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Monthly
Board Meeting
Minutes
June 3, 1999
The meeting was called to order at 7:10 PM by Lance Richert at the Becker CPA Review Offices.
Present
at the meeting:
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Lance Richert |
Roger Wales |
Jacqueline Kahn |
Karl Seeger |
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David Lightfoot |
Lucetta Lightfoot |
Greg Mierz |
Rick Brown |
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Ray Kirkland |
Bill Spornitz |
Hugh Golden |
Kevin York |
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Brian Horne |
John Allen |
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Keith Wollenberg, Pacific Region Vice President of the BMW CCA |
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Greg reports that 1,156 Magazines will go out in June.
Tech Events
Ray reports that 18 cars came out. It went well. Some racecars are going back. The audio session has been changed to August 15. Ray may have to leave the publicity article for David to do.
We have money. Roger distributed a report.
Bill reports that BMW Seattle will pay for the trophies and that the owner also mentioned to let Bill know if we needed any additional support. Ken Olson is putting information out to the other coupe owners regarding the featured car. We will do a poster. Bill will try to get the same music. We will get a food vendor.
Karl reports that we had sun, people and 2 runs groups going as far as the eye could see. 43 cars and around 80 toured.
Karl has been looking into rallies based on people’s interest at the new members party. He checked with the NW Rally Council. Jackie mentioned that Steve Lardier might have information in this regard. Karl will try an event to see how it goes.
Jacqueline says that June 9 we will pre-tech at 6:30 PM at Bellevue BMW. There will be no more than 80 cars. She will limit the number.
Rick will be coordinating the event by himself. He will check out the previously mentioned potential new venue. Everyone agreed that it would be OK to stay at the same location if Rick wanted to in case it made it easier on him.
Mary Lee Helton has resigned as Membership Chairman. Lance Richert will be taking on the job. He met with Mary Lee and got everything from her, including a detailed set of instructions on how to do the job. The backlog has been taken care of. Lance will work with Greg to figure out ways to streamline the administrative process a bit. Lance is planning to put in an article in the Zundfolge to outline what things he would like to accomplish as membership chairman.
Lance will e-mail the minutes to everyone as a draft. People should review their section, send any changes back, and then he will issue by e-mail a final set of minutes. Lance brought up the idea of posting the minutes to Board Meetings on the web page.
David reports that the new publisher has resigned. David went back and hired another of the short list of candidates. The new person will determine how much work is involved and decide if she will take on the job long term for our price of $750 per month. We were able to transfer the $500 in artwork that we already paid for as a set-up cost. Hugh didn’t care for the artwork. There was discussion on why the magazine comes out in the middle of the month rather than at the first of the month. David didn’t think that there was a real reason, and that it just did. Hugh’s resignation letter went in the June issue as requested.
Keith Wollenberg, Pacific Region Vice President of the BMW CCA was introduced and the floor handed over to him for his presentation.
He first reviewed where incremental portions of the $35/year membership goes. $13.50 goes back to the chapter for their use. An additional $1 per member is available if certain events occur each year. These are things like a concours, driving events, and publishing a newsletter.
The CCA sends out mailing information for newsletters either by pre-printed labels (usually for smaller chapters) or by E-mail or as a disk sent by mail, for use by a local mailing service (usually by larger chapters). The information is presently on Foxpro but will be on Access by the year 2000. Either the Foxpro or Access database can be downloaded to Excel and sent in that form, to run a roster or labels. A database is E-mailed to each local chapter on the 20th of every month. The CCA cannot give a specialized sort right now but will once the information is transferred to Access.
Insurance for rallies and autocrosses are fully rebated by CCA. Driving Schools insurance are 50% rebated. Keith also noted that CCA premiums are generally lower than individual clubs such as the ACA can achieve.
A Car Control Clinic is generally something in a parking lot type venue with a clear school style drill station setup. A Driving School is what we would consider a lapping day at a racetrack like SIR.
Formerly, it was the case that if there is an incident then CCA rebates 50% back of the insurance cost of the driving school to the local chapter. If there was no incident, 100% was rebated. It was felt that this policy rewarded luck, so it was discontinued.
Local chapters arrange directly with K&K for insurance riders to cover each event.
Each local BMW club is incorporated and is also a chapter to the CCA.
We next reviewed Paul Johnson’s letter addressed to Steve Niver dated Jan. 15, 1997, which Keith included in his handouts for our review. Keith reports that the same financial offer is still on the table.
Keith says that all of the funds that chapters collect, other than national dues, such as those for driving events, concours, etc. stay with the local chapter.
A question was asked regarding joint events with other clubs. Keith was not aware of a problem. He says it is OK to run events with numerous other people attending, and indicated that Inland Empire does exactly this.
We next reviewed the BMW CCA Special Interest Groups document. Keith says this is not cast in stone yet. Keith says that the International Council (I.C.) is cracking down on the use of the Roundel. Those that are in, or, affiliated with the I.C. may use the Roundel. He says that CCA is not interested in policing but they don’t know about NA or AG. There are 3 types of associations within the Special Interest Groups. These were reviewed.
Keith notes that in Western Washington and British Columbia there are presently 929 CCA members. ACA would add around 500-600 members if they merged with CCA. The Inland Empire chapter has 909 members and they would lose 600-700 members. There are 422 CCA members in Oregon. For those that were automatically switched from Inland Empire chapter to ours Keith suggests sending out a welcome letter. The letter could explain why the change happened and point out the added benefits.
Those CCA members that are “unassigned” are that way because they are not in a designated ZIP Code that automatically puts them in a territory.
David asked about the previous arrangement where we were able to pay $21.50 just to get the Roundel but not be a member of a local chapter. Keith says that it has not been brought up recently. He thinks it is intriguing but probably not viable.
It was noted that the CCA Ops Manual allows for local dues but Keith says no CCA chapter currently does. It could be done if a chapter wished to.
Keith says the Ops manual is sort of an albatross. The Requirements and Minimum Standards are clearly stated. They do apply to each chapter, but much of the Ops Manual is only advisory. He noted the difference between a member (who receives the Roundel) and an Associate Member (a member that does not receive the Roundel). The ACA does not have something like an Associate Member. The whole family of an individual is considered a member in the ACA. The CCA allows members to join multiple chapters if they pay $13.50 per chapter for the second and other chapters. There was a discussion regarding advertisers showing up at events.
Keith reports that the CCA pays for postage cost and the incremental cost to publish the extra newsletters that are required to be sent to all other CCA chapters as well as national officers and other designated people.
Keith reports that pretty soon there will be the option for automatic renewal of membership with a credit card. The CCA has a 76% retention rate, starting with a 66% rate after the first year of membership.
Convertibles – each chapter can define what a roll bar is. The notes in Appendix B are recommendations only. The move is to tighten the requirements although in order to change the status of roll bars (for example) requires the majority vote of all chapters. A 5-point harness is required in a convertible.
The issue of windows up or down at a “Driving School” was discussed. Keith says CCA’s reasoning is for ease of access in case of a crash.
Presently, according to CCA, only Instructors can carry passengers. The concern is the added distraction when driving. In CCA speak – anything is called a “School”. National does not define what an “Instructor” is. “Instructor” is defined by the local chapter. There is no national certification at this time.
Jacqueline asked about how CCA requires tech to be done. Keith notes that it is by a “Qualified Entity” which is usually an auto repair shop. This was instituted to ensure the tech inspection was carefully and adequately done. He says that if we had a set of members that had gone through some training then they would qualify as a “Qualified Entity”.
Keith notes that the minimum standards for a driving school are set in stone. He points out that they were adopted by a majority vote of all the CCA chapters, and intended to be minimums needed for safety.
Discussion regarding a “Deviation” per 5.2 in Section 3: Keith explained that if a chapter felt they might have a better way of doing something then they would petition the Board for permission to try their idea and then would report back to the Board with their findings. It could be considered like a “Pilot Program”. For a permanent change, the idea must be approved by a majority vote of the chapters.
The 9 member CCA Board consists of a President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer and 5 Regional Vice Presidents. All are elected by a vote of the members.
Bill asked a Concours question: Does an event have to break even as it states in the CCA Ops manual? Answer: No – that is only a recommendation. Keith notes that CCA will not tell a local chapter how to spend their money. Only the driving school and minimum standards sections are a requirement. He says there are not audits performed by National but an annual Financial Statement must be submitted and published in the chapter newsletter.
Keith reports that the decision to give the Los Angeles chapter extra money per member for the first three years was done very quietly by the National CCA board and most chapters don’t know about it.
Keith reported that for the yearly Octoberfest, National is trying to provide more help to the sponsoring chapter in regards to the logistics of setting up blocks of hotel rooms and things of that nature. This way the local chapter could spend more time planning for the actual events to be run. He says that Los Angeles is frustrated with how things are going regarding their involvement in the 2001 Octoberfest. He fears L.A. will probably pull out unless National gets their act figured out.
Keith noted that if a plebiscite was planned that CCA would pay for the cost to do it.
Keith ended by noting that he thinks it is a good idea to eventually submit this merger idea to the general membership for their vote. If the members say “No” then it is more likely, he thinks, that NA and AG will accept our position of staying as an independent ACA club. The CCA Ops Manual is on the CCA Website for anyone’s review.
John asked a question regarding if CCA has editorial control over the newsletters put out by the chapters? No, but there is a requirement to meet minimum standards, including publishing something every 90 days at a minimum.
Lucetta reports that Saturday is filling up faster than Sunday, which is backwards of normal.
Meeting adjourned around 10:20 PM
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