The meeting was called to order at 12:25 PM by Susan Griswold, President.
A statement was read to the members by Valerie Baldwin and signed by Valerie Baldwin, a Board Member and Beverly Nuding, Board Treasurer. A copy of this letter follows the minutes.
President Sue Griswold addressed the questions presented to the Board by an interested group of people.
Question 1.
It’s our understanding that John Prior & Claire Coleman did not want to sell their Monday game and so the Board terminated their license and told them that, if they cooperated, the Board would pay them $20,000 in “recognition of the efforts they had made in the past”. It’s also our understanding that John Schwartz has moved his Monday game from the JCC to the Bridge Center and that he paid $5,000 as part of the process.
Is this a substantially correct version of the events?
Answer: Yes
Question 2.
We are confused and concerned about the source of funds for the $15,000 difference.
a) The bylaws state that club owner approval is needed for any major expenditure from Bridge Center funds. If Bridge Center funds were used, was the approval step skipped?
b) If the $15,000 came from Unit funds, please explain.
Answer: from Unit funds.
Question 3.
Does the Board have a budget plan? If not, how can we get this to happen?
Answer: No, it has no budget plan. The Board will work on this when new members are elected. If anyone is interested in helping now, that help would be welcome.
Question 4
I can’t find anything in the minutes to document Board discussions about potential changes to the Monday game. Why don’t we have complete and accurate minutes?
Answer: There were sensitive matters discussed and no minutes were kept.
Question 5
Members would like to attend some Board meetings to hear discussion and perhaps provide input about items that matter to us. What do we need to do to get meeting agendas in advance?
Answer: The agenda will be published on the Unit Website and posted in the Bridge Club at least three days in advance of the meeting. Unit members are welcome at Board Meetings.
Question 6
We see bits and pieces of financial information here and there, but we don’t see the kind of financial reports we would expect a business of this size to provide to its stakeholders. We’d like to see monthly balance sheets, income and expense statements and budget to actual reports. How can we get this to happen.
Answer: The available reports will be sent to members upon request.
Question 7.
Jody Williams wrote a letter to the Board to share her thoughts about the change to the Monday game and to request that action be taken to prevent a similar situation from occurring in the future. She tried to have her letter posted on the Unit website but was told that the Website “belongs to the Board”. She asked the Kibitzer Editors and was told the Kibitzer was reserved for “positive and upbeat” articles. She could have tried posting her letter on the bulletin board, but she noticed that someone was removing bulletin board postings when they didn’t like the content. While it is generally best to avoid airing dirty laundry, it seems that the Website, the Kibitzer and the bulletin board should be more available to members for input on Unit matters. How can we give members more of a voice while preserving Unit oversight of the content?
Answer: The Website and the Kibitzer are read by more than our members. It is thought by the people in charge of those avenues that they are for information for not only the Unit members, but other interested people and, thus, not the proper place for discussions of Unit matters. The Webmaster is looking into having a discussion area accessible to members only.
Question 8.
Some of us looked into running for office. We were told that the slate is made up of one candidate per position, chosen by the election committee. In years past, it has been difficult to get candidates to the fill the slate, so we understand how we got into this situation. Could we have a more open process this year so we have a real election?
Answer: Contested elections would be most welcome. The usual problem is getting enough volunteers to fill the slate. Nominations are always welcome at the Election Meeting
Question 9.
We think that the new Monday club is paying less rent per table than other clubs. Is this correct? If so, in setting these rents, did the Board consider the discussion held in the summer of 2009, which ended with agreement that all owners, except for <50 games, should pay the same per table rate regardless of number of tables?
Answer: The Board was aware of the 2009 discussion. This is a step in hopefully lowering the table rental fees for all games.
This recitation of questions and answers was interrupted many times by comments and questions. Since there were agenda items to address and a time constraint, there was not time to fully address these matters. However, during this time a motion was made by John Mattis and seconded that Game Owners, the Bridge Club Manager, and Past Presidents be put on the distribution list for the draft minutes. Motion defeated.
At the end of the question list, a motion was made to adjourn the meeting and continue at the next Board Meeting. Motion carried.
The next Board Meeting will be at the Bridge Center at 3:45 PM, Tuesday, July 10, 2012.
Meeting adjourned at 1:10 PM
Respectfully submitted,
Margot Livenspargar, Secretary
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Valerie and Beverly’s statement follows
Bev Nuding and I would like to make a comment before Sue answers the questions submitted to the Board today. This is totally from our perspective and, based upon that, why we voted as we did on events upsetting some members.
For some perspective: We both joined the Board a year and a half ago to give something back to our club with the games we love to play in. The same reason goes for all of our fellow Board members. We are thrilled to be in our new center after countless hours of work by Sue Griswold and others. When we neared completion the Board’s attention necessarily turned to finances. Even with the generous donations of our members to help with the move, our spending on architect, city fees, chairs, tables, rugs, electrical, lighting, appliances, etc, as well as a bridge loan to IFES, our landlords, left our treasury depleted, and we looked with concern in our ability to meet our $10,000 per month ongoing costs of operation. At present we only have 4-month’s reserve to pay these expenses, scary by most standards, although we are now recouping the IFES loan by paying lower rent.
Most of our income comes from the club owners that pay the Unit “rent” for each table in their game held at the club and in turn the Unit pays all the expenses to operate the center (IFES rent, utilities, supplies, janitorial, etc). The Unit and thus the Board is on the hook for this, not the club owners. We love the club owners and want them to have successful games. Our relationship is mutually beneficial. We get a some extra income from classes but barely break even on the Firecracker Sectional.
Each year our club owners sign a contact with our Unit agreeing to pay the table rent. This is the Board’s only control over who uses the Bridge Center. We act as landlords to our club owners. When the our Terminal Way lease expired, all club owner-unit contracts were voided by contractual agreement. These contracts are still in negotiation and the new agreement covering our new Bridge Center has not been finalized. The weekday games are our bread and butter. Nighttime games are understandably smaller and weekend games compete with local tournaments. So our weekday games must cover most of our monthly expenses.
In looking at table counts and thus our future income stream one problem was glaring: Monday morning. Prior to 2009 the Monday game was actually two games: one owned by Sheri Greenberg, the other by Claire Coleman, Kevin O’Leary and Bonnie Beardsley. There were over 30 tables each Monday of the two games combined before John Prior purchased Sheri’s game in 2007 and the second game in 2009 (except for Claire’s share) leaving Claire with 14% ownership in the Monday game. The Monday table count had dropped 40% to around 17 tables per game in 2010. Players voted with their feet. This table drop had begun before John Schwartz began his game for beginners and intermediates at the Jewish Community Center and represented a substantial loss of income for our Unit.
As you know Schwartz’s game became so popular that even some high master point players from Prior’s game began playing at the JCC. Before the board became involved with any of this, several respected club members tried to help Prior make his game more appealing to players but that had not worked. So the Board began discussion with Prior on what could be done. He refused any help and refused the suggestion he sell his game.
Club owners buy, sell, start up and shut down their games with no Board involvement. The Board has no say except for what games are played at the Bridge Center. Prices are private; Board members do not know what directors paid for their games. Minutes of our Board meetings are posted on our web site for all to read, so we chose not to include our discussions of John’s game for privacy issues, akin to corporate board discussions of salaries and dismissals. If this was incorrect, we were not aware of it.
John Prior is sanctioned by the ACBL and, like Walter Miller and John Schwartz, may hold his game anywhere, and, if in our territory as established by the ACBL, we would support his game as we do the other outlier games. We do not derive any income from the outlier games. So for financial reasons, we voted as a Board not to renew John Prior’s contract with us and hoped we could persuade John Schwartz to move his successful game. We felt it was only right to compensate him for his (and Claire’s) loss of holding the game at our Center. We were not required to do this and they could move their game to another location. He accepted our offer and only after that did John Schwartz agree to move his game. Prior and Coleman were paid out of Unit funds that we fully expect to be recouped in less than a year due to the huge table count of Schwartz’s game. Based upon all this Bev and I voted with the Board to cancel our contract with the Unit, pay them a very generous settlement, and allow the Schwartz game at our new Bridge Center. If we made a few missteps along the way we are only human, but we think what we did the right thing for the financial future of the club we love.
Valerie Baldwin, Newcomer and Intermediate Liaison, and Bev Nuding, Treasurer