NCR Board Meeting Minutes

May 17, 2023

Attendees: Kit Williams, John Bodnar, James Shanks, Megan Tyler, Anna Crissman, Al Heatwole, Stephen Miller late

Guests: Chuck Stanley, Ben Tyler, Mark Senior late, Rob Wilmoth la

1. The meeting was called to order at 7:02pm by Anna Crissman, NCR RE.
2. Motion to approve the minutes from the April meeting (Shanks/Williams). Approved.

Financial Report

Treasurer Sam Fouse has sent the financial report to Kit Williams for the minutes.

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.

Sam also said he still has a significant amount of money to go out for May for food, sanction fees, and other items. Sam said he should have all of the VIP checks processed by this weekend.

Chapter Reports

Chris Severt was unable to attend the meeting but had sent a chapter report to the Board beforehand. He said the Cape Fear Chapter met with 4 people, all regular attendees, who spent the meeting discussing upcoming events. Lee Hill was also unable to attend the meeting and sent in a report. The West Chapter met with 11 people in Greensboro and spent the meeting discussing the May road race. James Shanks had posted his report to the Google Drive. The Triangle Chapter met with 15 people and spent the meeting looking at old photos and they had another one of their trivia contests. James said they will continue the trivia contest going forward as it has been great fun.

Additional Item

Anna announced to the Board that Shane Irving has resigned his position as a Member at Large on the Board. Anna, as Regional Executive, has the duty of nominating a replacement to fill the position, which will then be voted on by the Board. Anna nominated Rob Wilmoth to serve in the position, and said she had already spoken to Rob about this and Rob had told her that he would serve in the position if the Board agreed. Anna made a motion to have Rob assume the Member at Large position, and James seconded the motion. The Board passed the motion unanimously.

Old Business

1. May Event: Anna gave a brief recap of the event and said that we had a fairly successful event as far as finances go. We were able to execute the event despite some last minute changes and adjustments, such as Bruce Dover not being available to run registration. Anna said Sam had done a great job as race chair and had worked out a good new option for food for our workers. The weather was excellent the entire weekend and Anna felt the schedule worked very well. James said the Hospitality tent had over $700 worth of business during the weekend, and he attributed this to having such great, dry weather. He said the late Sunday rain did force him to cut his inventory count short. John Bodnar said he did have difficulty working with the stewards in Timing in regards to the paperwork required for penalties and official results. James said he would need more people to work with him in Hospitality if we continue to rely on them to distribute trophies during the events. He said he is also still having difficulty with getting Timing results over VIR’s wifi network. Anna felt we would need to rework our trophy process in the future and have a more complete plan going forward for results. Bruce said we had not yet received the steward’s Observers Report. Bruce had spoken to Sara Snyder who was taking the report and she said the event went well and did not have any complaints other than the stewards themselves.
2. VIR Flagging in 2024: Anna said we have not yet spoken with VIR again about VIR’s plan to force us to use their flaggers instead of our volunteers in 2024. Anna said she was told by Eric Prill that the decision was not yet final, but there was nothing concrete in place, and there were conflicting reports from other entities as far as what VIR has told them about the situation. Anna said we are planning to have another conversation about this with VIR at some time in the future. We still do not have concrete answers about what exactly VIR will be taking over, what positions they will and will not cover, how this will affect other areas of our events, etc. Anna just wanted to have this item on the agenda to show that we are still working on the problem. 

New Business

1. Rockingham: Al Heatwole said pretty much everything about the Rockingham situation has changed dramatically in the last week or so. Rob Wilmoth finally got in touch with the owner of the track who told him that Justin, our point of contact, no longer worked for the track. The owners also set up a new meeting with us, and Rob, Al, and Stephen Miller did a track visit earlier today. Al said the track has done a huge amount of work on the track facilities, particularly electronics and the grandstands at Turn 2. They are doing an extensive rebuild of many of the track facilities and are re-engineering many of the critical parts of the circuit. Stephen spoke directly with the track owner about changes that would need to be made in order to make the track work for SCCA events. The track owner seemed very eager to know what we would need in order to make the track safe for us to use, and he felt that if the track would work for us, other groups would also be interested in using the track. Al said the owner had plans to have some sort of hotel or lodging facility at the track as well, and they were actively testing cars during the visit on their Little Rock track. They are also planning to build a dirt track and a motocross track behind the main race track. They said they are working to get new engineering drawings in order to get the track certified to use by us, which is one of the major hurdles we ran into previously. They are also planning to repave the road course portion of the track, which was not done when they repaved the main oval. Stephen felt the meeting was better than anything we could have predicted in the previous months, and felt that the track owner wants to make the track safe and do it right so the track can be used by us and any other group that wants to. He said they had sent us the CAD files for the track and their plans for us to go over, which Stephen said he plans to send to various people in the SCCA to evaluate. He also noted that construction was actively happening during their visit, which is an excellent sign that they are motivated to make the track ready to use. Rob felt the owners did want to use us as advisors to help them get the track right, but also felt that they are looking at the facility as an entertainment venue rather than just a race track. Rob felt we could help them promote their venue and build a relationship with the track, through car promotional photos or events with Racing for ALS on the oval while we wait for the infield to be ready to use. Rob did feel that the track management did not have a ton of motorsports knowledge, but felt they were eager to learn and to get involved. Rob felt the track does have knowledge about marketing and advertising, which we could use to our advantage as well when we are at the point of having events. Rob planned to reach back out to the track next week to keep the process moving forward. Anna felt we needed to keep the tempo moving with this and stay on the ball with Rockingham, as this seemed to be the major point that caused us to have to cancel our planned TT last year. Everyone felt the Rockingham situation was now immensely positive and was looking forward to what may come from it. There was a lot more general conversation about the Rockingham visit before the next item was brought up.
2. Social Media proposal: Stephen said he was approached by an individual named Eli, who is a social media promoter who has worked with various groups in the past including working with Rob Wilmoth. Eli Pasteura approached Stephen with a plan to grow his own advertising business in the motorsports area by working with us to promote our events. Stephen highlighted that we have a checkered past with advertising, as being a volunteer organization it has been difficult to have someone consistently work to advertise our events. Eli had proposed to work with us to advertise our events and eventually to work out a business deal to pay him to promote our events. Eli wanted to work with us for free for a period of time until we could see a positive return on his work, at which point he wanted to have us work out a payment plan to pay him for his work to promote us and grow our participation numbers. Anna said our current social media presence is very ad-hoc and inconsistent, as it is done by multiple people, all of which are volunteering their time to do so. She felt having a dedicated professional to do this job would be a definite benefit for the region. Rob said he enjoyed working with Eli in the past but felt we would need to work closely with him in order to get a result that we wanted from him. Rob pointed out that Eli has worked with large YouTube accounts in the past and has a highly rated videography background. Anna felt we should give it a try to make our social media presence more consistent and reach more people. Anna pointed out that this year we only have one TT left in October, and our autocross events to promote. She still felt this could be a good way to gauge how effective having Eli working for us could be. Anna and Stephen both felt that if we went forward with this, we should be able to guarantee at least some payment to Eli for the work he would put in. Stephen said the suggested payment would be roughly $100-$200 per month. Stephen made a motion to give Eli access to all of our social media pages, have him promote the upcoming TT event in June, and have Eli meet with the Board again in June to report back on the results. Seconded by Rob Wilmoth. The motion passed.

Stephen brought up an additional item of SCCA Insurance changes. Stephen said it is now the responsibility of the regions to have a contract with any outside vendor who attends our events, and any vendors that are under contract from the track must be listed as having their own insurance from the track. Stephen said this change took place during a meeting that was happening at the same time as our Board meeting. Stephen clarified that this is only for vendors that we invite, not for any vendors who show up without our request. This applies for all events. Stephen said this would most apply to us with Tradd’s Photos, who we have used at multiple events this year. We would also need to make sure any vendors that come to TT events know about this change as well, as they would need to acknowledge that they would not be covered by the SCCA insurance at our events. There was further discussion about the specifics of how this would impact our events.

Motion to adjourn (Wilmoth/Bodnar). Approved at 8:32pm

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