Executive Board Meeting

The BBC Board held its regular business meeting Friday evening, June 11, at 5:30 pm, in the public meeting room at Old National Bank at Third and College Mall Road.

Board meetings are announced on the club ride calendar. Members are invited to attend to get a feel for what's involved in running the club. I heartily recommend that club members consider attending a meeting sometime. There's lots of good discussion of bicycling issues.

The main purpose of this note is to convey a sense of what goes on at board meeting, not to substitute for minutes. Ordinarily minutes should be posted to the Members Only part of the web site. Unfortunately a glance there will show that minutes of only one meeting in 2009 were posted there. We can hope that minutes from 2010 will be posted regularly.

By my count the whole board was there, including 4 elected officers and 6 appointed officers. In addition two other club members were present as non-voting guests. There were Keith Vogelsang (pres), Mark Villanova (VP), Kathy Cummins (sec), Joe Anderson (treas), Chris Tietz (Safety and Education), Tammy Berger (membership), Allan Edmonds (blog), Klaus Rothe (web design), Mike Finger (Ride Coordinator), Ron Brown (web master), Mark Napier (guest, RAIN and registrations), Linda McNabb (guest, RAIN).

Keith had sent out the agenda to the officers. Here's what it looked like:

1. Introductions (3 min)

2. Announcements (3 min) 

a) Adopt-a-road clean up scheduled Sunday, June 13 at 1:30. 

b) Race Across America Time Station begins next week, with racers arriving as early as 7PM June 15, and extending through June 19th.

3. Approval of minutes (5 min) 

a) May 7 Board meeting

b) May 8 Special Meeting

4. Reports (20 min) 

a) Treasurer

b) RAIN 

c) Membership 

d) Website 

e) Blog/Newsletter 

f) Touring 

g) Advocacy 

h) Safety

5. Old business (30 min) 

a) BBC credit card

b) Audit committee 

c) Conflict of interest policy 

d) BBC/TRIRI relationship 

e) Safety/Advocacy Article

6. New business (40 min) 

a) Reserve account

b) RAIN registration for 2011 

c) RAIN committee and ride labor 

d) 1099-misc reporting 

e) Membership benefits card/roster for bike shop discounts 

f) Summer Party 

 g) City of Bloomington Bicycle Task Force

7. Adjournment

What follows are just a few notes about some of what went on.

The next meeting will definitely not be until after RAIN.

There was some informal discussion of guerrilla bike light campaign by City and funded in part by a BBC grant. Great publicity for the club in the Friday newspaper.

Minutes will be kept short focussing on all decisions of the board but not trying to record everything said and discussed. But we do need an official record of decisions made.

Half the board in action: Klaus playing on his iPad, Mike and Ron meditating, Keith moving to the next agenda item, Linda (guest for RAIN), Joe studying the accounts, Kathy's laptop, Tammy's purse.

(A little tongue-in-cheek....ok?)

Treasurer's report shows $54,000 balance, the bulk of which is RAIN registrations in hand. $1800 dues so far this year, through March. Biggest expense so far is 50% down payment on RAIN jerseys.

RAIN: 795  rain registrations so far, compared to 576 last year, which was a record. Normally expect to double what we have at June 15, when late fee kicks in. Route changes around Plainfield are required. Finish line is changing backway into Earlham because of construction.

Membership: We now have 260 members after purging non-renewals, a healthy and encouraging number. As Keith says we have the membership to do a better job of staffing more of our volunteer needs for things like ride leaders and especially for providing good support for RAIN.

We want to make the website more useful for members, more interactive, with more news, etc. Expect that we will eventually integrate the blog with it. In the past the web site was perhaps oriented more toward new people and visitors. In the future it will take on an increased role as a resource for members.

One interesting thing was obtaining a club credit card. It has a low credit limit $2500. But the limit should increase in the next 1-2 years to a more useful level. Approved but requirement that authorized users sign an endemnity statement authorizing. Three elected officers will have cards, with different numbers. This will help in handling miscellaneous expenses associated with club activities.

Another new thing: Audit committee Sandi Owen and Jerry Arveson were asked by Keith to serve on an audit committee. They would be mapping out the business processes of the club; review of general ledger and tax returns; random sampling of transactions. They could get started later in the summer, probably August.  They'll provide a report to the board. They would also make a recommendation on how to handle new IRS reporting requirements.

We approved the draft Conflict of Interest policy put together by Chris Tietz.

Chris was given the go-ahead to start work on a safety and education article we will hope to publish in the HT and on our web site.

There was substantial discussion about recruiting and managing volunteer workers for RAIN.

It was agreed to have a summer party in the form of a cook-out or picnic in a city part, but not the pool party we've have had the last several years. Not so many people actually take advantage of the swimming opportunity.

At that point the hour was late and the weather threatening, so we quickly adjourned shortly before 8 pm, leaving a few items for discussion at the next meeting.

I hope these notes capture a little of the flavor of the meeting and encourage interested members to consider dropping in on board meetings. There's a surprising amount of work and decisions that have to be made.