September 2014

Brian Samuels, President, called the meeting to order at 3:50pm. Other board members present were Leslie Altick, Valerie Baldwin, Jim Harris, Bob Horowitz, Kevin O’Leary, James Stuart Smith, and Jody Williams. Todd Makler was absent by prior notice. Elinor Tanck, Kibitzer Editor and John Prior a Club Owner, also attended.

The minutes from the August 7th meeting were approved.

New Business

Annual renewal of the Club Owner License Agreements: The License Agreements with all the Unit’s club owners have their anniversaries in October and November. Thus for changes to the agreement to be applicable in 2015, they would have to be crafted, discussed with club owners, the board, and ACBL, and ratified by the board in the next 4 weeks. The ACBL has nothing to offer in terms of advice because our Unit structure, wherein the Unit owns the facility, is newer and in the minority of ACBL clubs. As no board member had the bandwidth for a revisions process in the one-month time frame, the License Agreement will not be revised for 2015. There are three possible changes that might be investigated during the next year: having all club owners be able run a Swiss teams game, having them be trained to operate a defibrillator, and changing the language surrounding club owner performance. (The License Agreement can be viewed on the Unit’s website.)

The current language in the Unit’s Agreement requires club owners be given a one-year advance notice of possible termination of their License Agreement. The objective criterion for such termination is unacceptably low or declining table counts. The club owner has nine months to rectify the situation, may terminate his Agreement, or sell his game at any time. If table counts do not improve, the Unit has the option to give notice of termination of the Agreement (three months before the one year anniversary of the original notice).

The Board decided to move forward and review the table counts for each club, in order to give all club owners advance notice of the outright renewal of their License Agreement or a renewal with a proviso that table counts must be improved. To aid discussion, Brian reviewed the unadjusted, year-over-year table counts for the first seven months of 2014 and 2013 for each club. Owing to high and/or increasing table counts, it was moved that the Licenses for the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday morning and evening, Thursday, and Friday morning and evening games should be renewed for 2015, without provisos. The motion passed unanimously, with Kevin recusing himself from the vote. Brian moved that the License for the Saturday game be renewed with the proviso that table counts be improved substantially (with the help and support of the Board) or the Unit may exercise its option not to renew. If the Unit did decide not to renew, the Unit would be obliged to give the Club Owner advance notice three months before the expiration of the 2015 agreement. The target table count was set at an average of 20 per month over the four months prior to the advance notice period. This motion too passed unanimously. A similar motion addressing the Sunday game (with the same target) also passed unanimously.

President’s Report:

The October and November board meetings will remain on the first Thursdays (the 2nd and 6th) of the month, but will be moved from the Bridge Center (so as not to conflict with classes held at the Bridge Center). The location is to be determined.

The feedback on the mid-year board report was universally positive. The fire marshal has notified us that he is proposing to the city that our Unit be considered separately from IFES, as we have behaved as model citizens.

It was clarified that the election for the ACBL director will be by individual vote, not a collective vote by the board.

Brian noted that the writer of the Kudos column is dissatisfied with its visibility on the Unit website. Although it would be logical for this column to go into the Forum, the writer is not interested in doing this. She requested that the column go into an email blast several times a year. The board decided not to grant this request, as soon there will be a policy regarding the content and frequency of electronic communications to members.

Treasurer’s Report: In Todd’s absence, there was no report.

Firecracker: James said the Santa Clara Convention Center has let us put two provisional dates for the Firecracker on the 2015 calendar, June 10-14 (without the upstairs room on Sunday), and June 24-28 (with both rooms). There will be at least a 12.5% rent increase, and possibly higher if we secure both rooms. This was not surprising since we have not had a rent increase since 2007, and the Convention Center remains the lowest cost venue of those James has checked. With the same table count, the Firecracker would be breakeven next year. James will check the price on a few other venues. He has already determined that the Levi’s Stadium space is not appropriate. Brian is still looking for a volunteer to assist James with the Firecracker this year. James will definitely not be chairing the Firecracker in 2016.

Unit Games: Jim reported that we have a unit game on September 14th (Swiss) and 20th (pairs). We need volunteers to help pick up food for future games. There will be another pairs game on October 11th and a Swiss game on October 12th. Jim has been in contact with other directors for games in 2015. It was decided that one of the upcoming Unit games would be dedicated to celebrating Hansa Narasimhan achievement of the highest possible ACBL rank – Grand Life Master. (Subsequently it was decided that it be the Sat, Nov 1 Pairs Unit game.)

Education: Val reported that all the teachers preparing to launch their fall classes. As of now, there are not enough registrants to hold the Intermediate class. There are many details being finalized for the 2015 Larry Cohen lecture, including when the registration will be opened.

Kibitzer: Elinor noted that it remains very difficult to estimate the appropriate size of the print run for the Kibitzer.

Old Business

Additional Refrigerator Space: Kevin has acquired (with Jody’s help) new shelves for the refrigerator at a nominal cost.

AV Upgrade: Jody has received five of the six boxes of the new equipment needed for the upgrade. The sixth should arrive in the following week. She is working on the installation schedule. The final price was below the revised budget. The Board thanked Jody for the savings she helped realize for the Unit.