Minutes - Draft

Annual General Membership Meeting 10-14-2007, 4-6 pm

Randy Smith Middle School

 

Call to Order: Larry Bright introduced himself as the President of the Eclipse Board and thanked everyone for attending the meeting.  Larry Bright called to order the meeting part of the AGM at 4:25 pm (following spaghetti potluck).        

 

Acceptance of Minutes:  Larry e-mailed the 2006 AGM meeting minutes to members prior to the meeting.  Looking for approval.  Motion to accept 2006 AGM minutes made by Robin Miller.  Seconded by Kathy Port.  All in Favor.  Minutes approved.

 

Reports:

 

1.                    President:  Larry Bright provided an update on the club: Above all we will remember this year as the year we lost a very dear friend and colleague, Jennifer Templeton. The loss of Jennifer was a great loss to the club.  Ron wanted to be here, but couldn’t due to other commitments, but wanted to say that he will remain very much a part of the club.  Jennifer was a wonderful coach, mother and advocate of soccer in Fairbanks.  Larry explained getting to know Jennifer over the years and very much misses her as a coach and a leader within the club.  She learned a great deal in a short period of time.  Larry commented on the very moving and touching memorial honoring Jennifer which was attended by a large contingent of Eclipse and Phoenix families.  The balloon release and the patches were an awesome gesture. Jennifer is such a loss but it is amazing how the team and the organization stepped up during this tragedy.  Larry talked to Ron about the example she set – her passion was soccer and she loved her team.  She had an incredible passion for soccer and the kids.  The ’94 Phoenix came back from the loss of their coach and won their second State Cup in row and their sister team ’94 Eclipse also won for the second year in a row.  Other teams also did very well making the semi’s and finals.  Our teams played well and hard at State Cup in Kenai.  This only happens if we have parents and wonderful volunteerism to make this all happen,.  Thank all of you for your volunteer efforts. We want to continue to develop young ladies and gentlemen to be fine soccer players and love the game.  We want to develop good players that will eventually be great citizens.  Larry's goals for the last year were:  1) Soccerships for players to make soccer possible to all players.  This was done - talk to your board rep if you are in need of a soccership.  We have systems in place to provide limited financial assistance for those in need;  2) to provide more support for coaches and mentors – we were not able to accomplish this but still trying to work on this;  3) increasing soccer for the community, primarily providing a indoor soccer facility – also, not yet a reality.  

2.                    Volunteer Update:  We need to fill all Officer positions and some volunteer positions;  Larry has agreed to be president for one more year.  Gary Bender – website coordinator – working with website; we need to find someone willing to help in this role to keep our website updated with current information;  We need to help Pips, Registrar; Pips  appreciated people getting information to her – everything went very smooth.  Pips would like an update on all team rosters, managers, treasurers, etc.

3.                    Coaches Summary: All coaches present provided a brief re-cap of their seasons.  The club has grown tremendously and Eclipse and Phoenix teams continue to improve and make a mark.

4.                    By - Law Changes: There were no changes or proposals for changes in the by laws.

 

Old Business:  none

 

New Business:

 

1.                      Election of Officers (president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, regis)

 

a) President: Anita Simpson nominated Larry Bright (6th year) for                                               President.  Nicole Nordstrand seconded. Larry will accept the nomination                                              for only one more year.  We have had a turnover in our Executive                                                                committee and will help in the transition of the club.  Move to accept.  All

in favor.  Nomination accepted.  Motion approved. 

 

                                    b) Vice President -   Any nominations – Sara Alden nominated Rebekah                                         Cadigan.  Rebekah said she would be happy to serve the club.  Marci                                               Lundgren seconded.   All in favor.  Nomination accepted. Motion                                                        approved.

 

                                    c) Treasurer:  Nicole nominated Sue Signor. Sue said she would serve the                                                      club. Alan McGinty seconded.  All in favor.  Nomination accepted.                                                   Motion approved.

 

                                    d) Secretary:  Rob Solomon nominated Anita Simpson for re-election (2                                        years served). Bill Black seconded.  All in favor; Nomination accepted.                                         Motion approved.

 

                                    e) Registrar: Sue Signor nominated Pips Veazey for re-election (2 years                                         served).  Robin Miller seconded.  All in favor.    Nomination accepted.

 

2.    Accountant Contract:  Our club has grown a lot and the Board has taken a hard look at our current situation with regards to finances.  Are we taking in enough to cover costs?  Are we tracking revenue and costs effectively?  Do we know where we are from month to month?  Kathy Port has conducted a review of our financial books.  She found it very difficult to track income and costs associated with specific events, like the summer clinic.  Most of our money comes in and goes out for a very specific reason.  The only money that is not earmarked is our money from the raffle.  Is the money from the raffle income (approx. $8,000)?  What is our net income?  Collected $33,000 in membership dues and made $8,000 on the raffle.  Tournaments fees have increased, but membership dues have not.  After her review, we’ve found that our membership fees are not covering all tournament costs.  We lost a little bit of money from our clinic because we said how many people will be attending the clinic with a contract, but some girls could not attend because of the state high school championships and we refunded those paid clinic fees.  We had more high school players than we anticipated.  We also lost some money on tracking gym time and paying for it and some of it was appropriated for goalie training which the board did approve for the club to absorb. Kathy Port proposes that we increase membership dues for the entire Club in order to cover our basic costs.  Fiscal year is 10/1-9/30 of each year.    We “forward fund” the raffle money (we receive it in one year and spend it the follow fiscal year).  This works well because we then know precisely how much raffle money we have to spend.  We are like a small company that needs help on our books.  Pips contacted Freeman and Associates and said that he would do our books for approximately $5000 a year.  Freeman and Associates will do our books, taxes and will provide consistency for our club.  He has agreed to do training for our treasurers 3 times a year – show us how to code, etc., and show consistency for our teams.  Our treasurers job will change significantly. The treasurer would collect our money and give it to Freeman etc.  He will also manage our club money much better, transfer money from savings to checking, etc. and monitor the levels and possibilities of interest bearing accounts.  It will be less liability to our club and officers.  Total cost to Freeman – would be $5000 including taxes and daily transactions for the club and trainings for the club.  He will do a monthly financial statement for our board meetings.  The treasurer would work with Freeman to make sure she has the financial information for each board meeting,  According to the by laws it does not say whose responsibility it is.  The board is made up of parents and coaches.  Are we in favor  of paying for such an accountant?  Are we in favor of hiring an accountant at about $25.00 per player increase in dues to pay for this?  A question was if we would revisit this next year to see how it is working.  We would have an annual contract to review if this is what we want to do.  We can not ask a volunteer to do this anymore and we can not ask volunteers to spend endless hours tracking these expenses.  We need some type of review if this is working.  Eclipse has grown from very small to very large and we need to become more professional.  Going from a mom and pop operation to a large club is difficult, but we’re doing ok.  However, it is not right to require so much work from so few volunteers.  Dave Veazey supports this idea and how important it is to support the role of an accountant.  Dave Veazey made a motion to hire an accountant for our club. He added it is just too much responsibility for someone who is not a professional to take on all of this work.  Sue Bishop seconded the motion and also supports the idea of hiring an accountant to do the work.

 

Larry asked all members if they are you in favor of hiring an accountant for the club? The majority of members approved the hiring of an accountant for the Eclipse Club.  The motion was approved.

 

A break was taken at the meeting to do some Raffles.  The following names were drawn.

 

Phoenix Socks- Rich  Holladay

Eclipse socks - Brianna Lundgren

Phoenix Socks – Jamie Holladay

 

3.             Uniform Contract:  Robin Miller gave a summary on the proposed uniform contract.  We will have a uniform coordinator for each team which will work with Beaver Sports to order each team’s uniforms including numbering and embroidering.  Contract with Beaver sports – the cost is the same amount as last year.  One person will coordinate for each team.  A uniform coordinator will still have to go to each team to do sizes etc.  Still have to pay 50% ahead of time.  One person from each team will work directly with Beaver Sports.  Trying to get orders in early so that come spring we are not hustling to get uniforms and save on shipping without excess overnight shipping costs.  Teams are responsible for any extra pieces.    We do not have a whole lot of extra inventory so we are asking Greg at Beaver Sports to carry several extra sizes of both the Eclipse and Phoenix uniforms.  We have plenty of socks.  Robin will come to team meetings to bring sample sizes and order forms.  Team uniform coordinators need to contact Robin Miller for samples by calling 590-9398 or 457-1076.

4.             Dues Increase:  Our dues pay for 4 tournaments – what we are currently asking for dues- $125- is not covering all of these tournament fees.  The question is what do we do about these – for 4 tournaments we only have $125.  We need to increase the dues by $25.00 to maintain the number of tournaments we enter.  Larry commented that it is a modest amount to ask extra.  Other large clubs will charge $2000 just to tryout out.  There are other models out there.  If you are going to do tournaments you are going to pay it out any way Dave Veazey commented that it is a very modest amount and important for the financial stability of our club and we have not raised dues in more than 4 years so we have not even kept up with inflation.  In addition, Larry asked that dues be increased an additional $25 to cover the expense of our accountant.  In summary, membership dues would increase from $125.00 to $175.00.  Nicole Nordstrand made a motion to increase Eclipse Club dues to $175.00 a year.  Dave Veazey seconded.  The majority of the members agreed to increase dues to $175.00 from October 2007 - 2008 for the Eclipse Club.  A summary of the increase and how it covered expenses for the year will be provided at the October 2008 AGM.  All membership dues were extended to be due by December 31, 2007.

5.             Final Comments:  Larry Bright again thanked all the members that attended the meeting and appreciates being able to serve the club for so many years.  We have a strong club with hard working volunteers and kids who love soccer.  Larry wished all teams another successful year.

 

Kathy Port has the list of additional raffle winners.

 

The meeting adjourned at 6:10 pm.