The meeting was called to order at 7:46 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.

The draft minutes of the previous (Dec. 7) meeting, as they had appeared on the Division Web site for the last month, were discussed. Certain sections were questioned, but ultimately judged to be accurate reports of actions which might profit from revision, rather than inaccurate reports. John Trojanowski moved that the draft minutes be accepted. The motion passed.

The Chairman asked for a report from the office of Treasurer, and the immediate past Treasurer John Trojanowski spoke. He stated that the Division had earned $4, and the Clear Lake Fencing club had earned $4, under the 50% - 50% split policy of the Division Board of the $8 profit from the Junior Olympics qualifiers. With that deposit, and a trifling of interest earned, the savings account continued to have a balance of just over $4,200. However, he described accounts payable to Matt Delevoryas of $122.98 for housing Jerry Benson for Divisionals, $25.57 for procuring a replacement for the weight set which Clear Lake Fencing Club lent to Divisionals but which was never returned, $105.39 for the current year of Web hosting and domain name registration, and $116.00 to be drawn from the $200 of the equipment maintenance fund for the dual-program "Leipzig"-capable chips for the Division's two Favero FULL-ARM-05 scoring boxes. John also noted that nothing had yet changed involving signature authority for the savings account, with neither the Chairman nor the Treasurer being signatories despite the requirement of 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.") It was agreed that John would very shortly cause to be delivered to Louise Lepie the paperwork both for her own required personal information, and for that for Dennis Meyers, which she would seek to get Dennis to complete.

Matt Delevoryas, as the person delegated to handle Division equipment loans, reported on the state of the equipment. He reported:

Louise Lepie noted that the home page of the Division's Web site had a paragraph which she had written, appearing under the heading "A MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE CHAIR", which had become somewhat dated. She cared to have that portion of the home page removed. But, she also cared to have some other text appear in its stead, text which she had yet to devise. It was noted that content changes to the home page had explicitly not been delegated to be within the authority of the Division Webmaster, but instead had remained under the direct management of the Executive Committee. After some discussion, Louise Lepie moved that the text on the home page associated with the heading "A MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE CHAIR" always be at the discretion of the Chairman. The motion passed. It was generally understood both that the Chairman wished the Webmaster to remove the current text promptly, and that the Chairman would deliver new text to the Webmaster in the near future.

Louise Lepie moved that the membership of the Division be contacted to inform them that a logo to represent the Gulf Coast Texas Division would be adopted by the Executive Committee by selection by vote of the voting members of the Division present at the 2005 Annual Meeting, and that submissions for candidate logos be to the Division Webmaster by two weeks before the Annual Meeting, for display on the Web site. The motion passed.

The Division Webmaster, Matt Delevoryas, reported on recent problems with Web hosting for the Division's Web site. He reported that the Division's virtual server was useless or inoperative from 2 AM Friday, December 31^st until 4 PM January 1^st, and that there was minor damage to three database tables which he corrected by restoring from backups. He reported that there was a secondary outage starting the evening of January the 1^st which was corrected the morning of Sunday the 2nd, and which the hosting company had attributed to lingering problems from the initial failure. No problems had been observed since. The hosting company had increased the current 12 months of hosting to 13 months in consideration of the problems experienced.

The delegated administer "the rotation" (the allocation of the "big three" tournaments to host clubs which was adopted at the April 16^th, 2004 meeting) through July 31, 2004, John Trojanowski, reported that during the past month Brazosport Fencing Extravaganza (formerly known as Brazosport College Fencing Club) had rejoined the USFA, and as such had been added to "the rotation" in the current last position, 17^th.

There was discussion of the meeting the Executive Committee had resolved one month earlier would be held on the evening of January 25^th, to which all clubs will be invited to send one or more representatives It was agreed that, despite any indications to the contrary, that meeting would not be a legal meeting of the Executive Committee where it could act, but rather a special meeting purely for the sake of communication between the Division and the Executive Committee. There was consideration of whether the meeting would have any practical requirements which would need approval of the Executive Committee, for example some appropriate change to the home page of the Division's Web site. The general consensus was that there was no such need for the Executive Committee to take any official actions.

There was extended discussion of the similar matters of Division sponsorship of referee development opportunities and armoring education. For referee development, it was noted that it would be nearly impossible to avoid some club having the appearance of special benefit because of it being held in conjunction with a tournament it is hosting. For armoring education, it would also be difficult to avoid the appearance of favoritism if any paid presenter were popularly perceived, even if incorrectly, as employed by someone with Division authority. Notwithstanding this, it was still the intent of the Executive Committee to facilitate education concerning both refereeing and armoring. It was noted that the Division Board had at its last meeting expressed its strong wish that the Executive Committee provide referee development in conjunction with the Space City Rendezvous and Divisionals, where the Division would bear the incremental cost of having the referee education. But, it had been recent experience that it was not always practical to pick a date and hope to be able to fit a referee instructor or referee examiner to it. It was noted that the overall cost would be least if the instructor or examiner, or someone without those credentials but with equal refereeing capability and equal expense, would have to be in town anyway for the needs of a tournament. But, noting the total cost specifically of having Gary van der Wege in Houston was sufficiently reasonable that it would be reasonable if he were involved in referee development in conjunction with a tournament not demanding a referee of his caliber. Indeed, it seemed more efficient to inquire when Gary could be available and approach whoever happened to have a tournament then, rather than solicit responses from interested tournaments before determining Gary's availability.

Matt Delevoryas moved that, until the next Executive Committee meeting, the Chairman be empowered to arrange referee seminars, with the consent of the three other Officers. The motion passed.

Louise Lepie moved to solicit requests from clubs to have Division-sponsored introductory-level armory workshops, to be open to the whole Division, designed specifically to address owners of fencing gear without previous armoring knowledge, with a syllabus made known in advance to assure understanding of what audience is being targeted, and with the requests being delivered to Matt Delevoryas. The motion passed. It was understood that the Secretary would make this known to the Division.

The assembly noted that the Division Board at its last meeting had expressed its strong wish that the Executive Committee delegate authority in a fashion allowing for timely updating of the home page of the Web site. It was noted that current policy specified that the delegation of authority in November to the Division Webmaster to alter the content of the Web site explicitly excluded the home page, leaving the content of the home page under the direct control of the Executive Committee (with the exception of the "A MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE CHAIR" area, as provided earlier in the meeting). And, it was further noted that with the relocation of the texts of news items from the home page to a new "News" page in accord with a December decision, it was possible for the Webmaster to alter news text at will, but that there would be no way from reading the home page to know of the existence of any changed news text! John Trojanowski moved that the Webmaster be authorized to change the news item headlines on the home page at his discretion. The motion passed.

Since the November resolution of the Executive Committee giving blanket authority to the Division Webmaster ("to be responsible for the work of maintaining the Division Web site, and to be authorized to decide matters of appearance, organization, and information content of the Web site other than the home page and within such restrictions as may be established by action of Division bodies with relevant authority"), question had arisen about whether that blanket authority did or did not take precedence over all then-existing policies of the Executive Committee concerning specific portions of the Web site. The consensus was that it did not. To make that consensus binding, Matt Delevoryas moved that the blanket authority granted to the Webmaster in November does not supersede such specific policies concerning specific areas of the Web site as the Executive Committee already had in force at the time. The motion passed.

Addition of August 2003 - September 2004 tournament results to the Web site. It was noted that there existed three different sets of policies concerning for which tournaments the results would be added to the Division's Web site. Before the 2003-2004, fencing year, the Executive Committee had never had any policy, and the November grant of blanket authority to the Webmaster left the Webmaster is at liberty to add, and not add, tournament result information for tournaments before August 2003. The September Executive Committee meeting created policy concerning future tournaments, requiring either partial or full results for various tournaments and authorizing the Secretary to decide whether to include partial results for additional tournaments. But, for the time in between August 2003 and the September Executive Committee meeting, there was a collection of informal understandings dating from the previous term of the Executive Committee about what would be included, and what was on the Web site at that time was the result of following those understandings. Matt Delevoryas noted that the biggest practical problem with this maze of policies was that there were certain tournaments from August 2003 through September 2004 for which a case could be made to include results of Gulf Coast fencers, yet neither the Secretary nor the Webmaster was at liberty to include them. Louise Lepie moved that the policy adopted in September for inclusion of future tournament results ("that complete results of any future tournaments of the Division, results of Division members in future Southwest Section Circuit Cup tournaments, results of Division members in future national tournaments, results of Division members in future sectional qualifying tournaments, and the results of Division members in such other future tournaments which are deemed sufficiently nearby and/or sufficiently major by the Secretary, would be added to the Division Web site on such page or pages as are used for listing tournament results, provided that the page in question not be the home page of the Web site") be retroactively applied starting with August, 2003. The motion passed.

The assembly briefly discussed whether there should be a formal policy concerning deletion of data on the Web site, the possibility that deletion could cause a permanent loss of information, and whether appropriate permissions should be issued before permanent disposal of any data on the Web site. There was a general consensus that preservation of important information was appropriate, but that at present there was little risk that someone might permanently dispose of important information on the Web site, and that the subject would require further thought before making a meaningful motion.

The assembly discussed the possibility of extending to all clubs the chance to have the Division Web site provide hosting of some sort of Web presence. The consensus was that this would be sufficiently limited in extent that no club would see fit to abandon any existing Web presence and use something offered by the Division instead, but clubs without their own existing Web presence might find the opportunity appealing. However, opinions were mixed about whether the idea was good or bad, it was noted that there do exist means for anyone to have a Web presence for free, and that there do exist means for clubs to get web design work for little to no expense. By general consent, the topic was dropped for the present without making any motion about the topic.

The assembly discussed various means to broaden the supporting manpower for accomplishing the work of the Division's Bout Committee.

The assembly noted that there was some lack of clarity in one section of the resolution adopted at the December meeting concerning sufficiency of notice of tournaments to fencers of the Division. In particular, part 4 of 5 of the resolution read "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.". It was noted that the concepts involved are somewhat complicated, involving the idea that a tournament can be not a USFA tournament, or that it might be a USFA tournament but that due to insufficiency of notice to the fencers it might be illegal to award classifications, or that it might be not only a USFA tournament but fully in compliance with the requirements for awarding of classifications. For classifications to be able to be earned, 1) an event must not have some inherent reason why qualifications can never be awarded, 2) the event must be a USFA event, and 3) the fencers of the Division must have adequate notice. The idea embodied in part 4 of 5 was that the Division would consider askFRED to be one means to achieve adequate notice of the fencers, but that presence on askFRED cannot confer the status of being a USFA tournament. Ultimately, John Trojanowski moved to amend the resolution adopted at the December meeting concerning sufficiency of notice of tournaments to fencers of the Division to replace the text of part 4 of 5 with: "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. However, posting on askFRED can only provide 'adequate notice'. Some other action must also be taken in addition to askFRED to arrange for the tournament to be a USFA divisional tournament." The motion passed.

The assembly discussed some pragmatic issues concerning the upcoming election, dissemination of official notice for the Annual Meeting, and the possibility of dissemination of postcards usable as proxy forms as had been done for the last election. There were no motions made.

By general consent, the meeting adjourned at 10:59 PM.