The Vermont Paddlers Club

Id

18

Mtgdate

2007-04-10

Purpose

Executive Committee Meeting

Officers

James Raboin, Tony Shaw, Richard Larsen, Brent W. Osborne

Others

Dan Beideck

Agenda

Old Business
Instructor Training Scholarship
Trip Submission Process
Memorial Day Weekend
Verbiage for non-ACA-insured Trips
VPC Calendar
Class II Clinic Discrepancies
Summer/Fall Schedule

Opening

This meeting was held at Dan Beideck's home at 7:00pm

Reports

RL distributed a treasury report to meeting attendees. The club netted ~$180 for the pool sessions at the UVM pool this past winter. We agreed to offer a free membership to J.Floyd for providing the club discounted pricing on a VPC banner. The bottom line, financially, is that the club is in good shape.

Newbiz

1. Instructor Training Scholarship: Given the positive financial state of the club, DB raised the question of whether we thought the VPC should make available some funding to go towards training members to become paddle instructors. In particular, the outing club at St. Michael's College (SMC) is offering a 4-day ACA Intro to Whitewater Instructor Development Workshop (IDW) in June. St. Mike's is already offering a $100 discount to VPC members. After some discussion, all voted in favor of making available $200 of club money to be used for helping to pay for a member's participation in the SMC (or other institution's equivalent) instructor training program. The maximum to be given to any one individual is $100. Cost for this program would then be just $250 for a VPC member who takes advantage of this scholarship. The recipient(s) of this scholarship will be expected to assist with the novice or Class II clinics this year (2007) as well as next year (2008). BWO agreed to contact Todd Wright at SMC and to write up a description of this scholarship for the VPC news.

2. Trip Submission: DB brought up the hypothetical issue that trips could be submitted or scheduled which conflict in the date, location and/or nature (ie relative difficulty) of the river. It is not in the interest of the club, for example, to have two trips scheduled for the same day which are on different class II-III rivers in the same geographic vicinity. In the event of this occuring there ought to be a process in place to resolve the conflict. After much discussion and debate, it was agreed that the Board of Directors (BOD) gives conflict resolution power to the acting activities director. If greater input is required, the activities director has the option to lead a discussion about the said conflict with the BOD either via email, or at the next meeting, if time permits. TS and DB will make a final edit of this clarification and post it to the "Trip Organizing 101" page on vtpaddlers.com.

3. Memorial Day Weekend: There is no paddle trip planned for this weekend, however the instructor workshop (for novice and class II clinic instructors) is scheduled for that Sunday. Should we ask NS to change the date of the workshop? (1) so we can have a Memorial Day Weekend VPC trip or (2) because it is the Sunday prior to Memorial Day and there may be a lack of participation...after brief debate, nothing was decided upon.

4. Verbiage for non-ACA-insured Trips: CJ sent an email with concern about how the description of VPC trips that were not ACA-insured was written. From a trip leader's perspective there is confusion about who is responsible during one of these trips. RL initially agreed to rewrite the non-ACA insured verbiage and send to DB, but some heated debate ensued. DB made the point that the ACA has a well-written insurance policy on their website. We discussed changing the VPC trip submission process to include this policy on our trip submission page and asking trip leaders to click "YES/Accept" (indicating they want ACA insurance, which would then lead them to a page of expectations that the ACA as well as VPC has for an ACA-insured VPC trip), or "NO" (indicating they do not want their trip to be ACA-insured). More discussion continued, specifically around the issue of VPC liability waivers. RL motioned to require all VPC trips to require a waiver of liability. There was no second to the motion and we all agreed that this discussion could continue for hours, if not days. It was decided to revisit this issue in the near future.

5. VPC Calendar: Should regional (non VPC) paddling-related events be allowed to be posted to our calendar? We agreed that the necessity of being a VPC member to post events to the calendar should prevent abuse of this option. The activities director will further use his/her discretion in monitoring the events on the calendar.

6. Class II Clinic Discrepancies: It was noted that the B&S lists the cost of the clinic as $25, while the website has the cost at $15. DB suggested that we increase the cost per student of the class II clinic for the reason being that many of the students will not become VPC members (the clinic is held at the Deerfield R. in western Mass, not in Vermont.). We could give a substantial discount to students who have previously graduated from the novice clinic. It was proposed that the official cost structure for the class II clinic be $15 for VPC members and previous novice grads, and $50 for non-VPC members. This cost does not include the required $10 for ACA insurance. The motion passes with RL abstaining from the vote. In addition, other logistical and financial details need to be worked out for this clinic, and the date is approaching rather quickly. It was agreed that the BOD collectively, rather than the Paddling Chair alone , should participate in making these decisions.

7. DB reminded everyone to be thinking about trips for the Summer and Fall and will be requesting input from VPC members. It was asked that there be some novice-esque trips scheduled so participants of the novice and class II clinics have some options to keep them active with paddling.

Oldbiz

1. B&S Mailings: JR was concerned that the Bow & Sterns which had to be snail-mailed to a few members had not yet been done. TS said he had taken care of this and that RL had written a $62 check for the postage/printing costs. All 2006 VPC members have been sent a B&S, either electronically, or through the mail. New members, and renewals pre-2006 still need to receive a new B&S. TS noted that of the roughly 145 B&S that went out electronically, only 1 recipient reported an inability to open the .pdf file. We agreed that a "Final Notice" email will be composed and sent to 2006 members who have yet to pay their 2007 dues. About 72 households are in this category. RL agreed to write a non-threatening/gentle email urging these households not to let their VPC memberships expire.

2. Web Hosting: At present, the club pays $20 a month for maintaining the vtpaddlers.com website, although RL has been writing checks for $25/mo. We're currently at 74% of our 100MB capacity. As the number of posts and especially pictures increases, we may approach 100% capacity. The question was asked if we wanted a bigger hosting package. We can increase our limit to 250MB which will increase costs to $30/mo. After discussion we reached the verdict that we should do nothing for now, but keep an eye on how close we are to the sotrage limit and make a decision to increase only when we hit the 90-95% capacity range. In addition, RL will make proper payments of $20/mo to TS for the current hosting package.

Closing

We all thanked Dan for hosting the meeting and for providing snacks and beverages. There was brief and informal discussion of American Whitewater's mention of Otter Creek as well as some talk about the licensed dam releases on the Missisquoi R., which the VPC has never taken advantage of. We thought it would be prudent to look further into this including the details of the promised water releases as well as the reach of river which would be involved. The meeting was adjourned at 9:15pm

Nextmtg

2007-05-08

Author

Brent W. Osborne

Postdate

2007-05-03

Blessed

1

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