As you may know, last week the title to the CRO land was officially
signed over and filed with the county clerks office. So the six acres
in question is now officially ours.

The next phase of CRO development will begin soon, so I met with Brad
and Dan yesterday afternoon and we discussed what we thought our next
steps should be as well as to make sure we were all up to date on
everything to this point.

Let me recap where we are right now. A new member that has spoken both
with Brad and with me about this has graciously offered us some pro
bono architectural work. He is ready to go and we will get him going
soon.

I have also been offered a pro bono title search on the land. I don't
see how there could possibly be a problem with this land and as long as
we have not yet done any development, there can not be a problem as we
have yet to incur any legal responsibilities. But we'll get this done
soon and that will be done before we need it.

We all agreed that we are basically waiting on two things before we
proceed with funding efforts.

1) Professional conceptual drawings
2) Reasonable cost estimates

We have the production pieces being developed at Francis Tuttle
Institute right now. They should be done in a few weeks. These can be
used (depending upon how they turn out) in conjunction with each fund
raising effort. However important and useful these may be, they should
not stop our efforts if they are not yet ready.

Completed architectural designs can be used as fund raising drawings
and will give us a detailed cost estimate as well.

We are probably a little early in actually requesting funds for this
project before these two things are ready. But I would like us to be
ready when these steps are completed. The time to investigate what
grants are available and what each will require is upon us.

At our next meeting on the 13th, I will officially announce the
formation of a CRO Development committee. This committee will deal with
both the physical development plans and the fund raising efforts. I see
it breaking into two sub committees fairly rapidly but I would like to
have everyone together at first as a general kick off meeting.

Some of the things I would like to have us discuss will include whom in
the professional community as well as the fund raising community we
should be contacting. Obviously we will get in contact with Dr. Osell
at NOC, Gary Hug and Mike Ford at Far Point Observatory as well as a
number of other people in the professional astronomy community. Dan has
made contact with a professional fund-raiser already. He is interested
in our project but agrees that we need to have a cost estimate and
professional drawings done first. I will also be contacting some of the
asteroid hunters I know about whatever they can offer in terms of the
physical plans they used in construction of their observatories.

Brad already has a lead on a number of funding options, and will be
investigating more before we meet again.

So, we will proceed with the naming of the committee on Jan 13th. That
committee will meet later in the month, and discuss our next steps. I
assume that most (if not all) of the people who are in this group will
be joining our team. I think we have the people needed to get this done
even if all of the individual talents are not yet represented. I have
found that the more I talk about this project, the more the people
around me get interested and want to help out.

Once we have met as a committee, I think everyone will have a better
idea of what talents we will need to accomplish the tasks at hand. Once
those are known each of us will know people who can do a few of them,
and we will know the other talents which we ourselves must acquire to
get this done. Then with a little focus and effort, we as a club can
get this done.

2006 is here, here we go,
Jeff