CLCA North Coast Blog

California Landscape Contractors Association (CLCA) San Luis Obispo 10th Annual Benefit Golf Tournament

Join us for this year’s golf tournament at Hunter Ranch Golf Course in Paso Robles, Rated 4 1/2 Stars by Golf Digest. All friends, family, associates, students, and CLCA members are welcome to participate in this tenth annual event. If you choose not to golf or can not make it, please consider being a Corporate Sponsor.

Proceeds to benefit Cal Poly Landscape Industry and Turf Student Scholarships and the San Luis Obispo Chapter of CLCA.

Please Click Here To Register http://www.clcaslo.org/p_ip_golf_reg_info_p1.html

or

Please Print The Attached Registration Form and Mail It In.

Thank you!

2011Golf_flyer.pdf

CLCA NCC is being invited to participate in this event again this year..we need a champion if we are going to accept the invitation…any takers?

Hi Charlie:

The North Coast Builders Exchange would like to invite the California Landscape Contractors Association to join us in presenting our Careers in Construction Expo to be held on Thursday, October 6th, 2011. The main purpose of this event is to offer information about various construction careers and to promote the recruitment of young people into the industry.

At Expo 2010 we hosted over 1,300 high school and middle school students and we are looking forward to similar success this year. This year we are emphasizing green building practices and materials and are asking each participant to include information on the greening of their industry at their booth.

We hope that you will be able to participate in Expo 2011. Here are the details:

* The event will take place at Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Building. * At least 1,000 students from Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino Counties are expected to attend. * Setup hours are on Wednesday, October 5th from 2:00 until 7:00 p.m., and on Thursday, October 6th from 8:00 until 8:30 a.m. when the event begins. * The event takes place from 8:30 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. on October 6th.

This year we are asking each booth participant to contribute a $100 participation fee for the event. There are also sponsorship opportunities available as described in the attached registration form. However, your participation matters the most so in light of the difficult economic state of our industry, if you would like to host a booth but cannot fund the donation fee a waiver will be granted.

I would appreciate it if you would confirm your participation in the Careers in Construction Expo 2011 by filling out the attached Participant Registration Form and returning it to me by Friday, August 19th. Please e-mail it or fax it to me at your earliest convenience and don’t hesitate to contact me in the meantime if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Robin Bartholow

Workforce Development Director

North Coast Builders Exchange

1030 Apollo Way Santa Rosa CA 95407

Phone 707-542-9502 Fax 707-542-2027

robin@ncbeonline.com

EXPO PARTICIPANT REGISTRATION FORM.doc

CLCA’s Landscape Industry Certified committee is putting on a Construction Math seminar at Buckeye Ranch/Bertotti Landscape on September 9 from 2-4:30pm in anticipation of the Fall test.

Please check out the details attached.

090911_Math_Petaluma.pdf

Dear Colleague:

As a key supporter of Santa Rosa Junior College, we would sincerely appreciate your help in getting the word out about our upcoming vacancy for the position of Dean of Agriculture/Natural Resource Management. The following is a link to the position description/announcement: www.santarosa.edu/hr/job-openings/show.php?id=1086. Please share this with your contacts as appropriate to help us find the best possible candidate.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. We sincerely appreciate your ongoing support of Santa Rosa Junior College.

Thank you-

Lorraine Wilson

Lorraine Wilson Dean III, Career and Technical Education and Economic Development Santa Rosa Junior College (707) 524-1506 lwilson@santarosa.edu E-mail responses written via Naturally Speaking software

CLCA North Coast Chapter August Dinner

Next Tuesday August 16th – 6:00 PM Rooster Run Golf Club in Petaluma

Speakers: 1. Larry Rohfles – ASSEMBLY BILLS & LEGISLATION – Affecting our industry (State CLCA Assistant Director) 2. Gil Gonzalez – MINIMIZING WORKERS COMPENSATION LIABILITY (LCIS – Landscape Contractors Insurance Services)

Master the basic landscape math and plan reading skills needed to move from laborer to manager: find areas, calculate volumes, convert fractions to decimals, read an architect’s scale and learn other valuable landscape and construction mathematical formulas. Combined English & Spanish class.

090911_Math_Petaluma.pdf

Facebook provides business owners with a great social media tool for connecting with customers and potential clients. It also provides easy tools for uploading photos, links, and posting updates on current projects. The problem becomes how to integrate all this new and current content with your company’s main web page.

Many companies’ sites were well designed by web designers, never to be updated again. Facebook makes this an easy problem to solve, but how do you make sure that your web visitors see your new Facebook photos and content. Relying on that little blue Facebook icon on the top or bottom of your page may not be enough.

Fortunately there are some tools to help. The North Coast Chapter uses the Facebook Social Plug-in, a suite of cut and paste code for your web page that displays recent posts on your site. This is fairly easy to install on your site or to have your web designer integrate. Another tool Facebook offers is the suggest to friends feature in the administrator section of your Facebook page. This can help get your page in front of more people and contacts.

Saturday, August 13: Garden Tour 2011

Join us in visiting award-winning residential gardens and commercial landscape installations. Learn first hand from the contractors about the challenges of each job. Enjoy the camaraderie of fellow members on this all day bus tour.

Meet at Horizon, 4060 Campbell Avenue, Menlo Park 94025-1007

7:45 am, Continental Breakfast
8:15 am, Garden Tour Bus leaves

$45.00 per person, includes continental breakfast, transportation and lunch

Reservations due by August 6, 2011

To reserve your space, complete the form here and mail with check payable to CLCA SFBA to:

Oliver Frank / Landscapia
1928 Lexington Ave., San Mateo, CA 94402
650 -345-4546 office, 650 333-3390 mobile
odfrank@earthlink.net

It’s 6pm, you’re still in the office. Your tank is running low, but that stack of estimates (proposals, designs, complaints, emails) is still a mile high. You can try to bear down and crank out the work, but tomorrow there will be more calls for bids, more emails, and the treadmill will continue.

Better to shift gears to some creative work that can get you energized or that you enjoy. Revise that portfolio that you give to customers, brainstorm ways to better connect and motivate your employees.

As Seth Godin so astutely points out in his book Linchpin, you need to have more bad ideas. When he asks some people if they have any good ideas, they say no. Do you have any bad ideas? By having more bad ideas some good ones will slip through, but only if you get off the estimate treadmill. The estimates will wait, or worse case they won’t, and new people will call (hopefully) tomorrow.

Please check your calendar for July 30th and join us in supporting our local college and our industry.

CLCA has offered to assist with the installation of an irrigation system for the Waterwise Landscape Laboratory at College of Marin, Indian Valley Campus. Representatives from Netafim, College of Marin and Marin Municipal Water District will be present on the volunteer work day. Once the irrigation system is in place CLCA will be able to use the site for membership training.

We will mostly work with trenching and installing pipe. A free lunch will be provided by College of Marin.

It is our sincere hope that you will find time to help us in this effort by participating in a volunteer work day together with students, teachers and trade representatives.

Please contact Brigid Flagerman 415-559-8091, Brigid.Flagerman@cagwin.com

Volunteer Flyer 1 page.pdf

In preparation for the Fall Landscape Industry Certified test in Sacramento, CLCA is offering some essential skills seminars. One of the seminars will be offered in SFBA chapter, so I wanted to make sure you were aware and hopefully get your support in promoting it as well.

Construction Math Seminar Friday, July 22, 2011 * 7-9:30am * Menlo Park CA Worth 2.5 PLANET CEUs for certificate renewals! Master the basic landscape math and plan reading skills needed to move from laborer to manager: find areas, calculate volumes, convert fractions to decimals, read an architect’s scale and learn other valuable landscape and construction mathematical formulas. Combined English & Spanish class. $40 members / $80 non-members

For all upcoming program dates and details, please visit www.clca.us/certification. Contact Stephanie King with any questions.

Stephanie King Certified Technician Program Manager/ Administrative Assistant

California Landscape Contractors Association 1491 River Park Drive, #100 Sacramento, CA 95815

916.830.2780 x26 916.830.2788 fax stephanieking@clca.org

072211_Math_Menlo Park.pdf

Marin Municipal Water District is preparing to update their MMWD Landscape Professional list for the public. We are helping them get the word out to that you need to add/update your company’s listing.

E-mail MMWD at wmenara@marinwater.org

MMWD Landscape_Contact_List.pdf

After a recent ongoing customer service headache with AT&T, the website Dial a Human, featured on Channel 7 on Your Side,  jumped out as a good resource. It gives the numbers to press to shortcut the interminable phone trees that are the hallmarks of most customer support.

Your call is very important to us, that is why we have optimized our system to delay you getting to speak to a real person. That real person will be in India and won’t have the training or ability to help you anyway, please continue to hold, while holding please enter your account number, so that when the agent comes to the line, we will ask you to restate your account  number…

MMWD has created a new user’s guide: Landscape Plan Review Requirements: User’s Guide. It is introduced in the following blog:

http://thinkbluemarin.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/landscape-plan-review-require ments-a-users-guide/

Please read the blog and the user’s guide. Mark Guthrie would appreciate any feedback at mguthrie@marinwater.org

A DRAFT of the Storm Water Low Impact Development Technical Design Manual is ready for your review

The City of Santa Rosa and Sonoma County present this Manual to supercede/replace the 2005 SUSMP Guidance Manual. This Manual provides the technical design guidelines for development projects in the implementation of permanent storm water quality features. Your input on this DRAFT Manual is important in shaping development in Sonoma County for years to come.

Comments on this Manual will be accepted until Monday, June 27, 2011. Comments may be submitted to Heaven Hix, Associate Civil Engineer via email at hhix@srcity.org or they may be dropped off at 69 Stony Circle, Santa Rosa, in care of Heaven Hix. For more information or to report issues with downloading the documents, please call 707-543-4530.

The City of Santa Rosa has many other specific email alerts that you can individually subscribe to. You can click here to manage your subscription and see all other available alerts.

SRJC will be offering GED testing in Spanish on two Saturdays this month: June 18th and June 25th. The testing taking fee is $150. We would appreciate your help in disseminating the attached announcement to anyone who may be interested.

GED Prep Classes Summer 2011.docx GED Test in Spanish 2.pdf

Please join us for the CLCA North Coast Chapter Spring Scramble Golf Tournament, with proceeds to benefit the LEAF scholarship Fund and North Coast Chapter: www.clcanorthcoastchapter.org/golf

Download the Tournament Entry Form

Event Details:
Date: Thursday, July 21, 2011
Time: Lunch and registration start at 11:30am, tee-off at 1:00
Venue: Foxtail Golf Club- North Course, Rohnert Park

Tournament Registration:
register by 7/1 $110
after 7/1 $125

Includes green fee, cart, range balls, balls & marker, lunch, 1 raffle ticket and 3 drink tickets! Additional Raffle Tickets $5 – Mulligans $5
Great Prizes for the Top Placing Teams! Long Drive, Closest to Pin Competitions, and More!