Winter Update
The LAFS Council met to discuss plans for 2015 and beyond. We want to make sure all members are kept informed and able to be as involved as they would like to be. The following is a summary of what we discussed and what was voted on. We had a long meeting and got a lot accomplished. This post is really long (sorry) because there is a lot to cover.
First off, we have expanded the council to eight members. Joining Bill, Linc, Kurt, Jerry, and Jon are Darrell Zimmerman, Travis Dombach, and Bill Erdley. We would like to add one more spot for next year, to expand to nine total seats. In the meantime, we decided that for a vote to pass, it must get at least five votes (meaning ties do not pass). We decided that the council term will run from November 1 until October 31. This will give the new council the full offseason to work each year. We discussed how we will conduct member voting at length. We’re going to take some more time to try to come up with a way that will work for as many members as possible. What is important is that every LAFS member will get to vote for who represents them on the council. We also discussed how we will find new council members. The best way that we could figure is that anyone who is interested in running for a council seat should let a current council member know. In the future we will likely have one or two people organize the vote. Each council member will get a two year term. We will stagger the current members so we don’t replace the entire council at once. The council will meet at least five times per year, in January, April, July, and November for general meetings, and in December to discuss the following year’s tournament schedule. We will hold two general membership meetings per year, in April and September. We would also like to decide in the future what the expectations are for a council member.
We talked for a while about finances. In 2014, the club spent $35.40 more than we brought in. Most of our money comes from Tuesday/Thursday leagues, Bill’s disc sales, tag sales, and cash donations. About 2/3 of the money we spent was on course maintenance. The other third included usage fees for the parks, PDGA fees, Web site hosting, and other small things. Jon, or whomever the future treasurer is, will provide the club with a brief rundown of the finances twice per year. Anyone who is interested in knowing more about where our money comes from and where it’s going should talk to Jon. He will provide any LAFS member with the details upon request.
There have been requests for the club to get non-profit status. At this point, we do not believe there is enough money coming in to warrant the cost and effort involved in that process. Anyone who wants to make a tax-deductable donation can make it to one of the parks, dedicated for use on the disc golf course. We will eventually move to get non-profit status through the IRS.
Here’s a brief rundown on park usage fees and that $1 per person that we always collect. Buchmiller charges us $0.60 per person to hold events that cost money. Overlook charges us $0.50. The remainder, and the entire dollar at Ship Rock and Roland, go to the club to help pay for course maintenance. Any event held on those four courses (LAFS territory) that charges an entry fee must collect $1 per person to cover these costs. Anyone is free to run an event as long as they collect that $1. See Jon for more details.
We will be doing tags a little differently this year. There will be three levels, gold, silver, and bronze, so that everyone has a chance at getting a top tag. The season runs from April through September. The tag you bring to a league event will count for the overall league standings as well as the tag you leave with, so there is an incentive to play between league rounds. Also, if there are more than five tag members playing anytime, they can count the round in the league standings. There must be at least five, $1 per person must be collected (for the club), and a form that Jerry is creating will need to be filled out so he can record the round in the computer. More info will be posted before the season starts about all of this. Questions can be directed to Jerry on tags.
We also discussed the handicaps, which will be mostly the same as before with a few tweaks to the math to try to make things more fair. Jerry is the man to talk to on this too if you want to know the details of how the system works.
We approved Jerry’s suggestion to hand out year-end prizes for the weekly leagues.
We will need lots of help with course work, as usual. We will try to hold a few weekend work parties and will eventually be keeping equipment at both Roland and Ship rock. Contact Bill if you have some time to help weed whack or do other stuff around the courses. Thanks!
There was a discussion about the club selling discs directly, but we are not going to do that for now.
Kurt will handle the first PDGA series at Akron (Thursdays). Darrell will handle the second.
We recommitted to helping new players learn the sport.
We discussed guidelines for running events under the LAFS umbrella.
We approved $500-$1000 of club funds to contribute to the fund raiser to get new baskets at Buchmiller. The Park has agreed to pay 50% of the cost. We will have 18 new baskets for the shorts and move the current short baskets to the longs. Jon will be leading the effort to raise our half of the funds, about $3000. We are already making progress. He will be posting much more information about this in the near future.
LAFS has a new Web site in the works that Kurt hopes to launch very soon. We also have a Twitter account now.
There are a lot of tournaments in the works for the Lancaster area this year. Linc is planning on TDing the Buchmiller Super Thriller on May 16. Jerry is working on a May tournament at South Hills. Darrell is working on the Akron Open in June. Kurt is hoping to run the Trilogy Challenge again. Much more to come on all of those and more events later in the year.
Any questions, comment, or concerns can be directed to any of the LAFS council members. Please speak up to make sure your voice is heard.