means it’s too late start dirt work. Meantime, workdays are happening at Oak Hill 4. Watch the page for dates. Marty is going to be stepping down as Milwaukee County Trail Coordinator next year and we will need someone to step in for him. Trails are Kegel/Alpha, Tosa system, and River Glen. If anyone is interested, please let the Board or Marty know.

Heritage Trail Update - Chris Shay/John Slawny

Green loop is done! It is about 1 mile of additional trail to the blue that is out there. Flow trail is complete just waiting on signage before the Park will allow it to open. Dirt has been delivered for the jump park. All the take-offs will be wooden ramps to help with maintaining them. The Grand opening will be in Spring of 2022. The trail is going to have an 80’s theme. The Green loop will be named “Fraggle Rock”; Blue Trail will be “Take On Me”; and jump line is “Double Dragon”. There will be a phase 2 which will include more miles as a stacked loop.

Minooka Park Project Update - Ron

Workdays are in process. Completed 4 already in October with at least one more in Nov. Last workday we will have a cook-out. We’ve been building up the berms and this coming weekend we will be taking on the powerline berms.

We are still working with the park to put in a new storage shed to keep the new tools in.

Fat Bike Grooming – Bryan

Bryan is working on new trailer. Building sides so they can cover the machine when in route to trails. Snow and salt not good for the machine. Anyone have ¾ inch plywood they would like to donate to the build? If so see Bryan Douglas. It would be nice if we had another snow dog, one for northern trails and one for Minooka or southern trails. There is a lot involved coordinating between the 3 trail systems. Should start thinking about fundraising for one either for this year or next.

Social Events/Rides

Soliciting the group for ideas of what they would like to see for social rides/events. Suggestion to bring odd Tuesday rides back. Maybe a weekend group ride for those that aren’t fans of night riding. Maybe Sunday late morning. Rides/social events should be schedules for each trail. Will work on dates and reach out for group ride leaders at different trails.

Become a member or donate to your local trails at www.metromountainbikers.com

Meeting adjourned 8:39pm

August Metro Meeting Minutes

Beth Kazinski — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 01:45:07 GMT

August 24^th 2021 7pm

Raised Grain - Waukesha

28 Members in attendance

Ron opened the meeting

Mission Statement

Introduction of Board Members

James Mattox, Chair - absent

Ron Stawicki, Member at Large

Dave Burch, Co-Chair - absent

Isaac Olson, Member at Large - absent

Dan Kutz, Treasurer

Chris McArdle, Member at Large - absent

Beth Kazinski, Secretary

Eric Hackbarth – OCMB

Election of New Board Members

Next Election this November 2021 for 2022 positions at Benno’s in West Allis. If you are interested in a Board position, please contact the below individuals for more details.

Positions up for renewal

Co-Chair ( Dave will move to Chair)
Beth Kazinski, Secretary
Ron Stawicki, Member at Large
Chris McArdle, Member at Large

Melissa Clark is interested in Secretary position. Melissa brings her knowledge of architect, design and fundraising. She will certainly be a welcome addition to the Metro Board.

Treasurer Update – Dan Kutz

Dan gave us a quick snapshot of Club’s overall financial standing. Recent expenses include the gateway sign at Minooka and container at Heritage. We have 165 active members. Down slightly form June. Donate to your local trails at www.metromountainbikers.com

Milwaukee County Parks Update - Marty

Light mowing and trimming has been taking place at Tosa and in pretty good shape.

Alpha is moving forward. The neighbors have cleared their personal belongings from the Parks property, and we are set to walk it on Wednesday. Marty, Jessica, and I believe a naturalist will be walking to make sure the new proposed trail does not get closer to the houses than the hiking trail. Its about 10% of the system that is holding us up. We have about 40% of the 2.0 trail to complete. Should need about 10 workdays to complete. Hoping to have 5 to 10 people. Looking at Sundays & Mondays. So please watch FB for scheduled days to volunteer. He is also looking to have NICA kids volunteer as well. An Eagle Scout is working on the signage. He may call on us to help him with funding & work.

Oak Hill 4 is coming out of its 3 season review this Fall. We will have to develop a new construction plan most likely for next year. Finishing up Alpha will be the goal this year.

Minooka Park Project Update - Ron

We want to thank the Collectivo team for trimming and mowing at Minooka before the WORS race. The event was well attended, it was a positive event for the Park. We should be picking up workdays again this fall to fix some areas and berms. Looking at October and November most likely weekends.

Pleasant Valley and Port Washington Trail Update- Eric Hackbarth

Pleasant Valley: If you haven’t seen it yet, they added a new tabletop yesterday to the skills area. The goal is to replace the old features including seesaws, skinnies, tabletops…. they are for beginner to intermediate riders to help them progress. They have 5 NICA teams that practice there so they are getting used.

They put in a proposal to the Parks to install a small shed for tools. Its only 6x8 steel shed so worried a bit about vandalism, so its going to be a test run. They will have some workdays coming in September for trimming.

Port: There is about 2 miles of trail there currently. There was a bridge that connected it to more trails across a creek but with heavy rains a few years back it washed away and cause major flooding downstream. The Park doesn’t want it to happen again so trying to come up with ideas to cross the creek. It’s typically only 5 to 6 inches of water so looking at armoring the bottom. Until then, enjoy the trails that are their and maybe combine it with Pleasant Valley for a day trip.

Heritage Trail Update – John Slawny

If you haven’t already, COME OUT! There’s lots of parking too! There are over 500 hours of volunteer work not including what James has put in. The current blue loop is in real good shape and the flow is almost done. Green is halfway done and should be ready in September. Jump Park will be in October. The Park should have the dirt dropped off then so we can continue building the jumps. The Metro sign is going in NOW – thank you Adam! We also had over 5 tons of stone dropped off from members. Things are moving along, and the Park has been a great partner of ours and lets us build what we want. The photo shoot this past weekend went well and park will be using to promote the trails. Park entrance fee is $5 daily or $40 annually. If you are doing volunteer work the park waives the daily entrance fee.

NICA Update

Workdays for NICA kids. They want to help. Mike Seiler leads the NICA Teen Trail Corps and wants to get the kids out helping wherever they can. Please bring projects to him and he will get them out to the NICA coaches. He can be reached at teentrailcorps@wisonsinmtb.org

Volunteer Hours – Dave Cullberson

Dave was not present for an update

Old Business

Wednesday night races – Stewart not present for an update

New Business

No new business

Meeting adjourned 7:48pm

June Metro Meeting Minutes

Beth Kazinski — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 12:21:29 GMT

June 15^th 2021 7pm

Wheel & Sprocket - Franklin

28 Members in attendance

Mission Statement

Introduction of Board Members

James Mattox, Chair - absent Ron Stawicki, Member at Large

Dave Burch, Co-Chair Isaac Olson, Member at Large

Dan Kutz, Treasurer Chris McArdle, Member at Large - absent

Beth Kazinski, Secretary Eric Hackbarth – OCMB - absent

Election of New Board Members

Next Election this November 2021 for 2022 positions
If you are interested in a Board position, please contact the below individuals for more details.
Positions up for renewal

Co-Chair ( Dave will move to Chair)
Beth Kazinski, Secretary
Ron Stawicki, Member at Large
Chris McArdle, Member at Large

Treasurer Update – Dan Kutz

173 Paid Members
Working on an Annual Budget to layout yearly expenditures and incorporate Heritage & Minooka builds.
Upcoming Expenditures approved in last Board meeting:

$1000 (approx. 10) for new tools. A lot of volunteers, not enough tools. Thanks Volunteers!!
$2800 for new Container and painting for Minooka, old shed was broken into.

Donate to your local trails at www.metromountainbikers.com

Milwaukee County Parks Update - Dave Burch

MKE Trail Coordinator, Jessica Wineberg was not able to make it but we are working on having her attend our meetings, so she has a better understanding of our mission and the enthusiasm of our membership to have local trails. We would like a better relationship with MKE.
Parks Amendment / Right of Entry Permit has been fully approved and we are good until next year when we need to re-apply. The process should be smoother next year now that we have gone through the process and now what to do and what to expect.
Fall of next year the 3 season review should be completed by Parks
Marty was not present to let us know when Alpha 2.0 workdays will resume. Keep an eye out on FB page for updates.

Heritage Trail Update - Chris Shay

Chris had a great PowerPoint presentation for us – pictures included as well as number of volunteer hours – well over 500 already! It included a new proposed budget for phase one.
Scheduled workdays will be posted as usual. Thank you to all the volunteers!!!
Link to presentation. Heritage Trails - Slinger WI Project Update - Google Slides

Minooka Park Project Update -Dave Burch

Meeting with County – No update from James. However, status was given to the Parks with an estimated time frame for staging area to be completed in late Fall of 2022 or Spring of 2023. Fundraising has been a challenge due to Covid.

Pleasant Valley and Port Washington Trail Update- Eric Hackbarth

Heads up – Local NICA practices will be starting this coming Tuesday and Thursday. Teams from Cedarburg, Grafton, Mequon, Port Washington & Washington County. They are particularly good at breaking up into groups and spreading out but keep in mind the parking lot and trails will be busy.

Volunteer Coordinator – Dave Cullbertson

Dave Cullbertson was not present to update on total volunteer hours year to date.
Please contact Dave with any hours that you have put in.
20 hours gets a Trail Fairy shirt. What color for last year???

NICA Update

Workdays for NICA kids. One was completed up at Heritage and one coming to Minooka soon.

Old Business

Wednesday Night Races – Stuart is willing to move forward but needs someone from Metro to assist in getting started. Insurance needs to be in place before we can move forward. Dan Kutz volunteer to help get started.
Social Event in May – Beth - We had 8 members that came out to Raised Grain in lieu of our social ride since Minooka was closed. Pizza, beer, and lots of talk on where we are all riding next. Thanks for coming out!

New Business

Milwaukee County Video Project. Collin Buth stepped up to put together a video for Metro to present and update Milwaukee County Parks on what we do and what we provide to the communities. Let’s start at Kegel-Alpha. Looking to get Marty to schedule a small workday to do some filming and discussion around sustainable trails. We need to make sure we get our message out to the county board members and community not just the Parks.
Membership Committee Chair. Josh Pollack stepped up to head our membership drive. Josh will work with the members of the board on ideas to drive membership.
Next Meeting Social Event, July 30^th at Heritage Trails. Look for the Metro Tent! The Park is having a beer garden and we will be hosting a ride on the new trails that will open with our Trail Guide John Slawny.

Meeting adjourned 8:09pm

April 2021 Metro Meeting

Beth Kazinski — Tue, 04 May 2021 14:29:15 GMT

April 2021 Metro Meeting

04/27/2021

Benno’s

West Allis, Wi

27 members in attendance

David did board introductions

Present: Absent:

James Mattox Chris McArdle

Dave Burch Isaac Olsen

Dan Kutz

Beth Kazinski

Ron Stawicki

Mission Statement

Elections:

November 2020 Elections were postponed due to Covid. Everyone please start thinking about participating and if you have any questions on what a particular position entails, just contact us. Positions up for election:

Co-Chair, Dave Burch will move into Chair position

Secretary, Beth Kazinski

Member at Large, Ron Stawicki

Member at Large, Chris McArdle

Financial Report – Dan Kutz

Club is in a strong position. $37,800

Insurance renewal this month of $3,142. There really is only one Company that insures clubs like us. We tried shopping around. This does include heavy equipment.

Membership is holding steady at 192 paid members. Up from last year

Donation of $75 from last year’s Banquet

Milwaukee County Parks Update – Marty & Dave

Kegel Alpha - Dave has been working on the MKE Right of Entry Permit that is required to be completed every year going forward. This gives Metro permission to maintain trails and signage in their parks. This was the first event that that halted the Kegel Alpha workdays. Dave has completed and submitted to MKE Parks. The second item was the bill presented by the county supervisors on behalf of the neighbors that boarder the park. The board voted and it did NOT pass 8-10. Close. We appreciate everyone who wrote their city officials on behalf on keeping the trails and how important they are to the communities.

We will be scheduling a meeting with the supervisors to walk the trails before we schedule more workdays to complete the new 2.0 project.

Eagle scout project on signage at Kegel Alpha will resume. We are hoping to have this done by June but TBD.

We also need to do an Annual Report on work completed and what we are planning for the coming year.

Suggestion of putting together a video to update county supervisors on what is happening at Alpha and other parks. Might be a better way to communicate then a typed letter that most likely doesn’t get read.

Tosa Trails. Watch for workdays coming on Oak Hill 3. Oak Hill 4 is going through its 3-season review with MKE Parks. Should be through in 2022. The Baja is being rebuilt again and Parks is aware. We are trying to get a bike park legitimized somewhere because there is certainly a want/need for it.

Minooka Park Update - James

Phase 1 – gateway sign. All the lumber is delivered and on site. The sign will be facing the new parking lot with trails behind it on the hill. We will be doing some clean up over the next couple of weeks and holes for the new sign should be in next week.

Dave has been working diligently on fundraising with local business to help fund the staging area. It will have 50 to 80 stalls much like the parking lot in area 5. Suburban Asphalt is donating the materials which will save us a lot of money. He is also working with local service clubs and Waukesha County community organizations. Remember we need additional parking before we can build out the bike park because there isn’t enough parking as it is. Park can’t fund the project for 10 years, so we needed to fundraise get the bike park in sooner.

Heritage Trail Update – James

Good news, it already has a parking lot! James with Shore Line Trails has been out rough cutting a trail already and soon will need to schedule workdays to do the finish work. Gavin McCloud has been out building the jump lines in the bike park section. We are hoping to open in August.

Future expansion will include 3 more miles of trail then connect to Glacial Hills. This is a 10-year plan.

OCMB Trails – Eric Hackbarth sent update

Pleasant Valley

Just completed switching out a 16ft length of the bridge over the creek on the advanced loop. It took a direct hit from a large, downed tree floating down the creek and was severely damaged. Repair successful and bridge is in good shape. Also, several other adding boardwalks will have work done to replace pieces starting to rot.
The log jump on the 2-way stretch on the intermediate loop was built up to a tabletop end of last year
The log jump on the 2-way stretch on the advanced loop is being built up to something similar. Work is in progress
Look for upgrades to the skills course pieces next to the kids loop by the shelter.

Port Trails

We have identified more potential new trail along the bluffs and will be requesting permission to flag and get approval to put in. Probably about a half mile segment. Overlooks the marina so it will be pretty.

We will be seeking approval to put a line of turfstone across the main creek crossing. This will help maintain a consistent surface to go across.
Eagle Scout Project. A local scout will be designing/building/installing a kiosk bulletin board at the trailhead at the Guenther park parking lot.

Fat Bike Grooming – Bryan Douglas, Chair

Thank you to everyone who helped groom and snowshoe. We are still deciding for next year if we should have snowshoeing at Minooka due to it NOT being a mutli-use trail. It sends the wrong message to those that are hiking that they can walk on the MTB trails. All other trails it definitely helped!

We do need to look at storage for the Snowdog at Minooka. It is a haul to get it from the barn to area 5. Something we need to discuss with the Park. We are also looking at transportation and upgrades for faster grooming process next year.

Heritage trails was a great add for this past season. CALL OUT! When purchasing a Washington County Sticker there is an option to donate to the MTB trail so please donate!!

Volunteer – Dave Cullbertson

We have a new Volunteer Coordinator Dave Cullbertson who was not present. Dave records hours and collects waivers. Make sure to send to him. The counties use these hours toward grants and donations.

With 20 volunteer hours you get a “trail fairy” shirt. So, send those hours in! We will have to review for 2020 and get shirts ordered.

Other Business

Marty asked about Wednesday Night Races. Stuart Scholz stepped up to run the event. It may not be every Wednesday and may or may not be traveling but we will have something. Dan Kutz volunteer to help Stuart when he can. Stay tuned!!! Need to talk to Wheel about insurance for the event.

Shed at Minooka was broken into, but nothing was stolen. We do need to replace but not sure if we should buy another shed or POD. Will be discussed at Board meeting and with Parks.

Next meeting will be a social meeting end of May.

8:59pm Meeting adjourned.

March Metro Meeting

Beth Kazinski — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 00:27:07 GMT

March 2020 Metro Meeting

03/10/2020

Beer Snobs

Hartland, Wi

18 members in attendance

Mission Statement

Introduction of Board

Present:

James Mattox

Dave Burch

Dan Kutz

Beth Kazinski

Ron Stawicki

Chris McArdle

Absent:

Isaac Olson

Membership Renewal

Membership renewals should be going out automatically. A year is from the date that you became a member. You can always go to the web-site www.metromountainbikers.com to check and see when your membership is up for renewal.

Trail Conditions/Maintenance

It seems to be working well updating the trail conditions on the Metro Facebook page and pushing to each group page. We will continue to do this through-out the summer. Trails are closed for spring thaw. Hopefully we can get out soon to walk the trails to see what maintenance needs to be done and if/when they would be rideable.

Milwaukee County had stated they didn’t have the resources to remove the large trees anymore, so we are trying to figure out what this means and if so then we will have to do it. We are looking for NICA to help do the trimming at the Tosa Trails since they seem to get overgrown quickly. Stay tuned and watch the specific trail pages workdays.

Signage

There was obviously a need to for fat bike signage at Minooka. This was the first year for grooming and people didn’t realize that the groomed trails were for bikes and not hiking. We certainly put enough out there so it should be obvious that its for bikes.

Minooka Park Update - James

James went over why we need to put in a Staging Area and not the park. Staging area is for educational and recreational activities including mountain biking. A parking lot is for cars.

Before the “Staging Area” goes in, Ron and James are working on the proposed plan on the new trail head and re-routes to give to the Park. There will be a lot of dirt work to start. They will be renting equipment for a weekend and will try to do as much machine work as possible but will need volunteers for manual work as well. It might be something that NICA can help with.

We will also need volunteers to help with the features from Little Switz. Right now, we are figuring out how to get them to the Park. We need to have the new trail head and features in before the Ribbon Cutting in June.

Dave is working on fundraising in the forms of County Grants, DNR, and Stewardship funds. Some of these grants leverage volunteers’ hours so make sure you get them into Chris Cooper! We will also approach the Kegel Foundation and Peoples for Bikes. If you are interested in fundraising, let Dave know he certainly can you our help.

We will also have a FAQ on our website to help Members with why and what is occurring with the fundraising projects.

Bike Expo

Bike expo is coming up and Chris has out on the website a sign-up sheet. You should be able to select the time/day you are able to work. The booth will be about the same as last year but with foam boards of each trail system that Darrin is currently working on. We probably won’t have the video playing this year. Hoping to get a spot by the fat bikes since we will have the groomer in the booth. We will also have the donation tube since we did raise $200 last year toward the groomer. Member ask if we could have laptop available for people to sign up. It can be something we can look at doing. We need to make sure we have WiFi available.

NICA

Practice starts in July with races in starting in September. Within their season we can let coaches know where and when trail work needs to be done. Chris C. has the document in Google Docs for each trail head to completed to let them know what needs to be work-on.

Grooming

Everyone agree it was grooming at Minooka and Pleasant Valley was awesome? It wasn’t easy getting through the single-track sections and it added on hours to the process, but it was certainly worth it.

We are working on extending out the exhaust system to move it away from the person running it. We did have a member step up that will do it for us.

We would like to have more grooming options but are limited by one machine and volunteer time. We are looking at Nagawaukee golf course for next year. Three to four options are max. We would have to pay off this machine before looking at purchasing another. We would like to expand but need to be smart about it.

Wick Field

Marty has been in touch with a small group that are looking for support in building trails behind Wick Field. They have started on their own already. The land is about 14 acres with 90’ vertical slope. They are calling it Hobo Hills. The land is property of the City of Milwaukee. They don’t have written approval to develop the property but a verbal interest in allowing MTB trails there. The Alderman is on board. They would like to get help from Metro on building out trails and maybe putting in some features and put together a master plan. Marty is trying to get a meeting together with them and our board members to discuss opportunity. Would be helpful for us to walk the property.

James Mattox motioned to allow the board to explore possibility participating in developing and maximizing the use of the property for MTB trials. 2^nd by Dan Kutz, all board members present voted yes. No Nays. Motion carried.

Open Floor

Membership appreciation banquet is this Sunday at Raised Grain. We’ll be having Pizza and door prizes. This is a free event for Members Only.

Charlie, member in attendance, brought up that Mt. Olympia in Oconomowoc is looking at putting MTB down hill trails on the hill. No metro involvement but exciting to hear, nonetheless.

Heritage trails is still moving along but no additional update. Still waiting for the ground to thaw before any work can start. Looking to have trails done in July.

Wednesday night races - James is working with an individual who is interested in running the Wednesday night races. He has a racing club in Milwaukee – not mtb. His main reason for wanting to do this is to keep kids on bikes. Outside of WORS there really isn’t any other races for the kids to participate in. James did explain the partnership with Wheel & Sprocket, and he is fine with that. It would still be promoted as a Metro Event. Would like to incorporate all 3 trail systems and have an overall series winner. We would give it one year and see how it goes. Still need to finalize some details and will go to the board.

Meeting adjourned 8:34pm

January 2020 Metro Meeting Minutes

Beth Kazinski — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 00:50:16 GMT

January 2020 Metro Meeting

01/14/2020

Café De Arts

Waukesha, Wi

19 members in attendance

James did board introductions and turned the meeting over to Dave Burch our new Co-Chair

Mission Statement

Financial Report – Dan Kutz was not present

James touched base from our board meeting regarding total funds in the bank account. Around $27k and we still have some donations for the groomer to add. We still need about $2500 in donations to finish paying off the groomer and added maintenance costs. You can donate on Metro’s site and receive a receipt. We do have some projects coming up but won’t require much funding. We don’t have any requirements to liquidate funds but if we went over $100k in the account we would be required to do annual reporting.

Membership is holding steady around 250 members, up about 2%

Some ideas were given for adding members since there are over 1200 people that follow Minooka page alone. The thought is to pool the individuals on each page to see why they aren’t members and what they are looking for in order to become one.

Leadership (Board) Meeting Update

James gave the members a brief update from our recent board meeting. Some of the items discussed were:

· Minooka Park Project – discussed strategy to complete and formed a fundraising committee

· Trail signage – we want to have all trail systems with consistent signage and are looking to start with Glacial Blue. Of course, we are working on a design to give to the landowners for their approval. It would be great for riders to have a sense of direction at Glacial Blue. Make your own adventure without getting lost.

· E-Bikes – discussed the boards stance on allowing off-road e-bikes on trails. We were all for it if it’s only Class 1 which is pedal assist with max 20mph.

· New Trail in Washington County – Heritage Park. As you may recall, 2yrs ago the park approached us about building trails. James and Ron walked the property and it’s viable for trails. It was put on hold because they wanted to build a lake first but about 3 weeks ago the park came back to us and the lake is out. They want to move forward right away with the trails. Board voted to add this new project as a Metro trail. James will head the project. The Park has $12k earmarked toward the trails and Gavin (Little Switz build crew) is going to donate his time and equipment to build flow trails with “features”. Project looking to be completed this summer.

· Update on Milwaukee Underpass Project - Both Marty and James have been in these meetings and they are moving ahead with this project. It is more than just a pump track and will allow for other activities. The “Friends of the Underpass” have asked us to help with future maintenance and possibly using our 501c3 to take donations. The board agreed if it is simple maintenance and not replacing the asphalt pump track down the road. Marty believes the attorneys will more than likely set up their own non-profit and possibly hire landscaping company to do maintenance. But we certainly will help where we can. Exciting to know this thing really has legs.

Alpha Trail Update - Marty

Marty gave an update on the last meetings he had with Milwaukee County Parks. However, the county recently decided to have a “3 season rule” where any new projects would not be looked at for 3 seasons. So, all the flagging we did and then the route they decided on (including the hiking trails) are now on hold (again) for 3 seasons. They won’t look at Alpha again until Nov of 2020. They also said they no longer have the resources to chainsaw fallen trees on any of the MTB Trails including Tosa. It is apparent that MKE County Parks is not interested in building more MTB trails, so we as aboard have decided to table all Milwaukee projects. We will continue to maintain the trails we currently have but will not use our volunteers time to push for new trails until we can find out what the county’s concerns are with mountain biking. James and Dave are scheduling a meeting with Milwaukee County Parks to discuss further.

Minooka Park Update - James

Minooka project is fully approved and looking to have new trails to ride June. Of course, spring is always questionable but looking to have a tiller and 2 compactors cutting in the flagged re-routes our volunteers cut in last fall. This includes the new trail head! We are planning on putting in a wall ride and other features donated by Little Switz.

Once that is complete, we then need to focus on putting in the 60-stall parking lot with sidewalk to the bathrooms. James is already talking with individuals with connections to contractors and looking to see what we can have donated. Dave is working on the fundraising for the now “Staging Area Project”. This opens the project to not just a parking lot but more of an educational area for users. Dave is hoping to have a draft of the project at the next meeting.

Once the staging area is complete, we are fundraising to have a contractor come in and build out the hill side!

Dave Burch is the Chair of our Fundraising Committee so if you are interested in helping, please contact Dave.

Fat Bike Grooming – Bryan Douglas, Chair

Ron thanked the grooming crew for getting out and grooming all the trails and keeping their schedules flexible and follow the snow. We are working on options to better communicate when trails are open and closed. Minooka is controlled by the Park, they consult us but ultimately it’s up to them. If someone is out riding when they shouldn’t, please don’t be mean but rather use it to educate them on groomed trails. Don’t assume they know.

If you like the groomed trails, don’t forget to donate on the Metro site to keeps this project moving ahead!

Volunteer Hours

Chris Cooper has added the 2020 Volunteer Spreadsheet to the Metro Mountain Bikers Page for volunteer hours to be added. If you have any 2019 hours to add, please do so before next week. Chris will be locking out the 2019 one after next week. We had 930.75 volunteer hours logged for 2019!!! Thank you to all our volunteers! You can email your hours to Chris Cooper at cooper4768@hotmail.com Use subject line “Volunteer Hours”

NICA Trail Work

Chris Cooper is the Metro Liaison to NICA in communicating trail needs and scheduling maintenance days for NICA teams. We will certainly look forward to having the extra hands this spring!

New Business

Marty asked about Wednesday Night Races. We are still where we were last year, waiting for someone to step up on run it. Maybe we can look at a timing system to help but we still need a point of contact.

Bike Expo. YES metro will have a booth with the Groomer in it. We are also looking at revamping the look and making it “brighter”. We want to be seen! Maps off all the trails, pics of riders, shredding videos, etc…..We want people to come in and ask who we are. We will need enthusiastic mountain bikers to help us spread that excitement!

Beth Kazinski has stepped up to file the Social Media position. She will be working with James to get a marketing strategy going.

Next meeting in February 11^th. It is a social meeting. We are looking at a night ride at Minooka followed by Raised Grain. Stay tuned!

8:29pm Meeting adjourned.

November 2019 Metro Meeting Minutes

Beth Kazinski — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 16:40:02 GMT

November 2019 Metro Meeting

11/12/19

Bennos’

West Allis, Wi

36 members in attendance

Mission Statement

Introduction of Board

Financial Report – Dan Kutz

Refer to spreadsheet handout.

Club has a positive net cash flow.

Changing system for member payments. Paypal’s fees are increasing so will move to Wild Apricot’s payment system. Isaac was making the necessary changes and members should be able to renew their memberships without an issue.

Alpha Trail Update

Marty is at a council meeting so not present to give an update. However, James did share that metro members showed up in force again at the public meeting in support of mountain bike trails. There are some hurdles to overcome still but looking at spring to push for more trails at Alpha. Remember we are looking at making the hiking trails, multi-use and allowing mountain biking. We are making headwinds with the municipalities.

Minooka Park Update - James

Minooka project is fully approved, and contract is signed and in our hands! It includes Fat Bike Grooming at Minooka. Huge win and a long time coming but it’s here. We do need to submit a grooming plan to have approved.

There will be parts of the blue where the groomer will not fit but you are still able to ride. Feel free to snowshoe these areas if you wish.

The plan also includes the use of machinery to build out phase 3. Phase 3 includes the build out of the hill with features donated by Little Switz. We are talking a 15ft wall ride people!

Question was asked if there were any hooks or conditions in the contract that we would be held up against. James stated no except the one for building the parking lot because there isn’t enough parking in Area 5 now and with the addition of phase 3 the park expects more users and there isn’t any more room in current area to accommodate.

There is a major shift in the county parks attitude toward mountain biking and it is included in the master parks plans for the county. The parks have never sold so many out of state passes then they have and it’s because of the mountain biking. We bring in almost as much as the dog park.

Fat Bike Grooming – Bryan Douglas, Chair

Sunday at Minooka 9am the fat bike committee is getting together for their first meeting to figure out where they can and cannot go with the groomer as well as develop safety plans. So if you are on the committee be there. Right now, we have permission to groom Minooka and Pleasant Valley. We are working on a 3^rd location – hoping Negawaukee golf course. The county is open to grooming since it’s just the golf course. The nice thing is they don’t have dog walkers here. We are going to keep it to 3 locations this year so we can get the system down and running smoothly before we think of adding anymore. We want quality trails over quantity. If you have questions or interested in being on the committee just contact Bryan.

Volunteer Hours

With all the new opportunities coming our way there will be a lot of volunteer hours that need to be counted. We send these hours to the counties and they use when applying for special projects. It is important to show involvement in the club and giving back to the community. Snowshoeing counts too! If you go out to do any volunteer work as a group, designate one person to report the hours for all who showed up. You can email your hours to Chris Cooper at cooper4768@hotmail.com Use subject “Volunteer Hours”

NICA Trail Work

Thank you to all the coaches that showed up tonight, we are so excited to have the NICA teams involved in Metro. NICA has a program where the kids can give back to the trail systems that they use. We welcome the additional trail hands and Chris Cooper will help organize with the groups (15 NICA Teams in the Metro area) since he is the Volunteer Coordinator.

Metro does have an age limitation on our insurance which didn’t allow the Kids to participate regardless of their enthusiasm to do so. NICA has the insurance coverage under this program for the Kids so we should all be covered.

Steve, NICA Coach present suggested having a designated NICA liaison between them and the Club. Congrats Steve that this now you! Seriously though, yes, it is a good idea and to please discuss further with James.

Board Positions

Tonight’s the night to Vote or consider running for a position!

Positions available for 2020:

· Co-Chair (open) 1 year co-chair then 2 year chair

· Social Chair (open)

· Member at Large (Isaac Olson) 2 year term

· Secretary (Beth Kazinski) 2 year term

James described the details of each position available and opened the floor to additional nominations. Dave Burch stepped up for Co-Chair and name added to the ballot. Voting remained open for an hour. Get ballots back to Secretary to be counted.

We had 23 voting members present. We encourage those in attendance who aren’t currently members to consider joining. All membership dollars go back to YOUR local trails.

Open Floor

Ron presented check to Metro for $100 from the last Bike-Sha. Thank you to Dan at Magellan’s on Main St for the Pizza donation as well as everyone who came out to ride and donate. Stay tuned for the next one!

8:02pm Meeting adjourned.

Election Results

Dave Burch, Co-Chair

James Mattox, Social Chair

Member at Large, Isaac Olson

Secretary, Beth Kazinski

Introducing your board and committee chairs for 2020!

Board

James Mattox, Chair

Dave Burch, Co-Chair

Beth Kazinski, Secretary

Dan Kutz, Treasurer

Ron Stawicki, Member at Large

Isaac Olson, Member at Large

Chris McArdle, Member at Large

Committee Chairs

Darrin Jaeger, Social Media Chair

Chris Cooper, Volunteer Coordinator

James Mattox, Social Events Chair

Bryan Douglas, Fat Bike Grooming Committee Chair

James Mattox & Ron Stawicki, Minooka Committee Chairs

Marty Weigel, Alpha Committee Chair

September Metro Meeting Minutes

Beth Kazinski — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 22:58:11 GMT

September 2019 Metro Meeting

9/10/19

Bennos’

West Allis, Wi

19 members in attendance

Introduction of Board

Mission Statement

Minooka Park Update - James

Minooka project is fully approved just waiting for contract to be signed at next executive committee meeting. This should be in late October. There were no objections during the county parks meeting so should go through no issues.

County fully approved our plan which included reroutes with donated Little Switz features on the hillside! Also includes new trailhead, parking lot, hang-out area, etc. The contract waiting to be signed also includes the use of heavy equipment which is a big win! Note, we are not held responsible for building the parking lot if we are not able to raise the funds.

Watch for invites for trail workdays!!

County is also allowing us to place a storage shed behind the bathhouse at Area 5 so we don’t have to keep dropping off and picking up equipment at someone’s house.

Waukesha Freeman interview gave us more exposure and we should capitalize on this with fundraising efforts to local business…maybe asphalt companies???? We’ll need to start putting together a Fundraising Committee.

Alpha Trial Update – Marty

Marty and Harold are working with Jessica the Milwaukee County Trails Coordinator. We are trying to protect the downhill run. The naturist shut down the inner loop we were looking for; however, they are going to sanction the use of the hiking trail for mountain biking –it will become a multi-use trail. This is for the root river parkway only. The river line will still be there if its dry enough to use.

Marty and Harold did walk the property and are suggesting to the trail’s coordinator the area behind the archery range for additional single track. We do have to close some trail but gaining just a bit more than we are losing.

There will be a public meeting regarding making the hiking trail multi us and we do expect some push back from hikers so we need MOUNTAIN BIKERS to show up in force on our behalf. Meeting is scheduled for Thursday October 10^th at the Ross Lodge from 4pm to 7pm.

James will have Darin send out a post via social media and email.

Fat Bike Grooming – Brian Douglas, Chair

Everyone should have received an email form regarding what they would like to see for grooming. Where? Which Trails? Who is interested in being on the Fat Bike Committee?

We will need people to help move the equipment and groom the trails. We will also need individuals to help coordinate grooming schedule once we have a few places to groom. The open/close for trails will be on Metro website.

We do have a place in Cedarburg to store the equipment and James donated the use of his snowmobile trailer to move the groomer. It is small enough for a car with a hitch to pull.

Feedback from the returned responses we’ve received so far, Pleasant Valley trail came up in 75% of those responses. We will also start with county golf courses. Of course, everyone would like to see Minooka on that list. Please complete the form and send back with your suggestions. Our goal is to start with 3 places to groom.

Membership – Goal is still 1000.

We had 10 new members in the last 30 days.

· Metro 118

· GEARS 19

· OCMB 17

We had small flyers printed to hand out. The flyers ask riders to join Metro and support our trail systems. Please take a stack and hand out whenever you can.

Volunteer Hours

Board Positions

Voting will take place for the new Board Positions this November so if you are interested place email Metro.

Positions that are coming up:

· Co-Chair

· Social Chair

· Member at Large (Isaac Olson)

· Secretary

Open Floor

Ron presented check to Metro for $150 from the last Bike-Sha. Thank you to Dan at Magellan’s on Main St for the Pizza and beer donation as well as everyone who came out to ride and donate. Stay tuned for the next one!

Eric Hackbarth gave an update for OCMB. The Port Washington short trail that washed away and then the city was using to dump debris on is now a trail again. They have been working hard re-creating the trail all summer long and is better than what it used to be. They just finished a ridable 2mile loop so check the OCMB page and go ride it in!!! Exciting to have more trail to ride!

A plus to note that River Glen Trail has been open a lot his year although the Mountain Bike stickers on the sign keep disappearing. Hmmm

Today’s 50/50 raffle donating $35 back to the Club.

Meeting adjourned.

May 2019 Metro Meeting Minutes

Beth Kazinski — Mon, 20 May 2019 22:08:48 GMT

May 2019 Metro Meeting

5/14/19 at 7:12pm

Café De Arts

Waukesha, WI

24 members in attendance

James opened meeting at 7:12pm

Introduction of the Board

Mission Statement

Quarterly Financial Update

Dan – Treasurer presented financial report for Metro, GEARS and OCMB accounts. Refer to Handout

Insurance was renewed for the club and now includes equipment use.

Fat Bike Grooming

Dan Douglas volunteered to be Chair of this committee. He will be responsible for setting up committee and organization. If you are interested you can contact Dan or Metro.

The committee will be responsible for:

· communication with area trails and golf courses for grooming

· communicating to community trail conditions

· transporting the equipment

· equipment maintenance

· Fundraising

Update on Trail Projects

Minooka Park

James has had several meetings with the Park and have a strong partnership going. Phase 3 that we originally were in discussion on is no longer an option due to land being declared protected by the Naturalist.

However, we have a new plan which is broken out into 3 phases. See map handout. Within this plan we will be re-routing the trail head as well as some existing trail. We are adding a session area on the hill going into the new “hand-out” area by our own parking lot. Flagging has already started and we are hoping to be completed by mid-summer. Weather and manpower permitting.

There has been some stress on the park with the existing trail head in picnic area 5 lot. One side is Picnic Parking and the other is MTB parking. However this is not happening and riders are parking on the wrong side. This causes issues when the area is rented out. Park needs additional parking to accommodate more users but is not in the budget for the next 10 yrs. Unfortunately the Courthouse is getting most of the county’s budget for renovations. We cannot move ahead with building new trails if we don’t have the parking to accommodate more users. So it is either wait 10 yrs or fundraise and do it as a Club.

We are also looking at being able to close off the Green Loop when needed. Most times the trail is good except for the Green and since we can’t segment it off, the whole system gets closed. We want to re-route some existing trial to be able to close this section off as needed as well as extending the Green back up the hill and into the new exit.

3 PHASE PLAN

Phase 1: New Trail Head and re-routes

· Little Switz donated 4 trailer loads of stuff/features that we will incorporate into the trails

· Includes re-route of the Green to new exit

· Fundraising for Phase 2 and 3

Phase 2: Parking lot

· Will have our own Hang-out area for which the park will have picnic tables and grills added.

Phase 3: Contractor to build out session area

The total cost that the Park is estimating (inflated) is $750,000 with half of that going to the parking lot.

TRAIL WORK DAYS………..We will need volunteers to assist with Phase 1. Ron will be spearheading but needs 3 other crew leaders since he can’t possibly be at all trail work days. If interested, see Ron.

We would really love to get NICA teams in to help. If they are under 14 they can’t use equipment (per insurance) but we can certainly find something for them to do on the trail. Glen did mention that NICA has a requirement that each team needs to give back to the trails they use and this would certainly qualify.

Ball Park Commons Update/Alpha

No update

Glacial Blue

Greg was not present at the meeting to give an update. However, he did want to mention that they are doing group rides every Tuesday night. This is a great chance to learn the trail system since nothing is marked and its two directional, but once you learn it you can make your own ride.

They raised $2500 toward the Glacial Blue project

JUNE 23^rd– Mark your calendars for their Social Event. There will be beer pop-ups in the woods as well as food. Please join us for the event and get to the trails!

Wednesday Night Racing

We couldn’t get one to volunteer to head these races so we decided to post-pone until next year. Someone has stepped forward to head them next year. We will continue to look for more volunteers through-out the year so we have affirm commitment by February 2020.

Tuesday Rides

Need Ride Leaders for Odd Tuesdays. We like to change up the trails but essentially you pick where you want to lead. Please contact Metro and let us know if you are interested.

Membership Drive

Membership goal is 1,000 members . We are currently in a renewal turn over so numbers should go back up.

Metro 125

GEARS 18

OCMB 12

We want to do more social rides since we are losing membership drive from Wednesday night races. We are thinking of making these social events MEMBER ONLY. You are welcome to join at the ride!

Awareness is huge. ASK from each of us here to share Metro site to FB friends/ pages and encourage your friends that ride our trails to join Metro and donate to new trails. They don’t have to move dirt but their membership dollars will be a huge contribution to pay a contractor to do it!

James will try to get social events together to membership drive. Stay tuned.

Colectivo Donation

Chris McArdle presented Metro $1000 donation to use these funds toward building new trails at Minooka. Thank you Colectivo for the generation donation and support you show the Club as well as the mountain bike community. We will certainly put the funds to great use!

Little Switz opening Day is May 19^th

Darrin presented free lift tickets to all first timers present to experience The Hill for themselves. There is something for all levels. Not everything there is a huge gap jump. You can keep the wheels on the ground if you wish. Come enjoy the ride with us! Thank you Little Switz for your support!

Bikesha by Ronsta

Beer, Bikes, and Pizza

The next Bikesha will be Saturday June 22^nd. Dan at Magellan’s on Main St. is generously donating pizzas for all. There is no cost for the ride but donations are welcome and all funds raised go back to Metro!

Ride starts at the back of Magellan’s. Gather around 6pm. Leave one beer after 6pm to tour the parkway. No drop ride. Refreshments provided during the ride by Ron.

Ron also presented donation to Metro of $150 from the last Bikesha. Thank you all!

Thank you Ayhan for hosting Metro Mountain Bikers meeting. Food and coffee where delicious!

Meeting Adjourned 8:25pm

Map Handout:

March 2019 Metro Meeting

Beth Kazinski — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 01:44:26 GMT

March 2019 Metro Meeting

3/12/19 at 7:17pm

Benno’s

West Allis, WI

26 members in attendance

James opened meeting

Mission Statement

Glacial Blue Update

Greg gave the run down on Park and Rec meeting in West Bend. Mountain bikers showed in record attendance. Overwhelming support pushed approval for machine built plan. They’ll be looking to start fundraising for the project soon.

Groomer

James ran through groomer options. Board agreed on moving forward with the purchase. We choose the model we did for the bigger motor and reverse option. The plan is to use it at Pleasant Valley and Glacial Blue. Hopefully we can get Minooka next year. Jessica Weinberg from Milwaukee County Parks would like input on what trails to groom and will look into grooming at Alpha. You can find a link to donate toward the groomer on the Metro site.

The Fat Bike Grooming Committee will need to meet to assign responsibilities on grooming and maintenance of the machine as well as providing the board/members with updates.

Rich Ramsey suggested getting state certified so grooming DNR trails is a possibility.

John Graham offered doing a beer fundraiser for raising money for the groomer.

Wheel & Sprocket Expo

Wheel & Sprocket Expo - April 4 through the 7th - Chris Cooper is looking for volunteers to help with the Metro Booth. The booth will be larger this year 10’x20’. The plan is to have the groomer in the booth to help promote fundraising for it. If you can help – any shift – see Chris Cooper.

Social Event

James is looking into doing a personal tour of Bentonville by a local Guide. Time is to be determined.

Ball Park Commons Update

Marty gave update. They are pushing for Mangan Woods at Alpha. Trail council meeting coming up and Alpha improvements are on the docket.

Meeting adjourned at 8:22pm

January 2019 Metro Meeting

Beth Kazinski — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 02:19:54 GMT

January 2019 Metro Meeting

1/8/19 at 7pm

Benno’s

West Allis, WI

36 members in attendance

Collin opened meeting

Mission Statement

Introduction of new board

Collin Stevens is the New Vice-Chair

James Mattox is now the Chair and Social Events Coordinator

Members at Large; Chris McArdle and Ron Stawicki for a second term

Dan Kutz is the incoming Treasurer

Social Media Chair is now Darrin Jaeger If you remember Darrin is the one who designed our new logo

Volunteer Coordinator is officially Chris Cooper

Current board positions not up for re-election this year:

Secretary - Beth Kazinski

Member at Large – Isaac Olsen

Gears, OCMB now part of Metro

Rich and Eric bring new trails

Rich Ramsey,

GEARS Chapter report

The two West bend parks they maintain are Glacial Blue Hills and Ridge Run which was a county park now a city park. Ridge Run is behind the university and has the kettle like terrain. Glacial Blue is a two way trail. There really aren’t a lot of signs but there are a lot of trail options that interlink with one another. It is hard to get lost so just explore them all. Terrain is beautiful and a real must see. They also maintain New Fane. They are still holding WEMS races there and this coming week is a Hugh Jass Race. So if you are coming to the race, make some time to stop at the other trails on your way back.

Fat Kats – Not Present but they maintain Greenbush trails. They haven’t dissolved their 501c3 status yet so not able to bring them in.

Eric Hackbarth

OCMB Chapter report

Pleasant Valley trail system. First trail of theirs they established. It really is like a sampler platter type trail - a little bit of everything. Port Washington trail was whipped out by storms in August. Huge task to get it back. A large portion of trail washed away. City had issues with lack of insurance with their club so they weren’t able to rebuild. Now part of Metro and having our insurance will get them back on track with rebuilding this system/relationship.

This merger brings benefit for both sides. There is strength in numbers with GEARS and OCMB joining Metro. Larger organization with more members /voices when looking for sponsorship/support and we are able to assist them with insurance and non-profit status so they can grow their trails and membership as well as a site to track their memberships.

Mechanically what it looks like?

Their trails are being added to our website as we speak. Wild Apricot is being updated with their region, Club Names for identifiers for new members to sign up. The new members will have an affiliation to choose when they sign up. Affiliation Types: GEARS, OCMB, and METRO. GEARS Inc dropped their IMBA status in 2018 so they have members waiting to join. They will be notifying members to sign up.

Fundraising

We need to come up with ideas on how we can get funds to get trail builders here. These are big projects and we can’t just rely on membership dollars. Need corporate dollars too. We are open to new faces and suggestions.

James: We are in a better place to develop a master plan, help Rich with Glacial Blue, and Eric with Heritage Park. We can’t break ground today but we need a master plan of what we do to build. So before we go to businesses asking for funding, we need to presentation/plan first. Once that happens then we can knock on doors.

Right now we have small projects, thousands not millions. If you are good at building presentations and want to help contact James or any of the other board members.

Up-coming Events

· Hugh Jass Race, Jan 12^th at New Fane - Need volunteers. Ron has the Metro tent so let him know if you can take it to set it up.

· Hugh Jass Race Feb 9^th at Alpha/Kegel - Again need volunteers to bring and set up the tent. You don’t have to stand under it the whole time, just looking to be visible on our trail systems so they know who maintains them.

· Frosty Hog – Feb 2^nd Humboldt Park - Need volunteers to bring and set up tent.

· Wheel & Sprocket Expo - April 4 through the 7th - James will put something special together for our booth - IPads for signing up new members. We want it to have a whole different feel. Maybe have give-a-way item so we can collect contact information (name and email) to add to our emailing list? But what to give a way???? Another suggestion would be to give out our vintage water bottles. Sign up for volunteers will be through the Metro website. We’ll send out emails that will tell our members how to sign up.

Wednesday Night Racing

Racing 20 years and going strong. BUT we need to have a new group to help run this event. Our awesome team is running on empty and might like to race too after all these years. So if you are interested in running these races – hopefully both Minooka and Alpha/Kegel this year, please contact Metro!!!

GEARS and OCMB might do the same format if they like. Cindy Pettit might be able to help them with the insurance side of it since Metro uses W&S insurance for this event. Metro can certainly give them the format to get them started. Doesn’t have to be on a Wednesday either, whatever works for them.

Winter fat biking

Maybe next month.

Meeting adjourned at 7:50pm

December Metro Meeting

Beth Kazinski — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 16:59:56 GMT

December 2018 Metro Meeting

12/11/2018

Beer Snob’s

Hartland, WI

26 members in attendance

Introduction of Board Members

Mission Statement

New Board Members

New board members will start their positions in January 2019

Co-Chair: Collin Stevens

Responsibilities will be working directly with Chair, running Agenda for Metro business meetings. Co-chair normally picks up responsibilities and/or delegates where other board positions aren’t filled.

2 Member at Large Positions:

Ron Stawicki

Chris McArdle

Responsibilities have not been assigned yet. This will be discussed at our next board meeting in January.

Treasurer: Dan Kutz

Responsible for financial accounts and reporting; expenses, income, cash flow, etc. They are also responsible for maintaining/renewing our 501c3 status and insurance.

Social Media chair: Darrin Jaeger

This individual will be responsible for updating and marketing through all social media channels.

Social Events Chair: James Mattox

This individual will do event planning -schedule and organize. There will be other members to help carry out the event but we need this person to spearhead monthly social meetings, rides, trips, etc.…..

Volunteer Coordinator: Chris Cooper

This individual will track all volunteer hours for Metro and send to both Waukesha and Milwaukee county as needed. They will also work with the Social Events Chair with gathering volunteers to help with events including trail work days.

Gears, OCMB, and Fat Kats now part of METRO!

Rich and Eric from Gears were present at the meeting. As you may remember from the last meeting, they pulled away from IMBA as were looking to join Metro as a sub-chapter. Their Board voted in favor of the move and are excited to be part of Metro and the ability to grow their membership and trails. For Metro, this would mean expanding our membership as well as our footprint. Together we would be working together for a stronger voice for mountain biking.

GEARS United maintains:

· Glacial Blue

· West Bend Parks

· New Fane

· Pleasant Valley

· Port Washington Trails

· Green bush

· Evergreen park

· Quarry Park

They have a new project at Heritage Park that they are working with the county parks on. The County Park wants flow trails and a bike park. Right now they are waiting on mining – what area is going to be mined. The County will be able to use some of the funds from the mining project to contribute to the trails. Then Metro will need to fundraise for the rest. The Park is under pressure to create more recreation here and believe that trails are the way to go.

The transition of GEARS united will be discussed during the next board meeting. Details to follow….

Fundraising!!!!!!

Minooka connector and new entrance

Glacial Blue Development

Heritage Trails County Park

Pump Track at Ball Park Commons

Club needs to be more visible in the community. As a club we should be approaching local business for their support. We want to machine build new trails and will need a master plan before we can move forward. If you are interested in being on the Fundraising committee or able to develop a master plan, please email Metro at metromountainbikers@gmail.com

We would love to hear from you on to develop our vision. Ideas? What would you like to see?

It was suggested by a member to email out information to members on what is happening in the club or what is needed. Not everyone uses social media and therefore don’t always know what is going on. If we are looking for more participation we need to use all media outlets to engage members. James did commit to sending email out monthly Meeting Minutes and future asks of members.

Hugh Jass Races

We are looking for volunteers to set up tent at the event. Not looking for you to stand under it and promote Metro the whole time but rather for a spot to hang out. The questions of “who is Metro” will come naturally. Just need to be visible on our trail systems. Right now everything is housed in our warehouse aka Marty’s garage. If you are interested just email the club and we’ll make sure you have it for your event.

Alpha/Kegel Race is on February 9^th 9am to 3pm-ish

James to email request for volunteers to take tent

We will consider purchasing another tent for the group up north so they don’t have to drive as far to get the tent for events up north.

Other Events

Frosty Hog 2/2 at Humboldt Park

Wheel and Sprocket Bike Expo April 4^th – 7^th

Looking for a new Team to run the Wednesday Night Races in summer of 2019. We would like to give the old crew a break after all these years. Please let us know if you are interested. James to email this out to all members.

Winter Fat Biking

Looking for a snowshoe group that will volunteer to snow shoe if we ever get snow, who’s interested???? If so just email Metro! We would like to have a group that we can consistently rely on snowshoe our trails.

James to email this out to all members

It might be a good idea to have signage so the hikers don’t think its okay for them to hike on the MTB trails. The GEARS group has sample signage they can share.

Ball Park Commons Committee update

Marty reported for committee. Milwaukee is still looking to fill the Trail Coordinator position. Please understand that we are not able to make new trails on our own without the okay from the county. And this will not happen until they get the position filled. They have 5 candidates they are currently interviewing so we hope that this will happen sooner than later. Our push in the Milwaukee County Plan is to building new trials higher up so we don’t have the flood like in the past.

We did meet with Wheel and they have hired Jeremy Witek to design the pump track with Zimmerman. The cost will be split between, Zimmerman, Wheel, and Metro.

Other Business

Financial update: Harold gave an update on finance status of the club as it stands today. See hand-out.

Update on the Bike Bazaar: Slow but did get approached to partner with the MKE NICA team to help with skills clinic. It would need to be in Milwaukee since it is expensive for them to travel. Their NICA team falls under the schools Athletics department and they want more trails. Will need to follow up with Paul and Nick. The kids also want to help build or do trail maintenance. Most kids are 14 and over so would be covered by our insurance. Would be a great way to expand our community involvement! We also sold some socks – donation back to club $25

Donation: Marty presented the Club with a check for $355 from the Beer Sales at last month’s Meeting! Thank you Marty!!!!

Nashotah Park winter fat bike trails: It was asked of the group if winter fatbike trails could be possible at Nashotah Park. There are sections of the trail that don’t see much use and would be great to bike on. We are working with Waukesha County Parks to develop more trails and Nashotah would be great addition. However, the Waukesha Parks likes to have separate trial systems so we would have to change the use of that current trail or create new trails specific for mountain biking. Since the county parks development staff is basically all new we are working to establish a strong relationship with them and the first step is with Minooka. Once we have this ironed out we can start asking about possible trails elsewhere.

Meeting Adjourned.

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November Metro Meeting and Board Elections

Beth Kazinski — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 18:23:29 GMT

November 2018 Metro Meeting

11/13/2018

Benno’s

West Allis, WI

36 members in attendance

Thank you Marty Weigel for hosting the Metro Meeting at Benno’s and for the very generous donation from the Sprecker beer sales to the Club. It was certainly a delicious way to donate.

Introduction of Board Members

Election of Board positions

Co-Chair: Responsibilities will be working directly with Chair, running Agenda for Metro business meetings. Co-chair normally picks up responsibilities and/or delegates where other board positions aren’t filled.

Ballot Nominations: Collin Stevens

2 Member at Large Positions: Responsibilities have not been assigned. That is something the board will determine after the election. Our hope is that one will help with fundraising and the other social media but this has not been determined.

Ballot Nominations: Ron Stawicki, current position holder

Chris McArdle, current position holder

Treasurer: This individual will be responsible for financial accounts and reporting; expenses, income, cash flow, etc. They are also responsible for maintaining/renewing our 501c3 status and insurance.

Ballot Nominations: Harold Schmidt, current position holder

Dan Kutz

Social Media chair: This individual will be responsible for updating and marketing through all social media channels.

Ballot Nomination: Darrin Jaeger

Social Events Chair: This individual will do event planning -schedule and organize. There will be other members to help carry out the event but we need this person to spearhead monthly social meetings, rides, trips, etc.…..

Ballot Nominations: James Mattox

Volunteer Coordinator: This individual will track all volunteer hours for Metro and send to both Waukesha and Milwaukee county as needed. They will also work with the Social Events Chair with gathering volunteers to help with events including trail work days.

Ballot Nominations: Chris Cooper

Future Partnership. Future Trails

Rich Ramsey from Gears United attended our meeting. They pulled away from IMBA as well and are looking to join Metro as a sub-chapter. The West Bend Parks are looking for GEARS United to help develop new purpose built trails and the park’s director wants machine built trails. This is where Metro’s strength as an organization can help move GEARS United and the Park’s request forward. As a sub-chapter they would be under our umbrella for Insurance and 501c3 status. This of course will help them with fundraising for the new trails. For Metro, this would mean expanding our membership as well as our footprint. We would be working together for a stronger voice for mountain biking.

GEARS United maintains the New Fane, Glacial Blue, and Pleasant Valley. “Gears United” encompasses 3 MTB Clubs; (OCMB) Ozaukee County Mountain Bikers Club, (GEARS) Glacial Edge Area Riding Society in Washington County, and Fat Kats Mountain Bike Club of Sheboygan County.

GEARS hosts a Tuesday Night Ride and would love to have us join them. Great opportunity to get to know the trails as well as the individuals who maintain them.

Minooka Park Committee Update

James and Ron reported. Minooka park is looking to expand the trails from beach to parking area 5 to help alleviate parking by the trail-head. Included in this plan is a re-route and design of the trail-head. A few board members were out flagging the area over the past couple of weeks. The naturalist needed to go through to make sure we weren’t “stepping” on any precious plants/trees. So far she hasn’t found any issues with the flagged areas which means the park will be able to clear-out the flagged route to prep for a spring build. Now we have a goal to fund raise for.

Ball Park Commons Committee update

Marty reported for committee. Milwaukee is still looking to fill the Trail Coordinator position. Anyone interested should contact the county. We could use an advocate! Milwaukee is working on the alternative line for the trail which should be in before snow files on hill.

Hoyt and Tosa Trails

Metro volunteers worked this past weekend doing some re-routing on the Tosa trails. There is a new section on the southbound leg (south of the pool) just before the 2 way section. This new re-route should be safer for all users. Also we continue to see sign vandalism at Hoyt.

Dirty 30

Marty and a few others did venture down to Bentonville for the Dirty 30. Amazing what they have accomplished with the support of local business. It would certainly benefit sending one or two Milwaukee/Waukesha county officials to this event next year so they can see what building trails will do for the community. Let’s bring Bentonville here!

Up-coming Social Events

Santa Ramp-up: November 25^th in West Bend brought to you by Gears United. Meet at West Bend Tap & Tavern at 10am. There will be about 5 stops with one stop including free PIZZA!
Turkey Hurl: Thanksgiving Day social ride at Tosa trails. Hosted by Marty Weigel. Meet at Hoyt at 8pm and bring lights!
Hugh Jass Race: Minooka on November 24^th. Need volunteers to work the tent that afternoon, even if it’s only before and after the race. Please let Chris Cooper know if you are available at help.
Milwaukee Bike Bazaar: Dec 8^th at 9am to 3pm Riverside University, 1615 E. Locust Ave, Milwaukee. It is now a fundraiser for the High School and Middle School Mountain Bike Programs for Milwaukee. So please come out and show your support. 100% of the Proceeds go to the Kids!

50/50 raffle

Marty pulled the winning ticket and choose to donate the funds back to Metro. Thanks for another $160 Marty, very generous of you!

9:07pm Meeting Adjourned.

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October 2018 Metro Meeting

Beth Kazinski — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 13:13:42 GMT

October 2018 Metro Meeting

10/9/2018

Wheel & Sprocket

Hales Corners, WI

19 members in attendance

Mission Statement

Introduction of Board Members

IMBA Update. 501c3

It took sometime but we are formally approved and have our non-profit tax status. We received our last dues check for past memberships from IMBA in the amount of $1980. This brings the total to somewhere around $3400. There might be some stray memberships for the quarter but the majority of the funds are now received. Isaac will delete IMBA reference from all Social Media and John has already drafted the letter that will go out to IMBA. ALL membership dues will go directly to OUR trails. You can still be a member of IMBA, but if would be a separate membership from Metro.

Minooka Park Update

James and Ron met with the leadership team from the Park. These are the individuals making the decisions of Minooka’s future vision. First order of business was the contract we received. It was not intended for future builds but rather a maintenance agreement for the current trails. This was a huge relief in that the Park is not limiting us to hand tools, they actually want machine built trails. Needless to say it was a great meeting and the Park sees the benefits of developing more MTB trails.

We were presented the master plan with the Park’s 5 year vision. (See handout). In addition to the MTB trails and a pump track, the park is looking to add several new features ; group camping, amphitheater, natural area, including re-naturalizing the cornfield. The water pump station is priority one and needs to be completed in Spring. We as a club need to get our expansion plans for the current trails to them for approval. Once approved, we can start adding features to the current trails. FUNDRAISING will need to start!

Need to get Minooka Committee together sooner than later. Include Darrin in as builder/designer to get a plan together for the park.

Phase 1 will be the new trail head. This phase should include a session area and flow trails that come down to the trailhead. We will need to get a dollar amount for this and then start fundraising over the winter so by early spring we can start building to ride in June.

While working on Phase 1, we will also be looking at trail contractors for our new trails. Need to get a design and cost together for the Park…….then fundraising!!!!

Are you good at grant writing or know someone who is? If so, please contact Metromountainbikers@gmail.com

Ball Park Commons update

Dave reported for committee. It was there first time meeting since the construction started.

The pump track is still the main focus for us. Stuart is working on cost analysis for lighting the pump track. Once we have we can determine how to fundraise for this project.

They are looking to have the Oak Leaf trail extension to connect to new facility for obvious reasons.

They did discuss the trailhead being adjacent to the Kegel/Alpha trail. We have not made any progress in regards to adding new trails to this system due to lack of trail coordinator. The word is soon. The county did have a trails assessment done last year so we are going to try and get ahold of this.

Construction is behind, I would assume due to weather.

Fall Clean-up of the trails

Watch for posts on FB and Metro site on upcoming trail days.

Winter Fat Biking

Looking for a dedicated group who loves snowshoeing to groom trails. Better riding when trails are groomed.

Open board positions coming

All positions are two year terms.

· Co-Chair
· Member at Large (2) – these positions will have specific duties assigned
· Volunteer Coordinator - Coop has taken this on temporarily for us. Thank you Coop!
· Treasurer
· Social Event Coordinator

Elections are held at the November 13th Metro Meeting at Benno’s in West Allis. Benno’s will also donate proceeds from beer sales to the club so join us for what’s on the agenda for 2019, nominate someone for a position , volunteer, or just donate by having a couple of beers. Hope to see you all next month!

8:23pm Meeting Adjourned.

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Monthly Metro Meeting

Beth Kazinski — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 04:11:31 GMT

Sept 2018 Metro Meeting

9/11/2018

Café de Arts

Waukesha, WI

16 members in attendance

Mission Statement

Introduction of Board Members

IMBA Update. 501c3

It took sometime but we are formally approved and have our non-profit tax status. We received $250 back from the IRS. With this approval we were able to get back our membership dues that IMBA was holding. We received our first check from IMBA for $1200. Another check is due the club for an additional $1980. Once we receive that we will formally announce our intension to no longer be a sub-chapter of IMBA. Then ALL membership dues will go directly to our trails. You can still be a member of IMBA, but if would be a separate membership from Metro.

Fundraising Committee

Now that we have our non-profit status we will need to start forming a fundraising committee. In order to build new trails we need the money. Let’s start thinking about the right individual to head this committee as well as its committee members. We are looking at building 4 new trail systems in the next 4 years and need to raise the funds to make it happen. It will take more participation from our 300 members to make this happen. If you are interested, or know someone who would be a good fit for this position, please contact the board at metromountainbikers@gmail.com

We see this person being an outgoing individual who is good at approaching businesses and able to discuss/present our plans in a proficient way. The board would set strategy for project and committee would develop methods to fundraise with a purpose.

Minooka Update

Everyone on the Parks committee is new so we are basically updating them all on what Metro is as well as mountain biking in general. The Park did give Metro a new MOU and we as a board hashed through it. There are a lot of redlines and we have a meeting with the Parks committee to review/discuss the MOU next week. Besides the legal aspects to the MOU we are requesting permission to use machines to build trails and not just hand tools. The Park is working on a redesign due to the water substation at the south end and will be present their new concept at this meeting.

Ball Park Commons update

Construction has slowed due to the very wet weather we were having. The project looks to be delayed by 2 months for opening. However, the land and plan is still in place to develop the pump track and possibly some additional areas down the road.
If anyone is interested in being on this committee we still have spots available, just contact James or the board at metromountainbikers@gmail.com

Reoccurring Social Events

· Odd Tuesday Rides

Next ride is Sept 18^th. This is a social no drop ride that will be hosted by James. Time is 6pm at Minooka. Bring lights if you plan on doing a couple laps.

· Wednesday Night Races

Wednesday races have come to an end. It was a great season with a lot of new riders. We like to thank Wheel & Sprocket for sponsoring the event.

Open board positions coming

All positions are two year terms.

· Co-Chair

· Member at Large (2) – these positions will have specific duties assigned

· Volunteer Coordinator - Coop has taken this on temporarily for us. Thank you Coop!

· Treasurer

· Social Event Coordinator

Elections are held at the November Metro Meeting.

Open Discussion

Tosa farmers market is this weekend. John Buran will be manning the Metro tent from 8-12 if anyone would like to join him and help get the word out. Not to mention volunteer hours.

$250 donation from the last Bikesha to the Club

James posed a question to members in attendance. Which would you rather see when looking at the future of the club?

1) Metro focusing on maintaining and building within current trail systems? (Minooka, Tosa, Ball Park, River Glen)

2) Metro focusing on building new trail systems while maintaining current systems?

Majority in attendance voted for #2, building new trail systems while maintaining current.

Both have their appeal to certain groups. Building new features within existing systems is great for current membership that utilizes these trails; however, finding new areas to develop would also draw in new memberships from outside of our existing footprint.

8:24pm Meeting Adjourned.

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July Metro Meeting Minutes

Beth Kazinski — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 01:30:03 GMT

July 2018 Metro Meeting

7/10/2018

Beer Snobs

Hartland, WI

15 members in attendance

Mission Statement

Trail Signs – Approved by board

Trail signs are made (15 of each) to place at all trail heads now we just need people to go put them out. Signs will need to be out at a minimum for WORS race.

Minooka: Bob volunteered to put out just need to get them James.

Isaac has a “Trail work ahead” sign that he uses during Collectivo work days.

Tosa : Chris C. is looking to schedule a Tosa work day next week so will put them out then. Marty needs to get approval from the city trail council before they go out. Meeting should be this Thursday and Marty will let us know. Not sure how long they will last there. Maybe not put in woods but located closer to the beer garden.

Alpha/Kagel: Just need approval and volunteer to put them up.

Social Media update – John Schultz

John not in attendance. People like the new look and feel of the site and posts. BUT need more material for John to keep it going. Please share your pics and video of your rides at the trails with John so he can incorporate them into web-site and social media outlets. You can send to John at metromountainbikers@gmail.com

Open Committee positions

· Social Events Chair – responsible for social rides and social meetings. If you are interested please contact the Board!

Current Membership – Goal is 1,000

Currently 150 active

James had some feedback from members that want to see stuff happen before joining. Understandable.

Suggestions on how we can bring in new member’s? What do they need? Want?

Matt suggested getting families involved. Maybe organized social events designed around families. Examples; kids ride or skills clinic. Brian and Matt will get together and brainstorm on an event geared around families and will let board know what day/times they are thinking so we can assist.

What about NICA families? Can we assist here? Must use our trails – train on the trails. How can we ask them to be members and help us build new trails for them to ride, train, and race on? Maybe we can start with the coaches? Maybe attend their meetings? Offer skills/ride Clinic?

Are we asking our friends and fellow riders to become members? If not, we should be. Share Metro Membership Posts on your FB and Instagram pages. Get the word out!

Join Metro Flyer

Created by Mike Vance and Darrin Jaeger. They are still in the process of getting word smithed. Once available we can use to handout on trails, NICA training nights at Minooka, a leave behind basically. The flyers will point them to our web-site.

Recurring Social Events

· Odd Tuesday Rides: We need volunteers! This is a no drop event and should be promoted as such. Volunteers are to host the ride and to promote club membership and participation. They can host at Alpha, Minooka, or Tosa trail systems. Contact board!

o Next Odd Tuesday Ride hosted by Dan Kuhts at Tosa JULY 17TH weather permitting

· Wednesday Night Races.: Cost to race is $20 for non-members and $5 for members. REMINDER: it is only $40 for a single membership.

o Next race at Minooka on Wednesday JULY 27^th

Tosa Famers Market

Need volunteers to man the booth. Should be the first weekend in August.

Take Aways:

1 Ask friends to join

2 Reach out to NICA coaches

3 Refine our message

Meeting Adjourned.

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June 2018 Metro Meeting Minutes

Beth Kazinski — Wed, 20 Jun 2018 14:33:11 GMT

June 2018 Metro Meeting

Metro Mountain Biker Meeting

6/12/2018

Minooka Park

Waukesha, WI

27 members in attendance

Mission Statement

Introduction of Board Members

Trail Signs – Approved by board

We had signs made to place at all trail heads – Ride Dirt Not Mud and Trails Brought to you by Metro Mountain Bikers. We also have signs made for trail work days “Trail Work Ahead” as well as “Trail Closed” signs with Metro Logo on them. We have enough for all through trail systems.

Committee Updates

Minooka: Chair James

The Park Director is retiring this July and a new director has been chosen but not yet appointed. We need to be patient until the new director is in place. Phase 3 is on hold until then. But we are very optimistic.

Menomonee Falls: Chair Mike Bons

No real updates until Fall.

Ball Park Commons: Chair Marty Weigel.

Construction is in full swing. Areas are now fenced off and “Do Not Enter” signs have been posted and they are enforcing. You are still entering the trails at 92^ndstreet; however, the Rawson trails are closed/gone. The trail coordinator quit and is moving to Montana. Current projects are on hold until they find a new Coordinator. However we are still looking into options for the pump track and still on track for this to happen. W&S is a big advocate in keeping the trails there and will help move the projects along during the transition.

If anyone knows some company that would be interested in the project please let us know. We want it to be asphalt/concrete with lights at night. We need to, as a club, be closely involved in the design of the pump track.

Social Media update – John Schultz

We have seen an increase in traffic and feedback has been extremely positive. People like the new look and feel of the site and posts. Please share your pics and video of your rides at the trails with John so he can incorporate them into web-site and social media outlets. You can send to Google Drive or just email John at metromountainbikers@gmail.com

Open Committee positions

· Social Events Chair – responsible for social rides and social meetings. If you are interested please contact the Board!

Current Membership – Goal is 1,000

Are we asking our friends and fellow riders to become members? If not, we should be. Share Metro Membership Posts on your FB and Instagram pages. Get the word out!

We have 16 new members in the last 30 days! 7 new in the last week (most likely from Wednesday night’s race).

We have flyers that Darrin designed that we can hand out to friends/riders/racers at trail heads and events that promote Metro and our Mission. Unfortunately Darrin was not able to make the meeting but will have for next meeting.

Trail Maintenance update

· Minooka: Huge thank you to the Collectivo Team for all their hard work last week at Minooka. They will be here again this week Thursday if anyone is interested in joining in.

· Ball park Commons: 92^nd to river road was mowed. Gage the trail coordinator was doing a lot for us but since he up and moved to Montana we will have to push to keep this up while they find a new coordinator.

· Tosa System: Someone trimmed back the face slappers on the Connector. BIG THANK YOU to whoever that was!

Recurring Social Events

· Odd Tuesday Rides: We need volunteers! This is a no drop event and should be promoted as such. Volunteers are to host the ride and to promote club membership and participation. They can host at Alpha, Minooka, or Tosa trail systems. Contact board!

o Next Odd Tuesday Ride is at Tosa June 19^thweather permitting

· Wednesday Night Races.: Since Alpha is under construction and some trail has been eliminated all races this year will be held at Minooka. There has been a good turnout of 30 races or more. Should pick up around the WORS race. We need to add these racers as new members. Did pick up some new memberships. Cost to race is $20 for non-members and $5 for members. REMINDER: it is only $40 for a single membership.

· Dirt Church: This is also a no drop event hosted by Ron. Traditionally it has been held at Minooka but looking to alternate between the 3 trail systems. June’s was cancelled due to Rain. It is just a ride, no service.

o Next one is scheduled for Sunday July 1^stat 9am at Minooka.

Open Discussion

· Little Switz Bike Park is open this Sunday June 17^th. James and a group will be there is anyone wants to join. Happy to show them around. There are trails for all levels of riding not just Black Diamond. Friday is also open for HIKE A BIKE.

· Chris suggested making sure we have the Metro tent ready for the July WORS races. Anyone want to man it?

· James is also looking to get a group ride to Sylvan. So stay tuned for dates.

Meeting Adjourned. Time to Ride!

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Meeting Minutes Notice

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:20:22 GMT

Our club is in the middle of updating all of the past meeting minutes. Please check back later for the more recent meeting minutes.

February 2018 Monthly Meeting Agenda

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:19:08 GMT

Metro MTB on 13 Feb 2018 8:37 AM

Mission statement - Metro Mountain Bikers - is a non - profit, volunteer organization dedicated to safeguarding the future of mountain biking through the preservation and promotion of responsible off -road bicycling opportunities. Which includes the education, sponsoring events, trail construction, and trail maintenance.

Move to be Independent (501c3 update)

New Website! – Isaac / John Shultz

New Membership levels! $40 entry level, $60 (this includes family), $100, $500, $1,000, $2,000

How to join?

· What if you are already a current member?

· Deadline for membership to attend meetings is (What should this be)

· New Metro Logo Concepts Presentation (Darin)

· Trail Maps Announcement – Don Iwen

· Pocket maps for distribution at the local bike shops of Minooka MTB Trails

· Larger one made for at the trailhead and at key trail intersections

· Update on Minooka phase 3 - Ron

· Vote in committees (sign up after meeting)

· Minooka Park Phase 3

· This committee will head up the phase 3 development at Minooka Park. Meet with the park director, maintenance crew, establish maintenance plan long term, and oversea the development. (15 members limit)

· Menomonee Falls

· Exploration of the area and partnership with Menomonee Falls Parks in researching trail opportunities. (3 Members)

· Holy Hill

· Exploration of the area and potential development and partnership for trail. (3 Members)

· Winter Fat Bike Trails

· Drive the adaption and projects for winter Fat Bike trails to be created by the Club and where including formulating a rotating grooming team. (7 Members)

· The Rock

· Work with Wheel and Sprocket on the planning and development of MTB projects at Ball Park Commons (The Rock)

· Club riding trips – (Social Events Chair?)

· Locations to set on calendar

· Copper Harbor

· Sylvan Park

· Marquette

· Bentonville, AR

· John Muir

· Open Committee Positions

· Volunteer Coordinator

· Social Media Chair

· Social Events Chair

· March 18th Third Annual Volunteer and Member Appreciation Party

· Time - 4:00 to 8:00

· Pizza provided by Metro Mountain Bikers

· Happy Place Third Space Beer offered for $5.00 a pint with 100% of proceeds from beer sales going to club. 50% proceeds for any other beer.

· All current club members (IMBA members) and future Metro Members with an offer to sign up through Wild Apricot to become a Metro Member.

· Details:

Come join Metro Mountain Bikers for our Third Annual Volunteer and Member appreciation party. All current, past and future members are invited. We would also like to extend an invite to other southeastern Wisconsin mountain bike clubs to join us. The Metro Mountain Bikers club has new plans for the 2018 riding/trail building season that we would like to share with you at our party. Including the ability to sign as a new Metro Mountain Biker member though our new club website. We will be presenting the new Trail Fairy T-Shirts to all volunteers that have over 20 hours of club volunteer work in 2017. The club will have free pizza, soda and $5.00 pints of Happy Place beer from Third Space Brewery for sale with proceeds from beer sales going back to the club. So, please come out to socialize with your fellow mountain bikers and discuss past/future Mountain Bike Adventures.

Trail Fairy T-Shirts - Cooper

Get with Cooper after the meeting to give him your shirt size.

December 2014 Monthly Meeting Minutes

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:17:19 GMT

1/14/14

Metro Mountain Bikers

Benno’s

Welcome by Chris McArdle

Review of the some of the changes from the board meeting. Introduced new board members.

Explained Functional leaders. Explained breaking out Trail Leaders differently.

Active Business:

Fundraising – Matt Gissibl from the Bike Fed explained some of the Bike Fed’s fundraising efforts by

targeting bike shops. Talked about t-shirt sales. Chris Cooper will provide Sara’s email to Matt.

Volunteers:

22 people qualified for shirts in 2013. City Print said pricing pretty much the same as last year. Less

people qualified for a shirt than in 2012. 1700 volunteer hours total, 60 people total. Minooka being big

volunteer-hour winner. Next meeting, we’ll be talking about working the metro booth at Expo.

Marketing: Collateral and Signage and Mapping. Derek has Templates for sock guy. Old logo may not

show up great on the socks. Might be worth sending anyway and see if the company can give us

options. Will look into pricing per quantity. May look into DeFeet per Matt @ the Bike Fed. Matt

explained how the t-shirts/socks work to sell at bike shops. Socks cost $5/bike shops re-sell for ~$12.

Maps – working on posters and maps. Any dates to have ready for printing? We need brochures now.

Derek committed to printing brochures. Chris will email Tom and have him send artwork to Derek.

Do we have a separate map of the Alpha? What about Bubba’s Woods? Bubba’s not approved.

Signage – Marty put link up on the Facebook page. Carsonite signs

Social Committee: officially recognizing Odd Tuesday, Spring/Fall social rides, also a monthly ride at a

trail system. May – August. May would be Minooka. Showcases the various area trails, try to get new

people to ride the trails. We’re looking for more people to be a part of the marketing team. Derek put together a survey

accessible to mtn bikers unless people can speak to county supervisors, etc. Need to find a way to get it legitimized. Harold went to Port to the Ozaukee County group. 2 mi mtn bike loop wanted there.

Already have committed $60,000 a pre-fab pump track and a skills course near skateboard park. Hope to have approval for it by the end of March. Chris has reached out to this group to have a combined meeting. Ozaukee County is looking at a combined IMBA chapter with a number of bike groups in that area – all groups will operate independently and combine to form the chapter. At Hoyt MMSD will be taking out the steps and the carwash soon.

County Trails Council – effort to encourage groups to prepare and develop trails within the county, City of Milwaukee has purchased two trail counters to getting data about trail usage. Ramsey wants to get moving on the memorandium of underwriting of bike trails 2/4/14. County Trails meets the 2 nd odd month at 10 am at the county parks building.

Events:

2014 Fatbike Access – 70 advocates attended – Hansi has a post about this event IMBA event is Jan 19 – 20 at Rays. If you go to Ray’s on Saturday you get Sunday free. Waukesha Bike Swap - 2/15 proceeds go to Waukesha Bike Alliance not sold out yet 75 – 80% sold out.

Fatbike race in Sheridan Park

Bike Expo – volunteers needed

May 16 – 18 Regional IMBA in Madison @Trek will open up the Farm for riding IMBA World Summit in August in Steamboat Springs, CO. Club would like to pay registration fee for several people to go to the sessions and encourage Metro members to go as sort of club ride. February meeting will start 50/50 raffle for cash, tires, and metro t-shirt

New business:

Marty emailed Marna @ the Rock re: Wednesday night racing. We’d like to see a series like this continue but we don’t want to compete with the Rock and we’re not sure what their intent is. These event prices are based on insurance and county parks issues.

November 2014 Monthly Meeting Minutes

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:16:36 GMT

11/9/14

Metro Mountain Bikers

Welcome by Ron Stawicki

Treasurer’s Report – Harold received the quarterly IMBA check for recent memberships/renewals.

Carsonite signs were purchased and have been paid for.

Fundraising – no fundraising report this month. The next need for fundraising will be Trailhead signage and we’ll need to determine what amount is required so we can contemplate what kind of fundraising we’ll need to do.

Volunteers – Chris Cooper reported 857 hours of total volunteer time this year. This is down a bit from last year but we haven’t had as many needs this year. We’re still looking for a person to coordinate the Social Committee – please contact Chris Cooper if interested. We had four people who worked on theBubba’s Woods Weed-out day in coordination with the neighborhood surrounding Bubba’s Woods.

Marketing – no Marketing report this month. Social Committee – we’re looking for a leader of the Social Committee – if interested, please contact

Chris Cooper.

Trails Council/Milwaukee County Parks – Marty talked about the new parks requirements regarding permits. No progress on the MOU (memorandum of understanding) with the parks department. National Bike Patrol – no Bike Patrol report this month.

Trails – Minooka trail work is underway – always Sunday mornings from 8 – 11 through November (just two more weeks to go). Minooka is hosting the Global Fat Bike Day on Dec. 6. Many trees down at Hoyt and some have been down for awhile. The county is aware of these trees but hasn’t dealt with them yet. Marty and Harold met with the County about Bubba’s Woods recently and the County has said everything is fine there for now, but requested no more re-routes. Oak Hill is in good shape. Alpha’s also in good shape. Harold and Marty along with the County walked the north side of the river from Hoyt to develop the trails there. County is agreeable to trails on that side of the river. Harold and Marty used black flags to mark that side of the river for possible trails. In the Spring, we’ll finalize the trails we want to build.

Signage – is now in our possession. Marty has called Digger’s Hotline at the request of the County. Marty is aiming for next weekend at Alpha or Hoyt.

State Trails Council meeting - scheduled on Thursday, Nov. 13 from 10 – 3 at Lapham Peak. It’s during the day should anyone be interested in attending and it’s open to the public. Part of the discussion will be on eBikes, which we discussed at length in this meeting.

Upcoming & Recently-held Events:

Singletrack High Movie – the Shorewood HS Mtn Bike team put this on and Marty attended
Fall Social Ride had a good time but it was lightly attended this year
Lapham Peak FatBike series has a kick-off meeting on Thursday, November 13 at 7:30 pm. The
race series starts November 20 at 7:30 pm – check Wheel & Sprocket’s website for information.
Race series will continue into January. Proceeds go to the Friends of Lapham Peak.
Turkey Hurl ride scheduled for Thanksgiving at 8 pm at Tosa Village at the Red School House.
Santa Rampage, Saturday, December 6.
Bike Across the Lake – tentatively Feb. 14 if winter weather is horrible
Spring Social Ride being discussed for May

New Business – no news about Kletsch Park. Elections – Chris McArdle nominated for Chair. Chris Cooper nominated for Co-Chair. Ron Stawicki

becomes Member at Large. Harold nominated for Treasurer. Anne Newhouse continues as Secretary. Lynne Senkerik nominated for Volunteer Coordinator.

December meeting – December 9 at The Bike Fed offices at 3618 W. Pierce St, Milwaukee. We are inviting someone from the County Park department to attend.

October 2014 Monthly Meeting Minutes

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:15:49 GMT

10/14/14

Metro Mountain Bikers

Welcome by Ron Stawicki & Chris McArdle

Treasurer’s Report – We took in $411 in raffle at Ray’s on October 2. We bought a couple of carsonite signs and the installation tool for the signs, which Marty picked up in Madison.

Fundraising – no fundraising report this month. We’ll need to think about fundraising for trailhead signs in the future.

Volunteers – We had another month of numerous volunteering events. Kletsch Park cross country meet went well with six Metro volunteers. Next Saturday, October 18 is the Weed Out in Bubba’s Woods – we’ll be looking for Metro volunteers to help out with a strong presence. We’ve had 605 hours in volunteer hours so far in 2014 with many hours not entered yet. If anyone has hours, please send to Chris Cooper.

Marketing – not a lot going on in Marketing. We discussed moving some of the marketing documents to a google drive. Marty thought we may need more posters ordered.

Social Committee – we’re looking for a leader of the Social Committee – if interested, please contact

Chris Cooper.

Trails – Marty picked up the trail installation driver tool and carsonite signs. Marty suggested starting to install soon while the ground is soft and not frozen yet.

Trails Council/Milwaukee County Parks – Marty talked about the new parks requirements regarding permits. No progress on the MOU (memorandum of understanding) with the parks department.

Bike Patrol – Bike Patrol has/had a busy month. WEMS race at Alpine Valley, NICA race series, and some local Cyclocross races.

Trails – Minooka trail work is underway – always Sunday mornings from 8 – 11 through November. Minooka will be hosting a Global FatBike event in early December. Tosa trails are in good shape. Marty will be meeting with the parks staff regarding trails on the north side of Hoyt Park-ish. Alpha trails were dried out enough for the WORS race. Andy joined us from the Colectivo WORS race and discussed the event, which was well received.

Fall Social Ride – October 18 at 10 am starting at Benno’s – The Garden Party.

Upcoming & Recently-held Events:

· The recent Little Switzerland event was discussed

· Matt Gissibl from the Bike Fed spoke to the owners of Little Switzerland (who also owns Mt. Morris) and talked about their conversation.

· Andy from Colectivo spoke about the WORS event. He will be attending the race directors meeting coming up in a couple of weeks.

· Ray’s preview was a great night and a lot of fun

· Matt G also talked about the Bike Fed summit/IMBA summit.

· November 7 Bikes and Beats at Turner Hall fundraiser.

· Lapham Peak FatBike series starting November 20 at 7:30 pm – check Wheel & Sprocket’s website for information.

· Santa Rampage, Saturday, December 6.

· October 28 benefit Winter Bike Party from 6 – 9 at Great lakes Distillery benefiting the

Milwaukee Bicycle Collective. Free admission.

Fall Social Ride – October 18 at 10 am starting at Benno’s – The Garden Party.

New Business – Harold talked a little about Kletsch Park in Glendale, but we hope to have more information at the next meeting.

November meeting – November 9 SUNDAY night at 5 pm @ Benno’s featuring Metro Elections.

December meeting – December 9 at The Bike Fed offices at 3618 W. Pierce St, Milwaukee.

September 2014 Monthly Meeting Minutes

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:15:08 GMT

9/9/14

Metro Mountain Bikers

Welcome by Ron Stawicki & Chris McArdle

Treasurer Report – Harold will be taking over the Treasurer’s role. Marty has put the stickers for signs on hold for now.

Fundraising – raffle is over so we need to figure out what’s next.

Volunteers – Chris Cooper was contacted by North Shore High School cross country race about needing volunteers for their race at Kletsch Park on September 18. Four volunteers are needed – contact Chris

Cooper if interested. Fall Color Fest is on Sept 27 and we’ll need volunteers to set up and be in our tent. If interested in volunteering for the event, contact Ron Stawicki who can put you in touch with the volunteer coordinators from Wheel & Sprocket. Talk to Chris McArdle if interested in volunteering for the Colectivo WORS race on Sunday, Sept 28. October 18 is a weed-out from 9 - 12 by Milwaukee County Parks (107 th & Menomonee River Parkway) in Bubba’s Woods. That is same day as our social ride (see below). The group agreed that a good turnout of Metro volunteers would be a very good idea.

Marketing – the new order of brochures has been received. We have officially moved into the black for the socks although we still have a lot of X-large socks available. We talked about more marketing materials under development.

Social Committee – we need someone interested to take over for the Social Committee. Contact Chris Cooper if interested.

Trail teams – Trails Council Meeting is Thursday, Sept. 11.

Trails – Ron said trails at Minooka are dry and fast. High School Race went great – about 108 participants. Waukesha County Parks felt it was a success. October/November are the Fall build season at Minooka. Tosa trails are in great shape too. Alpha trail has not dried out since June and it’s still wet and closed to riding. Harold talked to County and they want Metro to take over the trails at Kletsch Park that are along the river. The current trails are about two to three miles but they definitely need some work and signs for sale.

Bike Patrol – Had a large group at the Wolfman Tri at Bear Paw. Also a large group at the first High School race at Minooka as well.

Odd Tuesdsay Ride – one more ride this season which will be September 16 th . We plan on doing a cookout. Mike Crabb will post.

Wednesday Night @ the Rock – racing is completed this season.

Fall Social Ride – October 18 at 10 am. Location to be determined.

Rays – Preview night is October 2 6 to 10 pm. Ray’s will open on October 4. Rays has a lot of new stuff this year including new skills sections.

New Business – Bike Fed is having an annual meeting in Madison in October. November 9 Metro meeting will have elections. This meeting will be on a Sunday at 5 pm. We had representatives from Little Switzerland opening September 20. Facebook page Little Switzerland Bike Park. We briefly discussed the Fat Bike race series at Lapham. Barnyard Classic outside of Madison, cyclocross/mountain bike race. Nicolet-Roche trails October 4.

October meeting – October 14 meeting at Benno’s.

August 2014 Monthly Meeting Minutes

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:14:35 GMT

8/12/14

Metro Mountain Bikers

Welcome by Ron Stawicki

Treasurer Report – We have a vacancy with Derek stepping down from the Treasurer’s position and Harold Schmidt has agreed to come back to the position when he returns from his travels. We received our quarterly IMBA membership payment at just over $900 so a lot of people renewed or signed up for membership. The signs/stickers were ordered but Marty has pended it until better stickers showing a mountain bike are available.

Fundraising – sold 480 tickets with over $3300 gross, $2500 net. Raffle Greg Heil Wheel & Sprocket.

Kate & Maciej Rays, Tom Vomastic wins top prize to Erik’s.

Volunteers – 325 volunteers logged so far with some still missing. Tom Vomastic has been putting in a lot of time lately and his hours are not yet logged. We may need additional volunteers coming up for the NICA race at Minooka and Ron will look into what their needs may be and see how Metro can help. Also, with late Summer/Fall coming up, we’ll need volunteers for trail work so stayed tuned for more information.

Marketing – we need brochures but we still have posters available. We may need some additional help with Graphic Arts coming up as Tom has been getting busier with his job. Social Committee – Danielle is stepping down from the Social Committee so we’ll need someone else to step into that role. Please contact Chris Cooper if interested. Social Ride scheduled for 10/18.

Trail teams – Andy was here from the Collectivo team and asked if anyone had been to the Alpha trail. Marty explained what he’s recently seen. September 28 is the WORS race and the trails will need some work. Marty suggested Andy contact the County regarding a special permit in case they need it for rain before the event, etc. Marty suggested that two weeks before, they’ll need to plan for a lot of trail work. Bubba’s Woods has dried out (until today) and there has been some work done recently to the entrance from Highway 100. Hoyt is in good shape but may need some general maintenance. Oak Hill is also in good shape. Minooka trails have new signs in within the last month and a few other suggestions for new signs. All comments were positive about the new trails. October/November is the Fall build season for Minooka on Sunday mornings.

Hoyt Park – Lindsay Kriete a local racer and Tosa resident came to the meeting to tell her story of her dog being killed recently by a train while she was on the trails and suggestions she had for building trails on the North side of the river. Marty explained some of the discussions that they’ve with the County about the north side trails. Additional opinions were shared about a sign we could put up or what we could do until we get approval for more trail building. There will still be some ongoing discussions about this.

Wednesday Night @ the Rock – racing is still ongoing although there are a lot of different faces showing up these days.

IMBA World Summit – in Steamboat Springs, CO in August.

May 13, 2014

Page 1 of 2

September meeting – Waukesha at Magellan’s September 9.

July 2014 Monthly Meeting Minutes

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:14:02 GMT

7/8/14

Metro Mountain Bikers

Welcome by Chris McArdle & Ron Stawicki

Treasurer Report – Marty said 100 signs/stickers are ordered from Carsonite. Signs should be coming within a couple of weeks. In addition, one tool was ordered at $150/each.

Fundraising – Sara talked about the raffle. 400 have been distributed and we seem to be doing great with our goal of raising between $4000 and $5000. Sara still has more raffle tickets should anyone else be interested in selling them. Raffle drawing will be at the August meeting at Bennos. We are one pair of socks away from break even for sock sales.

Volunteers – volunteers need to remember to send their hours to Chris Cooper. Currently about six people have qualified for t-shirts but a lot of hours haven’t been logged yet.

Marketing – we may need to order more brochures but we don’t have a lot of other marketing going on currently. Derek is still looking at business cards and stickers too. (Business cards will be to hand to people as we’re doing trail work or talking to people about the trails.) Someone suggested putting a QR code on our marketing, especially our posters so Derek will look into.

Social Committee – Fall social ride 10/18 but the route is still under consideration. With the Sunburst race cancelled, Marty discussed doing a ride on July 27 with a tour of all trails in one day. He will post on

Facebook.

Trails Council Meeting – meeting Thursday, July 10. Marty had no further agenda items for the Trails Council.

Trail teams – Minooka trails are in good shape. The County is still working on signage so it may still be hard for some to navigate. Minooka is hosting the High School Race series this Fall. Hoyt’s in good shape, some of the dead falls have been removed between Swan and North and Bubba’s woods is closed (although people have still been riding there). Oak Hill is open with the usual wet spots and some of the dead falls have been removed. Alpha has been closed and has some wet spots too. Odd-Tuesday Rides – July 15 at 6 pm. Mike will have to wait to see how the trails are before deciding which trail to ride.

National Bike Patrol – Mike Crabb said they patrolled the WORS race in Wausau. They also just completed the US Cycling Amateur Champions in Rockdale as well.

Wednesday Night @ the Rock – first week of racing was last week although it rained and was messy for everyone.

IMBA World Summit – in Steamboat Springs, CO in August. If interested in attending, Metro will sponsor the session fee. Early entry ends soon.

August Meeting – next meeting with the raffle drawing is Tuesday, August 11 at Benno’s.

June 2014 Monthly Meeting Minutes

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:12:18 GMT

6/10/14

Metro Mountain Bikers

Welcome by Chris McArdle & Ron Stawicki

Treasurer Report – no treasurer’s report this week.

Fundraising – Sara talked about the raffle and the process for everyone taking raffle tickets. The raffle is in August and we are hoping to sell 500 tickets total. Sara will keep in contact via email with all selling tickets but money will be collected at our August meeting. Tickets are $10 or 3 for $20. Top sellers off raffle tickets will win a 29er wheel set provided by Ben’s Cycles. More Metro socks are still available at $10 for a pair.

Volunteers – Trail day on Sunday afternoon at Oak Hill – thanks to the volunteers who showed up. Chris Cooper reported that no volunteer hours were loaded this month.

Marketing – Posters were completed

Social Committee – Harold commented that we are looking at dates for the Fall Social Ride, most likely in October 18. Tom Vomastic talked about a group going up to Cooper Harber or Brown County,

Indiana. He’ll put a post up on Facebook about organizing a group. This upcoming weekend has a lot of great social events including the Fat Tire Tour of Milwaukee.

Trails Council Meeting – no meetings lately. Milwaukee County Parks is contemplating a trail pass/permit for usage on trails. They are interested to know what’s going on the trails because there are all kinds of events or usage for things they might not be aware of and they are responsible for trail usage.

Trail teams – Over 4 miles of Minooka trails are available and are in good shape and getting more riders all the time. Signage is still coming for the new loop. Tosa trails in good shape. This past weekend, volunteers worked at Oak Hill and got a lot of work done. Hoyt still needs a little bit of trimming. Alpha trails are in good shape as well.

County Parks MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) - Harold discussed the MOU wording from the county. Chris brought up a suggestion made at the Regional IMBA summit about having something stronger in place then an MOU.

Odd-Tuesday Rides – June 17 at Alpha at 6 pm.

National Bike Patrol – Mike Crabb said they are in need of tubes. We have an amount ear marked for National Bike Patrol usage. Ron is going to get through Wheel & Sprocket. There are new people in the Wausau area that are being trained at the WORS event this weekend. They are still looking for new people in Madison too.

Harold discussed Biking with Barley on Memorial Day weekend – contact Harold if you’re interested.

Regional IMBA Summit – discussion on contracts and insurance and other language suggested for use.

May 2014 Monthly Meeting Minutes

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:11:42 GMT

5/13/14

Metro Mountain Bikers

Welcome by Chris McArdle

Treasurer Report – No report this month.

Fundraising – we discussed having Metro socks for sale for $10. Sara Stum discussed the raffle that we and the prizes. Three prizes: $250 gift card from Wheel & Sprocket, season pass for Rays, and a $1500 top raffle prize from Erik’s Bike Shop, plus, Sara has suggested getting an incentive prize from Ben’s Cyclery for the top seller of raffle tickets. At the June meeting, Sara will bring raffle tickets for everyone to start selling tickets. We’ve applied for two raffle licenses and are waiting for them to arrive by mail.

Volunteers – Chris Cooper reminded everyone to email him their volunteer hours to get logged. We haven’t had many things planned or scheduled besides the Minooka Trail Work.

Marketing – Derek T. discussed a volunteer opportunity offered and encouraged through his employer and suggested others look into that. We’ll post something on the Facebook page regarding the need for volunteers. Tom created a draft poster and needs the Board approval. Harold discussed that he and Marty start distributed posters in the past in May so we’d like to have the posters available soon. Chris McArdle has received our new Metro pop-up tent and we can start using for events. Chris will bring it to our odd-Tuesday ride next week at Hoyt so everyone can see it. Cody offered to donate business cards if someone else gets the graphics completed.

Social Committee – Harold discussed our Spring social ride. We had nine people show up for the ride – the weather wasn’t particularly great. Fall social ride will be discussed over the next couple of meetings.

Trails Council Meeting – Harold said they met last week (first week of May). Chris discussed getting everyone to use GPS and put on Strava to show usage of the trails.

Bike Patrol – Mike has no new information. The Bike Patrol is still looking for new patrollers.

Trail teams – Second loop finished at Minooka – about four miles of trail to ride. Ron says the trails dry pretty quickly. He’s also working on trail signs. Next three weeks continues trail work. Statewide Bike to Work week, Waukesha Bike to Work day next Wednesday 6 am – 9 am. 7pm on Wednesday for the Ride of Silence in Waukesha. There is also a Ride of Silence in Cudahy and others around the area. Obviously, the weather has made the trails unrideable for now. Regional IMBA Summit in Madison – this upcoming weekend May 17 – 18. Chris M and Marty are attending portions of the event. If you’re interested in going, Metro will pay a portion of the fee. There was a limit to the attendees, however. Odd-Tuesday Rides start next Tuesday, May 20 at Hoyt Park, weather permitting. Harold discussed Biking with Barley on Memorial Day weekend – contact Harold if you’re interested. Wednesday Night @ the Rock – Racing will start June 4 through September (based on daylight). Metro has not committed to be involved at this point but future discussions are likely to happen. Open Forum – Harold discussed Biking with Barley for Memorial Day weekend starting at Blue Mounds State Park – talk to Harold for more details.

IMBA World Summit – if interested in attending, Metro will sponsor of portion of the fee.

Wisconsin High School Cycling League - Kathy Mock, Co-Director of the League (along with Don Edberg of WORS), was here to discuss. There are four scheduled events during the season that runs from July through October. Wisconsin was the 11st state to join the national league. Milwaukee seems to be a hub of interest in the high school league. If you’re interested in more information, the contact information is www.wisconsinmtb.org, email is Kathy@wisconsinmtb.org.

Metro is a sponsor for the Oak Leak Discovery Tour in Milwaukee. If interested, you can get the tour booklet at any of the golf courses and a few other locations around the area. June Meeting will be back at Benno’s, 74 th & Greenfield. If you have a suggestion for a future meeting location, please let Chris know.

Events:

Regional IMBA Summit 5/16 – 18 in Madison – we are looking for someone to attend this, contact Chris McArdle

IMBA World Summit in Steamboat Spring, CO 8/20 – 24 – if anyone is going, please contact Chris McArdle

April 2014 Monthly Meeting Minutes

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:11:00 GMT

4/8/14

Metro Mountain Bikers

Welcome by Chris McArdle

Treasurer Report - We have a number of recent purchases yet to clear for the new Metro socks and canopy, to name a few. General Liability insurance is in place starting Thursday, April 10 – needed especially for trail work. Insurance dictates no one under 12 at club events. New waivers for 2014 will be have to be signed at every club event – nothing really different here, however, some people hadn’t signed in the past. New waivers are not yet available but will be ready for next month.

Fundraising – working towards a raffle with more information next meeting.

Volunteers – shirts are available and were handed out at the meeting. Ron Stawicki will be taking the Waukesha members shirts. The shirts are in high-vis color and say Trail Volunteer on the back so we should be wearing them during trail work times. Chris Cooper ran through volunteer hours and sign up

for additional volunteer positions. Anyone interested in volunteering should contact Chris Cooper. Ride for the Arts ride marshal program was discussed – three volunteer hours will be available for anyone who will commit to a ride marshal. Trail work season will be starting soon and we’ll need plenty of people to help.

Marketing – Derek showed off the new Metro socks we’re selling for $10 each and he also discussed the newly-revised trail maps. Comments were made that a lot of people at the Expo were happy that the Minooka trails are available for riding.

Social Committee – Social Ride on 4/26 will be leaving from St. Martins church parking lot in St. Martins with the ride being in that general area and moving southwest. Additional information will be posted at Facebook and our website.

Trails Council Meeting – was held on March 13. Marty and Harold suggested inviting the County Parks Director to our next meeting in Milwaukee. They have both talked with him and Marty was invited for a sit-down meeting with him.

Bike Patrol – Mike received a lot of inquiries at Expo and is hoping that generated interested that will get more volunteers. The Bike Patrol is now handling marathons, half-marathons, triathlons in additional to the trails and they are looking for additional people with a medical background who like to ride.

Trail teams – Reminder that all trails are still closed. People tried to ride at the Southern Kettles this past weekend and were ticketed and fined. The question was raised about using Round Up on the Milwaukee County trails. We discussed hitting garlic mustard soon as that is normally the first thing that greens up. Minooka has a busy weekend coming up – Saturday, April 12 there is a Kohl’s Cares team coming (potentially up to 35 people) to work at Minooka at Noon in area 3 where the Rugby fields are. Going forward, trail work will be Sundays from 8 – 11. There will be some trail work happening at Estabrook Park that Harold will be leading.

Wednesday Night @ the Rock – Marna joined us to discuss. Racing will start June 4 through September (based on daylight). The Rock bike park should be open – weather permitting – by mid-May. Marna is now the bike park operator for the BMX track. June 5 – 7 will be a huge event for BMX racing and The Rock will contact us if volunteers needed (they probably will need volunteers). The Rock is projecting the price for Wednesday racing at $15.

Open Forum – Harold discussed Biking with Barley for Memorial Day weekend – talk to Harold for more details.

Events:

High School Mountain Bike League training event - April 26 – 27 at Trek

Regional IMBA Summit 5/16 – 18 in Madison – we are looking for someone to attend this, contact Chris McArdle

IMBA World Summit in Steamboat Spring, CO 8/20 – 24 – if anyone is going, please contact Chris McArdle

March 2014 Monthly Meeting Minutes

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:08:52 GMT

3/11/14

Metro Mountain Bikers

South Shore Cyclery

Welcome by Ron Stawicki (Chris McArdle out of town)

Club Financial Status – Insurance discussion

501©3 status – Derek said that IMBA recommends that we get our own EIN. Marty said we have an EIN and he will be locating the information for this. Marty stated that this tax-exempt status was part of the IMBA deal as a chapter status. Sara Stum also recommended that we need 501©3 status as part of our fundraising. We will continue this discussion at our next board meeting. MOU Discussion – haven’t scheduled meeting with the parks department. Trail council meeting is March 13 at 10 am.

Updates from the Rock on the Wednesday night cross country races – none. South Shore Cyclery will also send an email to their contact at the Rock inquiring about the status. Metro’s new insurance will enable us to do racing for a fee but people would still have to be Metro members. Question was if any IMBA members could race or just Metro members. IMBA requires $500 for the chapter (includes $1 million umbrella), $4.75 per member per year, $2.50 inland marine coverage. Costs historically have been much less than that. Events like the Odd Tuesday right would require Metro membership. Question was if there were any other options for insurance? Insurance is not yet set for 2014.

Committee Updates:

Marketing – update on socks, shirts, flyers. Tom completed the flyers and now Waukesha parks needs to approve. Socks are ordered and should be here for the bike expo. We worked with the Bike Fed on the sock order. They will be available for $10. Brochures are ready to go as well. Matt Gissibl from the Bike Fed showed us the new design available for mountain biking specifically and discussed how working with local bike shops can help drive sales. The Bike Fed sells their t-shirts for $25.00 retail at the local shops. The bike shops will order can order from the Bike Fed. Metro long- sleeved t-shirts are still available for sale.

Fundraising Updates:

Volunteer Coordinators:

Expo is the next big thing for us. We’re hoping the tent will be available for Expo. There are still a few times to fill with Metro volunteer and the schedule was passed around. Volunteer t-shirts still need to be ordered. We’ll need to inventory before and after. Cash box can go to Benno’s or with Derek for safekeeping. Trailbuilding will probably start later than normal this year due to the weather. Watch Facebook, Twitter, and email for dates. We’re still looking for ride marshals for the Ride for the Arts.

Social Committee – Spring Social Ride is April 26. At this time, the thought is to have the social ride leaving from St. Martens and ride towards Burlington on trails.

Trail Team Updates:

No updates

Grant Park – there’s enough interest for trails in Grant Park. We still have to get the County Parks department to sign off in order to have official trails. We need a plan of where we want to ride and the Parks department would have to review. We would be adopting existing trails. South Shore Cyclery is working with their City of Cudahy departments and there seems to be interest in developing insurance. We need South Shore cyclists and businesses to call Pat Jursik and offer their support. Discussion of multi-use trails

Amber from South Shore Cyclery said their Fatbike and Snowshoe race was awesome. They are going to be looking for ways to make it bigger and better for next year. Port Washington/Ozaukee – city is putting in a new pump track near the skate park. Cedarburg trail at pleasant valley park 3 mi down 4.5 total finishing this summer. Ozaukee county parks department is trying really hard to get mountain biking trails on county parks land but it’s come up against huge backlash – according to residents at the meeting, mountain bikers are apparently into drugs and murders. Having support from mayor or aldermen has been a huge bonus.

National Mountain Bike Patrol – Mike Crabb said the Wisconsin Bike Patrol is broadening their name to “just” bike patrol because they are patrolling other events like triathlons and marathons. They are looking for more people to get involved. TOaD has approached them but they don’t have to staff to help. They are also looking for people who have professional training as EMTs, nurses, doctors, etc. March 13 from 6:30 – 8:30 at Steinhafel’s conference room – Waukesha County Bike/Transportation Plans

Upcoming Events:

April 4 – 6 – Wheel & Sprocket Expo

April 8 – Metro Meeting @ Benno’s

April 13 – Metro Board Meeting

April 26 – Spring Social Ride

May 16 – 18 - Regional IMBA Summit in Madison

February 2014 Monthly Meeting Minutes

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 03:07:59 GMT

2/11/14
Metro Mountain Bikers
Benno’s

Welcome by Chris McArdle
Meeting with Ozaukee was postponed and may be rescheduled in March or April.
Active Business:
Bike Fed t-shirts – Metro would get profits from local sales, but the question was if we could get Metro identifying information on it? Various opinions on the design and wording of the t-shirts, but some suggested they liked the wording Tread on Me showing on the t-shirt. Pricepoint was close to $15 for most to be interested in purchasing. Chris will contact Matt Gissibl of the Bike Fed for more information about the sales. Fundraising – a separate meeting was held to discuss. Marty discussed offering to the Parks Department that one of their staff members go to the IMBA summit in Colorado this summer and the fundraising effort to do that. We need approximately $2500 for carsonite signage for the local signs and a possible $500 - $1000 for the IMBA Summit. We also discussed Wednesday racing at the Rock in terms of fundraising. Volunteers:
We passed around the sign-up sheet for Expo. Chris Cooper suggested getting a 10x10 pop-up tent to use at Expo. Chris McArdle will discuss with Collectivo about the vendor they’ve used and suggestions for a tent. There was a suggestion of getting a black canvas tent with white lettering. If anyone is interested in volunteering to be a ride marshal for the Ride for the Arts the process this year is to go to the website and sign up. Free entry, ride marshal t-shirt, and beer and food afterwards. The Ride for the Arts is the first Sunday in June.

Marketing:
Derek discussed and showed everyone the re-designed brochure to get Minooka trails included. Tom has to add copy for Minooka but otherwise it’s ready to go. Derek should email to Ron for Ron will show Waukesha County Parks staff. Derek also discussed socks. DeFeet minimum order of 6 dozen, our cost is $6/pair + $25 setup charge. $10/pair breakeven at 46 pairs. We may be able to partner with the Bike Fed, but we’re not counting on it. Sock Guy $5/pair, we have to order 10 dozen minimum + $50 setup.
We can mix sizes to order as well. We discussed colors too. After initial order, can we order more?
Derek will verify. We should continue the Metro branding and most liked the DeFeet option. Chris will ask Matt Gissibl of the Bed Fed for information on which style of sock sells more – tall or short? Order needs to be completed within the next couple of week so we have available for Expo. A suggestion was to sell at a different rate for signing up for an IMBA membership but no decision was made about that.
Social Committee: Good turnout for tubing at the Rock on 2/8. Spring Social Ride is scheduled for April 26.
Trails:
Trail Meetings – meeting with County (Ramsey and Mark). Meeting again in two weeks to discuss Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for all three of the currently-approved trail systems. Every year

we’ll have to have a new MOU to discuss the trail systems. No new trailbuilding until after May 15. No discussion on South Shore. Menomonee River Parkway meeting is scheduled by the Parks department for 2/12 at Mount Mary College. We discussed having Metro business cards available when doing trail work so we can pass our information on to people that ask about our work or want more details of our projects.
Waukesha County:
Nothing new at Minooka – but there has been a lot of fat biking going on. Nathan Guerra and Marty Tank have been talking to the land owners of Olympia Resort in Oconomowoc to develop mountain bike
trails.
Upcoming Events:
Waukesha Bike Swap 2/15
Fatbike race at Sheridan Park 2/22
Regional IMBA Summit in Madison 5/16 – 18
Marty spoke to Marna at The Rock and she said they would be doing Wednesday night racing again. We don’t have any other details. We need to find out the details and figure out who is going to do timing, pricing, etc.
Open Business – is the club willing to support the Oak Leak Discovery Tour for about $100? Yes, we’ll sponsor.

January 2014 Monthly Meeting Minutes

Metro MTB — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 02:23:49 GMT

1/14/14

Metro Mountain Bikers

Benno’s

Welcome by Chris McArdle

Review of the some of the changes from the board meeting. Introduced new board members.

Explained Functional leaders. Explained breaking out Trail Leaders differently.

Active Business:

Fundraising – Matt Gissibl from the Bike Fed explained some of the Bike Fed’s fundraising efforts by targeting bike shops. Talked about t-shirt sales. Chris Cooper will provide Sara’s email to Matt.

Volunteers:

22 people qualified for shirts in 2013. City Print said pricing pretty much the same as last year. Lesspeople qualified for a shirt than in 2012. 1700 volunteer hours total, 60 people total. Minooka being big volunteer-hour winner. Next meeting, we’ll be talking about working the metro booth at Expo.

Marketing: Collateral and Signage and Mapping. Derek has Templates for sock guy. Old logo may not show up great on the socks. Might be worth sending anyway and see if the company can give us options. Will look into pricing per quantity. May look into DeFeet per Matt @ the Bike Fed. Matt explained how the t-shirts/socks work to sell at bike shops. Socks cost $5/bike shops re-sell for ~$12.

Maps – working on posters and maps. Any dates to have ready for printing? We need brochures now.

Derek committed to printing brochures. Chris will email Tom and have him send artwork to Derek.

Do we have a separate map of the Alpha? What about Bubba’s Woods? Bubba’s not approved.

Signage – Marty put link up on the Facebook page. Carsonite signs Social Committee: officially recognizing Odd Tuesday, Spring/Fall social rides, also a monthly ride at a trail system. May – August. May would be Minooka. Showcases the various area trails, try to get new people to ride the trails. We’re looking for more people to be a part of the marketing team. Derek put together a survey

Trails: tosa trails are icy, Ron said he’s posting trail conditions Waukesha Bike Alliance facebook page and will post to Metro page as well South Shore – Harold brought up at the trails meeting. May not be accessible to mtn bikers unless people can speak to county supervisors, etc. Need to find a way to get it legitimized. Harold went to Port to the Ozaukee County group. 2 mi mtn bike loop wanted there. Already have committed $60,000 a pre-fab pump track and a skills course near skateboard park. Hope to have approval for it by the end of March. Chris has reached out to this group to have a combined meeting. Ozaukee County is looking at a combined IMBA chapter with a number of bike groups in that area – all groups will operate independently and combine to form the chapter. At Hoyt MMSD will be taking out the steps and the carwash soon.

Events:

Bike Expo – volunteers needed May 16 – 18 Regional IMBA in Madison @Trek will open up the Farm for riding IMBA World Summit in August in Steamboat Springs, CO. Club would like to pay registration fee for several people to go to the sessions and encourage Metro members to go as sort of club ride.

February meeting will start 50/50 raffle for cash, tires, and metro t-shirt

New business: Marty emailed Marna @ the Rock re: Wednesday night racing. We’d like to see a series like this continue but we don’t want to compete with the Rock and we’re not sure what their intent is. These event prices are based on insurance and county parks issues.