Minutes approved at the January 2012 Board Meeting
Potomac Valley Swimming
Board of Director’s Meeting
Overlee
6030 Lee Highway, Arlington, VA
December 13, 2012
· Dinner – 6:30
· Attendance – Riley Eaton, Bob Vincent, Manga Dalizu, Miriam Lynch, Brian Pawlowicz, Paris Jacobs, Mike Rubin, Emily Felker, Scott Bryant, Bill Marlin, Jim Thompson, Greg York, Linda Klopfenstein, Kurt Thiel, Jim Garner, Tim Husson, Ward Foley and Terri Marlin.
· Call to order & General Chair Comments –
o In November Riley Eaton, General Chair, attended the USA Swimming Diversity Summit in Colorado Springs, CO. The best part of the experience was to hear and see firsthand what a fantastic job Miriam has done and know that on the same weekend as the summit, Art Lopez was receiving a Golden Goggle Award. Everyone at USA Swimming speaks very highly of the two of them and everything that they have done in PVS. Potomac Valley Swimming remains a leader across the country in Diversity/Inclusion related programs and issues.
o The General Chair also wanted to note that over the first two weekends in December there have been six swim meets with over 6,000 athletes participating and over 34,000 splashes. Congratulations to all the swimmers and coaches and thank you to all the officials who helped make these meets possible.
· Action Items
o Approval of November 7, 2011 Board of Director Meeting Minutes – Motion to approve the minutes of the November 7, 2011 BoD meeting, seconded and approved.
o PVS Statement of Ethical Behavior, Conflict of Interest and Annual Certification – Paris Jacobs, Administrative Chair passed out the “Statement of Principles on Ethical Behavior and Conflicts of Interest” form and asked that all members read through statements, sign and return to her. This is an annual form that comes from USA Swimming and all Board Members, Contractors and Committee members must sign.
o Equipment Rental Charges for Club Meets – As part of the General Chair report, there is a recommendation to make some changes to the equipment rental. Over the past couple of months the distribution of properly working meet equipment has been sub-par.
§ Motion to reduce the equipment rental fee by 25% for all equipment ordered and delivered, seconded and approved.
· No invoices have been sent out for the fall meets. The controller will need to be sent specifics about what equipment didn’t/doesn’t work, so that he can bill the teams correctly.
· If meet managers encounter problems they should contact the Operation Chair and the Controller right away.
· Starting January 1, 2012 there will be a new fee structure for equipment rental. The 25% reduction will be taken off that fee until the equipment issues can be worked out. For meets that were held in the fall of 2011 a 25% reduction will also be taken off the bill.
· The reduction is off the rental fee only, not the delivery fee.
· Division Reports
o Executive Director – see report submitted
o Athlete Representatives – no report submitted
o Administrative – An application from Moon Aquatics was just received by the Administrative Chair. No further information has been gathered, nor has the application been sent to USA Swimming. The team swims out of Oak Marr.
o Inclusion/Diversity – see report submitted.
§ While at USA S for the Diversity summit, a new proposal began to be drafted for a Zone Diversity Chair Position. This person would coordinate with diversity chairs from each LSC and report to the Eastern Zone. A formal proposal will be presented at the Eastern Zone Conference in May. Part of the proposal is that the Zone level Diversity Chair cannot be the same as the LSC Diversity chair.
o Webmaster – see report submitted
o Technical Committee – see report submitted.
§ Tim has asked Jim Thompson to help with data collection and spreadsheet information, like the study on touch pads during the November Open. The Committee has worked with two meet directors in getting their meet sessions under 4 hours for the 12 & Under sessions.
§ Meet Manager 4 has been released and PVS will be using it for all Championship meets. Clubs can upgrade from MM3 to MM4 when they are ready. The databases are interchangeable between MM3 and MM4 so immediate upgrade is not a requirement.
o Finance/Accounting – see report submitted.
o Operations –
§ Will be making an effort to get to the storage unit in the next couple of weeks to check on equipment.
§ At the January CCM will resubmit a proposal to remove pads from all meets, except for Championship meets. Brian Pawlowicz spoke with several teams both in and out of our LSC and many wondered why PVS uses pads for any meets other than champs.
o Senior Swimming –
§ The controller had asked for the status on Hilary Fritz regarding her travel reimbursement appeal. Nothing has changed as of this date, USA Swimming has been contacted to help get her team affiliation corrected, it does not appear that her team has done anything to correction the records.
§ For LC Senior Champs, they have been two requests from Canadian Teams to attend this summer. The entry times have been adjusted to keep timelines under control. Most of the time adjustments were to the SC Qualifying Time, over 50% of the entry times were entered with SC times.
§ Bill Marlin will be putting together a proposal to present to CCM to lower the standard of distance times for the 1000 and 1650 at PVS meets.
§ Is looking for feedback from the official regarding the Oct and Nov Open as to what they think about changing the meets to three sessions. It was noted that the Tech Committee made this recommendation at the Nov meeting.
§ For Travel Assistance, one PVS athletes 1 attended Junior Nationals in Austin and 26 athletes attended Winter Nationals in Atlanta.
o Age Group Swimming – see report submitted.
§ Tim sent out a report regarding the potential numbers for JOs. Manga Dalizu will be meeting with will meet with meet management and officials from JOs to discuss meet issues.
o Coaches Representatives – Thank you from General Chair to the Coaches Representatives for sending out an email to the coaches introducing yourself and soliciting feedback from the coaching community. Coaches need to take advantage and use the representatives to communicated questions, comments and concerns to the Board of Directors.
o Officials – see report submitted.
§ The Officials committee has decided to introduce the use of radios at meets, it has been a great addition. We are now going to make radio protocol part of the N1 Certification process for Chief Judges.
o Strategic Planning – Nothing to report.
· Round Table Talking Points
o Athlete Protection Committee activities update –
§ The committee is changing the name of Athlete Protection to “Athlete Safety Committee” according to USA Swimming.
§ There was one issue, that was brought up by a coach in PVS regarding how to talk about and control issues in the locker room in facilities. Most of PVS teams do not have control of our own practice facilities and many of these facilities are open to the public during practice and meets. Here are a few guidelines recommended by the Athlete Safety Committee:
· Do not allow kids: to go to the bathroom by themselves during practice or meets, to lingering in the showers after practice or to stay at the facility alone even if it is open (coaches should make sure all athletes are picked up before leaving the facility themselves.
· Other issues were also brought up such as bulling.
· We, PVS cannot legislate any of this, but can and should give suggestions to our clubs as to recommendation as to how to handle any of these situations. See report (get from Riley)
· Old Business – no old business discussed
· New Business –
o Thoughts on hiring an equipment technician from Mike Rubin
§ Equipment is a continual problem at PVS and Club meets when PVS equipment is used/rented. At this time we do not have anyone hired to work or maintain the equipment, we only have an equipment delivery person on contract. Currently in this LSC we are lacking someone with these technical abilities to maintain and fix equipment as needed. The recommendation is to hire an individual, not the equipment delivery person, who can help take care of all of the equipment.
· This is not “new thinking” in recent months PVS has interviewed several people for this position; however it has been difficult to find someone who is willing to give up their weekends to be on call to fix any equipment problems on site. There are continued thoughts to get out of the business of renting equipment, yet this does not alleviate the problem with the 17 PVS meets per year.
§ Do we have the budget for one person to maintain the equipment and one person to deliver the equipment?
· The current salary and contract is for an equipment manager to deliver, maintain and repair the PVS equipment.
o A major concerned was raised by a BOD member regarding the fact that PVS is paying the current contractor the same salary without the requirement to maintain and repair equipment.
· One of the reasons we got rid of our last equipment manager, was because he no longer consistently repairing equipment, not because he wasn’t delivering equipment.
· When Don Smith did it, he maintained and take care of the equipment and there were still problems.
§ Other thoughts by various members
· Hire two people, one delivery person and once maintenance person.
· Instead of hiring someone; take non-working equipment to an “electronic shop”
· Get out of the delivery business, instead have each club pick up equipment themselves. Our equipment has to move all around it is not as simple as just taking it out of closet.
o Moving equipment around would cause more wear and tear on the equipment.
· As a group get together several times per year to work on, look at and maintain and clean up the equipment.
· Offer a performance bonus, small fee, but if they are maintaining the equipment well, they get a bonus.
· It will also be important to have someone available to be on site to help fix issues as they arise during the meet. There are quite a few officials and meet managers who can do some of the simple on site trouble shooting; however they are often busy with running the meet and do not have time.
· What about college age or HS Seniors who might be interested to be trained to help out and pay them a small fee. Not to be hired for the whole season, but for a meet or two each.
§ We are not going to be able to solve this issue tonight. We have it in our P & P that we have to support the PVS meets, but we do not have to support club meets.
§ Motion to advertise to look for a maintenance person (18 & over) to work on equipment, second and approved.
· Amendment to make it 18 & O, second and approved
· Date of next meeting (Monday Jan 9 at Overlee ) [Meeting was moved to Lee Graham]
· Adjourn