ACBL Unit 503 Meeting Minutes 6/04/07
The meeting was called to order by President Alan Cummings. All board members were present except Liz Blum, Gabriella Bowling, and Maria Brabb. Marian Kelly was also in attendance.
Administrative
May’s minutes were approved.
Marian, sitting in for Elinor who has gone somewhere and is not paying attention to Palo Alto Bridge, said the June Kibitzer deadline is at the end of this week. Elinor, who comes back on the 15th, wants to review the material, so the Kibitzer will be sent to the publisher on the 18th.
Maria wasn’t present, but we were assured that she had sent in the next Forum article.
Alan T. gave the treasurer’s report. The unit has a balance of $26,720.62. The reason for this large drop (about 30%) from last month is because we are starting to prepay (about $11,000) for the Firecracker Sectional. The center has a balance $30,599.57.
Liz wasn’t at the meeting, but the Alan C. mentioned that the unit increased in size by 8 members, and that we had 116 members with fewer than 5 points. This is a terrific testimonial to all our educational efforts and the junior games.
Alan C. gave us information about his between-meetings activities. Those that he wishes to publicize involve the Mentee/Mentor party which will take place on Monday July 9th after the regularly scheduled games. He paid out $300 to offset some of the costs. July 9th was going to be the day of our next meeting. We rescheduled it for the 16th.
Old Business
Roy gave a Firecracker update. As part of the agreement with the hotel we had to guarantee reservations for 80 room-nights. There have already been 81 room-nights reserved at the hotel. Apparently, we still need help at the partnership desk, and Pat Mcferren will help out.
We had a long discussion concerning bridge center improvements. We agreed to many of the suggestions that Martie had collected from the board and Unit members which includes painting the walls and a limited amount of new furniture. New director storage cabinets are due at the center soon.
As for the bridge itself, Alan C. brought up the dealing machine again, but could find no consensus for such an expensive item. However, Alan T. will be in charge of buying a new printer/fax/copier/scanner all-in-one device. We also talked about the BridgeMate scoring devices which would make paper scoring (pickups and travelers) obsolete at the table. It would cost about $166 per table and $300 for a server. Eric will look into it. On a more prosaic note we decided to by new bidding box inserts.
Eric told about his progress with the Cardinal Duplicate Bridge Club at Stanford. He has 1 set of boards and cards for the boards. He has a second set of boards on loan from a third party and has charmed Stanford into providing bidding boxes. The board agreed to loan him $750 to help him get started.
New Business
Martie gave us information about the June unit game. It will be a board-a-match game with a director for the Novice section.
Alan C. warned us that it is not too early to find someone who will chair the 2008 Firecracker.
We then adjourned.
Dave Wheeler
Secretary