The meeting was called to order at 8:45 PM by Chairman Louise Lepie at the Houston Athletic Fencing Center at 4997 West Bellfort, Houston. Other Officers present were Vice Chairman John Trojanowski and Secretary Matt Delevoryas. Treasurer Dennis Meyers was absent. Division member Nicole Trojanowski was present.

By general consent, the minutes of the previous (Nov. 2) meeting were accepted as they had appeared on the Division Web site for the last month and distributed on paper just before the meeting.

The Chairman asked for a report from the office of Treasurer, and the immediate past Treasurer John Trojanowski spoke. He stated that there had been no activity in the savings account since the previous meeting, other than an estimated $1 of interest earned, and that ad of the last meeting there was a balance of $4,213.79. He noted that he expected to prepare, in Dennis Meyers' absence, a financial statement which could be expected to be made available on the Division Web site. The balance sheet would likely be extremely simple, showing a single asset of the savings account, and liabilities of an account payable to Matt Delevoryas (for unreimbursed Divisionals housing expenses for Jerry Benson, and for the cost of replacing a weight set borrowed from Clear Lake Fencing Club by Divisionals and not returned to CLFC afterward), a restricted fund for fencing equipment maintenance, and the members' equity. John also reported that there are ongoing failures to bring the signature authority for the Division savings account into conformity with the Bylaws. ("It shall also be the responsibility of the Chairman to insure that any divisional bank accounts shall require at least two signatures. The two required signatures shall be the Chairman and the Treasurer.") He reported that when the current terms began, the signatories still had not been able to be changed from the two signatories when the account was originally opened, specifically that of then-Secretary August Skopik and then-Vice Chairman John Trojanowski. He noted that in the post-9/11 era, removing signatories from accounts was easy, but adding signatories to accounts required giving substantial personal information to the financial institution, and that Dennis Meyers had not been available to help with such matters since his term had begun. He believed, but could not recall with certainty, that August Skopik, no longer any Officer, had recently been successfully removed from the account, but that he, former-Vice Chairman, immediate past Treasurer, and current Vice Chairman, was still on the account. After some discussion, the logical course seemed to be to proceed promptly to add current Chairman Louise Lepie as a signatory to come closer to the ultimate goal, even if it was still impractical to add Dennis Meyers yet. During informal conversation, it was noted that the Division Web site had a page which stated a policy "regarding release of division reports", saying that it was Executive Committee policy to decline requests for reports (particularly financial reports) except on those occasions when required by the Bylaws. Desire was expressed that the page be removed, but it was noted that the page still accurately portrayed the policy of the Executive Committee as adopted November 13, 2003. Then, the assembly resolved by general consent to rescind the policy adopted November 13, 2003 concerning release of division reports.

Matt Delevoryas, as the person delegated to handle Division equipment loans, reported on the state of the equipment. The two main strip scoring equipment sets were in good shape, with the floor cords still missing for the "red set" and still being substituted for by a better floor cord set owned by Texas A&M University Fencing Club. Although the previous meeting had authorized purchase of replacements for the Division cords, Matt had yet to exhaust the final resources in attempting to locate the lost cords. Replacement microcontroller chips had been received and very recently installed in the Favero FULL-ARM-05 scoring boxes. These chips were two-program chips, capable of allowing the use of the scoring box either as an "old timings" or as a "new timings" box, to meet the demands of any given tournament or event where it might not be possible to assemble enough boxes all capable of one of the timings. These chips have had very little demand among owners of the FULL-ARM-05 boxes, so there was little experience in the field about their behavior, and a higher chance than with the one-program chip that there might be an error, but testing in actual use had failed to show any reason for worry. A reimbursement request had yet to be made to the Treasurer, pending some simple arithmetic to split the Division and non-Division portions of the parts order, and pending greater confidence by Matt that the chips would stay in service rather than be returned due to any unanticipated defect. The Division does own another scoring box recently recovered from a very long term loan. Until recently, this box had been identified as an Escrime Technologies (St. George) SG01, but that very day Matt had correctly identified it as what Escrime Technologies itself calls an SG21V1 (which bears no resemblance to current "SG21" boxes, which are actually what the manufacturer calls NSG21 boxes, causing the initial idea that the box might be an SG21 to be dismissed). There is an upgrade available for the SG21V1 for "new timings", so it is reasonable to believe that this box can see future life. It is not yet established what age of firmware is currently in it, hence whether it is or is not conforming as an "old timings" box for foil and/or saber. Almost certainly, it is conforming for épée. Since the previous Executive Committee meeting, the two main sets of equipment had been lent to South Houston High School Fencing Team for the Early Jingle Bell, to Bayou City Fencing Academy for the RYC although they never had to be deployed, and to Clear Lake Fencing Club for the BFE E and Under. They had already been requested and, subject to the possibility of pre-emption due to future yet higher-priority requests, granted to CLFC for the J.O. Qualifiers, to TAMUFC for the Heavy Metal, and to TAMUFC for Divisionals, and they were subject to call by all four of the remaining SSCC tournaments, and Sectionals.

The assembly then began discussing a series of matters pertaining to the Division Web site, mostly concerning issues where the home page might need to be altered, which specifically was omitted from authority granted to the Division Webmaster at the November meeting.

The assembly discussed communication which could be interpreted as a request to make changes on the Web site to reflect an enterprise independent of the Division (save that the tournaments involved would be divisional tournaments) called the Houston Cup. No related motions resulted.

John Trojanowski moved to authorize and request the Division Webmaster to add a news item to the Web site home page bringing attention to the upcoming J.O. qualifiers. The motion passed without objection.

Matt Delevoryas presented a laundry list of technical changes he wished to make to the HTML underlying the home page, for reasons of ease of readability by the Webmaster, ease of maintenance of the home page, and greater uniformity between the HTML underlying the home page and that of all other pages on the Web site. He noted that some of the changes would be easily noticed by an astute observer, particularly a webmaster, but none of the changes involved changing the overt appearance or the information content of the home page. John Trojanowski moved that the Division Webmaster be authorized to make changes to the home page of the Web site provided the changes were limited to infrastructure changes without effect on the overt appearance, visible organization, or information content of the home page. The motion passed without objection.

It was noted that there was an outdated news item on the home page concerning a referee development opportunity which had been in conjunction with the RYC, which the Webmaster had no authority to migrate to the "Past News" page. Louise Lepie moved to authorize and request the Webmaster to move the referee development news item off the home page. The motion passed without objection.

The assembly discussed esthetic and layout problems on the Web site home page associated with real, proposed, and future hypothetical news items with a large amount of text. The consensus was that the current layout of the home page, and the philosophy of having current news item text entirely on the home page, would not tolerate (in an esthetically acceptable manner) the presence of a large amount of text. Three alternatives were discussed - 1) the status quo (with the attendant limitation on amount of text for news items), 2) creating a new "News" page which would bear the entire text of all current news items, where blocks of text on the page would be targets of links from news "headlines" on the home page, and 3) committing to the existence of a family of auxiliary pages each of which would contain the entire text of longer news items, and which would be the target of links from short introductory text which would occur intermixed with the entire text of shorter news items without auxiliary pages. After reaching a consensus on the details, Matt Delevoryas moved that henceforth the home page would no longer have the entire text of ordinary current news items, but instead headlines which would link to corresponding full text occurring elsewhere on the Web site as provided for by the Webmaster, initially but not necessarily always a separate "News" page, and that the Webmaster be authorized and requested to make the appropriate changes to the home page to accomplish this. The motion passed without debate or objection. The assembly did note that it realized that, given how it had phrased the resolution, such prohibitions as had been and were still in place against the Webmaster altering the home page were understood neither to apply to the news text once moved off the home page as requested by this motion, nor to apply to any analogous future news next not actually on the home page.

The assembly spoke about The Committee [Secretary's note: The phrase "The Committee" herein is meant to refer to the committee with no known official name which was constituted by agreement at the November 16^th meeting of the membership of the Division, composed of a representative of each club, to recommend a policy for awarding certain key tournaments to host clubs], which produced a recommendation which was adopted by the Executive Committee without fundamental changes at its April 16^th meeting. It was noted that there was legal ambiguity about the charter of The Committee, hence it was impossible to say that it was discharged when it delivered a report, but there was also legal ambiguity about the authority by which it was convened, hence the authority required to discharge The Committee. It was clear that The Committee had been superseded by the creation of the Division Board, and any continued legal existence of The Committee served no practical function. The Division Board had already acted on November 6^th to dissolve The Committee to such extent as it might possess the necessary power, and the Division Board had invited the Executive Committee to do likewise. To this end, John Trojanowski moved:

The motion passed without objection.

Matt Delevoryas addressed the assembly, reminding it of the protocols involving "the rotation", the allocation of the "big three" tournaments to host clubs which was adopted at the April 16^th meeting, for which the Executive Committee was the administrator of the rotation in the absence of the exercise of power to delegate that role. He noted that whereas Young Elites of Houston had joined the USFA about two weeks into November, it would be appropriate for the Executive Committee to acknowledge that Young Elites of Houston had assumed the current last spot in "the rotation", the 16^th spot, immediately following the Galveston Fencing Club which had been the previous club to establish USFA membership. John Trojanowski moved that the Young Elites of Houston be acknowledged to have assumed that position in "the rotation", and that the Executive Committee welcomes aboard the newest Division club. The motion passed without objection.

Matt Delevoryas moved that John Trojanowski administer "the rotation" through July 31, 2005, including selecting the date for the start of the "rotating" of "the rotation" for 2005-2006 "big three" tournaments. The motion passed without objection.

The assembly discussed recent information from the USFA National Office concerning the divisional tournaments, the obligation that the Division be represented for the conducting of tournaments, and the liability of the Division for everything being done procedurally and legally correctly. It was noted that the way the Gulf Coast TX Division is structured by its Bylaws, the customary way the Division is represented is through the bout committee of the tournament. The Division Chairman appoints (or, if the appointment is not filled, acts as) the Chairman of the Division's Bout Committee. In turn, the Chairman of the Bout Committee appoints the members of the bout committees for each divisional tournament (usually depending heavily on suggestions by the local organizing committee), and he himself serves as the de facto chairman of those bout committees unless he delegates the role. The current Chairman of the Bout Committee, John Trojanowski, noted that he had not felt that he had had sufficient time to react satisfactorily for all recent tournaments. After some talk to determine what the Executive Committee would consider a reasonable action, Matt Delevoryas moved that the Executive Committee requires local organizing committees to notify the Division's Bout Committee by three weeks prior to a planned tournament to provide time for the Bout Committee to assure the appointment of an adequate tournament bout committee, and without which notice USFA sanction, including awarding of classifications, will not exist for the tournament. The motion passed without debate or objection.

Continuing on the general topic of USFA National Office expectations for divisional tournaments, the Executive Committee noted thoughts recently communicated from the National Office, and the requirement in the USFA's Operations Manual, "Classifications cannot be awarded if adequate notice of the competition has not been given to the members of the organizing body via such means as a published schedule, newsletter, or notices sent to all USFA clubs within the division or section." The National Office was holding the divisions responsible for compliance, but at the same time the National Office was not specifying what timeliness constitutes "adequate notice", and, lacking either such guidance from Colorado Springs and also lacking any local rules, local organizing committees could not easily be held to any particular standards. After discussion, John Trojanowski moved: "Given that the Operations Manual specifies that divisional tournaments must have adequate advance notice to the fencers of the division, but given that the National Office has no firm specifications of sufficient time, then the Executive Committee is adopting these specifications of what adequate notice shall be: 1) If notice of a tournament is by means of being included on a published schedule of the Division, and the means of publication is delivery to the fencers, then that delivery must have been initiated 15 days before the tournament if delivered by physical means like postal mail or 10 days before the tournament if delivered by essentially immediate means like electronic delivery. 2) If notice of a tournament is by means of being included on a published schedule of the Division, and the means of publication is to make the schedule available to fencers to fetch, then the inclusion on that schedule must occur 30 days before the tournament. 3) If notice of a tournament is by means of notification of all clubs in the Division, then that notification must have been initiated 15 days before the tournament if delivered by physical means like postal mail or 10 days before the tournament if delivered by essentially immediate means like electronic delivery. 4) If notice of a tournament is by being listed on the internet on askFRED, then the listing on askFRED must occur 30 days before the tournament, but local organizing committees are admonished that while sufficient timeliness of notice might be possible by listing on askFRED, the legitimacy and USFA sanction of a tournament cannot be created by just being listed on askFRED. 5) If notice of a tournament is by any means acceptable to the USFA but not already described herein, then the minimum time requirement will be indeterminate, but both issuers of notice and enforcers of notification requirements should consider themselves guided by an attempt to provide analogously timely notification to the minimum times for the situations specified herein." The motion passed without debate or objection. John Trojanowski then moved that the Webmaster be authorized and requested to modify the Division Web site home page to add a news item if news items still appear on the home page, or a headline linking to news item text elsewhere if the home page has been modified (as specified in an earlier resolution) to have headlines only, where the news item text describes this new timeliness specification. The motion passed without debate or objection. John Trojanowski then moved analogously, concerning the immediately preceding topic, that the Webmaster be authorized and requested to modify the Division Web site home page to add a news item if news items still appear on the home page, or a headline linking to news item text elsewhere if the home page has been modified (as specified in an earlier resolution) to have headlines only, where the news item text describes the new timeliness specification for notification of the Division's Bout Committee. The motion passed without debate or objection.

The assembly entertained information received from the National Office concerning collusion and favoring an opponent. Failure to follow relevant USFA rules and policies can jeopardize not only the rewards of individual accomplishments in a tournament, but the USFA sanction and the insurance coverage for the tournament. Observers may be sent to tournaments to observe conduct during the tournaments.

As he had at the previous meeting, Matt Delevoryas questioned the replacement of the Division Web site home page by one of the Officers between the last (November) and second last (September) meetings. At the November meeting, he noted the consensus reached at the September meeting that the Officers wished to examine a final draft before any such substantial reformatting. (No action resulted in November from the discussion, and it was implicit that the assembly ratified the current appearance and could address any dissatisfaction by proposing to alter the new current appearance.) In November, Matt questioned two titles appearing on the page which he did not understand to be positions which exist or have any authority, one of which had remained unaddressed - "Tournament Chair". After some discussion, the best available explanation was that "Tournament Chair" was a synonym for Chairman of the Division's Bout Committee, but that the person listed as "Tournament Chair" (John Trojanowski) was already listed as the Chairman of the Division's Bout Committee. Matt moved that the Webmaster be authorized and requested to modify the Division Web site home page to delete all indication that John Trojanowski is "Tournament Chair". The motion passed without objection.

Louise Lepie raised a broad topic concerning the idea of additional members of the Gulf Coast Division community being invited to be present for some meetings of the members of the Executive Committee, for a variety of reasons. After discussion of practicalities, the consensus was that this would be most efficient at meetings where the Officers were present, as opposed to being legal meetings of the Executive Committee where the Executive Committee could transact business. Such meetings could serve both to receive community input solicited in advance about specific topics, and to receive unsolicited information about topics not known beforehand to be of pressing interest to the community. After study of a calendar, Louise Lepie moved that the Officers of the Division hold a meeting on the evening of January 25^th, to which all clubs will be invited to send one or more representatives. The motion passed.

By general consent, the meeting adjourned at 11:57 PM.