USA Track & Field New England

Board of Governors

Meeting held at Association Office in Brookline

January 3, 2011

Present:  Steve Viegas, Jim Garcia, Stephen Peckiconis, John Oleski, Larry Libow, Justin Kuo, Mike Travers, Lisa Doucett, Jennifer Lee, Steve Vaitones

On the Phone:  Paul Kirsch

Meeting opened at 7:33 PM.  We did not have a quorum with 10 people.  Quorum requires one more than majority, which means 11 since there are currently 20 people on the Board.

Minutes:  The minutes of the December meeting were discussed but could not be approved without a quorum.  Gary had one open question.  Paul clarified that the two national championships awarded to NE by MUT are the 2011 Cranmore Hill Climb and 2012 Mt Washington Race.

Treasurer’s Report: Stephen Peckiconis did not have November monthly reports yet due to three weeks time away, including Annual Meeting, and busy year-end accounting schedule.  He presented a preliminary Balance Sheet as of 12/31/10 which happens to show a Net Income of $56K but mentioned several caveats as to why that number will be smaller when everything is properly accounted for.  The Balance Sheet was primarily presented to show how much money is in the bank at year end.

Stephen mentioned that we normally select a CPA to review the books at this time but that was tabled due to lack of a quorum.  Jim Garcia asked about costs of financial review and preparing Form 990. Stephen stated that the Review is essentially a fixed cost but the Form 990 cost is variable.  He hopes to get the Form 990 portion decreased this year.  Buying a software program to file the 990 would likely be expensive and very time consuming.

Mike Travers talked about the East Region / New England Masters Indoor T&F Champs on Jan 30. He’s looking for more volunteers, made a general appeal.  Onsite registration ends at 10am.  Steve Vaitones gave a detailed overview of the layout of the track facility.

Grievance Procedure:  SV1 is going to get a long list of panelists to SV2 to start reviewing.  SV1 reviewed the process.  SV1 says we need 15 or more names to review.  No Board members will be on the panel.

Managing Director’s Report:  National office is closed from 12/23-01/03/11.  Steve made a visit to the Providence CTA track to review setup.  He explained the need to keep all food and drink and shoes off the inside of the track.

NYAC’s John Honerkamp is interested in New York vs Boston track meet indoors.  Metro NY and Oregon are potential for rivalries.

David Callum was in office last week to review GBTC meet on Jan 23.

BU Terrier and Valentine meets do not allow HS Students at all.  Steve outlined reasons for this.

Andrea Segato is still working in the office once a week, for free.  He has experience in our industry as he works at a regional federation of the Italian Federation.

The Exchange Zone is in final layout state, couldn’t get high-quality pictures last week, got them today.

Old Business

Budget – Chair requests:  Stephen noted that he has not received copies of the budget requests from the chairs.  Gary has them but is in Florida.

Jennifer Lee started a Grand Prix selection checklist discussion.  Discussed for over 10 minutes how to improve.  Jen had a handout listing items she had collected for us to review and add to.  During the discussion we talked about how we can prove that we offer benefits, such as 400 more runners (entry fee $!) participating in the event.  Another key area talked about was the Gold/Silver/Bronze aka A/B/C aka Premier aka Sanction vs Sanction Plus, race labels given to races that meet higher standards so those races can use those to promote the high quality of their races.  That puts USATF-NE in the position of having some authority in the road race domain.  “Good Housekeeping” Seal of Approval.
Paul Kirsch suggested sending a survey out to each race that we have sanctioned to see what they think.  Others said that people are too busy to fill out survey, we need to call directly.

We discussed putting an LDR Series ad into the New England Runner (NER) annual calendar.  SV1 said that there was limited space available (March) and he would be able to obtain it for an ad which was not expensive.  We agreed to have Steve Vaitones put the ad into the NER calendar.

Steve Vaitones suggested a Sanctions & Certification 101 course be presented at one of our meetings so that everyone knows the basics of what is involved in sanctioning and other terminology on the National level.

Exchange Zone: Steve Vaitones said the next issue will contain a Membership Form. Jim Garcia suggested a post card type mailing. Steve Vaitones to investigate cost and cards used in previous years.
Action Item:  SV1 to provide cost info and postcard options for mailing renewal notices.

Steve Viegas asked who was interested in AED (Defibrillator) training. Several hands went up.  He will find an instructor and also contact clubs for interest.

New Business

John Oleski said that he is looking for a place for the premier showing in Boston of the video “Forever Fast”.  He is investigating venues such as largest health clubs in the area.  Time frame is Late Jan to Late Feb.
Action Item:  JO to schedule showing of the “Forever Fast” video and let us know.

AOM:  John stated that Stephanie Hicks of GCST was a strong candidate for December AOM.  Liberty AC’s 4x1600 relay team record was reviewed but there were too many caveats.

Steve Viegas will invite RRCA State Rep for Massachusetts, John Childs (Former NU runner), to one of our meetings.
Action Item:  SV2 to invite RRCA rep to one of our BOG meetings.

Boston Indoor Games will have six exhibition events prior to the main elite invitational races.  Peckiconis suggested having a table there to promote the association.  No takers on that.

Web site refresh: Jennifer Lee asked about the new web site.  It is still in process.  Jen offered to help.  Paul Kirsch mentioned the possibility of demoing the WordPress site next month.  Justin also replied.

Jen thought that WordPress conversion was taking a long time, and she would like to start a blog now and is interested in contributing to that.  Steve Vaitones and Justin Kuo suggested waiting until the conversion was completed.
Paul asked if it was worth doing a demo of the website at the next meeting.
Justin estimated there are 800 pages on current website and Paul said maybe they can be archived.  Another term is sunsetted, leaving them on the website out of the way as static pages.

Goal: Justin demo what is out there now.  Just show three or four pages and how post shows up on the front page.  SV1 said to check out White Mountain Milers or US Mountain Running Team websites to see an example of WordPress.

Paul Kirsch stated that the Mountain series lost Mountain HardWear/Montrail as a sponsor.  He did not state the impact of this on the series.  Paul is working on getting replacement sponsors.

Joan Bohlke sent an email to SV2 that she has arranged a post-event “party” after the New England Indoor T&F Champs on Feb 20, at The Boyne in Brighton.  Feedback to Joan was to have it start earlier, as soon after end of meet as possible.

February Meeting will be February 7th at the Association office.

MTA at 9:15

Respectfully submitted

Stephen Peckiconis