CBA board minutes March 12, 2013

 
Pres. AJ Stephani called the meeting to order at 3 minutes after 5 PM. All board members were in attendance and Herb Schapera was present as a guest.

As there was some question about how many of the board members had actually had a chance to read the January minutes, AJ reviewed them for all of us and postponed formal acceptance of those minutes until the next board meeting.

We started the meeting with a review of the 3 priorities:

 Building - some email messages have been received from the new realtor with whom we have been working, but no action seems imminent.

Membership - some discussion was had but no action taken.

Zero-tolerance - this was to be covered later in the meeting.

 Presidents report:

·       AJ requested that we approve standard unit level funding for GNT teams from our unit. As a reminder, it is customary for the unit to provide up to $500 per team (which is matched by the district board) for teams from our unit. At the January district qualifier the championship strata team was made up entirely of unit 124 members. The A strata team had one member from our unit. The request then was for $500 for the championship team and $125 for the A strata team. Motion was made by AJ and seconded by Gayle Keaney. The motion passed unanimously.

·       We have money in hand for the new refrigerator and AJ will be engineering the purchase. The new refrigerator will be bought with a functioning icemaker and connected in the kitchen. The existing refrigerator in the kitchen will be moved to the duplimate room and the old refrigerator discarded. The Deshapelle club has contributed the bulk of the money for this purchase.

·       As part of the youth game held on February 23 (which had 6 full tables) our unit had offered to pay for ACBL membership for the youth players involved. Until very recently a youth membership in ACBL was only $5 per year but that did not include receiving the monthly bulletin magazine and it was a very low retention rate. The ACBL has now raised the price of the youth membership to $15 per year but will include the magazine. The Howard Ringel fund will help with funding these memberships and the unit will provide the rest. As of now we have 14 youth membership applications.

·       We were all reminded of the change in the editor of the Alert newsletter from Amit Raturi to Steve Moese. Our appreciation was offered to both of these gentlemen.

·       AJ told all of us that we now have a supply of business cards for CBA available at the directors table. He asked all board members take a supply and hand them out to anyone who seems interested.

·       On Sunday, March 10 the website underwent a substantial change in format thanks in very large part to the efforts of Steve Moese. So far, response to the change has been very gratifying, not in the sense that we have had too many comments, but in the dearth of complaints.

 Chairs: The request was repeated to purchase up to 20 new chairs. These would be the vinyl faced cushioned black chairs. Potter Orr is to make the purchase after consultation with Don Etson about exactly what to do with the old chairs.

 Awards party: There was substantial discussion about whether or not to make this a free game for all of those who play or just to make it free for the 25 members who became life master’s during 2012. In the end, the decision was made to make this a free game but not publicize that it would be free. This should allow us to sidestep the difficult issue of how to control attendance and take reservations if we publicize it is being a free game. The motion to adopt this was made by Gerry Mirus and seconded by AJ. The vote was 8 in favor and 1 opposed.

 Mentor mentee program: Barb Levinson told us that they anticipated running the mentor mentee program in exactly the same format as last year. This means having games on Wednesday evenings and Sunday afternoons. This allows us to offer these games at half of the regular price without spending an exorbitant amount of money. Charging half-price allows us to breakeven as long as the games do not fall on time belonging to one of the directors. The program will start in mid-May and run through September as it did last year but the exact dates were unavailable at meeting time.

 Zero-tolerance: There was extended discussion of the topic. Finally, Gayle Keaney led us out of the wilderness with a suggestion that came from a road sign she saw in Texas. The suggestion on the sign was to “drive friendly”. We decided that this made good sense for zero-tolerance since that term by itself and the thrust of much of the material from ACBL has a negative spin dealing with infractions and penalties. While we will certainly use that material as part of the program, “play friendly” will be the tagline for this campaign. Sonya Wilson and Potter Orr will attempt a 1^st draft of the poster and also arrange to have conversations with the independent directors to describe our concerns and emphasize our desire for stricter policing of behavior at the bridge center.

 Treas.’s report: Treas. Susan Wisner and emailed all of us financial statement for the first 2 months of 2013. We did not have an extended discussion as it is her intention to review the financials only once a quarter. When the results for January through March are available, we will have a discussion at a board meeting. The basic results so far this year are positive.

 Education committee: A date has been set for the next Learn Bridge in a Day event, April 6. The website has been updated and advertising will start shortly. This year we will charge $10 for the program which will include as last fall a free lunch. Flyers will be available to give to our members for distribution and we will do another email blast to our members about the program. The education committee’s goal for the program this time is to have about 50 participants (as opposed to over 100 last time).

 Tournament committee:

·       We were reminded that there is an NLM sectional scheduled at the club May 18 and 19^th.

·       Our Flying Pig Regional will be the week of June 4 and will be the only regional in the country that week.

·       At the recent Indianapolis district 11 board meeting our proposal was approved to split the NAP district finals from our October sectional tournament. The NAP will take place at our club on the weekend before the sectional. Flight be qualification will be on Saturday and flights a and C will be on Sunday. These games will probably take place at 1 PM and 7 PM, but the exact times is up to the district coordinator. This will allow us to change the times for our sectional to 10 AM and 2:30 PM.

·       The next meeting of the tournament committee will be Saturday, March 30 at 11 AM.

Exhaustion and time to sign up for the evening game arrive simultaneously at 6:45 PM the meeting was adjourned.