Jun. 29, 2005 Executive Committee Minutes

The meeting was called to order at 7:16 PM by Chairman Louise Lepie at the Houston Athletic Fencing Center at 4997 West Bellfort, Houston. Other Officers present were Vice Chairman Jerry Dunaway and Secretary Matt Delevoryas. Treasurer Dennis Meyers was absent.

The draft minutes of the previous (Apr. 13) meeting, as they had appeared on the Division Web site, were accepted with corrections.

In the absence of the Treasurer, the Chairman presented a report from the office of Treasurer. John Trojanowski had withdrawn $4,100 from the old Division savings account at Guarantee Savings, which had been deposited into the newly opened checking account at Washington Mutual with Louise Lepie and Dennis Meyers as signatories. $129.54 still remained in the old account, but its withdrawal and the closing of the account would be more difficult than the withdrawal of the bulk of its contents. Louise Lepie had prepared but had not yet been able to get countersignatures for five checks, $218 to John Trojanowski for the money he lent the Division to pay for the expenses of the referee seminar in conjunction with the Space City Rendezvous, $983.90 to Louise Lepie for the money she lent the Division for the air fare and fee for the foil coaching seminar by Alex Beguinet and the referee seminar by Amgad Badawi in conjunction with the May Houston RYC, $369.94 to Matt Delevoryas for the money he lent the Division for the lodging expenses for referee Jerry Benson for the 2004 Divisionals, the replacement of a weight set lent to but lost by 2004 Divisionals for which the LOC was taking 0% and the Division taking 100% of the profit or loss, and purchase of two upgrade chips for the two Division Favero FULL-ARM-05 scoring boxes, $177.56 to Matt Delevoryas for the expense of the second of two mailings for the early March meeting of the Division and the mailing for the late March meeting of the Division, and $105.39 to Matt Delevoryas for the expense of one year of domain name registration and Web hosting from summer 2004 to summer 2005. Not counting the money for these checks, the checking account contained $2,245.21, of which $84 was in the cumulative $200/year fund reserved for equipment maintenance. It was noted that there existed yet another account payable, $88.78 to Matt Delevoryas for the expense of the mailing for the Annual Meeting of the Division.

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

The two main strip scoring equipment sets are in good shape with two previously reported significant exceptions.

1) 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. A previous meeting has authorized purchase of replacements for the Division cords. I have not yet exhausted the final resources in attempting to locate the lost cords, but it now seems beyond the point of diminishing returns.

2) Exactly two of the 16 rubber feet of the Favero Millennium reels are missing from their mounting holes. I have no reason any more to believe that the original feet will be found. It is not known when the feet disappeared, except that one reel was observed to be in use at the J.O. qualifiers with two feet already missing. A previous meeting authorized my purchase of replacements for the rubber feet.

As reported at the January Executive Committee meeting, replacement microcontroller chips were 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. Reimbursement for the expenditure, from the fund set aside for equipment maintenance, has been requested but still not received.

The April Executive Committee meeting required that this equipment be engraved with ownership information. This has yet to be done, but the equipment has left the possession of its custodian only once since that decision was made, shortly after the decision.

There is no change in the status of the Escrime Technologies SG21V1 box.

Since the April 13th Executive Committee meeting, the two main sets of equipment have been lent to Salle Mauro for its RYC. They have not yet been requested for any other purposes at all.

One June 27th, without prior approval, Matt Delevoryas spent $9.20 to renew the registration of the Division's domain name for another year. It would have lapsed at the end of June. Within the next four weeks, the Web hosting too was to lapse. (Matt noted that the domain name and the hosting are no longer synchronized because the Division got an extra one month of hosting in compensation for some problems experienced.) By general consent, Matt's renewal of the domain name was ratified, reimbursement was approved, and renewal of one more year of the current Web hosting by Matt and reimbursement (for slightly under $100) approved.

The assembly noted that the "rotating" of "the rotation", the allocation of the "big three" tournaments to host clubs, was conducted in late April under the authority of John Trojanowski, to whom administration of the rotation through July 31st had been delegated by the Executive Committee. The JO qualifier was allocated to Westchester Fencing Club, and Divisionals was allocated to South Houston High School Fencing Team. Those two clubs, in that order, were moved from the top to the bottom of the order. The one remaining tournament, the Division's Southwest Section Circuit Cup (SSCC) tournament was offered to Katy Blades as the next club in order. Katy Blades accepted the SSCC tournament. However, the SSCC Commissioner reported that Katy Blades was not eligible to hold that tournament. "The rotation" has no provision for a tournament being offered and accepting a tournament, but being ineligible to host it for reasons outside the rotation. Given that it was pressing to identify another host before an impending deadline, the rotating of the rotation was continued as if Katy Blades had not accepted the SSCC tournament. The Fencing Club at the University of Houston, and Spindletop Cavaliers, in that order, were offered and declined the SSCC tournament. Then, Bayou City Fencing Academy was offered and accepted the SSCC tournament. However, given that these three clubs were approached outside of the rules contained in the rotation, the results had questionable legality. By general consent, the assembly ratified the selection of BCFA as the host for the 2005-2006 Gulf Coast Texas Division tournament in the Southwest Section Circuit Cup. The assembly noted that this left questions about where Katy Blades, FCUH, Spindletop Cavaliers, and BCFA now appear in the rotation. The assembly also noted that no changes had been made to the rotation which would specify in advance how to handle an irregularity like this in the future.

Jerry Dunaway moved to adjourn. By general consent, the motion failed.

Louise Lepie moved that a moratorium begin on adding tournaments to the Division calendar. It was noted that the calendar currently contained only the Fête de Lune and the Cougar Call to Arms as Division tournaments in 2005-2006. The motion passed without objection.

The entire rest of the meeting consisted of informal discussion of systems which could provide for allocation of the weekends of each fencing year equitably to all clubs in a fashion where each weekend is considered exclusively allocated to a single club. There were no motions associated with the discussion, either formal or by general consent.

Jerry Dunaway moved to adjourn. By general consent, the motion passed. The meeting adjourned at 11:02 PM.