Committee Meeting

1. Financial Report

NS explained the current club finances spreadsheet.
NS pointed out that the club is now forecasted to break even this year, which includes the significant increase in facility charges for 2005.

RH asked whether the 50/30 split of 2nd child fees to the Bronco team shown on the spreadsheet should not in fact be a 40/40 team split when the accounts are split into cost centres. The committee agreed and NS agreed to affect this change in his financial reports. NS/0503-01

2. Ground booking and Goal post update for 7 May 2005

KS confirmed he is now in regular contact with the management contact at Woughton and that the Goal posts are still in use by the MK Dons football club.
KS has spoken to Donald Morris-Vincent at BaseballSoftballUK and agreed that if the goal posts straddle the home run fence then the problem could be dealt with as a ground rule, but if the entire goal posts fell within the field of play this was an obvious safety issue. KS & RH have been to Woughton and measured the outfield and taken photographs and the goalposts do fall completely within the field of play and so the Pony game will have to be rescheduled due to safety concerns.
RH was tasked with contacting Burgess Hill and explaining the problem and then finding a new fixture date. RH/0503-01

KS reported that he expected that the diamond would be marked to the appropriate dimensions for the age group playing each week.
KS also said that the Woughton clubhouse would be open with changing and showering facilities available throughout the season.

KS repeated that Woughton was now being run as a financial business and he was being warned that the costs for next year could potentially double as their charging structure was moving to a per team cost.
AS stated that Woughton Playing Fields had represented themselves as being commercial organisation for the past 4 years.

3. Game confirmation

DOS has confirmed the Pony game at Bracknell.
KS will confirm the Bronco games shortly.
The committee expect the team reps to continue this activity throughout the season.

4. Uniforms

AS & DOS confirmed that they had the shirts that would be used for the Pony team.

RH questioned whether the transfer of 5 Pony shirts to the Bronco team would include depreciation in the cost centred accounts.

KS suggested that there should be three cost centres in the accounts: Bronco, Pony & Club. It was then agreed that the uniforms would be classed as a club asset.

5. Game Balls

NS confirmed he had ordered three dozen balls for each team, and these had now been received and distributed to the team managers.

6. Umpires

RH reported that Chris Bateman had kindly offered to umpire the Bronco home games. RH also showed an e-mail from Ian Smyth from BaseballSoftballUK asking AS to give Chris an onfield assessment, to check his US coaching experience, so that he could join the Bronco coaching staff as a BSUK certified coach. AS/0503-01

NS offered to share umpiring the Pony games with AS.

RH repeated the idea of getting Pony leavers to return for a year of umpiring and AS agreed that this was a good idea. AS pointed out that the ABUA-GB were being supportive to younger umpires.

7. Travel Arrangements

KS explained that Estelle had been investigating the cost of a minibus. A 17-seater bus would cost 15/day, but you would need a driver that held a council driving license. The cost of the council driving test is 75 per driver. KS stated that all of these costs could be offset against a grant.
AS suggested this idea needed further research and the committee agreed. ES/0503-01

DOS ran through the arrangements for getting the Pony team to Bracknell for their next game.

8. Practice Schedules

KS suggested all bank holidays be used as Come and Try days. AS agreed.

RH asked AS about the Pony practice schedule so that he could update the web. AS/0503-02 AS and the Pony staff are considering and discussing moving to only running practice on Wednesday evenings. For this reason RH will only load up two weeks of practice dates for May.

9. Bronco Sunday League

KS is still expecting to have enough players for two Bronco teams shortly. KS is therefore arranging friendly development games for the new players so they can get experience in a less competitive environment.
KS explained that players who did not play in Saturdays team would always be given priority in the team selection process for Sunday games.

KS also let the committee know that he was hoping to increase links with the local Rugby clubs in Milton Keynes as was piloted in Birmingham in 2004.

10. Grants / Sponsorship

NS read out a report from Estelle Sherman.
Estelle is in the process of sending out sponsorship request letters. Estelle requests that the team wish lists include costing and supplier information. Estelle has been told it is a good idea to make a number of small claims for funding.

AS pointed out that many of the items on the wish list were common to both age groups.

AS then asked whether KS had seen the GB protective L-screen at Woughton. KS could not remember but will make a point of looking next time. KS/0503-01 KS then discussed the option of getting some cheap fencing.

KS then asked about Awards for All grants, and AS stated that Estelle should contact Erin at BaseballSoftballUK.

11. AOB - Letter from Melanie Whitney

AS submitted a letter from a parent addressed to the committee.

The letter expressed some concerns regarding the recent promotional video that was made at the Bronco practice on 13 April.
The committee confirmed that Melanie had returned a signed photographic permission document for her children. NS suggested that more details should be provided regarding the qualifications and work of the film production team.
RH & KS were tasked with responding to the letter. RH/0503-02

12. AOB - Letter from Genny Simmons

Each committee member has received an email from Genny Simmons stating she was unhappy with one of the paragraphs in the previous minutes.

RH explained that as the web master he thought Genny had quoted the paragraph out of context and was happy to add additional words to make the context explicit. AS explained that Genny had not understood the intended context and had taken offence based on a misunderstanding.
RH has been tasked with contacting Genny in the hope of finding a wording for the paragraph that addresses Gennys concerns. RH/0503-03

RH reiterated what had been agreed at a previous committee meeting. In the case where two parents shared an email address, it was good practice for the author to sign the message singularly, rather than signing it from both people, to help avoid confusion.

13. AOB - Constitution question

AS then explained why he and Genny were concerned that the committee meeting held on the 12 April 2005, may have contradicted the club constitution. AS was not sure that he had resigned from the committee because he had not waived his position as club president.

RH provided AS with his committee resignation email and AS agreed that it did say that he had resigned from the committee.

The committee then held a vote on whether they believed that the committee had acted properly and acted within the club constitution.

AS then stated that the official constitution was the one held at the bank.
RH reiterated that the constitution would be addressed at the end of the season as agreed at the previous committee meeting.

The committee then agreed to put the matter behind them and hoped the entire club could now concentrate on BaseballMK youth baseball.

14. AOB - Milton Keynes Merger

KS briefly talked about the meeting being called by BSUK with regards to merging all of the teams in Milton Keynes into a single club.
AS said he had wanted Milton Keynes to unify for a number of years, but he also briefly suggested he would also like to table the idea of each team being organised as a separate entity.
KS will continue to keep the committee appraised of this situation by email as the situation develops. KS/0503-02