Grange Notes by Tim Swartz, Grange President (with everyone’s help) February 28, 2024
We got a good start at our February meeting
As we hoped, the process of discussing the tasks we listed is serving as a good educational tool for the newer members, and even for people who have been part of the Grange for a while. In the process, a few people saw opportunities to pitch in–which is great! For example, Liz Benjamin, Cecile Sherburn, and Marty Roberts have volunteered to organize the annual Grange Cooking Contest which will be held at our May meeting–see more below. And Susan McKenney contacted me later to say that she’d like to help Amy Handy with maintenance of the flower beds outside the Hall.
Our March meeting, from 4:30 to 6:00 PM this Saturday will continue this discussion. Please join us, whether you’re a new member, or someone who joined to support the Grange, but hasn’t been to many (or any) meetings, or someone who’s been involved for a while. Getting input from lots of people will help us put our needs in perspective–and you might hear of something that you’ll enjoy doing, that helps you feel you are really contributing. Or maybe you’ll notice something we’ve missed–which we need to know about. At the least, you’ll know what’s going on.
It’s also time to start thinking about replacing and supplementing the efforts of many long-time volunteers. I’ll speak for myself: I got elected as Grange President in 2006; if I get re-elected this coming September for another 2-year term, the end of that will be my 20th anniversary…and I can’t keep it up forever.
Please come to the meeting and help us figure this out! There is a Zoom link for those who can’t make it in person, posted on the Grange Meeting Calendar listing.
Our meeting starts at 4:30 PM, and will go until 6:00 PM, when…
Plumbing at the Grange
During January, at a contra dance, people who used the bathrooms found that the toilet tanks were not filling up, or were doing so veeeeeeeeeeeeeery slowly. After some headscratching, and with the advice of Tom Mulholland, the plumber who did the plumbing work during the 2015 rebuilding of the bathrooms in the lower level, I replaced 4 of the tank-filling valves, which were full of sediment.
Since we have also had sediment in the aerators of the kitchen sinks, we voted at our February meeting to have Tom install a whole-building filter on the incoming line from the pump which supplies the (excellent) water for our Hall. He did so a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, after he drained the water from the pressure tank to install the water, we had problems with fluctuating water pressure.
It turns out that the pressure tank was about 40 years old–well over the typical 15 year life span–and the membrane inside had failed. After consulting with several members of the Grange, our “Executive Committee”, we decided to go ahead and hire Tom to install a new one. So by the Saturday meeting, Tom and I will have replaced the pressure tank. It’s never fun to have to spend this amount of money–but we are very glad that these problems did not crop up until we recovered from the major cash-flow problems we had due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our rentals have come back strong since then, and we are able to handle these expenses. Our expectation is that the filter will keep sediment from building up again, avoiding the need to replace toilet valves, and to keep cleaning the aerators.
We took care of business:
Keeping our corporation up to date
As predicted in the previous Grange Notes, we took a few minutes at our February meeting to go through the formalities of holding a “Corporation Meeting” for “Capital City Grange #469 Inc.”, which is the formal name for the organization that, among other things, owns the Grange Hall. Basically, this involved having formal votes accepting the officers of the Grange as the officers of the Corporation, and ratifying the acts of the Grange as the acts of the Corporation. On such bureaucratic formality is our Grange maintained as a legal entity!
Upgrading our foyer floor
Another thing you may or may not have noticed is the foyer floor at the original entrance–the “near-stairs” one at the end of the Hall opposite the stage. Over the years, we’ve had a variety of mats there, which have done an indifferent job of covering the floor and catching the dirt from the shoes of visitors. Our 2023 rebuilding of the wall between the foyer and the Main Hall has improved the walls that enclose this area, and taken away the clutter of table storage cart, trash cans, brooms and snow shovels that used to be there. All of this has made the floor problems look even worse by comparison!
At our February meeting, we voted to bite the bullet and invest in installation of carpet tiles made for entrance spaces, with “water-hog” texture designed to trap and hold water and grit brought in on boots and shoes, and allow it to be vacuumed up later. We have the installation scheduled for April 5th–which will likely be in the middle of Mud Season! The carpet tiles will allow us to replace worn sections, in the future, without needing to replace all the flooring.