BoD Minutes – December 14, 2016

Minutes of NCR-SCCA Monthly Board of Directors Meeting
December 14, 2016

Present: Rex Deffenbaugh, Bruce Dover, Sam Fouse, Steve Keadle, Buddy Matthews, Mark Senior, James Shanks, Mike Spencer, and via conference call, Heather Clark, Eric Danielsen, Morgan Mehler, Heather Powers, and Ben Tyler. John Byers, Blair Deffenbaugh, and John Lindquist were absent.

  1. The NCR BoD meeting was called to order by RE Sam Fouse at 7:15 pm, on Wednesday, December 14th 2016, at Piper’s Deli, 3219 Old Chapel Hill Road, Durham, NC, 27707.
  2. The only guests participated via phone. They were Eric Danielsen, Heather Powers, and Ben Tyler.
  3. Motion to approve the November minutes as written (Spencer / Senior). Passed.
  4. Morgan Mehler announced that the Cape Fear Chapter had met and elected a new Chapter Coordinator for 2017. He is Matt Decker.

Financial Report: Treasurer Steve Keadle was unable to provide the detailed reports for the second half of the year as he had hoped to be able to. He plans to get it to us as soon as possible, given that he and the Budget and Finance Committee will also be working on the budget for next year, as required in the Bylaws (see item #1 under New Business). Cash in the bank as of this writing was healthy, despite worker credits totaling nearly $36K having been paid to date. The VIR deposit of $39K, however, has not been paid yet.

VIR Meeting: The plan is for Mark Senior to set up a meeting at Piper’s Deli soon with Kerrigan Smith, VIR General Manager, and the VIR staff, and present them with the deposit check at that meeting. Once the date for that meeting is set, the Board members will be invited; though they need not attend, as this will be outside of the normal monthly Board meeting. Specialty Chiefs and other interested members may submit questions to the Board members who will be attending, to be asked in their stead.

Old Business:

  1.  SEDIV Convention at St. Simons Island. The Convention and Banquet will be February 5th– 7th . An informal poll showed that Bruce was going in order to attend a seminar on Registration and Buddy was going as a member of the ECR Rules Committee, in addition to the RE, Sam, and Assistant RE, Mike. Steve indicated that last year the Board had set a reimbursement limit of $2500. The RE’s and ARE’s expenses were covered in full and all remaining attendees there on Region business could submit receipts to cover lodging, travel, and convention fees, until that limit was reached. This year the policy would also cover the reimbursement requirements adopted at the last meeting, which include the possibility of a travelling companion for the RE and Assistant RE, as well as a per diem of $40 per day for food. Motion (Senior/Keadle) to adopt a reimbursement limit of $2500 subject to the foregoing conditions. Passed.

New Business:

  1. Year-end Financial Requirements. Sam noted that the Bylaws provide that the financial records are to be audited at the close the fiscal year (Article IX, Section 3), which is the calendar year. He asserted, and the Board agreed by consensus after discussion, that the word “audited” here was being used informally and not in the strict accounting sense of the term, which would require an independent investigation by a CPA going back to the last time the books and all receipts were examined and cataloged. If the term were to be interpreted in that strict sense, then we would have to hire a professional firm and surrender our books from many years past, since no one could remember when the last time that might have been done. It would probably be prohibitively expensive as well as unnecessary. So clearly this has not been followed in the past, and perhaps it is time for the Bylaws to be updated to reflect that. As a 501(c )(3) not-for-profit corporation, a simple review of our checking account and bank statements should suffice. We could hire that done, Sam said, or we could ask the Budget and Finance Committee to do it. The Committee currently consists of Sam, Steve, and John Lindquist. John will remain on the B&F Committee after his term as Member-at-Large concludes, so Sam proposed that he appoint a new member to the Committee (the Treasurer is always a member), and that they collectively perform the review in the early part of next year. It was suggested that Jerry Pell would be an ideal candidate for this position and Sam resolved to ask him. Motion to add Jerry Pell to the Budget and Finance Committee if he is willing to serve (Shanks/Spencer). Passed.
  2. Specialty Chiefs for 2017. Sam distributed a list of Specialty Chiefs for 2017 for the Board to consider in keeping with Operations Manual, which says that they serve at the pleasure of the Board. The RE recommends them and the Board confirms them. Most positions are the same as last year but several changes were needed as people have left.

2017 Specialty Chiefs Roster:
Comp. Chair – Mike Spencer (and Asst. RE)
Race Chairs – Eric Danielsen; Mark Senior; Justin Deffenbaugh; Sara Snider
Registration – Bruce Dover (and Office Manager)
Pits – Johnny Dunbar
Grid – Clayton Condrey
Paddock Marshall – Hayden Beatty
Pace Car – Ed Wentz
Starter – Pete Romanowski
Tech – Buddy Matthews
F&C – Heather Clark; Ben Tyler; Brian Eldredge
T&S – Anna Crissman
Hospitality – James Shanks
Licensing – Peter Krause
EV – Tim Gardner
Driver Rep – Heather Powers
Steward Rep – Steve Keadle

Motion (Spencer / Senior) to confirm the assignments on this list. Passed.

Sam re-confirmed the following already-approved Race Chair assignments:
Eric Danielsen, for “March into Spring”; now to be assisted by Heather Powers
Mark Senior for the “Spring Sprints”; with an assistant, yet to be determined.

Sam then recommended the following assignment be added:
Justin Deffenbaugh for the SARRC/MARRS

Motion (Spencer / Senior) to confirm these assignments as well. Passed.

  1. 2017 Budget. Sam noted that the Bylaws, which mandate the creation of the Budget and Finance Committee, also state that the Committee should prepare and present the annual budget for adoption by the Board of Directors no later than 30 days prior to the beginning of each new fiscal year (Article VII, Section 1b). That means we are already in the window for preparing the Budget for 2017. Sam announced that in order for the B&F Committee to meet its obligation to produce a budget, he would be sending a request to all specialty chiefs to produce their respective funding requests for the coming year. They should separate their requests into operating expenses and assets (durable goods which last more than one season) and return them via e-mail to him or to Steve as members of the Committee by no later than Dec. 23.
  1. Accounting Functions. Sam noted that Ginny’s departure from her prior position as Office Manager had ramifications that we had not anticipated at the time. She had been doing the functions of a bookkeeper, posting expenses and disbursements to Quick Books, and cutting checks for Steve, as Treasurer, to sign. Bruce, her successor to the job of Office Manager, has had no formal training as a bookkeeper, nor does he have access to Quick Books. Currently the Region is using Steve’s personal copy on his home computer. This is the biggest reason that his financial reports have been behind this year. Steve has been doing the accounting functions that Ginny used to do, which Bruce currently cannot do. Sam noted that this is not necessarily part of the Treasurer’s job. Per the Bylaws the office has a supervisory role and is not required to handle the day to day accounting functions, only to confirm that they are adhered to. Sam said that as he sees it, we have three choices,
    1. to have the Treasurer (Steve) do it,
    2. get another copy of Quick Books and train the Office Manager (Bruce) to do it, or
    3. hire a bookkeeping service to do it.

Since the first option is difficult and quite time-consuming, we should explore the other two. The first step in continuing to do it in-house is to find out where all the old records are, then collect and transfer them to the Region Office, in order to provide a solid place to start. Sam indicated that he will be contacting Ginny about any old records she has. She clearly has some, since she located the title to the Region’s Hospitality trailer after some searching. In the meantime, he asked Steve to investigate the cost of hiring a professional bookkeeping service to do the job for us. Further action will await the outcome of these endeavors.

  1. Worker Credits and Receipts. James made the point that, while he was helping Bruce get the ballots out for the election, he saw firsthand what an enormous headache it was for the Office Manager to have to request receipts from everyone in exchange for their worker credits. Several people have to be prodded to provide them and others claim falsely every year that they have never been required to do this before. Others cannot seem to use the correct form. He asked the question why we could not just do away with them as South Carolina and Atlanta Regions seem to have done. Sam agreed that we should not have to provide the volunteers with Form 1099 to satisfy the IRS, as long as we were paying individuals, not corporations, and the total amount was under $600 apiece. Then Steve weighed in and said that reporting was only half of the equation. If we did away with receipts then our workers were technically being paid, not reimbursed, from the IRS’s viewpoint, and they should then report their checks as income on their taxes. Requiring receipts indicates that we are reimbursing volunteers for expenses, not paying for services, and this gets our workers off the hook with the IRS. By consensus then the Board felt that the current policy should remain and receipts be required, no matter what other Regions were doing. Bruce was then asked whether there was any benefit to paying the credits twice a year, in the summer, and in the fall, rather than once a year. Bruce indicated that it made no difference to him and that in fact some people requested their reimbursement after every event. He felt we should leave it up to individuals to decide when to request payment, if at all, since, as the documents he provided showed, almost twenty percent (20%) of the volunteers did not request any reimbursement. That makes a big difference in our bottom line. The big change we had instituted this year, using a spreadsheet filled out by the Specialty Chiefs rather than punch cards, Bruce said, had already streamlined the system considerably. It was decided by consensus then that the current policy should remain in effect in its entirety.
  1. March Race and Schedule Review. There was a Comp Board meeting via phone last night, Tuesday, December 13th, to hammer out the Supps for the March race. Bruce had produced a preliminary copy of what was agreed upon and circulated it. He had made further changes to it in response to feedback prior to this meeting, so there was not much left to discuss. The main issue was the schedule, which was being modified to remove the qualifying sessions on Sunday and replace them with two 15-minute “hardship warm-up” sessions. There was debate about what these should be called, since the intent was that they could be used by anyone who had not qualified on Saturday as a qualifying session. The fear was that by calling them “qualifying sessions” that would entitle all cars to participate. In the end, it was decided that “warm-up” was a better term and that as long as participation required prior permission from the Chief Steward there would not be a problem. Two items remain to be decided, entry fees and alterations to the Code 35 procedure. Discussion on both of these items was postponed and Mike was directed to work with Bruce on the final schedule. They are under the gun to get these circulated among SEDIV officials as the deadline for submission to National is January 25th.
  1. Food Service Administration. Sam proposed that we appoint a single person to work with VIR on our food service purchases, a “food czar” so to speak, who could speak for us with one voice and eliminate confusion. Mark said seemed like a good idea, and would provide much-needed consistency, but that this person should be part of the Race Chair group at least. After discussion, the Board agreed by consensus. Sam is now looking for someone to fill this position.
  1. Super Tour and Majors Update and the Impact on Our Event. Sam reported that he had spoken with Eric Prill at the PRI show in Indianapolis just last week and had been told by him what the final criteria will be for qualifying for the Runoffs this year, 2017. Eric had just been updated on this by outgoing SCCA Chairman of the Board John Walsh. Apparently, the SCCA Board wants to guarantee record attendance at the Runoffs in Indianapolis this year, so they have watered down the qualifications even further than previously reported. As of this writing a driver may do any of the following to qualify for the Runoffs:
  • Attend 3 Majors weekends and turn a wheel on track. He need not even qualify but merely make the attempt.
  • Attend 2 Majors weekends and any 2 Regional race weekends.
  • Attend any four Regional races within the calendar year of the Runoffs, provided that he finishes among the top 3 drivers in his class (top 5 in SM or SRF3) in his division. Drivers who qualify for the Runoffs by other means, who finish ahead of him, will not be considered in this determination (!).

These new criteria are still quite fluid, and may impact attendance at our Super Tour “Spring Sprints” by five to ten per cent, according to the SCCA Board. That seems low to us, but we have no way of knowing. Sam added that Sebring had already raised their entry fee to $650 and he was expecting that we would have to raise ours, despite the predicted loss of entries. James warned that we should still strive to put on the best event we could, including a gift for drivers and workers, since we needed to preserve our status as the best Majors in the Southeast. The rest of Board agreed by consensus. Sam indicated that he had plans for producing a race program using the cover of the 1957 issue of Sports Car showing Carroll Shelby winning the first race at VIR. Buddy added that our t-shirt inventory should be expanded to included actual children sizes. Bruce said he would look into producing vinyl decals with our new logo on them.

Chapter and Committee Reports: There was no time left to discuss committee reports. Mark Senior had circulated his Triangle Chapter report via e-mail, but it had yet to be posted to the Google drive, though this will be rectified soon. Bruce also circulated hard copy of a Solo Program financial statement through November 30th, which was also not discussed nor posted yet.

Motion to adjourn at 8:59 PM (Spencer /Senior). Passed.

Submitted by Secretary, James Shanks

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