June 2017

Call to Order and Approval of May 11 Minutes: President Dave Puryear called the meeting to order at 3:40 pm. The minutes of the May 11, 2017 minutes were approved as submitted. Other board members present included Leslie Altick, Gill Barsley, Marolyn Imaoka, John Schwartz, Jody Williams, and Susan Zhang.

Firecracker 2017 Update – Gill reported that the Boy Scout troop from the Buddhist temple is all set to handle the parking. All that is needed are the vests used to identify helpers. Set-up is fully staffed as is Partnership. James Stuart-Smith will set up the room on Tuesday. Newcomers and 99-er games will be in the Bridge Center, as will the team games, except for Sunday when they will be held in the IFES hall. Gill is considering hiring workers from the Day Center to help with Tear-Down; she will also discuss having the Boy Scouts help. IFES has offered a $10 pizza snack with drink for Wednesday evening. Seven to ten rooms are booked each night at the hotel.

Weekend Usage of BC – Dave reported that the current Saturday game may expand to more Saturdays. Feedback suggests that members are frustrated by not knowing exactly on which Saturdays there will be a game. Jim Harris will set up the Unit Game schedule and sanctions for 2018. It was suggested that the Unit games be scheduled whenever there is not a Saturday game, so that a member can expect a game of some type every Saturday.

Reports:

President – Dave updated the Board on the activities of our foundation, Peninsula Bridge Education Foundation (PBEF), of which he is also a member. At this point, PBEF technically owns Silicon Valley Youth bridge (SiVY). This is because PBEF has become the financial sponsor under the foundation’s 503(c)3 (to make contributions to SiVY tax deductible). To facilitate continuing communication, PBEF and SiVY will have nonvoting members on each other’s board. Dave announced there will be a spring cleaning session on June 18 in order to ready the Bridge Center for the Firecracker. Lastly, one candidate for the District Seat on the National Board, Jackie Zayac, has asked to address our Board in July before the election. The Board agreed to her request.

Technology Committee – Jody reported that research on the whether to use Bridge Mates or Bridge Pads discovered that certain replacement parts for the latter are no longer being manufactured. Moreover, the capabilities of Bridge Mates have been expanded (e.g., they can now score team games). Will Watson suggested that the Unit buy rent/buy a couple Bridge Mates and a server to test them further. The Board agreed. In researching a more advanced web platform, Jody learned that the platform the Corvette Club had been testing has issues. Jody will work with Alan to understand the issues that the Corvette club had to decide whether to go with the same solution they did or whether to identify other potential platforms. She also requested help in recruiting additional members for the Technology Committee.

Finance Committee – Leslie noted that July is when the Finance Committee starts the budgeting process. She will follow-up with Todd to identify possible dates.
Unit Games – Gill reported the table counts for Unit Games year-to-date were 231 ½. This is below 2016’s level, but there had been two more Unit Games year-to-date in 2016.

Treasurer – In his absence, Todd sent out a brief variance analysis that showed due to offsetting positive and negative variances, the Unit is still slightly ahead of budget

Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 5:25. The next meeting will be on July 13.