Minutes approved at the December 2015 BoD Meeting

Potomac Valley Swimming

Board of Directors Meeting

Video Conference

November 17, 2014

· Attendance – Bill Marlin, Tom Ugast, Bob Vincent, Tim Husson, Mike Rubin, Jim Garner, Manga Dalizu, Steve Menard, Merari Chollette, Mark Faherty, Heather Purk, Murphy Freal, Trey McKula, John Ertter and Kurt Thiel.

· Call to Order – General Chair, Bill Marlin, called the meeting to order at 7:00 pm

· Proof of Quorum – We have 16 members on the call and enough voting members.

· Approval of October Meeting Minutes – Motion to approve the minutes from the October Board Meeting, seconded and approved.

· Approval of Chair Reports and November Financials, Motion to accept the submitted reports and October Financial, seconded and approved.

· General Chair Comments –

o Update on Coaches Rep position – Want to officially welcome Mark Faherty as the Coaches Representative. Thanks Mark!

· Old Business

o Continuing Education Grant for Derek Young – Tom Ugast contacted Derek about his report and it was submitted. As per the policy he will need to submit the report to Competition Committee at the Winter Meeting.

§ It was then asked for it to be sent to the coaches.

§ In order to speed up the process and payment, Bob Vincent, recommended and Bill approved that once the report is sent to the coaches and reviewed a check can be set to Derek.

· New Business

o Athlete Committee – Murphy reported has been in contact with all the various Committee Chairs and have received the information needed.

§ Mission Statement - Purpose the committee better educate swimmers on USA Swimming legislation as well as provide a better support system for athletes.

§ It has been recommended that the Athlete Committee become an Advisory Committee, similar to the Competition Committee.

§ Board Members agreed to set it up as an Advisory Committee.

§ Once the Athlete Committee is set up and established, Murphy will collect the names of those who are interested in joining the various standing committees.

§ Murphy suggests that the member who are on the standing committees become the voting members of the Athlete Committee.

§ If there are enough members, then you can start in January. Greg has indicated that he can help get Overlee as a meeting place. Once a date is set, it will be posted on the PVS website with the other meeting dates.

o Proposal – meet reporting requirement P & P change – The proposal is to add the requirement of post meet reporting of the Admin Official. Then we can verify that they have met the requirement and then Tim has someone to contact if there is an issue.

§ How many AOs do we currently have in PVS? Nearly all Referee’s are certified as AO, they were grandfathered in. There are 17 additional certified AOs.

§ There have been some comments/complaints about clubs finding an AO to work their meet. Tim noted that we cannot make any changes to this rule as it is a USA Swimming rule.

§ There have currently been 2 clinics, and a third one is scheduled, but no one is currently signed up.

§ Are we going to add the Admin Official to the meet announcement before the meet? Not at this time. For now we are going to just ask for it post meet.

§ Seconded and approved.

o Personnel Committee Proposal – see report – Bob Vincent commented that in the past we have referred to the Compensation Committee as the committee that performs the personal reviews and make recommendations regarding their status and salary. This committee should actually be called the Personal Committee.

§ It was recommended that Tom Ugast is the Chair, Riley Eaton (as past  General Chair) and Bob Vincent as the Finance Chair, serve on the committee.  

§ Tom Ugast is being asked to be the Chair as the Admin Chair. Bill as the General Chair will receive the reports.

§ Motion, Since the Bylaws do not identify a Chairman it is recommended that the General Chair appoint Tom Ugast, Vice-Chair of Admin, as Chair. Serving on the committee will be Riley Eaton, as Past General Chair and Bob Vincent as Finance Chair. The Committee will prepare a report of its findings and recommendations and then present them to the General Chair. Seconded and approved.

§ This committee will have to be reappointed each year.

o Use of Credit Cards for non-athlete registration – Proposal to streamline the registration process for our non-athlete members, by allowing credit card be available for payment for registration, seconded,

§ Currently there is a delay in getting non-athletes (primarily Officials) registered, due to the current procedures of processing payments.

§ Tom Ugast feels this is something that we do need to do to move forward. However there are some legitimate concerns.

· For one we do not want to store anyone’s credit card, so the system used will have to be set up not to save or store credit card numbers, this will help us avoid some insurance issues.

· It was commented that in Virginia Swimming they use PayPal for payment processing. There are a number of different vendors currently being looked at.

§ Is there a cost to the LSC?

· Yes, there will be a fee assessed to the LSC, but many feel it is the cost of doing business.

§ Motion to allow a test pilot program to allow credit card payment for non-athlete registration, seconded, approved.

· How long with the test period last?? This is to be determined.

· We might want to have an answer for the HOD when we go to our meeting in May, so that we can justify it. The Admin or Finance Chair will be able to provide anyone from HOD with the specific reasons for this change.

· John Ertter noted that PVS does not charge coaches & non-athletes any additional fee. The entire $52 goes directly to USA Swimming. We do not make anything on these transactions. If we use credit cards, we will actually lose about $1200 in service fees

· Bob Vincent feels we are a service organization if this is what we need to do to make thing easier for our members then we need to do it.

· Round Table discussions topics

o Safe Sport – the position of the Eastern Zone Safe Sport came up again. There is still no clear cut what that position will entail. It has been put off again until the January Safe Sport meeting in Colorado Meeting.

§ The EZ put it back on USA Swimming, who then sent it back to the Zone. But right now it is just going round and round.

§ Bill will set up a conference call with Paris, Ed and Greg to discuss what PVS feels should happen with this position.

o Safety Concerns at Fairland –

§ This was brought up today, from one of the meet referee, she felt it was unsafe due to the number of athletes on the deck.

§ Bill commented that he feels we have out grown Fairland as a dual course meet. It is recommended that Fairland only be used as a single course 10 lane meet beginning the fall of 2015.

§ Tim commented that he saw some good marshaling, which was a positive sign, but that the decks were crowded.

§ Saturday morning there were roughly 600 athletes on deck. 

§ We will likely have the same issue in January. However, we likely will not be able to add another venue at this late of date.

§ Thinking outside the box a little, what about a heated tent?

§ Mark Faherty suggested looking at Freedom Center, Chin Center, Claude Moore for the 2015-2016 season.  

§ Can we look at something for January? Just to see.

§ Manga, Steve, Mark & Heather can you please go out to the CCM and discuss with other coaches as to what they would like to see and how they suggest we implements this sort of change.

§ Takoma is still interested in talking with us about hosting meets again. This will have to go to CCM again. There have been some changes made at Takoma, but the CCM and then the board would have to approve PVS hosting meets there again.  

§ What about allowing different sites to make changes to their schedule or splitting Fairland to two different weekends? Both would be difficult due to the fact that all meets fall under the same sanction.

· Diversity Event – PVS hosted a Diversity Summit in late October. Merari reported that it went well. Sergio Lopez came and talked to parents, volunteers and athletes. Roughly 35 athletes participated in the in-water clinic. Thanks Greg for Safe Sport Bags Tags and Caps. Sergio had a great time.

· Diversity Summit – Merari has received the contract for the facility, for the event in June of 2015 at the University of Maryland. She will send it to John Ertter and Bob Vincent for review and to sign. PVS will receive $5000 from USA Swimming, $5000 will come from the PVS Diversity budget and the rest will be paid for by the different LSCs.

· Eastern Zone Tech Committee – Tristian has sent out the proposed cuts for the Sectional meets. They should be published on the EZ website soon.

· The 2015 LC Senior Champ meet was moved one week later. RMSC has submitted a bid to host the meet. Manga would like to award them the meet now instead of waiting until January, so they can start working on getting the Officials and volunteers. All agreed

· Audit – John Ertter reminded everyone, if you are submitting receipts for reimbursement, you must send an original receipt (it can be scanned) to John Ertter so he can reimburse you. This has been made very clear by the Auditors. We will be asking for a full Audit at the end of this next fiscal year. So all receipts will have to be sent to John if you are looking for reimbursement. You also need to ask in a timely manner. This is also very important now that we have credit cards.

· Adjourn

· Next meeting – Wednesday, December 17 as a video conference.