April 2009

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Minutes from Board Meeting on April 2, 2009

Attendees

Mary Cooperman, Bonnie Strittmatter, Jay Chu, Chuck Katter, Ronald Wimer, David Blansfield, Steph Belleveau, Jeanne Bowles, Chris Gannon, Adrienne Williams, Jeremy Howard, Barbara Weiderecht, Andrea Boissevain, Susie Byrne.

Approval of Minutes

The minutes from the March 4 meeting was approved.

USA Swimming

Chris had three more meets to reconcile (Regionals, AG’s and New Englands) Otherwise everything was up to date. She also had four families that were no longer with the team and she will reconcile their accounts as well.

P&E Committee Report

Chuck, Mary and Steph reported on the initiatives they decided on as a follow-up to the P&E Meeting. These included the following:

Education

  • Parents in each practice group will have mandatory meetings with their respective coaches at the beginning of the season. The first meeting will focus on Wrat procedures (Pet-WRAT, volunteer requirements) and will introduce USA Swimming and its website. We may also consider additional meetings that include topics of interest to parents—role of swimming and adolescence, nutrition, etc.
  • Have a “Mock Meet” for parents so they can become comfortable with timing, starting procedures, etc.
  • Institutionalize the USA Swimming Development/Recognition Programs and create a Club Development Chair. We need to determine how to institutionalize this position so it carries over from year to year.

Volunteerism

  • We will keep the same volunteer program/requirements next year
  • Everyone who hasn’t met this year’s requirements will be spoken to. In cases where the parents have done NOTHING, the child will be in danger of not swimming next year.
  • We will assign volunteer slots during the LC meets for those parents who haven’t done their short course zero-points timing. This will be done before anyone else can sign up. When the LC meet schedule comes out, Steph will see how many slots are available and determine whether ALL families will be required to do another round of zero-points timing.
  • We will assign ALL timing slots next year for ALL meets.

The Board agreed with the ideas and added thoughts as well. One suggestion was to incorporate meet education, or the “Mock Meet,” into the annual Red/Blue meet. The Committee will flesh out how this education will work. It is possible that this job will fall to the incoming Ex Officio.

PET-WRAT

In keeping with the P&E Committee’s suggestions, the Board agreed that Steph would assign the 21 families who have not completed a 0-points timing assignment to an upcoming Long Course meet. Steph (and her replacement) will also assign all timing slots next year. These assignments will be given to everyone before the season starts. Families will know when they are expected to time and should have plenty of opportunity to trade slots with another family if they need to. Steph also reported on Volunteerism/Pet-WRAT points to date. She provided the following numbers:

Volunteerism

1. 161 Families currently on team.
2. 224 non-championship timing positions including backup timers, head timers, timers, etc. for short course.
3. 26 officials
4. 135 families who are required to do zero-point timing
5. 21 families did not fulfill zero-point requirement

Pet-Wrat Points To-Date
1. Total points required: 4075
2. Total points earned to-date: 5021
3. Difference: 946
4. Total points paid out 2008: 1395
5. Variance 449

Coaches’ Report

Jeremy and Martin both resigned their positions effective the end of April. Jeremy pledged to consolidate his files and make the transition as easy as possible. He anticipates that there will be enough part-time coaches to cover practices and the meet schedule should be posted by next week. He had planned to have Bluefish and Stripers groups this summer with an anticipated tryout for these children at the end of August. There will also be a general tryout in September.

Nominating Committee Report

Although Adrienne still needed to confirm the Meet Coordinator and Concessions Chair she anticipated the slate would be ready to post in plenty of time for the elections in June.

Grocery Cards

The Board briefly debated the Grocery Card program and decided it was worth continuing another year. Jeanne (who is expected to be the new Fundraising Chair) will promote the program.

Bylaws

The Board approved the changes that Bonnie and Andrea made to the Bylaws, (adding the new Board positions). Bonnie will finalize and post them. The Board will vote on them at the next meeting.

There was also a suggestion to create an “ad-hoc” advisory council, which would include past Wrat parents whose children have gone through the program, to deal with the “big” issues. The Board decided that we would not create this committee at this time (and amend the bylaws accordingly) because the current bylaws give us the latitude to do it in the future if needed.

Treasurer’s Report

Year-to-Date profit is $18,100 below budget. Significant negative variances include $7500 coaches compensation (budget timing variance), $7400 Y Nationals expenses (full accounting not yet complete), $6400 meet income (primarily resulting from the Q meet which was budgeted but not hosted), $2800 website construction expenses (unbudgeted), $2300 60th Anniversary Party expenses (unbudgeted), $2400 Pet WRAT fees and $1700 cap expenses. These items were partially offset by positive variances as follows: $8602 volunteer non-compliance fees (unbudgeted), $1200 equipment expenditures, $1200 award expenses and $1100 officials expenses.

We anticipate falling short of our budgeted full-year income by approximately $16,000, essentially evenly split between expenses for the 60th anniversary party and the cost of the redesign of the website.

Co-Presidents’ Report

Coaching: Rob Reeves hopes to have someone onboard to fill the coaching positions quickly. The job will be called Sr. Director of Aquatics and Competitive Swimming. He will create a search committee immediately and will use his time at YNats to talk to other Y executives about how to best restructure the program. Kelsey will be on deck for all 8/under and AG practices. Ellen will continue to run the Sr. practices. David Cohen will be leading the Aquatics Dept. in the interim and Ellen and Kelsey will do the day-to-day administrative work such as meet entries.

Long Course Meets: All three bids were accepted, (Sr. Invitational, Long Course Invitational, 9/Under Meet We still, however, need a meet manager for the LC Invite. Chuck will be meet director for the Sr. Invitational and Adrienne will handle the 9/under meet.

Recognition Night: Invitations have been sent out via email and Jeremy will hand a hard copies out at first LC practice. Stew Leonard’s will cater. Kids from CHT will act as servers and Jeanne has purchased water bottles as gifts. The 8/unders will receive these, too. Additional expenses will be the decorations, donation to CHT, audiovisual.

60th Anniversary: Jeanne has gotten a cost of $25 per person, not including beer/wine, tax, tips, and servers. The caterer will be Celebrations by Carlson. We have the whole first floor of the Women’s Club. Linda Bruce and Nathalie Fonteyne will decorate and some of the Sr’s. will play classical music.

Website: Ron, Bonnie and Mary are entering information. Ron hopes to switch from the old site to the new site on April 20.\

The next meeting will be May 7, 2009.

Respectfully Submitted,
Mary Cooperman
Secretary