October 1, 2014
Present: Larry Holden, Michael Edwards, Dave Lilley, Alan Wittman, FrancineWiest, Scott Collins, John Fredericksen, Steve Wilkos, Paul Santulli, Melinda Workman, Jay Terry, Alan Koslow, Dave Holmes
- Call to order at 8:10pm
- Welcome & Meeting Minutes
- Minutes for June 2014 meeting were unavailable for review/approval, will try for them next meeting
Business Items
- 2014/15 Board of Directors
- Larry reported that the slate of directors was approved by the membership via e-mail, with 45 “YES” votes and zero “NO” votes. The approved slate includes:
- Andre Barashkoff
- Scott Collins
- Michael Edwards
- John Fredericksen
- Mark Gardner
- Kari Haas
- Steve Hoffman
- Debra Holden
- Larry Holden
- Dave Holmes
- Alan Koslow
- Dave Lilley
- Lea Monson
- Mark Riley
- Paul Santulli
- Jay Terry
- Chad Weiser
- Francine Wiest
- Alan Wittman
- Melinda Workman
- The elected board has the right to appoint other board members as necessary.
- There was discussion around what people would be doing this year. Dizzy Fukutomi has stepped down from softball, but Andre Barashkoff has expressed interest in helping out in that area. John Fredericksen will take Tom Froslan’s place as VP of Machine Pitch. Jay Terry would like to step away as VP of Majors to eliminate any potential conflict of interest. We have open the VP for Big Diamond, and Safety Officer. We will need/want other help too, it would be nice to have someone to cover fields/facilities, for example.
- 2014 Season Recap/2015 Season Planning
- The board talked briefly about the highlights, issues, and successes of 2014, in particular the continued growth and popularity of the winter training program, and the success of the 9/10 boys All Star team, winning both the District 9 and State tournaments
- Stod’s has moved facilities, and we’re concerned about our ability to run the winter training program there with its slightly smaller size, and potential growth again in player participation. The board discussed possible alternative facilities, such as the old Stod’s across the street, or perhaps NHE gym. We might try to start the youngest kids an hour earlier somewhere else close by, then divide the remaining older kids (7 & above) into 3 groups instead of 2.
- The board discussed registration fees, and it was generally felt that since we’ve been able to operate in the black for the past couple of years, largely because of excellent fundraising, this would be a good year to keep fees the same. We will, however, discuss this to finalize that decision, and talk about late fees/early registration discounts at the next meeting.
- There was discussion about adding some kind of league event or activity (like a coaches game, or home-run derby, or wiffle ball tournament), something that would be fun for the league and potentially also be a fundraiser. We would need someone to organize this, however. Jay let us know that North Seattle Little League is able to raise around $60k doing their “mid-season classic” event. The question came up as to whether we need the money, and while it is true that we are comfortable right now, additional sources of funding could give us the ability in the future to invest capital in field improvement projects, perhaps teaming with the school district or the city parks department.
- Financial Report
- Michael presented the YTD results, we are comfortably in the black for 2014, fields once again were very expensive, and we may not have been fully charged by the school district, but they’ve told us we’re paid up.
- We will be looking for people to submit budget requests and to review the proposed budget over the next two meetings.
- Fields
- Mark will be submitting field requests over the next month. Some thought should be given to potential alternatives to the school fields which are very expensive. For instance, we should request time at Robinswood which is close to our boundary.
- The school district will be handling the scheduling for the school fields this year which had previously been handled by the Parks Department. This would include Puesta, Newport Heights, Somerset and Eastgate Elementary schools. The school district will charge by the “season”, and the field will then be “owned” by the reserving organization for that 3-month period. This could be problematic, because it looks like their definition of season will be March-April-May, causing us to have to buy the next season as well, though we only need the fields in June.
- Uniforms
- Went well for 2014, particularly the new look for softball uniforms, so we will use the same approach.
- Equipment
- Alan will arrange a time/method for remaining equipment to be returned
- We discussed the green box at NHE, and the fact that it’s continually being broken into. Alan will check it out.
- Softball inquired whether we could get some softball specific catchers gear
- Coach & Player Development
- The board approved renting Stod’s again this year. See other discussion above.
- We will be back with Mark Linden this year to run the various clinics he has done.
- We will continue to utilize the High School coaching staff to aid with baseball, and would like to increase their involvement to more than just Majors
- Softball will look into pitching instruction; we had a clinic set to go a couple years ago that fell through because of facility issues
- Umpires
- Will be looking closely at this for 2015, including whether we want to continue our junior umpire program, which has been hard to manage
- Commitment from enough youth umpires
- Scheduling has been an issue, particularly last-minute changes
- Not sure if our umpire coordinators will be willing to do this again this year
- Another league brought up the question as to whether our own Little League insurance would even cover these kids, as they are paid. We will need to research this
- We need to start earlier with communication to people about the FREE training available to umpires through District 9
- We will contact Brad Files this year about encouraging High School players to ump games when they can, particularly weekends which are not normally full of games
- Need to set expectations with parents, coaches & managers, as to our needs for adult umpires to be available, as well as treatment of youth umpires. It was noted that we REQUIRE parents to ump games at A and AA level, why do we stop at AAA?
- Volunteers
- We will send a message to parents before the season about Little League and the fact that it is 100% volunteer run; we need more parents sharing their time as volunteers
- Can we pre-determine volunteer commitment at registration? We need to review the Bonzi registration form, and also make the volunteer “choice box” on the form more definitive
- Meeting adjourned at 10:00pm