THE VILLAGE CARD CLUB
BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING
November 14, 2008

The meeting was called to order by President Cecil Grattafiori at 2:12 pm.

Attending: Cecil Grattafiori, Jim Bicknell, Peg Birzer, Ginna DeThomas, Lillian Estes, Pam Harris, Teri LaBove, Becky Rice, Ed Hamparian and Barbara Stiff. Absent: Cathy Irving

Guests attending: Ray and Fran Banks, Ron and Carol Trainer , Lois Schoenrock, Mabel Serpa, Frank Matthews, Sandi Villegas and grandson, Dick Condon, Jack and Louallen Leach, Kathy Harris, Gina Doss, Nancy Luehring, Cindy Devish and Nan Medcalf.

Additions to the agenda: Becky – minor game changes; Ginna – re-stratification for monthly awards; Teri – Mentor Plus and Link to Website; Pam – Bridge + and a personnel matter. Pam also asked that the issue of Teacher Pay be deleted. The agenda was approved with changes.

The minutes of the October board meeting were approved with the following change:
“Pam made a motion that the Nominating and Election Committee Guidelines are in conflict with the June 2008 amendments to the Bylaws and that the Nominating and Election Committee Guidelines are rescinded in their entirety. Becky seconded and all approved.”

A letter from the chairperson of the election committee, Estelle White, was read at her request. The letter asked that the board support the notice that has been posted on the bulletin boards regarding “electioneering”. There is to be no campaigning at the club.

Nan Medcalf reported on the status of the Christmas party which will be held on Thursday, December 18. It will be a catered meal with a cost to the club of $9.00 per plate; members will be asked to pay $5.00 toward the party. There was some discussion of set up time, prizes and the number expected. Cecil thanked Nan for her hard work and for her report.

Mabel Serpa gave a history of Bridge + in the 12 years that she was on the board. She noted that changes have been made to the Standing Rules that are not reflected in current publications and that when the board approved the change from two teachers to one, it was in conflict from the original Standing Rule. Becky then read a time line that showed attendance for the past year. (See attachment I.) Cecil thanked Mabel for her interest. The board will follow up on the matter.

Board member reports:
Ginna: no report

Becky reported on the table count for January 2008 through October 2008 is 7813.75; which is a 2.8% increase from 2007. T his does not take into account the week the club was closed because of the Hot Springs Regional in May 2008. He October 2008 total table count was 804.75 which is a 6.5% decrease from October 2007 table count of 860.5. The 2008 October figures include 28 tables for the new game Easybridge!. The VCC was closed one Wednesday in October due to the flooding we had in the Village and the VCC was closed on a Friday due to the DeGray Sectional Tournament.

Lillian thanked Cathy and Ned Irving for the donation of new pencil sharpeners; she also purchased two of the same sharpeners. She reported that the white boards are now out of commission; Andy Cosby has contacted the manufacturer on how to repair the warping of the boards. She said that the refrigerator is not working again and there was discussion on whether to repair or try to find a new refrigerator. Cecil felt it could be repaired.

Pam said classes are ending. Play and Learn will not be held this year as the Club series was written for the old test. Students will be encouraged to go into Bridge+ and Easybridge!

Teri reported six new members for a total of 803. Cecil asked how many had paid their 2009 dues and Teri felt that approximately 25% have been paid. Jim had questions regarding the election committee and those who were eligible to vote. Cecil said this would be discussed later.

Jim said the financial reports have been posted. This month shows a profit of $1,388.68. Jim noted that the October credit card bill which included the ACBL fees was not paid because there was not enough money in the checking account to cover this charge. Becky questioned ACBL game fees and the dates they are usually paid. Cecil assured the board that there would be 12 months of ACBL fees paid by the 2008 Board. There was discussion of upcoming costs and income and possible ways to cut costs.

Old business:
Cecil said that Martha had asked that he report that all current candidates are posted on the bulletin board in the hall.

Pam made a motion that Bridge+ be changed to a time during the day. The possibilities are Wednesday or Friday afternoon and although a telephone census is being made, no definite day has been decided. The change would be made on December 1. Ginna seconded the motion and it was approved with one abstention.

Peg read a report on Easybridge! (See Attachment II). Guest Louallen Leach noted that she had experience with Easybridge! in Austin and Lubbock, Texas where the program was helpful in keeping those clubs going.

Teri made a motion that the Mentor Plus program be discontinued as there has been little interest. She felt that continuing the mini-lessons on Wednesdays would be more successful. Becky seconded and all approved.

Pam questioned eligible voters for the election. She noted that those who are currently paying dues as new club members for 2009 have in the past been eligible for voting. Teri said that as membership chair she is asked for a current membership list right before the election. There was some discussion of a cutoff date. Becky made a motion that members be eligible to vote if they have paid their dues by December 1. Pam seconded and the motion was approved.

Becky noted that she has distributed copies of the 2009 calendar for the board to look over. She is unable to finalize it until she has the dates for the Unit wide Championship games. January 1st through October 31st of 2008 there have been eleven special games that have not been run at the same time as regular scheduled games. These eleven games have a total table count of 146.5 tables. This is a positive reason why we should continue to have special games at the VCC and to support Unit 161, District 10 and ACBL. There was some discussion, with Becky asking that this board give the calendar their approval in December. However, it was noted that the 2009 board can change the calendar if they wish.

Becky then made a motion that the Life Master/Non-life Master game be changed to 6:30 pm at the request of players and Director. Teri seconded and the motion was approved.

Ginna made a motion to change the stratification of the monthly awards so that one person cannot win two awards. The award would be made to the person who had the most points in their stratification: i.e., 0-20, 20-300, and 1000+. Becky seconded and the motion carried.

Teri questioned that a member has a link to their personal website on our website. She asked if this had been granted board approval. After discussion it was decided to delegated this to the club manager or Webmaster.

Pam made a motion that the meeting be closed to discuss a personnel matter. Ginna seconded and the meeting was closed at 4:00 pm. Submitted by: Peg Birzer, Secretary Subject to Board Approval

ATTACHMENT I

There has been a lot of erroneous rumors regarding what has happened with Bridge + this year and at this time I would like to do a timeline of what I feel has actually transpired this year regarding Bridge+.

Bridge+ was changed to an evening game during the Board Meeting on Friday, January 11th. Cathy Bertrand advised the Board that Ray and Connie had requested this change, because they thought they could increase the table count with an evening game. A few members of the Board felt the main reason for requesting this time change for Bridge + was because Connie had gotten a job on Thursday morning which would keep her from doing Bridge + in the morning. Several of us on the Board had a huge concern about making this change because we felt that attendance would decline not increase due to people in the Village not wanting to drive at night. However, the Board voted to accommodate Connie and Ray by changing Bridge+ to 6:30pm on Thursdays.

On Monday, October 6th the Board voted to change the teacher requirements in Bridge + to one teacher and a helper, because of the low attendance for the last 18 months and the low table count didn’t warrant needing two teachers. On Tuesday, October 14th Connie and Ray emailed Pam Harris with their resignation notice to no longer teach Bridge+. The reason they gave for resigning was, they did not feel like they could offer the quality of help and training that they had always provided to new players with only one teacher. In the last 9 months and two weeks the average Bridge + table count has been 3.15 tables. I have the table count figures with me for Bridge + that supports this 3.15 average table count figure if any Board Member wants to see my calculations. As a Board member I feel that one teacher with a helper should be able to give excellent level of help for 13 players.

Recently there have been rumors in the club that since the Board changed to only one teacher for Bridge+ that this has hurt the attendance for Bridge+. Bridge+ went to only one teacher on October 16th, the 3rd Thursday in October. The following is a breakdown of table counts prior to the October 16th teacher change: In September the average attendance for Bridge+ was 2.5 tables. On October 2nd and October 9th the table count was zero. Prior to the October 16th Bridge + game when there could only be one paid accredited teacher for Bridge+, Pam asked me to call some people to see if we could get better attendance for that game. Time after time the two reasons people gave me that they would not be able to play on October 16th Bridge+ night was because they had tickets for the performance at Woodlands and/or they did not want to drive at night, not one person said that couldn’t play because there was only going to be one teacher running Bridge+. On October 16th there was only one table that showed up for Bridge+, so the table count shows zero because you need 3 tables to run a Bridge+ game, but that was mainly due to the performance at the Woodlands. On Thursday October 23rd there were 3 tables for Bridge+, which was more than any one of the four nights in September. The teacher for the October 23rd game was able to do a good job without a 2nd teacher being in the room. However, as a Board Member I feel we may need to rethink changing Bridge+ back to a daytime game, so there will be no conflict with the Woodlands performances and no conflict with people not wanting to drive at night. I would like to remind the Board, at this time, the only reason we changed Bridge+ from a daytime to an evening game in January was to accommodate the request by the teachers of this game.

Another rumor I would like to refute is that the Thursday morning Easybridge is taking away from Bridge+. My same argument is as before that Bridge+ only had an average of 2.5 tables in September and on October 2nd and October 9th the Bridge+ table count was zero. All of these games were prior to Easybridge starting on October 16th.

There is enough room in this club to have Bridge+ and Easybridge. As a presenter of Easybridge we are planning on encouraging Easybridge players to play in Bridge+ and our Tuesday afternoon 0-20 game, and next year encourage them to take classes that will be offered here at the club. Whoever is starting these negative and erroneous rumors is doing a huge disservice to this Club.

ATTACHMENT II

We did not do any advertising of Easybridge! until after the fall class series started, so as not to “steal” anyone’s students. On October 16 we held our first Easybridge! game. We started with 33 players. On Oct. 23 we had 40 players, nine who weren’t here the first week. On Oct 30 we had 39, three who were there for the first time. On Nov 6 we had 33, again with one for the first time. Yesterday, we had 25 players, and they are now paying our regular entry fees. People came, came again, missed a game and came again. As best we can tell, we have not “lost” anyone yet, but we know we will We have 47 players on our roster. There were 43 who had never played at the VCC or had not been here in more than a year.

Last Monday, we held our first Easybridge! Workshop and we had 19 students. Each paid $7.00 for the workshop. These workshops will be offered every other Monday from now on. We paid $50 for the Workshop Presenter’s Handbook, with 10 beginner’s workshops, and we can use them in future Easybridge sessions at no additional cost.

At our first game, Cecil took the microphone to welcome all the players. He told them how pleased he was that they were here and wished them every success. Then on November 5, in a phone conversation with me, he said that he could tell these people weren’t “real bridge players” and they won’t stay. We sure hope our players don’t hear this, but this is consistent with many negative comments that I have heard, including the statement by the Club Manager that I “committed fraud” when I ordered 100 Easybridge! textbooks. If anyone had asked me, I would have told them the circumstances under which that order was submitted.

To date, we have sold 40 books for a total of $400. They come in 25 book increments from the Easybridge! people, and if we had ordered 50 they would have been $8.00 each and our profit would be less. In the past, the club has ordered a large number of Audrey Grant books at the quantity price and then inventoried them until they were used up. I hope the board will authorize another Easybridge! game in January, and we can use our inventory at that time. I have at least 12 new people who would like to begin the series in Jan.

We have had players ask us what other games they can play at the club. We recommend Bridge+ although the timing is bad – Thursday morning and back the same evening. Pretty soon, we will be feeding them into our Newcomer and 49er games. Some may also migrate to Rubber Bridge or Better Bridgers.

Our five Certified Presenters have worked well together and worked hard to get this started. Every minute, every effort and every dollar they have spent has been donated. They even paid for their own certification. Becky has made some beautiful posters, which I am sure could be used in other classes. Ginna is a marvelous organizer, schedule keeper and hostess, who had players asking for her cream cheese Danish recipe after the second game. Cathy, who was a junior high teacher, is a marvelous presenter and just right for this venue. She also did a super job with the publicity, which brought in most of our players. But we could not have done this without Andy, who had experience with Easybridge! in Springfield eight years ago. Andy has been vilified by some of our board members and has graciously ignored these comments and gone ahead and worked successfully as our lead Easybridge! Presenter.

But these are not the only card club members who have helped us get started. Lillian Estes came for our first game to supervise the kitchen and brought her renowned banana bread. Sandi Villegas also came to our first game and brought goodies. Cindy Devish came for our third game, brought cookies and stayed to get familiar with the game; and we actually had a $10 donation for coffee from a VCC member. Greg Bono, who is teaching a Club Series in the other room, sits down with us to share ideas about how to bridge from the Club Series to Easybridge! and from Easybridge! to our other ACBL Series classes.

If only our Village Card Club as a whole could work this well together, we could truly do wonders. Look what the Little Rock card club did -- working together amicably, they built a whole new building. We could definitely meet our rent increases, if we would stop all the bickering and back-biting.

Jim Bicknell asked for an Easybridge! (instead of Bridge + as his e-mail said) financial report. We have prepared a projection for this year. It shows a profit for the club of $560; we may exceed that. Copies are available.

Thank you -- we see Easybridge! going on forever and feeding into the classes, lower strat games and building our reputation as a card club for everyone -- NOT just the “real” players.