New York State Bicycle Racing Association 1Q Quarterly Meeting Minutes

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New York State Bicycle Racing Association 1Q Quarterly Meeting Minutes

Telecon: 7pm-8pm, Wednesday, 15Mar17
Dial in: 1 (605) 475-5920 Participant code: 298-2449#

Officer/Board Attendees: Jeff Poulin (President), Tom Weichmann (Vice President), Dave Beals (CX), Mike Cormier (Vice President), Lucia Deng (NYC Rep), Leona Chin (Junior Rep), Tony Sylor (Junior Rep), Rich Scaduto (WNY Rep), Gary Toth (Permit Coord; Adirondack Rep), Kelly Neuner (Women’s Rep), Shane Ferro (Women’s Rep)

Officer/Board Absent: Noel Bonk (Secretary- at work!), Liz Marcello (Officials Coord- on holiday!), Lloyd Campbell (Central), Justin Strauss (Junior Rep), Eric Ragot (Hudson Rep), Myles Romanow (LI Rep)

President’s Report (Jeff Poulin)

• Actions since the annual meeting update: the following minutes record actions approved by the board and completed since the annual meeting, with rationale:

  1. USAC LA Agreement: Signed the new USAC LA agreement with the additional GF/GG/Charity rebate of .17/rider
    1. Remember that USAC in recent years has been rebating $10k/yr less per year than the 20% of license fees that LAs started out with in 2003 (in 2015, 20% of licenses would have been a $33,292 rebate but USAC only rebated $23,780). After much turmoil in 2015, USAC made a small increase for 2016 by adding a .17/race day rebate. However, actual 2016 data (~$3,551) show that was only about 1/3 of what USAC committed so we are still over $6k short
    2. USAC cannot provide data on previous years GFs/GGs/Charity rides but my estimate of additional revenue NYSBRA will get by adding the new .17 per GF/GG/Charity rider is only about $765 (almost entirely from the 4000 riders in the GFNY, plus maybe another 500 from “somewhere” = 4500 race days *.17 = $765)
    3. USAC plans to host more (truly agonizing) workshops on “the future of LAs” that NYSBRA will participate in and try to influence them
    4. The choice was to take the $765 or not… so we take it.
  2. Seek Other Revenue Sources: BikeReg
    1. I’ve asked BikeReg for a small fee in exchange for making BikeReg NYSBRA’s “preferred registration provider” on our website (or similar)
    2. This is de facto true already and it would tell USAC we endorse BikeReg over the USAC registration system
    3. BikeReg is currently considering this (telecon either 15 or 16Mar)
  3. Seek other Revenue Sources: NACS: Signed the NACS LA agreement supporting the North American CycleSport (NACS)
    1. NACS sanctions “grass roots” events and it turns out NACS offers more generous rebates to LAs thanUSAC (they give 25% of net fee, which for GGs/GFs is .225/rider whereas USAC is .17. Also “25%” promise will go up if the NACS insurance fees ever go up, whereas USAC rebates are locked in at .17/racer and $10/license despite numerous USAC fee increases)
    2. NACS also has much lower costs for Race Directors of GGs/GFs/charity rides and especially RRs that have many vehicles (because vehicles are free with the NACS insurance instead of the additional $45/car and $85/moto USAC charges; this can easily save a RR over $500)

iii. As a result, there are at least 5 NY events now permitting with NACS. NYSBRA can get rebates from those events by supporting NACS

  1. Other Revenue Sources: Advertising in NYSBRA Newsletter/website/other
    i. NYSBRA is now offer space for an exclusive ad every month for a fee (e.g., $250). The monthlynewsletter offers potential sponsors a targeted audience of approximately 2700 recipients ii. Mike Cormier reports that response has been positive! Mike or Noel will sponsor the nextnewsletter in part to test the process and to get the ads started
    iii. Solicit tax-deductible donations on our website and in the monthly newsletter (NYSBRA is a 501c3) iv. We are seeking additional partners and sponsors
  2. Budget: Cut expenses where possible
    1. Scrutinize grants as always; the $500 max guideline for clinics is a good example
    2. Reduced the $1k automatic grant for hosting a “UCI/National event” to $500. We spent $4k on that last year to just four events, which we feel was out of proportion with other grants, for example about the same amount as we spent on over 50 juniors. FULL DISCLOSURE: Thater (my event) will not be an A event so will not get the grant at all either way. Reducing the grant to $500 will save us $1500.
    3. We will consider other options to cut. We just don’t have a lot of admin expenses! Most of our money goes back into cycling!
    4. ACTION: Jeff to update grant policy; Noel to update web site. DONE.

• Other topics:

  1. LA Summit: was held in Colorado Springs from 8-12Feb. Jeff attended and reported daily from thesummit as usual
  2. USAC has dropped Junior 9-10 from Natz Categories:
    1. Discussion: Leona reported that many junior parents were upset about the late and surprise notice from USAC. These families had considerable training and investment in time/money. At the state level these investments are much less and there does not appear to be any issues in NY.
    2. Should NYSBRA keep the 9-10 category?: We will have more happy kids…. The consensus was to leave the age 9-10 category in the NYSBRA championship races.
  3. TT State Championship Bid from Jim Walker:
    1. Time Trial: No bids were received so NYSBRA has continued to entertain bids. Gary Tothwill ask Jim Walker if he is still interested and he has coordinated with Tom Weichmann and Jeff Poulin, culminating this week in a formal proposal. Details are:
      • Name of sponsoring USA Cycling club – Team Placid Planet
      • Sunday, August 6, 2017, Upper Jay, NY
    2. Discussion: the board voted to approve Jim’s bid. ACTION: Jeff to announce the TT on nyraces. DONE.
    3. Gravel Grinder (GG) State Championship from Tony Sylor:

i. Tony has proposed an inaugural NYSBRA GG state championship. GGs and GFs are the fastest growing parts of cycling and this could launch a new customer base for NYSBRA. Details are:

• Event Name: Prattsburgh Gravel Classic (final race of the Mudslinger Gravel Series) on 5/13/17

• Championship Categories (6 total): Elite Men and Women; Intermediate Men and Women; Juniors boys and girls

• NYSBRA Cost: $210 (6 State championship jerseys @ $35 ea), should be mostly covered by the NACS rebates

  1. Discussion: Minimum age would be about 12 yrs old. Tony will review the NY State Champ guidelines on standards for running a quality championship event. The initial age groups would be a subset of the NY required categories (i.e., Elite, Intermediate, and Junior categories for men and women). The NYSBRA jerseys so not say “USAC” on them; they are NY championship jerseys. Gary suggested adding master’s categories; Tony said they were already planning to do that for next year if registration increased as expected.
  2. Board to vote by email by CoB Friday. APPROVED.

Vice President’s Report / Upgrades (Tom Weichmann)

  1. 1-week Response Time!: Tom ran a report showing our response times and we are doing really wellwith a 2.1 day average response time, with only 5 upgrades taking over 7 days.
  2. Track Upgrader: Alan Atwood has performed track upgrades but since he is no longer on theNYSBRA board we have asked Kelly Neuner to do them. She is willing, and once Lucia shows herhow it is done we will formally announce that she is replacing Alan

Secretary’s Report (Noel Bonk)

  1. 2017 NYSBRA Road/Track/TT Race Schedule:
  2. Noel has published the events on website and on NYSBRA’s Google Calendar; please add the NYSBRA Google Calendar to your own Google Calendar
  3. Changes continue to trickle in…
  4. Newsletter: The March newsletter was posted from new MailPoet system. Takes a bit longer togo out (since we are sending it from our own site and don’t want to overwhelm the host) but overall looks to have worked fine. We should be able to cancel MailChimp by month’s end. We will still need to pay for the 3rd party smtp service (SendGrid)- but that is only $9.99 a month. This should be an approx savings of $380.
  5. Sponsorship in Newsletter: I’ll be working on getting the first two “test” sponsors setup on the site for April. I think this is just Mike and myself for now. I think it would be better to start with us first so I can work out the process before we add anyone else.
  6. Newsletter ideas: include announcement about “Amazon Smile”
  7. Web Site http://www.nysbra.com (Noel Bonk)
    1. Changes to website: I’ve created an archive of the existing website and created a subdomain tobuild the new test site (new.nysbra.com). I plan to install WordPress and a new theme (to thetest site) this weekend.
    2. I can also look into hosting the website on my own Site Ground server, which I estimate would onlycost $50 a year instead of the ~$150 a year we are paying Bizland.
    3. Installed JetPack (and a number of other updates) on the website – this gives us good snapshot ofsite traffic. 1404 views and 719 visitors so far for March.

Treasurers Report (Mike Cormier)

  1. Transition: working with Mike to transition the treasurer job from Rod
  2. 2017 Budget (Mike): Current balance is $28,707.93. Mike fielded questions and solicited suggestionson approaches to balance the budget.
  3. Discussion: Rich suggested creating and selling a NYSBRA kit but there is generally enough kits out therethat the market would be quite small for the amount of work it would take. Water bottles and other cycling items with NYSBRA logos could be other options. Other ideas included having an end of year banquet that NYSBRA could make money from. Rich will look into options.

Grant Program: 2017 (Jeff Poulin)
a. Reporting: Grants are just getting started for 2017, mostly for rider clinics (very good!!!!). I have

changed how I track them and am working with Tom to use a Google Sheet that the board can view at any time and make reporting MUCH easier. We’ll publish the link when it is ready. ACTION: Tom.

Permits (Gary Toth)
a. 2017 Permits: All permits are up to date; the major issue this year is flyers do not include the new

Cat 5 women’s category so Gary is sending them back to get that field added.

Officials Coordinator (Liz Marcello on holiday)

  1. New Official Clinic in Clinton, NJ, 25Feb: had six students (Wave Chan, Kelly Neuner, Gabby Fisher,Brian Price, Becca Book, and Jane Kenyon). They (minus Brian) all “apprenticed” at Grant’s TombCriterium to reinforce what they learned. They are sorely needed in NYC!
  2. Northeast Regional Officials Symposium: The annual New C/Moto clinic (normally held in Danbury,CT) will be in Williamstown, MA on 18-19Mar17. Contact Liz Campbell for info!

Cyclocross (Dave Beals)

  1. 2017 CX schedule: Dave has sent out a call for dates and is building the 2017 CX calendar
  2. CX Championships: The call for the 2017 New York State Cyclocross Championships will go outaround the end of March
  3. CX Permits: Gary will process CX permits once the call for the CX Championships goes out
  4. CX Schedule: Add the NYSBRA Google CX Calendar to your own Google Calendar

Women’s Cycling (Kelly Neuner, Shane Ferro)

  1. Kelly Neuner replaced Liz Marcello as our new NYSBRA Women’s co-Rep: Welcome to Kelly!
  2. Women’s races: Shane is helping to get more women to the Women’s Woodstock Gran Prix(WWGP) on 6May. WWGP is providing buses from Metro North to make it easy for NY women toget to the race. Contact Shane for info!
  3. Future Women’s CX Clinic: Liz and Shane are planning a CX clinic in late summer; contact them ifinterested!

Junior Cycling (Justin Strauss, Leona Chin, Tony Sylor)

a. Sponsorship for Junior Programs (Leona): Leona is pursuing fundraising ideas to specifically support

Junior racing. These include:

  1. Amazon Smile affiliation: Registration with “Amazon Smile” will provide the transfer offunds (0.5% of sales) made through affiliate link or the selection of NYSBRA Juniors as the Amazon Smile recipient organization. Make purchases through “smile.amazon.com” and select “New York State Bicycle Racing Association” as your charity of choice.
  2. Modell’s Sporting Goods Spring Team Weeks campaign: Leona proposes to host a Spring Campaign with possible four week dates of Friday, April 7, 2017 through Thursday, May 4, 2017.
  3. R&A Cycles (Brooklyn, NY) educational workshops for parents and juniors: dates and hours to be determined based on availability of parents and shop personnel
  4. Other downstate bicycle shops have agreed to host evening / afternoon with the juniors and their parents: we’ve spoken to several shops and teams that are interested in helping out with the juniors. In-progress.

• Other Business? (All)
a. Rider Survey: Lucia was considering a NY rider survey and will plan on doing one in the fall.

i. Jeff got USAC to dig up and forward their survey from 2-3 yrs ago but it was fairly limited

b. Next Board Quarterly Telecon: i. 7pm, 14Jun17

c. Meeting adjourned at 8:25pm.

 

Posted in General News.