This is not a discussion of where you meet or what type of facility you have.  This is more for those squadrons that meet at their "own" facility.  They have an permanent office, structure, hangar or even a trailor.

We are very fortunate in that we have our own building provided to us by the city.  We have 24/7 access and our own parking lot.  The building has a kitchen, full bathroom, two separate smaller rooms and one large meeting room, enough for about 40 people. 

Growing up at the same squadron but 20 years before, we met at a high school.  So suffie to say, I feel very very fortunate to have what we have.  Not to mention we have a new van and a C182.

Our building is a mess.  Computer monitors stacked up, crap laying around, old folders, notebooks, posters and AE projects.  The kitchen has old food boxes sitting on the ground and trash cans that haven' t been emptied in a while.  I am disappointed in my squadron. 

Perhaps if they knew what it was like to meet at a crappy high school where you have to wait until a certain time to sign out keys only to have other kids interupting your meeting and then not having a single closet to store your squadron's supplies, they would appreciate what they have.

I am going to take a few hours during this week to go in and clean it up.  I'll bring my shop-vac, vacuum, windex and trashbags and see if anyone notices.

Next to Andrews AFB Squadron in the 90s, I don't think I've seen such a fortunate CAP squadron to have a facility of this magnitude.  My best guess is that it's about 1100 square feet in size.

You are lucky to have such a facility and it's a shame some treat it like a dump.

My squadron has it's own facility but it's in sorry shape.  It consists of 4 office type trailers  arranged in a  "U" shape.  The trailers seem to be circa 1960 and I'm surprised they still are standing.  We have a few small messes here and there, but the overall condition is lacking.  If it weren't for bubble gun, bailing wire and 100 mile an hour tape, it might just fall down.

Quote from: Stonewall on December 21, 2008, 09:20:44 PM
Our building is a mess.  Computer monitors stacked up, crap laying around, old folders, notebooks, posters and AE projects.  The kitchen has old food boxes sitting on the ground and trash cans that haven' t been emptied in a while.  I am disappointed in my squadron. 

Unacceptable and sad.  Having it look that was risks losing it should your benefactors make an unscheduled visit.

While we do not currently have our own place, we did have several rooms in a flight school that were our's alone a few years ago.

It could have been kept better, but it was not too bad, the cadets vacuumed and took the trash out every week, and cleaned the bathroom every month or so. One of the SMs mowed the lawn as needed, and we didn't typically leave stuff laying around.

Even in our current facility (just the conference room in our airport's FBO, which we have reserved for our meeting night) the cadets vacuum after each meeting and take care of the trash if it needs it.

We have just about the entire 2nd floor, Wing of a large hangar on an Air Force Reserve Base.  This gives us two classrooms, 2 large office space areas, 3 smaller offices.    Additionally, we are allowed to have our CAP VHF antenna mounted on the hangar.  Furthermore, we have access to the base local telephone network/DSN network & have about 12 extensions.  We were not able to get access to the internet via the base system, so we use a wireless provider, since cost would have been prohibitive for cable or telephone DSL.  The hangar also has emergency power immediately available.  Our area is always kept clean, neat, & orderly -- there is no trash or obsolete equipment/furniture etc stored.  We have two retired senior members that spend a lot of time at our facility & perform a lot of the cleaning that is necessary.   Common areas, such as hallways/walkways & rest rooms are cleaned by base contractors.   Cadets assist weekly by emptying trash etc.   We are VERY fortunate to have such a great permanent place to hold our meetings, and are very grateful to the AF Reesrve for their outstanding support to us. 

RM

Quote from: Stonewall on December 21, 2008, 09:20:44 PM
This is not a discussion of where you meet or what type of facility you have.  This is more for those squadrons that meet at their "own" facility.  They have an permanent office, structure, hangar or even a trailor.

We make the cadets clean up after every meeting.  The place is to be in better condition than when we got there!  Chairs lined up even at the tables, floor clean, white boards erased etc...

We have a 15 minute clean-up time after every meeting.  No one leaves until the place is cleaned.  my mama did that to me growing up, the cadets can do the same thing.

If a cadet can't pick up the place I sure as heck will not trust him to fly or help someone.

At my squadron, we have basically a reconditioned warehouse.  There are walls with a couple of offices and we have a good sized supply room.  There is also a kitchen with a sink, fridge, and cabinets but no appliances (excepting the coffee machine...)  For the most part, the cadets and officers keep the place fairly clean although some appear to not know how to vacuum.  They also appear to not know where all of the trash cans are...

As for the stuff laying about, several of the squadron officers have made a very contrite effort to rid the squadron of all the old junk.  All of our excess DRMO junk (mostly monitors and old computers) are stored in the supply room in boxes.  I have heard horror stories from the past where the squadron had a bunch of junk to include a portable landing light system stored in a storage facility.  Apparently the officers at the time loaded several large trucks full of the stuff and took it to the local dump.  Since then, nothing comes into the squadron without approval from the chain of command.

Today, my buddy Jody and I were talking about this subject and not only would this place be "G.I. Inspection Ready" 24/7, but we as cadets would have pulled "duty".  Our place is big enough to set up cots and remain over night (RON).  It has a shower, internet, full kitchen, big TV with DVD player; what a great place for a qualified GTM cadet to spend the weekend doing homework, training, watching TV, surfing the internet.  WOW!  If we would have had this place WIWAC, it'd be manned like a volunteer fire department.

After the fire in 1992, the Army moved my SQD to a super awesome converted WW2 O-Club.  It was a terrible mess, we cleaned it up, painted etc.  We spent 1 year before it burnt down.  Then we got moved to a old 2 story brick BOQ building and renovated the heck out of it.  We had one floor with nothing but a classroom and 8 rooms with bunks, and the first floor was a kitchen and offices for almost every staff member.

After renovation, we were told the new building we were in would be torn down......I left that summer (1998), and when I visited them this past summer, they were meeting in a old WW2 theatre on post.  It was a mess, and I found out that they just got booted from there and were looking for somewhere else on post to go.  When I left in '98 the SQD was around 100 members, with about 75 actually showing up.  Now they barely have enough on the rosters to be considered a SQD.

It is a shame, what you work so hard to build can utterly colapse in a decade. 

Anyway, I made sure that Cadets and Senior Members (both) spent 15 minutes each meeting cleaning up.  Then on the one Saturday a month the SQD met, we set around 1 hour toward cleaning.  That is the only real way to do it.  Get it clean, real good at first, then you only have to spend a few minutes each week dry moping, etc.

Stonewall......get some SQD members to assist.  No need to be the "hero"!!

 

Quote from: Pumbaa on December 21, 2008, 11:31:23 PM
We make the cadets clean up after every meeting.  The place is to be in better condition than when we got there!  Chairs lined up even at the tables, floor clean, white boards erased etc...

We have a 15 minute clean-up time after every meeting.  No one leaves until the place is cleaned.  my mama did that to me growing up, the cadets can do the same thing.

If a cadet can't pick up the place I sure as heck will not trust him to fly or help someone.

Why do you have just the cadets doing the cleaning? Would it kill your senior members to lend a hand?

Contrary to some folks beliefs, cadets are NOT slave labor for the seniors.

We've been renovating buildings donated for our use by the county airport for the last several years, slowly but surely.  While it used to look pretty shabby when we inherited the buildings, we've all put considerable time, effort and personal money into getting the buildings gutted and renovated.  Our facilities are actually three small buildings next to each other. 

We've had a lot of squadron "work days" over the past two years or so.  Basically a weekend day where we'd invite everyone out to tackle our task list - cleaning buildings, sorting uniforms, sheetrocking walls, landscaping, fixing doors or whatever needed to be done.  I think for those of us that worked on the building it created a sense of ownership and pride.   That helps some, I'm sure.

The middle building has sort of become our storage and supply.  That building is a bit of a mess, though all of the uniforms are hung and boxed by size.  It's just that there's a lot of stuff in there.  But it's not a "public" building; members only go in there when they need something from supply (uniforms, for example) so that at least confines the clutter to a designated area.   I do my best to make sure the new classroom/ops center building, on the other hand, keeps as neat and clean as possible. 

The third building is a small office; the office can sometimes get messy with paperwork particularly during busy times.  It happens, and I don't like leaving it that way for long but when you have limited volunteers and unlimited work, messes can happen.  Sometimes I try and get up there on a non-meeting night and tackle some of the paperwork, or sorting new or returned uniforms sitting in the supply "inbox" or otherwise tidy up but my busy schedule makes those visits less and less common.

It takes a lot of effort at times, but it's definitely worth it.  Right on our PA-1 we actually have a "Facilities Committee". It has members on it who are willing to work on the building, including a few members who are contractors by profession.  We originally had committee meetings to determine how we were going to renovate the buildings, and determine layouts and materials needed and the process.  Now we meet more to discuss upgrades, maintenance tasks, etc. 


I have to agree with Eclipse's statement above that it could lead to a very bad situation if your benefactors who provide(d) the space were to stop by unannounced and were disgusted with the state of the facility. 

Stewarding the scant resources Civil Air Patrol does have is extremely important to our organization's ability to carry out our missions as well as our public and professional image.

We have cadets and seniors clean up & tidy the building after each use.
BTW every thing is kept neat and clean all the time.

Quote from: tarheel gumby on December 22, 2008, 03:00:17 AM
We have cadets and seniors clean up & tidy the building after each use.
BTW every thing is kept neat and clean all the time.

I've been to your unit in Asheville, about 7 or 8 years ago.  It was awesome.  There was a SAR mission going on there and it was a pretty darned good facility. 

Gunner

Well, I took a half day at work and went to my squadron for 3 hours...NOT ENOUGH!  Going back this evening after my little ones go to sleep.

I found at least 4 cups on the floor or otherwise hidden that had things growing in them.  Food, dirty dishes in the sink and dead roaches throughout.  Had to empty my shop-vac twice & didn't even get to wiping down the surfaces.

Lots of junk and clutter needs to be addressed too.  Nothing I can't stand more than "free junk" someone pawned off on the squadron, like 200 FAA calendar books from 2001 or 30 year old duty rosters. 

Threw away trash from 4 full trash cans and emptied 2 liter bottles of soda that had probably been around for a few months...

Going to surprise the heck out of the squadron when they return after the break and set a standard where everyone is responsible for a certain area of the building before going home.

Cool thing is I found a photo album with pictures from '87 and '88 with me and some other cadets doing color guard and on the Camp Blanding Obstacle Course with some 20th SFG guys.  Love those fatigues with unauthorized Army Patrol Caps with "Ranger Eyes" on the back.

Kirt If I was in your area I would have been there to help. Nothing worse than having to do it alone. BUT the guilt trip is worth a million dollars

Went back for 2 more hours.  I changed 3 air filters because it looked as if they hadn't been changed since we occupied the building almost 2 years ago.  Seriously, my wife the Public Health Specialist/Biologist said she's surprised we don't walk out of meetings with the "black lung" each week.

I brought my high speed Dyson for a final touch up after spending a few hours with my shop-vac today and ended up dumbing the thing 3 times as well.  Looks nice though, and feels nice too.  I think I sucked up a total of 20 dead bugs, mostly roaches.

I still need to spend a few more hours but I'm not sure I can find the time this weekend.  Either way, I hope they notice when they come back.  We've got a phenominal facility.  The more time I spend there the more time I love it.

My buddy and I were talking about how if we had this place as cadets (instead of meeting at a high school) we would have bunked there over the weekend; standing by for missions and acting like we were "Active Duty CAP".  Seriously, you could live there.  I'm disappointed cadets didn't show up while I was there, but I can't imagine they do much more outside of official activities.

The 30-year old duty rosters could be interesting from a historical point of view.  Might want to keep some of that kind of stuff around. 

Quote from: RiverAux on December 27, 2008, 04:16:42 AM
The 30-year old duty rosters could be interesting from a historical point of view.  Might want to keep some of that kind of stuff around. 

Yeah, I wouldn't throw that type of thing away, but it doesn't need to be sitting next to a box of cupcakes. 

Our home.

Quote from: Stonewall on December 27, 2008, 04:19:04 AM

Quote from: RiverAux on December 27, 2008, 04:16:42 AM
The 30-year old duty rosters could be interesting from a historical point of view.  Might want to keep some of that kind of stuff around. 

Yeah, I wouldn't throw that type of thing away, but it doesn't need to be sitting next to a box of cupcakes. 

So they were Senior duty rosters