NCR SCCA Board Meeting Minutes

Attendees: Kit Williams, James Shanks, Lee Hill, Sam Fouse, Megan Tyler, Al Heatwole, Anna Crissman, John Bodnar, Rob Wilmoth, Chris Severt late.

Guests: Chuck Stanley, Bruce Dover, Matt Decker, Ryan Lohrman, Chris Schimmel, Frank Killian, Tony Edward, Ben Tyler, Stephen Miller late

1. The meeting was called to order by Anna Crissman, NCR RE at 7:02 pm.

2. Motion to approve the minutes from the February Board meeting (Wilmoth/Bodnar). Approved.

Financial Report

Sam Fouse, Treasurer had sent a financial report to Kit Williams, Secretary before the meeting.

As the details of our finances are confidential, NCR members who wish more information should contact either the Office Manager or any member of the Board of Directors. They are also invited to attend a Chapter Meeting, where such matters are discussed in detail.

Chapter Reports

Chris Severt was unable to attend the start of the meeting and had emailed the Board with a report of the Cape Fear Chapter meeting. He said they met with 5 members and 1 new guest and spent the meeting introducing the guest to the SCCA and to NCR. Chris said he hoped the guest would be attending an autocross soon. Lee Hill said the West Chapter met with 15 people at their normal location. They discussed the upcoming Super Tour and the open member at Large Board seat. He said it was a good meeting with normal attendees. James Shanks said the Triangle Chapter met with about 12 people and discussed the upcoming Super Tour and watched some interesting automotive videos. They also played another game of automotive trivia.

Old Business

1. Member at Large Vacancy: Anna introduced the three candidates for the open Member at Large seat on the Board. Stephen Miller had resigned his seat in February, and the Board had met at the annual banquet to discuss the issue. We had decided at that time to have the three candidates come to this Board meeting to present themselves to the Board so we could make a decision on the vacant position. The three candidates were Matt Decker, Tony Edward, and Ryan Lohrman. Each of them had sent a brief bio of themselves and a description of their interest in the Board position to us prior to this meeting. To briefly recap, Matt has been an NCR member since 2015 and had previously served as the Cape Fear Chapter Coordinator. He has primarily participated in autocross and time trial events, both as a driver and organizer. Tony has been a SCCA member since 1982 and has spent many years road racing. After taking a break for several years, he is getting back into the SCCA and wants to take an active role in the region. Ryan has been attending NCR time trial events for several years and has been working heavily with Stephen Miller on organizing time trials events both with us and with the South East Division. After the candidates introduced themselves, a discussion was had about how a vote can be taken. The Board decided to have our vote during the private discussion which will take place at the end of the meeting. Chris Severt had appointed Kit Williams to vote as a proxy for him since he would not be able to attend the meeting before the vote was taken. Motion to vote on the Member at Large position during the closed meeting at the end of this meeting (Crissman/Wilmoth). Approved. During the closed meeting, Al Heatwole resigned his Member at Large seat, leaving the Board with two open positions to fill. The Board voted to add Ryan Lohrman and Matt Decker to the Board. Ryan will take Stephen Miller’s vacant seat and will complete his two year term on the Board, and Matt will take Al’s seat and will finish out Al’s term until the end of this year, when that seat will be open for election.

2. Super Tour Planning: Anna said some minor changes have been made, primarily moving SMX to their own group based on how that class has run at the Super Tours so far this year. Anna said we have slowed down on entries quite a bit, but pointed out that the Road Atlanta Super Tour received most of their registrations in the last week or so before the event. Sam said he has started calling prep shops to make sure they are getting registered and reserving their paddock spots. Anna said there have been several changes with VIR since the last Board meeting. They tried to move the location of our race control location from one room to another in the North tower, which we had to convince VIR not to do in order to allow us to use our radios. There have also been several changes to the catering at VIR which Anna and Mark Senior are still working through. The main change is likely to be in the cost of our worker lunches. Sam said the test day already has 100 drivers registered, which already puts that day in the positives as far as finances go. This will make the job done in Tech a bit more difficult, as we will need to make sure we get the test day cars through Tech on Wednesday and Thursday morning.

New Business

1. May VIR Event Planning: Anna said she and Megan Tyler had met with the stewards and the comp board to get the Supps for the event finalized. They are not yet complete or approved but the process is working. The schedule is still being worked on, and the duration of the races and the enduro are still fluctuating. Ben Tyler pointed out that part of the requirements for the flaggers we must rent from VIR is that they are given a minimum of exactly one hour for a lunch break. Anna said she has discussed this with the stewards about managing the schedule. She also said the entry fees have gone up slightly, as we are having to pay the track significantly more this year. Ben brought up that we need to make a solution for our radio base station for the May race, as VIR is going to force us to use the center room in the North tower for race control. Anna said John Bodnar is going to be working on a solution for an extension to the cables to make them reach from the far room into the center room. James Shanks said he was concerned about the trophies for the May race. He was concerned that he was put into that position last year and there was not a well organized system in place for giving out trophies. Anna and Sam said that Eric Danielsen was working on a solution and that there were plans in the works to make the trophy situation much easier and less stressful. The plan involves creating a separate group of people and a dedicated process for our trophies. John Bodnar said he has also tested a few different strategies for getting results sent in for those trophies quicker.

2. Sponsorships: Anna said she had attended a cars and coffee event recently and was approached by some folks who asked her how they could sponsor some of our events. She said we have done things like this in the past, such as having worker parties and socials sponsored by different groups. As we are having to pay more and more every year to hold our club racing events, Anna felt taking advantage of this can help offset our costs. Sam said sponsoring the socials/parties is the best and easiest place to make a sponsorship happen, and that gets the companies some of the most exposure as those events are usually attended by just about everyone at the event. Rob has lots of experience with this through both Racing for ALS and AudiClub and he said he would put together some information for us. He also said that having a clear set of options and prices for a company to see is a very good practice to have, and would help define the terms and exposure for each sponsorship. He pointed out that at a certain level of sponsorship, many companies would want to make sure they weren’t competing with someone else in their same field for a sponsorship, but to start off with we should keep our prices low and welcome any monetary support that anyone wants to give us. Anna said we can also look into getting a sponsor message mentioned during the race broadcast, which is something that Gregg Ginsburg does very often during his race broadcast streams. Rob said this was a good idea but doing anything with a broadcast is likely going to require a contract with specifics. Al Heatwole cautioned that we would need to be specific about not accepting political or religious ads in this process. He had experience with a previous advertisement where that was not specifically stated.

Additional Item

Ben Tyler brought up that before the Runoffs last year, we received a donation of 23 fire bottles, and then purchased several more in order to have 90 fire bottles available for that event. He said we absolutely do not need to maintain that many fire bottles for our normal events and right now, all the extra bottles are doing is taking up space. He mentioned that the Buccaneer region is hosting an upcoming crash and burn school and is in need of fire bottles for this school event. He proposed that we should donate the approximately 38 extra fire bottles to the Buccaneer region for their event. After discussion, the Board decided that it would make sense to keep about 5 additional fire bottles for our TT program. Motion to donate approximately 33 fire bottles to the Buccaneer region for their crash and burn school (Bodnar/Fouse). Approved. The fire bottles will need to be transported to Savannah, Georgia sometime before their school, and Al and Ben said they would coordinate to get them moved.

At this point in the meeting, Anna Crissman closed the open portion of the meeting and began the closed Board discussion at 8:09 pm. The Board discussed multiple items in the private meeting.

Motion to adjourn the meeting (Heatwole/Wilmoth). Approved at 9:16pm.

Please note that all NCR members are welcome to attend NCR Board of Directors meetings.

If any member should have a question about the Region or its activities, please contact the Office Manager or any member of the Board.

Submitted by Secretary Kit Williams