Minutes
Unit 143 Board Meeting
March 12 , 2008
(Approved April 9, 2008)
President John Samsel called the meeting to order at 7:00 PM. Present were Board members Bob Janis, Bob Wheeler, Sheryl Finkenstadt, Sandy Bigg, Donna Pedrotti, Suzi Shymanski-Moore and Sasanka Ramanadham. Absent were Board Members Steve Zenk, Debbie Romero, Ed Hale, Mark Ludwig and Jane Ettelson.
February Minutes
The February minutes were approved.
Corresponding Secretary's Report
The Unit 143 data base is still current as of March 1, 2008.
The 2008 POTY report was updated to include results of the March Unit Game. The report has been e-mailed to Milt Zlatic and Sheryl Finkenstadt.
An obituary notice for Mary Jane Kirsner was mailed to ACBL.
Treasurer's Report
Bob Janis provided a copy of the Unit 143 balance sheet as of February 29, 2008. This showed a balance of $ 5,450 in the checking account. The unit has $35,712 in current assets. The report shows a loss of $2,033 for the months of October 2007 thru February 2008. Bob noted that some expenses have been prepaid for future tournaments. Also the 199er tournament made some money.
The report was approved.
STANDING COMMITTEES
A. Awards/Nominating/Club Liaison
No Report
- Charity/Hospitality/Caddies
No report.
- Education
No report
D. Membership
Steve Zenk e-mailed his report to the board members. He reported an increase of 4 members in Unit 143. Total membership stands at 1057.
E. Website
Sheryl Finkenstadt reported that the web site lists about 60 unique visitors to the site each month. The most popular pages in order are the home page, the game results page and the library. There were 9843 hits on web site pages for the period of 2/15/2008 thru 3/12/2008.
Sheryl would like to remind directors that she is usually available to make emergency “Game Changes/Cancellation” notices before 9:00 AM. However she is not usually logged on at that time and will therefore require a telephone call to make any requested changes.
The Date book has been completely transferred to the web.
- Publicity
Sasanka Ramanadham has the flyers ready for the August Regional. He also made a suggestion to send post cards for the May Sectional, the Bragging Rights qualifying, and the Regional Tournaments in one mailing. His suggestion was approved.
- NAP/GNT
No report
- Recording Secretary/Bidding Boxes
No report
- Vice President
No Report.
- Tournament Chairman
No report
OLD BUSINESS
Sasanka Ramanadham reported on the Bragging Rights Match. The St Louis qualifying matches will be held on the weekend of July 12 & 13 at Maryland Heights. The rental will be $450. Sanction for the game has been received. Alan Popkin will provide a projector for the finals of the Bragging Rights match at the August Regional.
The Eight is Enough Unit Game franchise to Donna Coker is scheduled to end after the March 2008 game. Donna will have to pay all appropriate ACBL fees if the Eight is Enough Game is to remain a Unit Game. She is free to continue the game as a regular game if she so wishes.
NEW BUSINESS
A special session will be held on Saturday afternoon at the May Sectional Tournament. Sasanka outlined a plan to have session that will include 5 tables of Easy Bridge players and a group of middle school students (40-45) from the Edwardsville-Effingham areas. The students may be playing to qualify for the National Youth Tournament in July in Atlanta. The students are being taught by Chris Shaw. The plan is to have food (pizza/salad) after the game and trophies for the winners. Budget for these items will be discussed next month. A speaker is also planned to educate the kids about Bridge etiquette.
Sasanka presented the results of a survey taken at the January Sectional Tournament regarding starting times for the Saturday KO event. Captains of the teams were polled and a stating time of 9:30 AM was preferred to 9:00 AM by a 16-4 vote. We also discussed changing starting times to 1:30 PM and 7:00PM for the pair events on Friday and Saturday. The item was tabled until next month so that input from Mike Carman can be obtained.
Alan Popkin is to convene a hearing on the problem at a recent game of Donna Coker. She has banned the player from her games.
Meeting Adjourned at 8:08 PM