Rockport Thacher and Straitsmouth Island Town Committee, Oct. 1, 2026

This is the Thatcher Straitsmith Island Town Committee of 1st of October 2026. We have a quorum present. It's been duly posted so we can begin the meeting. Unfortunately, the meeting begins with a sad note. You may have already received the email that went out about Dick McPherson. He passed away today. Dick first got involved in the island back in the early 2000s when he came out with the K-Ban radio club. They at that time were participating in around the world 24-hour

hour. How many lighthouses can you contact on shortwave radio? I don't know whether they won or lost, but certainly we won because we got Dick for the next 26 years as a valued, able, and clever volunteer. Don't know what the arrangements are right now, but that will let you know when that occurs. If we could have a moment of silence for Dick.

Who agrees? He also says aye. Thank you. I'm here too, Sid. I'm sorry? I'm here too. Chris. Chris. Yeah. I can't take anything. Treasures report. Sue Hardy is once again away camping. Good for her. And I will just read her report. Under fuel and other operating expenses, the available balance is $1,330.22 in the wages account is $801.86.

The Thatcher Island gift account. There's some incompatibility between Sue and the town as far as the final figures. She lists $1,099.95. And under capital projects reserve, there is still $2,753.68. Any questions on that treasurer's report? Otherwise, entertain a motion to accept it as submitted? In favor, a question. You want to vote on that? We'll go the other way. Dave Nackowitz. Yes. Nicole Bannerman. Yes.

Paul Saina. Yes. Patty Wagman. Yes. Bob Crowe. Myself. Yes. And George Langer. Also says yes. Thank you. Sid. Yes. Sid, there's the phone number that's being shown on the screen. I think that's Lee Mar. 546-3852. That might be Lee. Okay. All right. In that case, we'll log him in as present. Thank you. I asked him to unmute, but I'm not sure if he, yeah, because right now he's just muted. Christy, can you say that number again? I'm just going to look it up to, okay.

Treasures Report as submitted, are you in favor? All right. Thank you. Now, status of the boats. Mr. Krause. Good evening. Can everybody hear me? Yeah. Very good. Both boats are still in the water, operating pretty well. As most of you are aware, we're planning an outing tomorrow. They're both going to be in operation. The real last planned activity for the season. And once we get through tomorrow, we'll begin to wrap things up on my end. The only other thing that really needs to happen after tomorrow

is that we'll need to pick a couple hours and run back out and recover all of the mooring balls and the pickup lines. For some of you that may or may not realize this, we have seven different moorings out there. So it's more than just a five-minute run. We have to go out there and recover all that gear, put it on the boat, bring it back, clean it up, and store it for the winter. Once we do that, hopefully very shortly after that, the next day or so, by this time next week, we should have both boats hauled out and on the trailers and headed over to Crocker's for some winterization. Other than that, that's about my report, unless anyone has any questions.

Any questions for Bob Krause? Thank you, Bob. Moving on to tourist trips, some information about this year. By some calculations, there were 216 round trips out to the island. They carried out a total of 725 passengers, sold 256 tickets, which generated $9,427 to the town general fund.

The question is, the way we ran the boats this year, did that meet the needs of the tourists? Did that offer adequate tourist trips to each island? How did the cancellations work? How did the rebookings work? And what about the rain date? And can we make the process easier for our tourists, but also easier on the folks who deal with putting this program together

and using Eventbrite and then Emil catching the problems left, right, and center and personally sorting them out. So first off, I'll ask Camille, you want to address some of those as far as first off, did the number of trips this year seem to be adequate for the needs of the tourists for each island? Well, we did have a lot of cancellations this year due to the weather. So I showed we had 124 trips to Thatcher and then 28 cancelled trips to Thatcher. So that was a lot.

And then to Strait Smith, we only had 7 trips to Strait Smith and 10 Strait Smith were cancelled. And one of the reasons was that in July, we had no Strait Smith trips because it was cancelled due to weather. And then in the beginning in June, the very first boat didn't have a lot of response, no reservations. So we convinced it instead of running three boats, we just ran the one boat. So I would say that, yes, we did have enough boats available. Yes, there was a big wait list, but it was because we had a lot of cancellations. And then to go follow up with that,

our rain date boats, we had three of them. And we did two of them in July. And each Thursday ran four boats, which was full. And then we had one in August. And I was away and George covered that. And there were three boats that looked like they were full. And so when we do have a cancellation, what I've been doing is everyone when I call and cancel, I asked them if they'd like to rebook. Usually, if it's in June, there's a lot of empty spaces and it's easy to rebook the cancelled people in June. This year, the end of June, we had one seat here, one seat there. It was basically

full. So in June and in July and August, what I would do is if I did have any seats available, they would get first dibs. If not, I asked if they wanted to be on the wait list. If they were on the wait list, and I had cancellations, I would always go to the cancelled people first, before I just would, you know, offer them to people who called in. So I tried awfully hard to get everyone that was cancelled, you know, an opportunity to rebook. It ended up that my count was 195 people that were cancelled. And out of that 195 people that were cancelled, we were able to rebook 67 people. And out of that 67, 40 of them were booked on a

rain date. So I think the rain date worked very well to meet the needs. So I would say, you know, the same schedule as next year seemed to work. We have no control over the weather, and we both get cancelled. But, you know, it seemed to meet the needs. Okay. Now, with respect to the rain dates, what we had done, I think, is had one a month. What I'd like to propose is we have one every three weeks. And that would be on a Thursday. And it would be one boat going out with three trips, either to Thatcher or to Straysmith,

or to both. And we would let Camille fill those boats, or whoever is doing that for Camille, fill those boats as she sees fit from prior trips that were cancelled because of weather or a mechanical fare of the boat. And if she found that on a given rain date, you needed four trips, then what I would suggest we do is she would fill those three boats first,

and only if there were another four people would she muster a fourth trip. So we'd still have one boat on Thursdays with three or potentially four trips on Thursdays. And a trip, if we use Thatcher one, could take people either to Straysmith, drop them off, or to Thatcher, drop them off, or to take some to Straysmith, drop them off, and some to Thatcher, and drop them off, kind of like the Vaparazzos do in Venice. And that would require only one crew, and not muster two crews, with the additional demands on captains and boat crew's time, as well as the

finances involved. Comments on that concept. SID, can you state again what you said that four boats and have her fill the first three boats first, and if there's only four or more people use a fourth boat, or three or more? Well, that's where you're kind of splitting hairs. But I would say if you've got four or more people, we fill the fourth boat for three. I don't think it's worth having a fourth boat that day. Okay, thank you. But this would give Camille flexibility to get people to either island on a

rain date, and be able to fill those up to the day before, as long as we have a crew signed up for a rain date every three weeks. Three, one, three. I think that that's a really good idea, because this year, with no boats to Straysmith in July, I did have a wait list for people who just wanted to go to Straysmith. And actually two of them that I rebook said, well, if I can't go to Straysmith, do you have anything for me on Thatcher? I was able to put them on a rain date boat for Thatcher. So I think that whole concept of we can split it

depending on what the need is, you know, to Straysmith and or Thatcher combination, I think, is a really good idea. Captain Crows, you got any comments on that? I think it's workable. Yeah, I think we just need to put it on schedule and give Camille a chance to fill the seats and then go from there. You know, it's always a little tricky. You know, I can have a crew ready to go, but it's almost always up in the air to see how well that's going to be used. But I think if we go

for every three weeks, it'll be interesting to see how much that will get filled. I guess, as I'm saying that one of my questions becomes, you know, you're talking about a fourth boat. Let's do all that in reverse. What's the minimum number of people that we want to schedule a Thursday for? One boatload? Two? Three? I think when last year we talked about it on that first rain day, Bob, you said if I could fill two boats, it would be a go. But open to, you know, if you want to go with three, you know, whatever. But like, if you let me know, then this way, when I'm

getting talking to people, I could tell them, yes, it looks like we're going to have a boat and give them directions how to get the ticket, as opposed to me having to call you, find out how many people I have, then call the people back and tell them yes or no. So if we could have a number to start with, that would be great. You know, my sense is, you know, two boatloads, you know, we're talking 12 paying passengers now somewhere that we get some revenue for. I think that starts to make enough sense to keep a boat crew in the water. What do you think? Yeah, I think two would be a reasonable minimum to muster a rain date. And if you've got a crew there and you've got two trips

going out, and Camille also runs in parallel a wait list for people who want to go out. As we get more into July and August, the more that wait list would be exercised, and you could probably fill the third trip out. Yeah, I think that can work. Any other questions, suggestions? George Langer, are you back with us? There you are. Yes, thank you. Sorry, we have two Zoom calls going right now.

Oh, okay. All right. In that case, we'll, I'll. It's the financial or the legal training for the town of Rockport. What was the question? The question was with having a rain date every third Thursday with a boat that will go out with up to make three trips to Thatcher, to Stratsmith, or to Thatcher and Stratsmith for they who had been canceled in the previous three weeks,

or also be filled with people on a wait list as the summer goes on. It worked well this past summer. I would say we don't need to start it so early. We started it in June. I think we had two dates in June. I don't think you need that. I think it was a good thing. I think you're right on that. And what I would propose is starting it the last Thursday in June is the 24th. So that would be our first rain date. And if we did that, then every three weeks would give us a rain date in July and two in August,

where you could again use the folks who are on a waiting list and any canceled tourists because of whether who could make it. Did Camille already speak to that? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The one, I'm looking back on my little calendar, the July 22nd, Wednesday that was canceled and we vote the Thursday 23rd rain date. I think there was only one person that did not rebook. So basically everybody from the Wednesday except for one person, not even one group, just one person, since they couldn't make it that next day. So I think if we, you know, when we do it

closer like that, more of those canceled people can respond. And again, as we get later into the season in August, there is a long list of waitlists. So if we don't fill it with rebooked people, we could work on waitlist people. Okay. Then that'll, that'll be the tentative plan for next year. This might be a good time to also get some dates for the beginning and the end of the tourist season in case that is going to show up in either the newsletter or spring musings or whatever.

So I would suggest we start the tourist season on June 2nd, which is a Wednesday, and that boat will go to Thatcher. And then straysmith will not start until the eighth and straysmith will be every other Tuesday. And then the end of the season will also start, stop rather, on Wednesday, the 25th of August with a rain date on the 26th of August. What did you say? August 25th? The last trip to Thatcher with a rain date on the 26th of August. Okay. Thank you.

That's not too much different than our one this year, except for we started last year with straysmith and the straysmith will be starting a week later when hopefully there's a little bit more interest having built up on that. Okay. Also under the tourist trips, special trips that were done. There were quite a few this year. I think all of them went reasonably well. Most of them were done outside of Eventbrite,

except for the Rotary Club in Rockport. Is that right? I think they went through the Eventbrite. And for the special trips, which were the Cub Scouts, Council on Aging, the Anisquam Yacht Club, the Salem Maritime went out late in the season. Since each of those trips had, if you will, a sponsor or a champion in the association, that seemed to work reasonably well without having to do it through Eventbrite.

Unless folks would like to have it done all through Eventbrite, we can continue with the patent for those special trips as they worked last year. The only advantage to Eventbrite is if you're charging. Yeah, it worked fine. You know, it's just, yeah, it worked fine. Okay. Now, again, I would defer to Camille if she disagrees. Camille? I think you're muted, Camille. Oh, okay. There we go. The advantage of Eventbrite, like with the Rotary Club,

was yes, it was free, but then nobody had to collect names to make a manifest. All the names were there in Eventbrite. All George had to do was what he does every week is just transfer them with Salesforce, plus then he's captured their information in terms of home addressed mail stuff to and email address. So that would be the one advantage of doing free trips with Eventbrite, but it really, you know, George is the one usually making the manifest, except for those special trips that don't go through Eventbrite. So it would be, you know, up to him splitting hairs if it's worth getting, capturing all that information or not. And like with the Boy Scouts, those are

kids, you're not going to really capture their email address and their home address to mail stuff to, you know, so it's, it's, it doesn't really matter. Okay, under special trips, I've got down, should they be free? And that, again, is a reassessment of if something is free, is it valued by the receiving party, or is it just law the threshold for canceling because of whatever the will or the moment is? So, Doc, I would add to that, sometimes it's saying thank you. So a lot of the Rockport

groups like Council on Aging, Scouts, I mean, these are all people that, if not directly supported through CPC funding and so on, were members of families who supported that. That's a clear exception, I think. The, have we seen a increase, a decrease, or the same as far as people who go through Eventbrite canceling before, after the seven days? Does that seem about the same,

or is there any, any change in that? Camille or George? It doesn't seem like there's been a change. The, the people who cancel with pre-tickets within less than seven days, I could put those back on Eventbrite, you know, to resell, or I could call people off of the wait list to see the people who pay and cancel, I cannot take them off of Eventbrite, but I do have a workaround if they become a member that I can get them on the boat too. So, well, we're not getting the fee, you're getting a membership. So I haven't noticed an increase in that this past year.

Sid, I just want to just add to the conversation about should they be free, that it would be nice if we could set some parameters around where do we stop? Because people are doing their own thing with certain groups, and I'm just, I don't know how other people feel about that. Some people may think that I'm being a little overstepping my boundaries here, but I think with money that we are, you know, we're, we're being very kind to individuals asking them for donations and things like that. And I just wonder if it would be worthwhile having a conversation at a meeting at some point about what are our parameters around it. Otherwise, I can see this creating, I think for our boat crew and our boat hands, I think for our docents, I think for the

workers that I think they should all have a point of view about it, and not just leave it that if there's a Rockport group, they can go out, or a Gloucester group, they can go out free of charge. And that, that's all I have to say about it. I think that's a very, very salient point to bring up and to discuss, Patty. The general philosophy has been if it was a town group, nonprofit, philanthropic, or civically beneficial to the town, then we wouldn't charge them for that.

But there's a lot of people, there's a lot of groups that may be in the gray area on that now. Perhaps what we should do is anyone who would like to be the sponsor advocate of a group that would like to go out to bring it to the attention of the town committee and the association and have them vote yay and nay on it. That way, you would have more input from the folks who are basically keeping the island working

and be able to benefit from their opinions, just as your suggestion. Isn't that how it works today? It is basically, but it's not on a formal basis. It's more of an informal basis. So if we looked at this year, I guess the Anisquam Yacht Club would be one that I think under Patty's kind of guideline could be challenged. You could also challenge the artists, although there's a more direct organizational relationship

there. But the others, I think, well, the Smith family, I don't know how people feel about that one. That's all I'd have to say, I guess. I don't know, does that address what you were saying, Patty? No, I'm glad to hear what you're saying, because I think that these are conversations we need to have. I think that we do have donors that we are accommodating. The artists certainly give to our town. I just don't think that we should just leave it at a static basis. I think it would be good for those that are involved in wanting to represent, as Sid said, to have some sort of mindset of a

global thinking about whether or not it's what we should do. Because, like I said, in any of these kinds of runs, that idea is getting to somebody else, and then to somebody else, and then to somebody else. And I just don't want to be overwhelming some of our subgroups to being overwhelmed, and to making sure that we're doing what we want to accommodate certain groups. And that's why I'm talking about parameters. I don't want to make up those parameters, but I think it should be a good discussion, like you had brought up some good topics. And we had a metric with the association for very large donors being able to be accommodated. I don't believe we've done that

yet. Actually, we did. At least why is my understanding of it is that if we had donors, and what's a large donor? Well, I think 5k, we said at about 5,000 and above. Well, no, it was a thousand is a large donor. But with the caveat, if you were a large donor, and you gave that much, then we would accommodate you on a scheduled day. If you gave more than that, five grand, then we would accommodate you on a day of your convenience. It's not a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Saturday, necessarily. And that's kind of what we held

so far. As far as the Smith family, they have easily surpassed that baseline for a trip on a regular day. And they did go out on a regular day, I believe. It was a Tuesday, Thatcher day. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I think we're still consistent with that principle. But again, if the Knights of Pythia has come down the street and want to go out, I think we need to think a little bit more about that, the generic acceptance of groups. And if a group has an advocate in our association, that advocate should be able to

justify the benefits to the island, both in community support, advertising, or potential donations to justify implementing their request. And it does go through you. I mean, Camille and I have not approved any special trips for anyone without going through you. Anybody else got any questions? All right. So to be further honed and refined,

best use of docents. The docents this year, I last counted 126 docent days. That means there were two or three people either at the dock and on the island or at the dock and on the island and up in the lighthouse. So they are now doing your woman service for the tourists going back and forth. But I wonder if we could use them better. And the better is there's a number of choke points

and people going out to the island. And we've used the docents as a way of having people sign in on the island. And that probably is not necessary, except for a few modifications. Namely, anybody who signs in through a ticket or gets a ticket through Eventbrite is signing in and signing the town waiver that's required by town council so that the docents no longer have to sign the people coming by launch either on the island or elsewhere.

It's the keepers who need to sign in people who come by kayak, their private boat, or that type of conveyance so as to have a more total capture of the legal requirements. But the docent who's at the dock, that person is there. There's usually a period of time where they're with the people going out. And I wonder if the doc docent could also be used to give more of a idea of what to

expect on the island about the birds, about the sticks to keep them away, and hand out a brochure or map there and answer some questions on the dock while you're waiting for the boat to show up. Then once the people get on the island, rather than have them all wade around at the boathouse to get the spiel on the island, they will have already had that at the dock. So you can let them go with their exuberance to either climb the tower, go

wherever they want to go, and still get the message across to them. Now on the other end of that, when people are coming back to get the boat, they are usually hanging around the boathouse. That's where the gift card is. It's hardly a gift card. That's where the sales card is, and that's where people make their transactions. Oftentimes at the last minute, while you're trying to land a boat, while you're trying to get people on the boat, perhaps the cart and those transactions might better be served if they were moved elsewhere. One place for elsewhere is in the museum. So you would have a docent in the museum

handling the gift card, also answering whatever questions people had while they're traveling through the museum, and you could have your inventory in the unused toilet in the museum instead of in the boathouse, so that you would have less traffic around the boathouse while you're trying to operate the boat launching and landings. Response to that. Is Joanne on the call? Joanne, where were you? Not seeing Joanne right now. Nick Bannerman, what do you think about that?

I think we'd lose a lot of sales if it was in the museum there. Oh, there she is. I'm here. Oh, okay. Joanne. Can you hear me? Yep. Yes. Okay, great. Awesome. Well, Nick could speak too, but whatever. So anyway, okay, it's an interesting concept, but I can't say I agree with it. I called five docents and got their opinions on it as well. And they all agreed, basically, that that's a big mistake to move it from the boathouse to the museum. And I suspect that I know what the impetus was, because oftentimes, and I have solutions, we have to go into the boathouse

when the winch is about to go off to pull in a boat to get other sizes of merchandise that the departing group is requesting. I think having the boathouse gift cart at the boathouse and telling the people to get back 10 minutes before their boats departing is what we've been doing. And I think the monkey wrench in this whole thing, the fly in the ointment, was the docents being asked to take a tally of who's getting on the boat that's departing back to Granite Pier, and also making last minute sales by the people that are going to be departing. And you also probably just had a group come in on a new boat coming in. And honestly,

I think the docents would be misused in the waste in the museum. We choose our docents because of their people skills. And I know that a lot of the lighthouse keepers have wonderful skills, but they're hired, or so to speak, to bring the boats in safely and keep everybody out of the boathouse when the winch is running kind of thing. The both the docents are the people with the skills. And I have seen many of them over talk Nick Bannerman as a perfect example, not just because she's here, but she goes over to that picnic table and engages people. And that's the kind of thing we want to do to build a communication with our guests. And maybe some

of them will say, geez, I would like to volunteer, or whatever, become members. I just think moving it to the museum is not a great idea at all, my own opinion. Nick, you want to add anything? Yeah, I agree with Joanne. I think people go to the museum right when they arrive on the island. And I think you make all your sales when they're waiting to get on the boat. They tend to be a little bit early so that they can make sure that they're on time. And that's when we make a lot of what's that's when we make all the sales. And I agree with Nick and the other pieces when we have

repeat visitors, they don't want to go into the museum again and watch the movie again. They've been there and done that. So they probably could very well skip the museum, as well as people with children that don't want to sit through as interesting as it is the video. I think we'll miss a lot of traffic. Any Karen? Karen Wise. Yeah, so no, I think that Joanne and Nick really summed it up. I agree with them. Perhaps, and the docents can talk about this, next year we can bring sort of one size of each t-shirt out to the cart, keep it on the bottom of the cart, so that we don't need to run into the

boathouse at the last minute the same way that we do today. So, you know, maybe we can change our process a little bit there regarding what we bring out to the cart. That's a great idea, Karen. The other thing, too, is sometimes that card doesn't slide well in the square. And when it doesn't, it might just be the way your wrist is angling it. And you say to somebody else in the boathouse, hey, you want to just run this card, see if you can get it to work, bingo, it works. So if you're in the museum, you're isolated, you don't have any backup. That's actually a good point, Joanne, because sometimes you need a little extra help with something, with the transaction, and it's nice to have people there to help out.

Yeah. Katie. Yeah. And I think people, and maybe if the museum were in a more visible place, but I think you'd have somebody just sitting there for a lot of the time not doing things or, you know, it's sort of a hit or miss. And down at the boathouse, that's where the action is. And yeah, it can get a little hectic at times, but there's usually other people to help you between the keepers and other boat people. So yeah, I don't see it. And they want

it after they've done. They don't want it before they, you know, after they've been there, and they've had a great time, they're like, maybe I will buy a t shirt. Any other comments? Okay, I'll weigh in. I'm not a docent, but I'm a keeper. I'm at the boathouse when everybody comes. And now that I'm listening, that is a valid point that people are sitting around waiting for that boat. And sometimes if there's enough keepers there, I'm sitting at the picnic table, chit-chatting, and they're like, oh, when there was on that cart, let me look. And so they'll wander over and maybe get some sales. Maybe an alternative is another, like to move that

location. So it's not as close to the boathouse. Like Norm Delisle did a really nice job putting all that like little brick walkway there, you know, to put the cart on. Maybe that cart could be moved further back, like near the generator house, the stone house, and put a nice little thing there. So it's not right there at the boathouse. And what Karen said, that's what clicked in my mind. Yes, instead of having one type of each shirt, have one or two sizes of each shirt. So then you don't have to be running into the boathouse. Oh, you want a medium, let me go get it. You'd have it there. And once the people left, you could go ahead and restock then when

there's no boats being landed. So I mean, I'm just throwing that out. Maybe, you know, moving the the gift card, I could see how that would be helpful, but maybe not moving it to the museum, putting it at another location close to the boathouse, but not at the boathouse, like right behind it. Just throwing something out that came to me as everybody was talking. Well, I think you're all right. And I agree with you. The psychology of business is if you're going to sell something, you're better off selling it after they've toured the Monet visit, and then gone into the bookstore on the way out to buy the stuff. So I think you're right.

However, and however, it's probably the more important problem that leaves who's going to take inventory because nobody is right now, as far as passengers on equals passengers off. Well, I want to chime in on that dock for years, 10 years that I've been there. The docents have not been asked to do that. That was something new this year. And I think I call it, I'm sorry, a fly in the ointment, because you can't be tending guests waiting for their boat to go out and bonding with them and selling merchandise and then taking a head count because some people drizzle in late. I think that should be the response. This is my opinion, responsibility

of somebody on the boat crew, or the person may be running the winch because there's no winch running when the boat's getting ready to depart the island. Bob Gross. What Joanne just said is, from a practical standpoint, is essentially what happens now anyway. The boat operators, the drivers all have a printout of the people that are supposed to be going out. And generally, we know when they're all coming back, we have it all in one sheet of paper. So we should be checking off paying passengers' names. And after that, it's not that hard to

add in any of the other port crews. If we've got people like Santa out there who's wandering around, he still needs to go home at the end of the day. And I'd like to be able to document that, yeah, we took Paul Santa off the island, maybe on the second or third track. And I think maybe on the second or third trip back in and brought him back so that we know he's not still out there wandering around. And we know that that's happened in the past. So it's an important function to perform. But I think everybody's right. I think the people that are on the east side of the boathouse are going to have their hands pretty full. And I think it's very appropriate

to let the boathouse, I'll just say maybe more formally on that response. If I may, well, I've got four for a second. We can jump back to the first part of your statement, too. Let's go back to Granite Pier when people are coming in. I think you make a very good point, Sid, that that's an excellent spot for people to hear about history, everything as much as we can tell them before they even get on the boat to head out there. And I know the docent that I live with does that quite a bit. The restriction, though,

and the hiccup in that is that we can't control when people get there unless we require people to be there 15 minutes ahead of time. We routinely have people coming in late. There are days when we're holding boats, hoping that passengers show up. And it just doesn't leave enough time for that to be applied consistently across all of the passengers. I think if you want to accept the notion that we're going to get, I'll say most of them, who show up on time, then yes, to me, that's a very appropriate place to be doing that. But just understand that there will be

plenty of exceptions for people that show up late, and we'll have to just punch their card and get them on the boat and get them out of there. Okay, on that thought, would it be beneficial to change the quote unquote leave date on the ticket? So instead of leaving at 10 o'clock, you put leave at 9.50. But in reality, you're going to leave at 10 o'clock. So people would see 9.50 and maybe get there the 10 minutes early. That's just throwing something out that the time could be changed on the ticket on when they need to be there. We do tell them, and it is said when they print out on the confirmation, please get there 15 minutes before departure.

But if we change the departure time to move it up and still leave at the time that you want, like on the hour on the half hour, would that be an option to get people there on time? Just throwing that out. I don't think it can hurt, but I don't know that it's going to change much. I think they who procrastinate will procrastinate at 10 minutes of nine, just as they will at nine o'clock. Go back a little bit to the thinking of the tourist passenger as a piece of inventory. The doc docent checks them in.

Mm hmm. The doc docent can then give to the captain. The people who are checked in. And you leave with them. Now, from the point where you leave with them till the time you bring them back, how about that is the boat captain and are the boat crews responsibility to make sure they've got six people on board that they took out? I think that's what's happening informally as it is now. I know it does on my boats. Yeah, but informally means there's still too many holes in the sieve.

To be more more understood. OK, his his so that when when we're all running around in circles screaming and shouting at the boat doc or at the boat house, we know who to get. To say, have you got your passengers here now? So I would like to put that on the boat, captain slash crews to do that. Is it the same boat captain going out as coming back? That can change sometimes. It can and often does. However, what you need to appreciate is that when there's a schedule that's posted. And when you folks, you in particular, George, you are kind enough to

finalize all that and assign passengers to between you and Camille, assign passengers to a particular boat in time. That is now in black and white. And that's what we use for our manifest so that people. We're just checking and making sure that those are the people that are there. If they're not, then we'd scratch the name off and write in the name that showed up. So that way, at least we've got them accounted for. But your point, quite often, what happens is that the boat that takes a group out will not be the same, but they will come back on

simply because of the timing of the pickups and drop off. In fact, it's more routine to have to have them flip. So that it's another reason to have all those names and the whole schedule and boats and names of people on that schedule for both boat operators to have, for the doses to have. So everybody knows where everybody's supposed to be at. And now that becomes our inventory list. And we can go down the list and check names right off as we go along going out and coming back in. Well, the other thing to that, Bob, that's a good point. Diane Cartwright had set up a great system. She checked off from the beginning of the name when they arrived on the island,

since they don't have to sign in. And then when they lined up to get back onto the boat, she checked off on the back end of their last name. So you could see that everybody was on and everybody was off, the same group. The caveat to that is you have a random person, which we practiced last year, that would say, you know, I've had enough. My boat's not supposed to go till 12 o'clock, but here I am at 1115. I'd like to get this boat. And we tell them only during a medical emergency is that done, you know, to swap somebody on because, you know, the person that shows up in it, you know, that isn't on the list to go on that boat, that creates a real problem.

And it just cascades like a domino effect. If the person that's supposed to be on the boat can't fit on because somebody took the seat and a person that wanted to get off earlier. And again, the only exception to that would be, you know, if we are running a short passenger list, we may only have four or five people going out on a boat. And it does like want to come back a little bit early and we have an empty seat for them, then great. But we still have a restriction of six maximum on each boat. I'm going to interrupt this discussion at this point and leave it with the boat crew will be responsible for the inventory of tourists out and back from the island to be worked out by

the boat crews. The docents will be focusing now on selling things at the boat house and not be trying to sell a t-shirt and then check off the list at the same time, which results in inevitable confusion of both thoughts. So to be to be discussed more in the spring, but the docents and boat crews can figure out how they're going to do their part of this. Sid, my last two cents, I'll make it short. As much as I appreciate Bob's concern about my welfare, nobody else does, but there's very few people on this call that experience the Ted Tyre experience.

So I understand people think you've beaten a dead horse, but we've been through it. We know it happens. No, I couldn't agree more. I think it's critical. It's something that we that we really need to be able to do. Okay, sliding down the list, kayakers, that's worked out, done for the year. Projects for 2027 to be determined by the god's impact on the island. Requirement of recruitment of additional boat captains. Dr. Krause, you want to give us some idea of what you've been thinking about? Yeah, thank you. I currently only have a grand total of four active boat captains, including me.

Two of them like to head to Florida this time of year, so it drops down to two pretty quickly. If we go past this point, you know, for anything extra, such as work crews, which we're going to probably need to do next year or the year after, because we're probably going to have work crews going into October once again working on lighthouses. So with some of those kinds of things in mind, I guess two things I would offer. One, everybody should know that somebody who's, I think both of them are on the call, Nathan Ives and Sebastian Lavasco,

are both threatening to go take a course and sit for their series six, their six pack license over the winter. And we've been starting to cross train both of them to the boat drivers. That's, I think, a good start. But please understand that a lot like any other population, this is not something that's fixed in stone. I see maybe the four of us current captains being good for maybe another one to two years, and at least one of them is going to have to step off. Because frankly, we're all getting older. And, you know, it gets tougher and tougher to

keep up with some of this stuff. And we're going to need new people to start to fill in. So I think this is going to be helpful for for another year or two. But after that, we're going to start to fall back into some of these same numbers, and we're going to really need to continue to build on that class of boat crew, if you will. And it's, it takes a little bit of effort to do this. I don't know if any of you realize, but the getting a minimum of a six pack license, the license and application and testing and everything involved in it costs in excess of $1,000, which we are happy to help people out with. And the course itself, if you take it

straight through is seven days. The actual exam takes, I want to say a minimum of four hours. It's a pretty formal process. It's not a quick and easy thing that you can just knock off in you know, in a couple hours on a weekend. So it's something that requires quite a bit of effort and a commitment. So I'm very grateful to Nathan and Sebastian for being willing to step up and to do some of these things. But we're going to need more people in the years to come. Any questions? Thank you, Bob. Sharon Ware, Fish and Wildlife. Sharon still with us, is she?

Yes, I am. Him right here. Hi, Sid. Good evening, everyone. So my update is, we have a crew that's very excited to be going out to the island tomorrow to release seven new collared rabbits. And while they're out there, they're going to be doing trying to track the rabbits that are out there right now that do have collars with their telemetry equipment. They are also going to collect the memory cards from all of the game cams and review them for signs of kits, which I hope to be able to report to the board at the next meeting. Let's see. So

thank you. Thank you to the town for getting our crew out to the island. We really appreciate it, especially so late in the season. The other thing I just want to mention is that Amy and Nancy, our biologists, have been rethinking the well, they've been looking at the footage from the game cams, and they've pretty much identified at least two raccoon and two mink on the island based on the size differences of the animals that they see on the cameras. And after discussing that with other biologists who manage New England Cottontail colonies and the New England Cottontail working group, the consensus is that these predators are going to be an issue for the

rabbits and that the refuge should take action to remove them starting next spring. And so we would like to, over the winter, set up a contract with APHIS, who are the federal folks who would do predator removal, and it probably would involve a few days and nights on the island in the spring. And any questions? That's all I have to report. No questions for Sharon. I would like to make a motion that the town committee vote in favor

of endorsing Fish and Wildlife's plan to remove raccoons, weasels, or other predatory species that compromise the status of the rabbit colony on Thatcher Island. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor, by vote, let's see. Bob Krause. Aye. George Langer. Aye. Dave Nachowitz. Aye. Paul Saina. Aye. Patty Wegman. I'm going to say aye, but I think, Sharon, it would be really helpful for my mind to get some

background information or some data regarding removal of those animals to another location. And I understand why you're doing it. I just think it would be great to have some general articles or something that's supportive of that. So I'll say aye. Nicole. Aye. Can Liemeyer, who I think may be coughing? You get it right, said aye. Aye. All right. Sharon, you have your vote. Very good. Thank you. All right. Just odds and ends and other things. We had the cookout. I think that was well received. Kudos to the five, six, and seven of the folks who put that together.

Anything else for the Thatcher Island Town Committee? Yeah, Sid. I see we got Ruth George on. I want to make sure that we... CPC has been our lifeline here on both islands. And I don't know if they're seeing everything that we have, whether it's a newsletter or our videos. I just want to make sure that they're getting everything, all our publicity, what's going on. Especially like the last... We got the

video from the documentary from Pat Forten on straightsmith. Ruth, I'll send it to you. But I also propose that we make sure all of CPC members have the newsletter to see what's going on. Good idea. And extend that to the select bin as well. All right. Who's in charge? George, is that you, George, that does that? Or is that Christy Ruedel, who does that? The two of us will take care of it. All right. Good idea, Paul. Thank you. Anything else for the Town Committee? Hearing none, we'll make a motion to end the meeting.

So moved. A unanimous consent. Thank you. Randy. I guess it's our turn. On behalf of the Thatcher Straightsmith Island Association, I, like Doc, want to acknowledge Dick McPherson just for a moment. Dick was a good friend to many of us. And he was always great to spend time with on Thursdays, I mean on Wednesdays on the island, and catch up with him at coffee breaks. But he did so much more for so many of us. He taught us so many things over the years, especially the volunteers and the keepers. And especially me, he patiently coached sometimes remotely from his house when I interrupted him

about any technology or solar power issue that I happened to be dealing with when we were on the islands. And he's just such a great guy, such a great friend, and will be missed by all of us. Now, for the meeting of the Thatcher Straightsmith Island Association, I suppose I ought to look at our agenda. I would like to have a motion to approve the meeting minutes from the August meeting, that Christie did such a fine job of creating. Do I have a motion? So moved. Seconded. Second. All those in favor? Thank you again, Christie. Meredith is

bicycling across Croatia right now. So I get to be the treasurer's report and the finance committee, but I'm going to take half the time. So therefore, let's talk about income first, one of my favorite things. In general, our total accounts, before I go into income year to date, our total accounts are, and I know that Christie has all this, so I won't bore you all with right to the penny dollar amounts, but we have a total assets in our accounts of 1.326 million. A majority of that is in our UBS investment account, and about, small print here,

about $450,000 of it is reserved for our south tower renovation, so we're doing well with that. And then on our income year to date, based on our budgets for 2026, and this is by the way, this report is through August 31st of this year, so only eight months. We are at about $87,000, and our goal for income was, and this income is of course from merchandise, sales, memberships, day-to-day donations, etc. So we're 87,000 out of our budget that we put in for 133,000,

therefore 65% of our way towards our goal, but our fall newsletter is always a great generator of donations, and we've gotten some income in September, and October will probably be good to us too, so that being said, I'm not worried about the 65%. And then on the expense side, unusual report as we end the season almost, but as of the end of August, we have spent only $107,000 out of our budget for 176,000. Quite a few expenses, and that's 61% by the way, but quite a few expenses are going to come in in September and October, but I'd say we are safe to

say that our expenses are going to stay under budget for the year 2026, which is all good news. Thank you for that. I believe we are supposed to vote on approving the Treasurer's Report, so that being said, could I have a motion to do that? So moved. Could I have it seconded? And then all those in favor? Aye. Thank you, thank you. The Executive Committee report is by myself, since Bill is also cycling in Croatia. So I'm so glad she's here. Ruth George,

thank you for another wonderful job at town meeting. No one could have done it better than you, but we do thank you for helping us and every member of the CPC Committee helping us get yet another couple hundred thousand dollars. So we know we get that when we start to spend the money, but we, thanks to the CPC, have three years in a row, I believe, Ruth, of our approved town funds of $200,000 a year. And thank you so much for all you do to help us. On the negative side of life, Amelia Peabody Grant was rejected this past month, despite the good application. And we are about to apply in the next couple of weeks for a mass

cultural grant. And so that we'll be venturing down a path of trying to make up the gap of the recent rejection. Any questions for me before I move to the next topic on the agenda? Hearing none, website update. Karen, could you fill us in? Sure. There were some very visible updates to the website for our South Tower fundraising activities with help from a number of people, both on the design side and the implementation side. So I appreciate everybody who did work on that. We also, in a very small item for the website,

and you'll see it at the Harvest Fest as well, we've raised the prices of just a couple of our merchandise items, and they're already visible on the website. So books have gone up a dollar, t-shirts have gone up a couple of dollars, that sort of thing. That's it, though. Thank you, Karen. Sales, merchandising. Christine, are you still here with us? There you are. You need to unmute yourself. I thought I had. Am I unmuted now? Yeah, you're perfect now. Okay. Well, we had a good last farmers market. I think it was over 1,500. So that's great. And we're looking, hoping for a nice day on the 17th. And it's a longer,

it's longer than the farmer's market. It's, I think it's, is it a 12 to five, something like that on the 17th. So we're hoping for good sales there. And I have three people already signed up to help. If anyone else out there would like to be around on that day, that's great. Let me know. Do you need anybody to set up or do you have enough for set up? No, we haven't really talked about set up because it won't be the usual at 8am set up. I don't think we can get in that early. You can put me down for set up. I think it set up will be about 11. Okay. Anybody else who wants to volunteer on that wonderful harvest fest?

Hearing none. I'm going to move on. Did you have anything else, Christine? No, that's it. I can go volunteer the 17th. Sorry, I was on mute. Oh, great. Okay. Thanks, Nicole. Was that you, Nicole? Put me down. Yeah. Put me down for the 17th. Let me know, Christine, what time you want me there. Okay. Yeah. I, I think I'm already down. I think, yes, Katie, you're on, you're on the list. And, uh, I think that's the act is, is, and, uh, and Nora, I hope Nora will help out because she was a big help on the last one. Yeah. You'll get, you'll get Nathan, unfortunately, too, but at least Nora will be there to help. Yeah. Um, any, anything else, Christine? That's it. Okay. Under the category of other business, uh,

when I, earlier I saw his name, but is, uh, Justin Marshall still on the call to talk a little bit about the calendars? Yes. Well, thank you. Um, so, uh, the final set of photos have been selected. Uh, we're just trying to get, um, some additional metadata and information on a few of those photos. Um, I did reach out, uh, to Bill, uh, he's on vacation. So, uh, Karen and Christie have kindly volunteered to help me out with that, but we should have, um, the final set of everything, uh, for approval, uh, probably in the next week or so. Thank you. That's great. Um,

Paul newsletter is wrapping up our agenda. George, you're on. So our writer's deadline is next Friday. Uh, we have a lot of great articles in this issue. Um, wrapping up the Straitsmith light entry cabin, uh, and a two-page spread of photographs of work done on the island, uh, the tramway on Thatcher and, um, a couple of roofing pictures from the entry cabin on Straitsmith. So that's all good. And, um, yeah, we're gonna, yeah, I'll stop right there. That's great. Thanks. You don't want to let the cat out of the bag? No, it isn't that it's just, um, we've, it's a, it's a matter of how many we get printed.

That's the question. And, uh, so I think we've got some ways to better align that with men membership. Okay. Well, thank you for all your effort. Um, unless there's somebody else that wants to add an agenda item to our meeting, I'm going to make a motion to adjourn. So thank you so much. And all of you have a good evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good night, everyone.