Meeting Minutes: November 2018

Nov 25, 2018

Meeting was brought to order @ 19:30 by Kristen Poole. October meeting minutes approved as posted.

RE Report — Kristen Poole

• Membership Report: 665 members as of this meeting.

Monthly Reports:

• Treasures report by Alan Lesher: AX, RX, membership & sponsorship income, distribution, and YTD figures were reviewed.
• Program Reports
  • AX report by Chris Brown:
    • Recap of the York Expo event. A lot of people were scared off due to the cost of the event. There were some communication issues day of that caused additional problems. It appears to be something we should try again at least once next year. The concerns raised were split between lot size vs cost and weather. Additional negotiation with the venue owner will be done to see if we can get a larger area of the lot.
    • 2019 Preview: We have enough contracts in hand to have a minimum of 5 events, including one double-header (Saturday and Sunday). There are additional sites in the negotiation process. Venue searches are continuing. Melissa Mauro & Chris Brown are talking with another region about the possibility of co-hosting a large event as well. Hershey will be unavailable for 2019 due to lot paving and upgrades.
    • AX Venue Committee Update (Chair, Chris Brown): Additional research and owner communications continue. We have secured at least 4 venues for next year. More information will be coming.
  • RX report by John Roscinski:
    • RallyCross has two venues lined up for the 2019 season. Once the contracts are signed, the new venue will be announced. The new lot is approximately 30 acres, which is about three times the size of the Farmshow lot.
  • Street Survival report by Melissa Mauro:
    • We have successfully completed our first Street Survival event. Responses by the students and their parents were all positive. Melissa is in possession of the student and parent response forms if you are interested in seeing any of the official responses. The venue was pleased with the outcome of the event and are willing to allow us to use the lot again next year. We were provided two dates that would be available for the 2019. We are looking at a date in June. We plan to establish a Street Survival scholarship in the name of 21-year-old member Matthew Stahl who passed away in November from a car accident that also claimed the life of a 17 year old. The scholarship will likely be awarded to a student based on monetary needs.
• Club Communication
  • Web report by Jake Limm: Everything is going great. WordPress update has taken place and was successful. Broken and nonworking links have been corrected. Kristen received the renewal notice for the web hosting. Kristen made a motion to renew the web hosting at the discounted 3-year rate offered. The motion was seconded and carried.
  • Facebook Report by Doug Austin: Things are going well. No noticeable increase/decrease in members.
  • Squeal Report by Melissa Mauro: Open rate 28% and click rate dropped to 25%.
• Special Committee Reports
  • North Eastern Division Mini Conference (Co-chairs, Kristen Poole & Melissa Mauro): The conference will take place at the Radisson on February 15-16, 2019. All event sessions have been determined, except Road Racing, which are forthcoming. Kristen will be going live with the schedule and registration on Monday 12-3-18.
  • Truck Committee:
    • We have not scheduled to have the opaque graphics placed onto the storage area windows yet. This is to be completed during the off season. Markus will schedule the installation. Due to the low temperatures it is not ideal to do the installation now. This item is tabled until February.
    • The old truck has been sold. It is currently sitting with the new owner. We will be getting with the new owner to complete the sale and transfer ownership through PennDoT.
  • Road Rally (Lisa Leathery): No 2019 event schedule has been made at this time.
  • EoY Banquet (Kristen and Doug):
    • The venue has been successfully changed back to the Sheraton.  Registration is now live for this event.
    • Trophies: Trophies have been hammered out.
      • Jackets will be awarded for first place and photo plaques will be handed out for second place and below. Doug asked the board for any proposed changes to the jackets and to vote allocate funds for the awards. Options were discussed at length. At the board’s request Doug will verify rain repellent/rain jacket options.
      • Having 1st place yearly patches made for exiting jacket winners starting with the 2019 season was discussed. Doug contacted the vendor about the patches but did not receive a reply yet.
      • Kristen: Photo plaques and other trophies are going to be done by another vendor at almost half the price of last years trophies. The board needs everyone holding perpetual trophy cups to turn them in as soon as possible. The perpetual plaques that recipients keep will require some redesign due to issues with the design file.
    • Raffle: Kristen and Melissa did the raffle items last year and volunteered to handle them again this year’s banquet.
    • Programs (Kristen): Kristen started designing the programs. The cost will be about the same price as last years banquet. No objections were raised on the price.

Old Business:

1. Board Nominations (Brian Holmes): Brian was provided an overview tally count only of MSR votes. He added the in-person votes from the November meeting. Positions are as follows:
   1. Melissa Mauro will assume the Assistant Regional Executive (ARE) position with a vote of 29/19.
   2. Rob Springer will assume the 3-Year Director position with a vote of 39/10.
2. National Conference: Kristen Poole, Bryan Roper, Melissa Mauro and Chris Brown will be attending the conference in 2019. The flights have been booked. The flights were $1000 more than 2018 for the same flights. Kristen contacted national and requested to have the registration fees comped for Kristen, Bryan and Melissa since they are speakers. They agreed and will be covering the $825 to help offset the increase in airfare.

New Business:

1.  We will be completing some updates to by-laws and supplemental rules for 2019. All required changes are considered minor. Upon agreement of the board Kristen proposed making red-line changes to the by-laws and submitting them for review to the board with voting to take place at the January meeting. The board agreed with this proposal. Individual programs will be responsible for verifying and updating their supplemental rules.
2. A motion was made to the board via offline email between October and today to purchase “#teamsusquatch” vinyls. Kristen received the okay from Austin Baker who was the original designer. The board agreed to the motion and a request was made to Slow Sally’s Stickers and Things for 300 stickers to be made. The plan is to give many of them out with trophies at the banquet.
3. For the past year, Kristen has been personally paying for Survey Monkey for official post event surveys at $35 a month. Kristen requested to have the club continue with the service and pick up the monthly fee. A motion was made to accept as requested. The motion was seconded and carried.

Good and welfare:

1. We are saddened to say we lost Matthew Stahl to an auto accident caused by a 17-year-old driver. Matthew’s girlfriend, Brielle, was the sole survivor of the accident. Several members attended the services in a SCCA convoy, proudly displaying “#teamsusquatch” and the appropriate number/class of the vehicles. At the request of his mother, Rich Thomas was kind enough to do an extended burn out in honor of her son. We will be establishing a Street Survival scholarship in Matthew’s name.

Respectfully submitted — Brian Holmes, Secretary