Minutes approved at April BoD Meeting
Potomac Valley
Board of Director’s Meeting
Overlee Community Center
6030 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA
March 8, 2010
· Dinner
· Attendance: Greg York, Manga Dalizu, Boots Hall, Art Davis, Bill Marlin, Riley Eason, Jim Thompson, Dave DiNardo, CJ Fiala, Tara Banks, John Hirschmann, Miriam Lynch, Paris Jacobs, Tim Husson, Brian Pawlowicz, John Ertter, Jim Garner, Bob Vincent, Patty Friedman, Lance Page, Chris Huott, Mark Eldridge, Terri Marlin
· Call to Order – Greg York called the meeting to order at 7:00 pm
· Nominating Committee - At the previous meeting, the General Chair, asked John Hirschmann, Linda Klopfenstein and Jim Garner to be on the Nominating Committee and put forth nominees for both the Board of Directors and Board of Review who will be elected at the annual House of Delegate meeting scheduled for May 19, 2010. A motion was made to approve John, Linda and Jim as the Nominating Committee, seconded and approved.
· Inclusion (Diversity) Chair position –The Board of Directors have been interested in creating an Inclusion Chair position with the goal of making it a voting member of the BoD. Several attempts have been made to find an interested candidate. The General Chair announced that Miriam Lynch is interested in taking on the position as the Inclusion Chair. The priorities being diversity within Potomac Valley Swimming both ethnically and economically. Miriam is working on writing up a job description and will present it at the April BoD. The goal is to make the Inclusion Chair a voting member of the PVS Board of Director.
o A By-Law Amendment will first have to be written up and presented to the HOD in May. The amendment should address how the position will be filled (by election, appointment, etc)
o Art Davis had previously agreed to write up the By-Law Amendment to present to the House of Delegates.
· Eastern Zone Meeting in May – The Eastern Zone Meeting is scheduled for the second weekend in May in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Due to budget constraints only select members of the Board will be paid for by PVS to attend. Other members of the board are invited to attend, but will have to pay for their own transportation and lodging. Greg indicated that PVS would just pay the registration fee for others from PVS wishing to attend. The selected members include the General Chair, Senior Chair, Age Group Chair, the Senior Coaches Representative and the Executive Director. Several other are also invited due to their involvement with the Eastern Zone Board, Boots Hall as the Eastern Zone Secretary, Tim Husson, the Eastern Zone Webmaster and Paris Jacobs as the Eastern Zone Meeting Coordinator.
· At-Large HoD Members – The General Chair will be recommending the At-Large members at the April Board of Directors meeting. The recommendations will require Board of Directors approval.
· Approval of January 18, 2010 Meeting Minutes – A motion was made to approve the January 18, 2010 BoD Meeting minutes, the motion was seconded and approved.
· Meet Announcements – In reviewing recent Meet Announcements, the Administrative Vice-Chair, Art Davis, has noticed several errors and omissions. The errors have been noted, in addition there are several important items that are missing from our Meet Announcements as a whole.
o There are specific items such as; the water depth for both the starting end and turning end and whether or not the length of the pool is certified with USA Swimming are now required to be in all Meet Announcements. There is also a specific requirement that all MAs contain a statement that release USA Swimming as well as the host team from any and all liability. Currently these items are not included in any of our Meet Announcement. Art acknowledges that while PVS leads the country with our financial information, we are lacking in the area of Meet Announcement production. He feels that we should make these corrections, and start leading the country in these issues as well.
§ At the January USA Swimming Meet Management Seminar in Colorado Springs, it was noted that all Meet Announcement should be as consistent as possible regardless of the type of meet.
§ In order to improve the PVS Meet Announcements it will take a coordinated effort amongst all Board Members.
§ Paris Jacobs has volunteered along with Riley Eaton and Brian Pawlowicz to work on constructing multiple meet announcement templates for all types of meets. Art Davis and Tim Husson will both consult project as the Admin Chair and an Official representative respectively. They will have templates ready to present by June 1.
· IRS Form 990 - John Ertter announced that the IRS form 990 is tax file that PVS has to do annually. The Form 990 now takes an in depth look at our organization; proving that PVS is in good standing as a non-profit organization. There were a few things that now need to be reported that put PVS in an unfavorable light. However John Ertter believes that he will be able to change many of these responses as soon as PVS takes the necessary steps and we will then be able to report on them more favorably.
· Policies and Procedures – Art Davis reported that no items from the P & P have been reported that need additional editing before beginning the final draft and posting. The process of updating the P & P will continue. Once all corrections are made Art Davis and John Hirschmann will look over them a final time before publishing the most current up to date version to the PVS web site.
· Conflict of Interest Policy – Three years ago a compliance statements was developed and a policy established as to who must sign them. It included all Board members and several other named positions. This statement stating that there are no conflicts of interest between a Board Member and the items discussed and voted on by the board member, and if there is a conflict of interest that particular board member will abstain from any voting. Ertter stated he thinks there should be a change in policy so that in the future everyone has to reread and sign this document every year. By the April BOD meeting Ertter will prepare a form with the policy for the Board to adopt which would restate who must sign. He will then provide this document each year and then propose to amend PVS policy so required people must sign it annually.
· 2010-2011 Budget – John Ertter has prepared a “proposed budget”, which includes showing where he thinks we will be in at the end of next fiscal year. Without any program changes and without any increases in PVS fees will have about a $50,000 deficit in FY 2010-11, which is on top of the $40,000 + deficit now projected for the end of this fiscal year. John suggests that the BoD members have a special meeting at some point prior to HOD to discuss the proposed budget in greater depth.
o One reason for the deficit will be due to the forced increase of pool rentals/expenses.
o Four months ago John Ertter presented a proposal to increase the individual meet entry fees for all PVS sponsored meets by $1, to help decrease the amount of the projected deficit.
§ He stated that some members stated they feel that the $1 increase is an arbitrary amount and more research is needed before a final amount is voted on. In addition some felt many coaches would prefer to see a deficit first before increasing the meet entry fees.
§ This proposal was submitted several months ago because the Executive Director recognized that many clubs will need to budget their club meet entry fees and how they impact to the teams prior to summer. The existence of this proposal was also brought to the clubs attention at the Competition Committee Meeting in January.
o The General Chair has asked the Audit Committee to meet regarding the budget issues prior to the April Board Meeting in order to give the Board their recommendations. The Chair of the Audit Committee stated he did not think this was an appropriate assignment for the Committee to take on since the issues at hand involved what should be the LSC program priorities, this is not an audit function.
o It was agreed that at the April Board meeting we will do dinner at 6, the formal Board meeting will begin at 6:30 with formal Board reports and formal action taken on any necessary business and then discussion on the budget will begin at 7:00. All Board members are stronger urged to read over the budget package prior to the meeting in order to prepare for the budget meeting.
· 2010 SC Eastern Zone team athlete fee: The Executive Director recommends the athlete portion of the 2010 SC Eastern Zone trip fee be $500. In looking at the past several years and using the 2009 trip as a starting point, he feels that since we have over spent in the past with the cost for each swimmer being less, that we have over spent what has been voted on by the HOD as the planned SC subsidy to the zone team.
o Members of the CCM have stated that they don’t care what the trip cost, that we should spend whatever needs to be spent.
o Although some members feel that we as the Board serve the clubs that we should listen to what they want, others feel that the board is responsible for following what the HOD votes on each May, and stay within the set budget.
o There are several ways to cut costs that will be suggested to the Zone Team Coordinator.
o Recommendations will be sent to the Zone Coordinator to decrease the overall cost. There recommendations include; limiting the amount of outfitting is given to each swimmer, simplifying the art work for outfitting so less colors are used, rework the lodging arrangements so there are 3-4 swimmers per room instead of as few as two swimmers. It is possible that that the outfitting packages are already set for this spring’s trip, but the housing arrangements are not, so it is predicted that at least some of the costs will decreased.
o Motion to set the price for the 2010 Eastern Zone Short Course Championships at $500 per swimmer. The motion was seconded and approved.
· PVS January 2011 Open – For the first time the 2010 PVS January Open was increased to 4 sites. RMSC hosted one of the sites at MLK. In an attempt to balance the number of entries at the 4 sites, RMSC was asked by the PVS Administrator to split their team and have two of the RMSC sites compete at PGS & LC. Several options were presented, given the time constraints RMSC reluctantly agreed to split. After the conclusion of the meet a RMSC representative wrote a letter to the PVS Board of Directors stating their dissatisfaction to being split and have stated that in the future they do not want to be split and if they cannot be guaranteed that their entire team will stay together, then RMSC may opt not to host or participate in the January Open in the future.
o A lengthy discussion followed. It included why RMSC wished to compete at only one site whereas other very large clubs in PVS have historically asked to be split to allow for greater variety for their swimmers in terms of whom they compete against.
o PVS has historically not sanctioned competition when only one team is competing.
o The policy in P & P states that teams are assigned to Open Meet by Team, not by site.
o The General Chair has asked for Mark Eldridge to come up with an alternative solution and present them to the Board of Directors in the near future.
· Equipment Rental: A member club has formally appealed the decision to not provide PVS timing equipment for a forthcoming PVS sanctioned club sponsored meet. The Executive Director stated in explanation to why the decision was made that one of the responsibilities of the controller is to collect the fees charged to clubs for equipment, splash fees etc. Currently there is one team that has yet to pay the balance of their charges for equipment rental for a previously held meet. The team had been asked to put in writing their complaint regarding the equipment invoice that has been issued to them.
o It was stated that the primary complaints are as following
§ PVS rental rates are being charged are not accurately quoted on the PVS website. [ Tuesday 3/9/10 the pricing chart has since been removed to avoid future confusion, a corrected copy will be reposted when finalized.]
§ Some of the equipment was not working properly when the meet was held in December. [Subsequently in early January all PVS equipment was inventoried and the process of fixing broken equipment was begun, in addition a new set of equipment has been purchased.]
§ There seemed to be some problems with integrating club owned equipment and PVS rental equipment.
o The consensus of the Board was to allow this team to rent equipment for their next meet and to allow John Ertter to work with the member club to resolve the financial issues.
o LEAP Update – See report submitted by John Hirschmann. Art Davis and John Hirschmann have a working plan for continuing the P & P update.
o John Hirschmann has worked very hard on the LEAP project and the Board thanks him for all of his hard work.
· Old Business; no old business
· New Business; no new business
· Reports
o Executive Director
o Athlete Representatives – No report submitted
o Administrative - see report submitted
o Webmaster Report – see reported submitted - Tim in possession of all PVS computers and is working on them to be able to provide computers for PVS meet. He also reported that the scoreboard at PGS & LC is no longer fully working, it can only display times from one course in a limited display.
o Finance/Accounting – No report submitted.
o Operations – No report submitted.
o Senior Division – This past weekend at PVS Junior Champs, we were about 200 splashes larger than last year. Riley has discussed with a number of coaches of the reasons why it was still fairly small. Although the cuts were relaxed a bit the meet was still a bit smaller than desired. He will continue to look at the cuts and make adjustments for next year’s meet.
o Age Group Division – The meet managers for the LC Course Zone have met with the facility managers, the Meet Managers are now just waiting for final approval of the Meet Announcement from the Eastern Zone Technical Chair.
o Coaches Representatives –Manga has drafted a New Coach Checklist, please send ideas/thoughts to Manga.
o Officials – see report submitted - The officials are volunteers. They don’t think it is their job to have to beg for timers. The officials have asked all meet managers to make sure that if you are running a meet to get your parents involved in timers.
§ There was some discussion on how to work together as an LSC to come up with ideas/policies so everyone follows the same the procedures across the LSC in order to get timers signed up/assigned for meet.
§ Paris suggested that this “policy” gets added to the meet announcements.
o Strategic Planning – No report submitted.
· Date for next BOD Meeting – April 12; dinner will be at 6:00, the meeting start at 6:30 to allow BoD reports and any required non-budget action items to be addressed. At 7:00pm it is planned to start the review of the proposed budget.
· Motion to adjourn made, seconded and approved.