November 1, 2004

Special Exec Committee Meeting

Present: Robert Baird, Ron Walton, Ben Mueller, Trey Bradberry, Amy Hall, and Rick Hazlewood

Absent: Judith Martinez

This special meeting was started at 7:45 pm and ended at 10:00 pm.

August's Minutes

 August's minutes were submitted by Gary Sullan and approved.

Fall Cup and the Hotel fees.

Ron discussed the result of his meetings with various people exploring options of how to deal with the local hotels who benefit from our Fall Cup teams coming to town. Someone on the club could become the booking agent for all teams who need to make reservations with any hotel we use. We would then receive the travel agent commission that is about 10% of the hotel bill. Another option would be to enter into an agreement with a travel agent who becomes our sole booking agent and split the commission with the agent. We may experiment with this process during the spring tournament.

Fall Cup Expense Report

The profit is currently estimated to be  $15, 000 this year. It is down from last year when it was a larger tournament. We also lost revenue when we could not sell concessions at the park district fields. Also, t-shirts sales were not as profitable as they have been in the past. It was also discussed that the tournament just did not feel as crowded in the past couple of years. Members of the club who helped coordinate and run the tournament have already met and discussed ways to improve upon this year’s tournament.

Follow-up on the Town Hall Meeting

It was discussed how the sunshine laws apply to LISC as a non-profit organization. No one is really sure what that entails at this time.

We do have a policy that is not well-advertised that our meetings are open to the public for the first thirty minutes. If that is indeed going to be advertised, we will need to meet somewhere besides the current room at the Mettler at the Crossing Center since it seats eight people comfortably and that is it.

We discussed the need to meet more often until all of the issues are straightened out especially since the committee also needs to deal with the operational details of the club in addition to the policies, procedures, and by-laws that we all feel need to be addressed. Each one of us needs to write down what we do in our roles and what processes do we follow.

We discussed the issue of Ron’s offer to have a vote of confidence on his position as president. It was brought up that there are no provisions in the by-laws to cover this circumstance. The idea of every officer stand up for a vote of confidence was also brought up but then dropped from the discussion. Ben Mueller pointed out that the elections in the spring may indeed be soon enough to serve the same purpose. No decision was made at the end of the discussion.

Ron Walton suggested that we amend the by-laws to promote a smoother transition for new people assuming offices. The elections would be held before the spring season even begins. The newly-elected officers would then work with those leaving office for a period of time, perhaps two months, learning all what that office requires and learning from the person leaving office. The committee overwhelmingly agreed that this would be beneficial and that it needs to be presented in written form to the Board of Directors so we could amend the by-laws accordingly.

We discussed the scholarship issues. Gary Sullan mentioned currently have more scholarship players than ever before. This is putting a strain on our budget since the dues money is the source of scholarship money and our operating money too. We need to firm up a policy on who gets the scholarship and how those players are identified. It was agreed that the methods used this fall that ended up adding two players to one team were not out of the ordinary in that they did not attend tryouts. We have added players after tryouts many times in the past. However, the main issue of how to fund scholarship players remains as the current system drains money from our operating funds.