Minutes for the Annual Meeting of June 3, 2017

Board Members:

Sylvia Ortega (Co-President), Martha Corneck (Co-President), Kerry Steele-Rubin (Co-Treasurer), John Belpedio (Co-Treasurer), Lorraine Kennedy (Ex officio), Tracy Keblish (Co Officials Coordinator), John Wang (Co Officials Coordinator), Adrienne Williams (Escrow Manager), Candace Twiss (PetWRAT Coordinator), Ngassam Ngnoumen (8/U Team Parent Rep), Cheryl Smiley (Senior Parent Rep) and Ellen Johnston (Head Coach).

Also Attending:

Andy McNab (Ex Officio), Scott Van Kuilenburg, Martha Torres, Kristina Ponte Michaels, Dan Lacugna, Jackie Austin, Leslie Kickham, Jacqueline Passios/Oldani, Beth Ritz, Eric Berkowitz, Mark McDermott, Piyush Vora, and Marc Lefebvre.

A quorum was achieved and the meeting was called to order. Both Martha Corneck and Lorraine Kennedy acted as Secretary and prepared the minutes.

 Nominating Committee

Candace Twiss, as a member of the Nominating Committee, presented the slate of new members for the Parents Club for the period of 2017-2018. It is as follows:

 

CO-PRESIDENT		MARTHA CORNECK		mcorneck@me.com
CO-PRESIDENT		NGASSAM NGNOUMEN		ngnoumenn@yahoo.com
CO-TREASURER		DAN LACUGNA		dlacugna@aol.com
EX OFFICIO		SYLVIA ORTEGA		bolshoi44@gmail.com
SECRETARY		LORRAINE KENNEDY		lorraine57@optonline.net
SENIOR TEAM REP		CHERYL SMILEY		300bayberry@optonline.net
SENIOR TEAM REP		TRICIA BEGG		triciabegg@aol.com
AGE GROUP PARENT REP		KUKU FLEMING		ktfdolphin@gmail.com
8U PARENT REP		LORI BLESSEY		lblessey@gmail.com
8U PARENT REP		AMY BOLAND		aj-boland@hotmail.com
OFFICIALS CO-CHAIR		JOHN WANG		johnandcrystal2003@gmail.com
OFFICIALS CO-CHAIR		MARK MCDERMOTT		markamcdermott@me.com
STUDENT REPS		BLAKE RAINEY and SCOTT ADLER

 

 

Committee Chairs were also reviewed. Sylvia Ortega made a motion to approve the Slate for the new members of the Board for 2016/2017, second by Andy McNab, carried it were.

RESOLVED that the slate of the Nominating Committee as presented to the Committee was approved. 

Coaches Report

Head Coach Ellen Johnston presented her monthly and annual report, which included topics such as the state of the team and the growth over the last three years, the state of the meets over the last year and the development of swimmers and practice groups. The change in venue for the Recognition Night was a success for the team as it was able to accommodate our larger size and able to increase the quality of venue. The summer practice schedule will be posted soon and all long course swimmers will be in the pool until the end of July. The second annual town meet is scheduled for July 25^th after the positive success of last year. The YMCA sponsored Point to Point event will be held July 30^th.   Coach Ellen discussed the memorial planned for Coach Bill Krum on July 11^th. She would like the Board to consider renaming the Pentathlon the Bill Krum Memorial Pentathlon. Martha Corneck and Sylvia Ortega both agreed to put the renaming of the meet on the agenda for the July meeting.

Meet Manager’s Report

The Meet Manager, Huong Belpedio, was unavailable but Sylvia Ortega read her report. The June 9/under meet is upcoming next week. This was the last home meet of the year. Huong said that she is working on a master hospitality list with some other parents to be used for next year.

Officials Report

John Wang presented the Officials Report. The WRAT year 2016-2017 has been very successful. Our officials ran 4 meets with one more upcoming.

We have a roster of talented officials many who are new to our team and new to officiating. WRAT officials can always be counted on to volunteer at home and away meets. Our officials provide a professional and necessary service to assure that all swimmers have the best possible experience at a swim meet.

Thank you to all of the WRAT officials that assisted over the year. Welcome to those that have recently joined our team and congratulations to those that are new to officiating.

Pet WRAT Report

Candace stated that 54 families that still have hours left to fulfill.

Candace Twiss also mentioned in her report that we need to find more ways to assist newer families need to have a better understanding of volunteering to time as well as navigating Team Unify to find their obligation hours, hours worked, balances etc. A discussion began of creating more education and how to change the policy to incentivize more families. The discussion was tabled until the Planning and Evaluation Session after the Annual meeting.

                   

USA Swimming Manager’s Report

Adrienne Williams discussed the accounts stating that a few have debit balances but that will correct it once credit cards are billed during the beginning of the month process. Mrs. Williams stated there are no escrow account issues and all Meets have been billed. The size of the team is currently 216 swimmers and 183 families.

 

Treasurer’s Report

John Belpedio and Kerry Steele- Rubin discuss the state of the club. John began his remarks by indicating that the Parents’ Club is very close to its budget targets. The year will end on a positive income (approximately $23, 000) surplus despite the additional civic and philanthropy activities and social activities that occurred but our meet income was very strong and we were able to decrease the spending on parking that occurred the prior year.   We are now in process of wrapping up the fiscal year with a strong savings and bright future ahead.

Parent Rep reports

As mentioned earlier the practice groups were involved in many philanthropic and social activities. The reps would like to see many of these activities repeated next year and suggest that calendar dates are chosen early as the swim calendar fills up. A suggestion was made to have an 8/under family social earlier in the year before the first 8/under home meet in October.

Co-President’s Report

I would like to confirm that the Water Rat Parents’ Club remains a strong organization of dedicated volunteers and this past year was no exception. We are a non- profit organization with annual revenues and expenses of over $100,000. After hearing the financial report, you can see that we are well managed and fiscally sound.

The purpose of the Club is to support the Water Rat Swim Team. We do that in many ways. We raise funds to be used for the benefit of the program and its participants. We assist the coaches by managing meets and providing other administrative aid. We also organize and conduct social functions for the swimmers on the team. The Club is able to provide this support by maintaining and managing an annual budget.

The strength of our organization lies in our volunteer base. Our effectiveness over the past year resulted from a willingness of our many volunteers to pool their collective knowledge, skills, and abilities and work together to achieve a common vision, which is a world-class competitive swim team. Our future success will depend on us continuing to nurture that volunteer pool as some new parents join.

We have a tremendous impact on the team. Without the volunteers from the Parents’ club the team cannot run meets nor can the swimmers socialize at organized events off the pool deck like such as at Pink, Plunge, Red/Blue met, Recognition Night, Turkey Burn, pasta parties, pizza parties etc. By continuing our fiscal oversight of the parents’ funds, the Parents’ club is able to provide support to the swimmers on and off the deck and to assist the coaching staff so that they may provide the premier coaching that has been the team’s trademark.

To close, we wish to note that this is has been a great year for the entire team with many new team records set at all swim levels. We look forward to continued success in our upcoming swim season and future seasons. We encourage all parents to become involved and help us provide our kids with a great swimming experience, and we thank all of you who have been actively engaged this year. We would also like to thank the YMCA for the strong and growing support of our team. To this end, as we are now nearly 3 fiscal years in our new home at the new YMCA, we would like to create a capital budget and begin to plan for more assets for the team. Sylvia Ortega presented some plans for a capital budget and told the attendees that a more detailed discussion will occur at the following monthly meeting once the details are collected.

Martha Corneck moved to adjourn meeting, and Sylvia Ortega seconded, all voted in favor. The next meeting is slated July 6th, 2017.

Respectfully submitted
Martha Corneck
Co-President

 

Lorraine Kennedy
Acting Secretary
Water Rats Parents’ Club

 

Working Groups for Planning Session

Sylvia Ortega presented the results of the Suggestion Box Summary.   The topics for the planning session were as follows:

Volunteer Development

Fund raising

Officials Development

We were very encouraged by the degree of participation and the number of parents that offered their expertise to help the club build on the ideas that were discussed to improve the areas discussed. Alternative strategies have been seen by some as more precise tools for delivering the outcomes many family members want.

The Board received good feedback on some areas to place more emphasis on in the planning for next year.