Draft of the Minutes of the September 15, 2009 Board Meeting

Michigan United Soccer League

Draft of the Minutes of Tuesday, September 15, 2009

at the MUSL office in Royal Oak

  1. Call to Order:7:44 PM
  2. Attendance:

Pres. Cook V. P. Kirkwood Sec’y HelmutReg’r Myers

Radu - Competition Baker - Statistics Krieger Discipline

Director at Large Benfield Director at Large Gojcaj

3.Approval of Previous Minutes:No corrections of previous minutes had been requested by Board members, but Sec’y. von Oetinger asked members for some clarifications that he would like to see incorporated into the Minutes of the meeting of July 16, of August 11, and of the Special Board Meeting of July 25. The updates of the minutes were approved.

4.Correspondence: The MSA requested proposals for by-law changes.

Secretary von Oetinger .P. reported some correspondence with Shoshana DeMaria of the MSA regarding the ‘Cultural Diversity Committee’ during which he had expressed his doubts about the efficacy of the Committee’s plans to make 15 minute presentations to the Annual Meetings of the affiliated leagues. Ms. DeMaria had hoped to lecture the membership on the importance of cross cultural understanding and tolerance. Helmut had suggested that the people who needed to hear such messages most were the players on the field. However, such messages usually don’t travel down to that level.

Helmut also reported having received July and August meeting minutes of the MSA.

We also received a notice from the MSYSA charging us $25.00 for failure to attend a mandatory meeting. V.P Kirkwood explained that the MUSL had been in attendance and had signed the attendance roster. However, Harold claimed that the MUSL had not been called during the attendance check by the Secretary. As Adm. Myers had already sent the check, it was decided to let the matter rest. Harold stated that he would ask for a refund at the next meeting. Larry suggested to apply the money to our next affiliation fee.

We also received a letter from the MSA, indicating that a $500 contributed by the MUSL from proceeds of “The Longest Soccer Game” check had been forwarded to the “Charles Stewart Mott Children’s Hospital”.

Also received a complaint from Chris Stockman about the length of his suspension and charging that the league was failing to follow its procedures regarding red cards. Disciplinary Chair Krieger and I had responded to the letter and the issue is resolved.

Helmut had also sent letters of expulsion to Chaldean Rockets O-30 and O40 as well as to the Chaldean Arsenal O-30.

The Correspondence was accepted as presented.

5.Reports:

a.President Cook: No Report

b.Vice-President Kirkwood: Presented the MSA financial report all Board members.

He reported that the USASA has secured an “Officers and Directors Liability insurance for all affiliated leagues at no charge to the leagues. Larry noted that this will save us $725.

Draft of the Minutes of the September 15, 2009 Board Meeting

Harold also had brought with him the marked up rules of the MUSL and the MSYSA, indicating what changes would be required to enable us to become part of the Youth Association and field U-19 teams Harold also promised to have dates for the next half-session of a referee class by this week-end. There are nine people who still require a half session and about half a dozen other interested parties. Harold had also brought copies of the latest “The Laws of the Game”, to be kept at the office for those MUSL referees who had not received one.

Nick Radu mentioned that at the last MSA meeting, SRA Folino had brought up some questions regarding referee assignment and payment procedures, noting that currently, there are no hard and fast rules. Nick had explained to him that we had prepared a proposal for their approval that would address these concerns. He added that we need to get this document to him as soon as possible.

Helmut raised the issue of the MSA plans to raise registration fees. Helmut felt that the MSA has spent large amounts of moneys, going over their budget. Helmut strongly felt that the cost of soccer should be kept as low as possible to benefit our members and to attract new teams.

Nick continued that exceeding the budget had been brought up at the last two MSA Board meetings with the resolve that we need to identify areas where we could cut back, including the President’s travel expenses, the Administrators, expenses, and the Veteran’s Cup stipends. Nick had mentioned that the women’s teams attending the Veteran’s Cup had received close to $9,000, and that it would take three years of women’s registration fees to cover this amount of money. Nick further had mentioned that, there being only one women’s league in the state, all of the teams came out of the same league and none of them had to earn their right to participate by competing against another league. Moreover, some of the players who had gone to that cup had come out of states other than Michigan. In contrast, Michigan had no men’s teams attending the Veteran’s Cup.

Harold Kirkwood added that the MSA Budget Meeting would take place this Thursday and Nick and Harold would be attending that to represent our league. The MSA budget had been at about $20,000 per year while the actual spending exceeded about $45,000. Registrations had been assessed at $20.00 for 2009 and the proposal is to increase that to $25.00, to staunch the drain on the MSA savings. We should have an updated report by the weekend.

Upon a question to this effect, Nick explained that the budget meeting would work out a proposal for the general membership, who would then have to approve or amend it at eh MSA AGM.

Larry Myers calculated that, if the MSA were to pay about $60,000 from the over $140,000 in MSA coffers, there would still be some $60,000 left in the account. Raising the registration fee to $22.00, only a much smaller amount would be drained from MSA savings. Especially, if other spending were to be curtailed. Therefore, Larry did not see the need to raise the registration fees to $25.00.

Helmut suggested that we sent a person to the budget meeting who is well versed in accounting matters.

Nick pointed out that he and Harold had made it known that they were not satisfied with the financial reports, whereupon Dyann Pugliese had presented formal financial reports at the last 3 or 4 meetings.

Helmut complaint that these reports are not included in the minutes to which they should be attached.

Nick also explained that Jim Wheeler, who is a CPA, will reconcile the accounting for the MSA finances. Thereafter, his report will be turned over to an accounting firm to verify his findings. Hiring an accounting firm to do the entire review would be cost prohibitive.

Larry expressed that he had confidence in Treasurer Dyann’s accounting and just wanted to make sure that he would be informed on what the State Association wanted to do and how it wanted to pay for it. He did not feel that the State needed to hoard a large sum for unforeseen circumstances.

As to the Administrators salary, Nick and Harold explained that, when the position was established, a budget of $25,000 was set up for that purpose. Thereupon, Dyann wanted the job. As she only staffs the office twice a week, this was considered somewhat high. Nick stated that she is charging $25/hour.

An agreement had been formalized for her position, which some on our Board received (not Helmut).

Rick Cook stated that it is in our interest to monitor the money spent by the MSA as well as on what it is spent. He felt that the moneys spent by the MSA should be somewhat proportional to the size of the member leagues. Harold reinforced this view, noting that with about 40 percent of the membership we should be entitled to about that much support from the state, as opposed to the women’s league which represents about 10 percent of the membership but received the lions share of state allocations.

(HELMUT’S NOTE: Regarding the argument that there should be an in-state competition for teams to qualify for regional or national tournaments, it should be understood that The Veteran’s Cup does not require state qualification. Any team that wants to go is welcome. It is the tournament of Champions and the Open and Amateur Cups which require state qualification. If our teams don’t like to go, that is not the State Association’s problem.)

Pres. Cook mentioned that he had set out to take an O-55 team to the Veteran’s Cup, trained al winter in the Eisenhower gym, but when the time came to put up the money, only six people were prepared to go. Had they known the state would support them to the tune of $2,000, they might have gotten a team together.

Nick explained that the budget meeting would likely allocate about $2,500 for each cup competition, to be divided among the number of teams that enter.

Nick concluded his report with the observation that the budget item “Office Expenses” covered one-time outlays for equipping the office with computer, printer and other furnishings. The rest of the expenses should be whittled down to possibly 50% of current standings wherever possible.

c.Secretary von Oetinger: Reported writing the Minutes of a special Board Meeting of July 16 and the regular Board Meeting of August 11. He attended several games that were officiated quite nicely. And he compiled a listing of the punitive actions and fines prescribed by the MPSL and MDSL in response to the suggestion at our last Board Meeting that we may wish to establish a similar table of fines for our league.

d.Registrar Larry Myers : Reported that he had our web server change our registration system to include the last country in which a player from abroad had played. This is to enable the national associations to verify that such players had been issued “International Clearances”. (For Lary’s info, It is the last country in which a player played soccer that is required by FIFA. For example: Waad Sana originated from Iraq, but when he played in Holland, he had to obtain clearance from Iraq to play in Holland. Then, when he moved to the USA, he had to obtain clearance from Holland.)

e.Commissioners Discipline - A. Krieger: Not in attendance. In his absence, Larry sent out notices of fines, because this stuff cannot be left sitting unattended for a week. In one incident, a teammate of a player who had been tackled from behind, charged the tackler and threw him to the ground. Both the player who had been tackled and his team mate were written up for violent conduct. Larry will contact Aaron to see what he wants to do with that. Larry conceded that decisions on these incidents are very subjective, but stressed that experience in the game could help prevent excessively harsh decisions.

Rick Cook asked us to remember that we had decided to come down hard on disciplinary matters.

Helmut asked if we might do better by having a Committee handling discipline, which would help to curb excessive punishments, but that did not appeal to the Board.

f.Competition - Nick Radu: see above.

g.Commissioner Statistics - Rick Baker: Not in attendance Larry also reported that R. Baker had returned all the “Game Sheets” to the office and Larry was entering all the referees officiating for us into a data base to get a handle on who is doing them. Larry had referees telling him that they were assigned games far away from their home but not any near their home. In short, there have been accusations of favoritism.

Also, Larry reported that we have another instance of a team, DKI, dropping in mid-season. This brings us down to 40 teams O-30. In fairness, we should, therefore, negate all of the games in which DKI played. Rick suggested that we keep the red card stats of the players. But the team record would be expunged.

h.Administrator - Larry Myers: Larry had prepared a listing of our league’s divisional format, returning all divisions to eight members, except the Open division which has special problems. The positions of teams in this listing can not yet be determined until all games have been played. However, the essence is that all divisions return to eight teams each, and that all new teams enter in the last division. The O-30 3rd Division and the O-40 4th division is also have been whittled down to eight. teams also. In the O-40 2nd division you will notice the Croatia Soccer Club who have asked to join the league. They are all playing in a league and appear to be a ”killer team”. (Larry, you first spoke of the Canton soccer Club and then. a little later of the Croatia Soccer Club. I take it that we aere talking about Croatia, right?) These are guys are just turning 40 years old and are all first division players. Still we cannot place them in the first division as we have never done this before. Larry added that there is also a possibility of a Downriver team entering the O-40’s as well as a Korean team.

Harold Kirkwood announced that Intra will likely have an O-40 team next season.

There is a club in Taylor that has invited us to attend their meeting. They may wish to enter an Open, an O-30, and an O-40 team. They tried to enter last year, but failed to make it because the mover on this project got sidetracked by his work related responsibilities.

Larry further suggested that, instead of having an O-30 East and West division, we could divide the teams into O-40 3rd and 4th divisions, for the sake of better competition.

For the O-50 age group, Larry noted that the strong teams are all in the East division and placed the weaker teams in the 2nd division. This would also here provide more equal competition. None of this is written in stone as games are still being played.

Any new teams would have to be placed where there is an opening to avid uneven number in a division, which forces extra games. The main structure has to be kept intact. The lowest division will be the only one in which we should permit an uneven number of teams. However, we can absolutely not do what we did last year by allowing teams to enter late and forcing us to revise the schedule several times. New teams may be placed on a waiting list, and if there is a drop-out, they could be invited.

Helmut inserted that we might consider raising the bond for teams to insure their completing the seasonal schedule.

Further, Larry presented our annual “Team Affiliation form” in which the manager’s responsibilities are spelled out to the effect that he and his team agree to abide by MUSL rules and that the manager named in the document will be deemed the “owner” of the team. Larry wondered if we should add something to the effect that the manager will assume the responsibility of paying all of the team’s financial obligations (or commitments). The Board unanimously agreed to this. (Larry: we also should add a signature line for the manager

On a list of teams arrear in their payments to the league, Larry had noted next to the amount actually owed, the minimum amount we would be willing to accept to cover our expense for registering their players with the MSA. Larry would like Helmut to prepare a letter notifying such teams of their suspension from the league. Larry would then add the respective addresses to these letters and Helmut could sign and mail them. Drop-out teams which seem to ignore these duns should be taken to Small Claims Court to obtain a judgment against them. This may not assure us of payment. However, as this could affect their credit status, this may be a persuasive action. We would refrain from pursuing claims against individual players. Should I include the names of the teams that will receive these letters: Kobra Kai, DKI, The Strikers, FK Hajduk, The Force, Detroit Arsenal, Chaldean Arsenal O-30? and O-40 Paid $360,) Larry suggested that Pres. Cook personally phone some of the people to alert them to their vulnerability and encourage them to pay up.

Finally, Larry explained that next year, players would be able to register on-line. The players would have to pay their registration fee either by credit card, check, money order or in cash. The amount they would be charged would be what we will normally charge as a registration fee. Then, managers could to go into our system and, looking up their team records, would be able to select the players they see on the left of the screen, and by doing so, would move that player’s name to the right, thereby adding that player to their 2010 roster. After a certain date, this facility will be stopped. Mangers would have to come to the office to