BCC Board Meeting Minutes -- July 8th, 2008

Bonneville Cycle Club
Board of Director’s Meeting
July 9th, 2008 7:00pm
Sugarhouse Park

Attendees:
Board Members Present:
John McCool, President BBC
Jerry Bergosh, VP BBC
Tim Shea, Roadcaptain BBC
Lyle Phleps, Treasurer BBC
Dana Morgan, Secretary BBC
Beth Williams, Membership BBC
Travis Fisher, Newletter BBC
Jay Lepreau, Member-at-Large BBC
Brent Jones, Member-at-Large BBC
Rob Paul, Member-at-Large BBC
Board Members Absent:
Raliegh Ferr, Webmaster
Others:
J. Todd Anderson
Matt Killborn,
Brent Jones

Review Minutes and Approve:
John McCool motioned to vote to approve June’s minutes with modifications from Jay Lepreau. Lyle Phelps seconded the motion to vote. All approved.

Treasurer’s Report:
Lyle reported that approx $95,000 was currently in the BCC “working” account but he expected there was an outstanding amount of $20,000 in checks that still needed to clear from LRRH expenses. Approx $32,000 was in the interest bearing money market account. After more expenses for LR are paid from the working account, more money will be transferred to the interest bearing account, but he did not indicate the amount. Lyle would be doing financials this weekend.

Brent Jones brought up the fact that the club’s bylaws require the President to “prepare and maintain a budget and to exercise financial responsibility for ongoing activities of the club”. Lyle, Jerry, John and Jay all objected and stated that there was no time to prepare a budget. However, Dana pressed Jerry for a high-level budget, stating that there must be some idea of projected revenue and expenses for the year and that it would be nice to have a high-level overview of the club finances so when asked to vote on new financial proposals presented to the board, she had some idea of how the proposal would impact the annual finances. Jerry began to give a high-level overview, but was interrupted by Jay, stating that we were off track. Dana tried to take a few notes but was unable to understand them afterwards.

VP Report:
Jerry Bergosh reported that he had reserved the Anderson Library at 7:00pm for all board meetings for the remainder of the year.

Secretary Report:
Dana Morgan had distributed the minutes from June 2008 to the board. Jay Lapreau responded with minor changes. Dana will incorporate that changes as approved by the board and distribute to the general membership. Dana also expressed concern that without minutes approved by the board from the May meeting there was only “rumor” and individual interpretation as to was what discussed, voted on and approved and without board-approved minutes – was anything actually approved. John said he would write something up from the May meeting and get it to the board for approval.

Membership Report:
Beth Williams reported that BCC membership at only 526 members with 15 new members since last month. Beth also reported that online membership is down considerably since switching from active.com to the BCC store.

May 2008 – 19 of 42 memberships did not renew: 15 were new 2007 members, 4 returning members
June 2008 - 57 of 87 memberships did not renew: 43 were new 2007 members, 14 returning members

Lyle Phelps indicated that he probably had 25 renewals that he had not delivered to Beth.

Newsletter Report:
Travis Fisher reported that the newsletter was at the printer. Members questioned what was the content. Travis indicated the final Touring article and the ride schedule. Jerry commented that without an ULCER article, this month’s newsletter could not be used to help market ULCER and next month’s newsletter would be published after the event. Someone asked how much it cost to publish the newsletter, John responded that for a regular newsletter (membership distribution) it was about $500. However, for a big event newsletter with extended distribution it was around $2000.

Webmaster Report:
Raleigh Fehr was absent – no report.

Members-at-Large Reports:
Rob Paul reported that overnight bicycle ride in Huntington Canyon had ten participants and a good time was had by all.

Jay Lepreau reported that the Salt Lake Tribune had an article reporting that both the mayor and the governor are pushing bicycles and bicycle-friendly communities. He suggested that BCC write a letter to the editor and/or contact a journalist for an article plugging BCC and/or ULCER. Tim noted that the picture that accompanied the article showed a rider wearing an old ULCER jersey.

Brent Jones again brought up the fact that NONE of the 2007 high mileage jerseys have been received by last year’s High Milage recipients. McCool said that was his fault, he simply dropped the ball.

RoadCaptain Report:

New Business:
Nominating Committee:

John McCool reported that the club’s bylaws require him to organize a nominating committee in July’s board meeting. At the end of the meeting the nominating committee members included: John McCool, Lyle Phelps, Jerry Burgosh, Travis Fischer and Brent Jones

Idea for BCC Board and Gear Gurus to Get BCC Visible and “Do Good” – J. Todd Anderson:
Notes from printed email presented at the board meeting: “As I helped sponsor the BCC Racing gear Brent mentioned he also hoped we might be able to put our logo on the BCC gear. I share that interest. My ides would coordinate with this, but take it to the next level in an effort to do three things:
1) Get BCC much more visible by increasing the number of members we have riding in BCC gear, especially at these major rides. We would do this by offering a nice incentive and initially putting them in the hands of many members without any cash outlay on their part.
2) Substaintially increase our presence at Tour de Cure next year and raise a substantial contribution to the American Diabetes Assocation.
3) Increase the visibility of our firm (Capital Confidence Advisors) in the cycling community.
We would do this by offering an incentive to Members who will register in advance for the 2009 Tour de Cure and will commit to raise the minimum of $150 to ride. We would increase the incentive if, for example, they would commit to raise $300.”
This proposal sparked a lively and varied discussion. Todd Anderson said he didn’t know what the price point was, but he would be willing to subsidize the jerseys for a total $2000 contribution. McCool noted that wholesale price for jersey was around $40. Dana noted that while we now have a BCC race team wearing a BCC race jersey while BCC subsidizes race fees, wouldn’t it be nice to form a BCC “Charity-Ride” team – and provide similar benefits to the charity team – i.e help the Charity-team organize charity events (yard sales, hoe-downs, BBQ’s) to raise money for the charity-ride and also help subsidize some of the jersey costs to ride as a team. The question was how do you decide who to subsidize and for how much? That lead to a discussion in which Jerry pointed out that is much less expensive to but hundreds of jerseys than it is to buy just ten or twenty – and that he would like to see every member of the club receive a club jersey, and perhaps raise membership dues to help cover the cost. The discussion branched to perhaps only giving jerseys to those who road at least 3 club rides or to the top 20/25 riders, etc. McCool deferred the discussion (but hopefully not the final decision) to the clothing committee for comment.

ULCER
Jerry reported that ULCER registration was no longer going through active.com and instead was going through the new BCC store. Jerry asked Jay what he thought of the new process for online registration. Jay commented that he thought it worked well, but it was VERY difficult to FIND any information about ULCER on the Bonneville website. Jerry commented that was a good lead-in for his next motion for discussion (that was not previously on the meeting agenda).
Jerry reported that Raleigh (the club’s current webmaster) was currently out of town on business and was therefore unavailable to help add the ULCER content to the BCC website. Matt Kilborn had graciously volunteered to help, but because the web front-end was not “professionally” developed, it was difficult to find the hooks in which he could easily add new content. He ended up just recently being able to add a new “small” menu item on the left side of the page – titled “ULCER” – and then was able to add a bit of information such as where ULCER would be help, when it would start, how much, how to register and order a jersey, etc. He would have rather added it to the “home” page screen that would be initially displayed when a user first navigated to the site, but given the time constraints and the non-standard application, that was the best he could do.

Jerry pointed out that at this time last year ULCER had 800 registrations – as of the board meeting, only 300 people had registered for ULCER 2008. He had sent out 5500 emails notices to last year’s ULCER and LRRH riders, another 6,500 to REI’s list. 20,000 Postcards (don’t know if this was the number mailed or the cost for Postcards). 11,000 Cycling Utah in June and July issues – again is this the number of magazines or the cost?
Jerry indicated that he thought the number of registered riders was down this year because the ULCER information on our web-site (where, when, how, etc) didn’t exist until recently and it was difficult to find on the site. He thought that while Raleigh had done a great job in developing and supporting the site in the past, the time had come to redo the site using professional services and software packages, so that other club members besides himself could maintain it. Dana indicated that this proposal would need to be carefully researched and analyzed for cost-effectiveness and benefits to the club.

Dana also indicated that perhaps the number of registrations was down due to other reasons such as: no longer using active.com for secure online registration and email reminders, the increased registration fee from $45 to $55, the fact that ULCER was not supporting a major charity such at the National Kidney Foundation this year, or having competition from the Tour De Park City the weekend before ULCER.

Jerry also indicated that he had VERY poor response to his call for volunteers. Gladys Mundolious had stepped up to be volunteer coordinator and Trek of American Fork and REI were helping as sponsors – but there were no rest stop leads, lunch leads, sag drivers, etc. as of yet. Lyle and Jerry had contacted the Boy Scouts of America to see if they were interested in volunteering and no one had responded as of yet. They discussed paying the Scout Troops for their work and they could raise money for troop activities by helping at ULCER.

Jerry also reported that his latest analysis indicated that the break even point for ULCER financially was currently somewhere around 1300 registrations. He also projected that at 2000 riders, ULCER would make $18,000.

Jerry showed the board the ULCER posters and ask that board members take a few to display in neighborhood businesses and bike shops.
The meeting adjourned at 9:30 or so.