BoD meeting Minutes – January 2017

Minutes of NCR-SCCA Monthly Board of Directors Meeting
January 25, 2017

Present: Heather Clark, Anna Crissman, Rex Deffenbaugh, Bruce Dover, Sam Fouse, Buddy Matthews, Heather Powers, Mark Senior, James Shanks, and via conference call, Eric Danielsen, Morgan Mehler, Joedy Pennington, Sara Snider, and Ben Tyler. Matt Decker and Blair Deffenbaugh were absent.

1. The NCR BoD meeting was called to order by RE Sam Fouse at 7:21 PM, on Wednesday, January 25^th 2017, at Piper’s Deli, 3219 Old Chapel Hill Road, Durham, NC,

2. The only guests participated via phone. They were Eric Danielsen, Joedy Pennington, Sara Snider, and Ben Tyler.

3. Motion to approve the December minutes as written (Senior / Crissman).

Order of items below reflects the order of discussion; not as they appeared on the published agenda.

New Business:

1. Board Vacancies Filled. RE Sam Fouse announced that recently-reelected Assistant RE Mike Spencer had resigned, due to new career responsibilities. As per the Bylaws, Sam appointed Member-at-Large Anna Crissman to take over that spot, subject to Board approval. Approval was unanimous. That left a vacancy in the Member-at-Large position which Anna previously held. Sam appointed Rex Deffenbaugh to fill that office. Again, approval was unanimous. Rex’s term as Past RE had just ended, so there were no further vacancies to fill, and business could now be properly conducted. The slate of voting Board Members for 2017 is now as follows:

Regional Executive                             Sam Fouse

Asst. Regional Executive                    Anna Crissman

Treasurer                                             Heather Powers

Secretary                                             James Shanks

Member-at-Large                                Heather Clark

Member-at-Large                                Blair Deffenbaugh

Member-at-Large                                Rex Deffenbaugh

Member-at-Large                                Morgan Mehler

Cape Fear Chapter Coordinator          Matt Decker

Triangle Chapter Coordinator             Mark Senior

West Chapter Coordinator                  Buddy Matthews

2. TCPS Series. Mike Spencer has also been TCPS administrator for the past year, and with his resignation, a new administrator needed to be chosen. Also, it had come to light that no points had been tallied to date, and no trophies awarded, for 2016. Sam had reviewed the Series rules, and determined that, as RE, he was to appoint two (2) people to a TCPS Committee and that those members in turn would appoint an Administrator. Sam asked Treasurer Heather Powers to join him as the other member of the Committee, since Region money was involved. She agreed. Board approval was unanimous. Sam also said that Darryl Hunter was considering taking the Administrator position, and that he was awaiting Darryl’s decision. Sam further said that his preliminary investigation showed that there were 93 entries in the series last year and that there was a trophy budget of $1395 (93 X $15) for trophies to be allocated. The first order of business of the new TCPS Committee then would be determining who should be awarded a trophy, and then get them made and distributed.
   1. The question was then raised whether the TCPS should continue or be abandoned in favor of the Carolina Cup Pro Series. A quick review of a tally of last year’s entries at our events showed that TCPS participation far out-weighed CCPS, and several Board members indicated that they did not want to compete in a series which gave prize money in exchange for a higher entry fee. It was also pointed out that the CCPS entries had been declining at other tracks, and that the future of that series was to be discussed at the upcoming SEDIV Convention. So, the question of a merger of the two series was tabled until after the Convention.
   2. The next question raised was whether someone could concurrently run TCPS, CCPS, and ECR, instead of just TCPS and ECR, or CCPS and ECR, as they can do now. As T&S Chief, ARE Anna Crissman said that T&S could handle that. She further indicated that they could handle someone just entering CCPS and TCPS and running those simultaneously. The only problem would be how to set up the registration for these expanded options in motorsportreg.com (MSR). Bruce Dover, as Registrar and Office Manager, indicated that this would take some time to do and that registration for the March in Sprint event was due to open in about a week, February 2^nd. Eric Danielsen, as Marketing Chair, pointed out that we would need to decide now what we would do, so that we could advertise the changes in the opening announcement e-mail. By consensus, the Board agreed to adopt those new entry policies and directed Bruce to make those changes to MSR as soon as possible.

3. Financial Report. Sam indicated that he had received complete year-end financials from outgoing Treasurer Steve Keadle at the Annual Meeting and Awards Dinner. He also circulated a Profit and Loss Year-to-Year Comparison that Steve had produced, showing that we ended the year with a substantial surplus versus a big loss in 2015, which was considerably better than expected. And while revenue was up 36 percent, entries had increased only by 12 percent, which proved once again, that we were “right-pricing” our entry fees. There were a couple of items in the Profit and Loss statement which seemed out of line when compared to 2015. SEDIV fees, merchant fees, and teleconferencing fees, all seemed to have increased significantly. Heather indicated that she would be looking into those. Concerning the transfer of office to newly-elected Treasurer Heather Powers, Sam indicated that there had been a small delay because Steve was listed as the account holder of record at our bank, Branch Banking and Trust. But this had been taken care of, and Heather Powers was now able to access the accounts and sign checks. Steve had spent some considerable time with Heather and Sam showing them his accounting procedures regarding our books. Ms. Powers confidently indicated that we could expect timely reports going forward.

4. Budget and Finance Committee. Since John Lindquist had resigned from the Budget and Finance Committee, Sam needed to nominate new people to staff it. Per the Bylaws, the Treasurer is always a member, and the others get appointed for one, two, or three-year terms. Sam nominated Steve Keadle for a one-year term so that we would not lose continuity and could benefit from the work he had already done. He nominated himself to a two-year term, which would cover his remaining time as RE and then Past RE, and he nominated Bruce Dover, for a three-year term. It had been agreed outside this meeting that Bruce would be doing some of the bookkeeping functions that Steve had been doing, and he will be working closely with Heather Powers and Sam in this new role. The Board unanimously approved Sam’s nominations.

5. National Convention Report. Sam reported that he, Rex, Anna, and Blair, had all attended the SCCA National Convention. Blair Deffenbaugh gave presentations on using social media to promote our events and on Track Night in America. Sam gave a presentation on how to run a successful Majors event. All the presentations were well-received. Sam said that the networking he did was probably even more important than the presentations.

6. Spring Sprints. Sam was able to get the template of required Supplementary Regulations for our Super Tour Majors from Deanna Flannigan and had passed those to Anna, as new head of the NCR Comp Board. Anna indicated that she would be calling a Comp Board meeting soon. We would have to add our own VIR-required regulations and local procedures to what’s in the template to produce our own Supps.

7. MARRS in October. Sam added that he had met with WDC Region representatives concerning their request to have the MARRS season finale at VIR as part of our Goblins Go event in October, October 14-15. They estimate that this will increase our car count by as much as 70 cars; and we will still be hosting the V8 Road Racing Series and the Production Car Festival as well. We will only have to pay MARRS a fee of $25 per car (the same as in May) and they have agreed to help us with expenses for an expanded social Saturday night. We in turn will be asking VIR about renting the skid pad for additional paddock space as well as renting the large green shelter next to it for that social.

8. Budget Request for F&C. This item was not discussed. It was only noted for the record that it had been submitted to the Treasurer and that Heather Powers would be working with Ben to pay either him or the vendor(s).

9. New Phone Hub. Sam announced that he was looking into buying a new phone hub to replace the one we were using. He wanted something with multiple microphones so that the people who called in could hear better no matter whom was talking. Anna felt that this was old technology and that a better solution could be found using Skype or something similar. She volunteered to look into it.

10. Announcer for Our Events in 2017. Sara Snider had been contacted by Scott Conway, who had fulfilled the role of announcer at some of our events in the past, about doing it again for the upcoming season. His rate seemed to be about $700 per weekend, $250 per day plus a hotel room and meals. Sam suggested that we would not need an announcer in March, as the event was not well-attended enough, nor in April for the Majors, as the SCCA would be providing both an announcer and a radio DJ as part of the contract. Motion to have Scott Conway be the announcer at the SARRC/MARRS in May and at the (now) SARRC/MARRS Goblins Go in October (Shanks /R. Deffenbaugh). Passed.

11. Website Advertising. John Lindquist had purchased at small static ad on our new website from Web Master Jeff Eng at the rate of $10 per month to get this ball rolling. Jeff suggested that we make it known that this is an introductory rate available to our members and favored sponsors for a period of one year. He also proposed, in an e-mail to Sam, some more elaborate, and eye-catching, sorts of ads that he could produce for clients willing to spend more money. As the jargon describing these was not well-known, Sam has asked him for clarification that a layman might understand. This would fit in nicely with our plans to produce a printed program for the Spring Sprints, as a potential sponsor could start out with a very cheap print ad and follow it up with a long-running web ad.

Old Business:

1. SEDIV Convention at St. Simons Island. The SEDIV Convention and Banquet will be February 5^th to the 7th . An informal poll showed that Buddy was going as a member of the ECR Rules Committee, and Anna as Divisional Administrator for Timing and Scoring. They should have their most of their expenses covered by SEDIV for those roles. But if not, they can apply for reimbursement under our recently adopted convention policy. The RE (Sam) and ARE (Anna) have their expenses covered in full, and everyone else will split a pot of $2500 by submitting receipts for lodging, travel, and convention fees, until that limit is reached. In addition to Sam, Bruce, Mark, Blair Stitt (as SARRC Rep) and Sara Snider were all planning to go. Bruce was going in order to attend a seminar on Registration as requested by the Board in a prior meeting.

2. VIR Meeting: Mark Senior has set up a meeting with Kerrigan Smith, VIR General Manager, and the VIR staff, on February 8^th, location to be announced (possibly Piper’s Deli). Sam had gone to the track some time ago and presented them with our deposit check for $39K, only to find that they had another outstanding food service bill from much earlier in the year that they want us to pay. He turned that over to Bruce for investigation and payment. In any case, our deposit has been paid. Attendance at this upcoming meeting is optional, so Mark asked the Board to develop a list of issues to be discussed at that meeting. In no particular order the following items were identified.
   1. Food service billing needs to be consistent and compete by the end of the weekend
   2. Registration Building. Is VIR going to provide enhancements to the trailer?
   3. Code 35 practice session during the test day
   4. Complete access for F&S photographers during SCCA events
   5. New roofs for corner stations
   6. New roof for tech shed
   7. Proper exit point for Station 8 so that it can be safely manned
   8. Power from start stand so that a photo cell can be positioned across track
   9. Pace car waivers signed before the first event
   10. Boosting the wi-fi signal in the paddock
   11. Providing a count of paid spectators at our events
   12. Publish basic hotel rates so we can advertise them
   13. Publish skid pad and (green) picnic shelter rental rates
   14. Cut off post-event billing after 30 days

Chapter and Committee Reports: There were no Chapter meetings this month because of the Annual Meeting and Awards dinner on the 14^th. No committees have met either.

Motion to adjourn at 8:45 PM (Senior / R. Deffenbaugh). Passed.

 

Promotion for Bruce Dover. The Board was reconvened to discuss a personnel issue in closed session, as is our practice, by RE Sam Fouse, at approximately 9:05 PM. Sam apologized to those present, Heather Clark, Anna Crissman, Rex Deffenbaugh, Buddy Matthews, Heather Powers, Mark Senior, and James Shanks, for not having thought to propose this meeting sooner. There being a quorum present, it was not necessary to call people back on the phone to participate.  The results of that meeting were that the Board voted unanimously to promote Office Manager Bruce Dover from a part-time hourly employee to a full-time salaried employee, with a commensurate raise in pay. The Board also agreed to review his compensation in six months to determine whether it was adequate for his new responsibilities as a bookkeeper.

Adjourned again approximately 9:10 PM.

Submitted by Secretary, James Shanks