Minutes

WBL Board Meeting

March 19, 2003

In Attendance: Barbara Doran, Wei Bao, Don Berman, Ben Laden, Steve Robinson, Barbara Shaw, Fred King, Dick Wegman, Dave Ruderman and non-voting members Donna Rogall, Michael Carroad.

Barbara Doran called to meeting to order at 7:28 P.M.

She announced that the ACBL Board of Governors elections are coming up and she is running. The Board meets the first Sunday at the Summer Nationals. She has reported to the ACBL that our Unit has 10 voting members this year but will have 11 voting members next year. She also said that she will present all of the awards at the year end meeting. She will get Lee Jensen a gift for retiring. Elections are coming up and she wanted to know who was running for offices. Dick Wegman is running for President, Fred King for Vice President, Barbara Shaw for Secretary, and Steve Robinson for Treasurer. There are 3 two year at large positions open.  Don Berman is running again leaving two 2 year positions and one 1 year position open finishing Lee’s term of office.  We need decisions by next Wednesday so there can be announcements in the bulletin. Possible candidates are Ron Starr, Charity Sack, Carol Banks, Ron Zuker, and Steve Forsythe.

The Minutes were approved.

Steve Robinson reported that we have $705.50 in the checking account. The February tournament made money but the profit was low due to the weather. He did purchase Quicken to do the treasurer's reports. Barbara Ames reviewed the books and said that they were all right. Dave Ruderman asked how much we pay for running the dealing machine? We pay Rick Larkin $9.00 per box of boards to duplicate the boards. So a sectional costs us about $180.00 for the pre-dealt hands. We also do the pre-dealt hands for regionals and that costs the regional about $2500.00. The Treasurer’s report was accepted.

Michael Carroad announced that Rick Larkin went on vacation for 2 weeks so the dealing machine is not available. We will duplicate hands manually during that time.

Ben Laden stated that our next Sectional is May 1-4th. We will be using the Christ the King Church for Thursday night, Friday and Saturday. The Sunday team games will be held at the Washington Bridge Center and Laurel Bridge Club. The B/C Swiss is at the WBC and the A/X BAM is in Laurel. The location for the October 7-10 Sectional has not been decided. It was suggested that we look into using the Montgomery County Schools. Dave Ruderman asked that we find a new place to store our chairs which are in his garage. Kitty Gottfried needs volunteer help cleaning up and making sandwiches. Dick Wegman mentioned that the Church is willing to rent us their facility if the space is available. The Silver Spring Civic Center renovations will not be completed until 2005. They remember us and certainly are interested in having us back as renters. We might be able to have someone on the Planning Committee. We need a food facility and 8’ x 8’ per table for space. Steve Robinson reminded us that we will not have the church for April 17th. So our Unit game will be at the WBC. The NVBA is not having any game that night.

Donna Rogall said that she needs help doing the tabulating of the Survey Responses. Dick Wegman suggested that we correlate the responses by flights. Steve Robinson suggested that we pick out the areas in which we are most interested and tabulate them immediately. We are especially interested in the flight C responses. Carroad mentioned that parking seems to be the most important issue at Nationals.

New Business:

Donna Rogall said that only 10 non-members renewed their Bulletin subscriptions. Nadine Wood went through the list of people who should continue to get the bulletin free. Donna asked if she should send postcards as a reminder. Barbara Doran decided that no postcards will be sent.

Donna reported that she talked to Margo and expressed her views on combining the NVBA and WBL bulletins. Margo decided that no meeting was necessary. In Donna’s view it was not save us any money and might cost us more. There would be no extra space. We would have to print more copies. We would have to split the cost along membership lines. And we would have to get a new postal permit and that would cost us $.20 more per person to get the permit. The postage would cost us about $200.00 per issue.

Fred King reported on the Unit Growth committee. There is interest among the area bridge teachers to have the WBL buy teaching books in bulk and to sell them to the teachers at cost. The bulk cost would be 100 books at $10.00 per book.

Don Berman said that one of the Laurel members took a teaching class at the Philadelphia Nationals and wishes to start a beginning class in Laurel. We said that would be all right.

Steve Forsythe’s class on Thursday nights is averaging 2 tables. They had 3 1/2 tables at the last class in March. Steve gave us a list of people with less than 20 points to call. There are approximately 900 members with less than 20 points.

We are going to draft a letter on School competition. Fred went through the list of people who had not renewed their membership for the last two years. Age was the main reason. Charity Sack has taken the lead preparing a pamphlet for area realtors, welcome wagons and county recreation departments. She has nothing yet. Marlys Moholt is willing to coordinate carpools for those who can not drive at night. She will set up the initial contact but will not arrange carpools each week after the contact has been established.

Barbara Shaw the teacher for the Bridgeatschools! program at the Jefferson School asked the WBL to purchase memberships for the 4 boys completing a full year of bridge lessons. The Board agreed to buy the memberships at $14.74 each as a graduation present for the boys. Dave Ruderman asked for a progress report from Nadine Wood, National Chairman of the Bridgeatschools! program.

We decided to purchase a large cake for the game tomorrow night to celebrate our newest National Champions. John and Bill won the Flight C Grand National Teams. In addition, Bill Cole and Ellen Cherniavsky were 4th in the National Mixed Pairs and Jane Sturgis’s team was 19th in the National Swiss.

An announcement about the Alexandria Regional will be included in the next bulletin with a full spread in the June bulletin.

Steve Robinson reported that he sent a 1099 form to the man at the armory who we pay to do the clean up after our tournaments. We paid him $700.00 per sectional for clean up. Michael Carroad said that he doesn’t work for us, he works for the armory. However, it was pointed out that we wrote the man his check directly so it seems he was working directly for us. Dick Wegman suggested that perhaps we should have included his fee in the armory rent and then let the armory pay him. Lee Jensen, tournament director, was not happy with the situation.

The next meeting is April, 23, 2003 at Barbara Doran's house. The May meeting will be at Dick Wegman’s house.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:30 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,

Barbara Shaw, Recording Secretary