On Monday June 27, we closed on the easement. A very big thanks to; Steve Devine, Phil LaRue, Wolfgang Thamm and Peter Quigley for working though all of the details. Especially the last few weeks! The funds are still working their way through the various clearing houses, but should be available to us by the end of this week.
A little accounting: $17,000 is being held in escrow, pending our upgrading our diesel tank and cleaning up the burn pile, $27,500 was paid out of the funds to our real estate lawyer for a total of about $32,500. The final check was for $3,529,849.75. This is being deposited into a special money market account. This account spreads the money across multiple banks so the total amount is covered by FDIC insurance. We have committed $35,000 to purchase the fifth Grob 103(KG). We also owe the Lawyers handling our 501(c)3 conversion about $30,000.
Next Steps; By now you should have received an announcement via regular mail about a special membership meeting to be held on Thursday July 14th at 7:00PM. We will be voting to change our By-Laws and certificate of incorporation to allow us to apply for 501(c)3 status with the IRS. We will open the meeting by electing associate members who are eligible for regular member status. They will be eligible to vote in this important election. Voting will be via election Runner. If you are unable to attend please give your proxy to a trusted voting member. But remember proxies do not count toward the threshold for a quorum. Please attend if at all possible.
REMEMBER to be eligible to vote you must be an active member and your dues must be fully paid!
Also at this meeting we will be asking the membership to approve a plan to upgrade our fleet. By all measures the Grob 103 is best aircraft for our mission. We plan to have each of our Grob 103s thoroughly refurbished, one at a time, over the next several years. Each aircraft will cost between $40,00 to $50,000. We will be asking the membership to support using the easement funds to support this upgrade.
We need to upgrade our tow planes as well. We are working on a plan and will present to the membership details as we work them out.
See you at the field and on July 14th.
Dave