AS APPROVED at the May 23, 2007 House of Delegates Meeting

Call to Order:  The meeting was called to order by the PVS General Chairman, Jim Garner at 7:05 PM. 

Attendance:  Jim Garner, General Chairman; John Hirschmann, Dan Jacobs, Bill Marlin, Don Riedlinger, Bill Stephens, Jim Van Erden, Ron Whalen, Board Members; Robert Walker, ASA, Mark Faherty, CUBU; Pushaen Gunasinghe, DCPR; Manga Dalizu, FAST; John Cudahy, HACC; Paris Jacobs, MACH; Sara Collins, MAV; Joel, Cyganiecwicz, OCCS; Mark Eldridge, RMSC; Art Davis, Riley Eaton, Steed Edwards, Kerry Ellett, John Ertter, Marie-Beth “Boots” Hall, Tim Husson, Linda Klopfenstein, Jim Thompson, At-Large Delegates; Sumie Emory, non-voting delegate.

Approval of 2005 House of Delegates Meeting Minutes:  A motion was made to approve the minutes of the May 23, 2005, House of Delegates as they had been posted to the website prior to the meeting.  The motion was seconded and the minutes were approved unanimously.

Approval of Agenda for 2006 House of Delegates Meeting:  A motion was made and seconded and the House approved without change the agenda that had been prepared by the General Chairman and circulated prior to the meeting.  The motion was approved unanimously.

State of Corporation:  Jim Garner as General Chairman gave a brief report on the status of the Corporation.

Janet Auger was introduced to the House of Delegates as the new Administrative Assistant for the LSC.  She had assumed her role in January of this year.

Jim reported that PVS’s financial condition, as reflected in the financial statements that were provided in advance of the meeting, is very strong.  Our athlete population continues to grow; however, our officials population remains flat.  He expressed concern that, while we are offering more meets for our swimmers, we are frequently short of officials.  He asked that clubs encourage their athletes’ parents to become involved.

Jim reported on two new programs from USA-Swimming.  The first is an interactive CD, which contains non-sport specific information for Coaches/Parents/Administrators.  It will be available for $40 retail and there will be a $20 discount coupon in Splash Magazine.  One copy will be sent to every club and to every LSC office.   The second new program is a “Seasonal Program Designer.”  While he had not personally reviewed the program, Jim stated that Christian Doud (MACH) had and was very impressed with its comprehensiveness.

As for the coming year, Jim informed the House that PVS hopes to have discussions with VSI with the hope that coordination of scheduling of meets (particularly in the long course season) can occur.  He briefly introduced two new initiatives that the Board is recommending regarding meets.  The first involves our 8 & Under swimmers whereby PVS will rent a pool in order to provide the opportunity for short dual meets to be held consecutively during the rental period.  The second initiative proposed is to improve the quality of our Championship meets by adding more pageantry and excitement to the meet, athlete hospitality and similar initiatives.

Jim concluded his report by reporting that Greg York was leaving the Board of Directors after seven consecutive years of service.  He expressed his appreciation to Greg for his many years of service on the Board and in other capacities and presented him with a crystal bowl commemorating his outstanding service to PVS.

Nominating Committee Report – Linda Klopfenstein:  Linda Klopfenstein gave a report on behalf of the Nominating Committee.  A report of the Nominating Committee had been sent out prior to the meeting.  

Linda indicated the current candidates are Art Davis as Administrative Vice-Chairman, Bill Marlin as Age Group Chairman, Ron Whalen (incumbent) as Operations Vice-Chairman and Bill Stephens as Strategic Planning Chairman.  All terms will run from September 1, 2006 to August 31, 2008.  A motion was made, seconded and approved that the nominations be closed.  The above candidates were elected by acclamation.

Linda then announced that there were six nominations for the Board of Review and that there were four vacancies to be filled.  The nominees were Lionel Bejean, Kerry Ellett, Tim Husson (incumbent), Jack Neill, Jeff Roddin (incumbent) and Jim Thompson (incumbent).  Additional nominations from the floor were sought.  There were none.  Ballots were distributed to eligible voters.

Registrar’s Report – Bill Stephens:  Prior to the meeting, Bill Stephens had provided summary registration information.  He reported that PVS currently has approximately 7600 registered swimmers, 300 coaches and 300 volunteers.  He stated that we have been successful in keeping males athletes involved as evidenced by our gender ratios of 44% male/56% female versus the national average of 40/60.  We continue to attract younger swimmers with our 8 & Under age group representing 14% of the national total in December 2005. 

Reviewing the Registration by Club Report, Stephens pointed out that we continue to have 5 Clubs with over 500 registered swimmers and that we have the highest average team size—200 swimmers versus the national average of 90.  Reviewing the “Officials” column, Stephens expressed concern about our official to swimmer ratio which is 1:30 versus the national average of 1:23.  He indicated that proposals were being considered whereby the Board would fine clubs with inadequate numbers of registered officials.

Administrative Report – Bill Stephens:  PVS continues to staff its operations with professionals who have a strong commitment to swimming.  Current contractor support is provided as follows:

            Registrar - Sumie Emory
            Administrator – Janet Auger
            Controller – John Ertter
            Equipment – Don Smith

Stephens stated that PVS had made a decision to not establish a physical office due to the lack of demand and the ability to do many functions for which a physical office was important in the past via the internet. 

Stephens was pleased to report tremendous improvement in compliance of coaches in maintaining their certifications.  While in 2002, noncompliance was running 35-40%; in 2006, noncompliance is for technical issues only.  He expressed concern that perhaps the “swimmer / coach” status was being inappropriately extended.  He reminded the House that, for insurance purposes, a single uncertified coach on deck affects whether insurance is in effect.

Reporting on Outreach, Stephens informed the House that Arthur Lopez’s program, “Nadar Por Vida”, is highlighted in an article in the May/June 2006 Splash magazine.  He expressed his hope that PVS would continue to support the program.

Noting that he was completing his second two year term as Administrative Vice Chairman, Stephens provided the following summary of what he perceived to be “Deficiencies, Incompletes and New Issues”:

Meet experience
            Family Friendly
            Opportunities for 8 and unders
            Retention
            Officials program
            New Pools and support programs
            New teams
            LSC Boundaries

In closing, Stephens expressed his special thanks to John Hirschman for his diligence, thoroughness and commitment to PVS and to Greg York for providing his willingness to do any and every thing and his ability to “wear his PVS hat” when required.

Webmaster’s Report – John Hirschmann:  Hirschmann provided a written report in advance of the meeting.  He thanked in particular Tim Husson for his work in posting and loading all meet results including the two searchable data bases that are maintained.  He also thanked Janet Auger for her assistance since January and for her increasing role in helping to support the website. 

He noted that the website has become mature in terms of usage statistics.  He expressed the hope that with Tim and Janet taking care of providing much of the new content, there would now be time for a review of the site to retire or make less prominent items previously posted.  He did however note that review of the usage statistics shows that this historical information is still accessed on a frequent basis.

He noted that the much of the work to provide meet results and maintain the data bases pertains to dealing with the need to correct times and/or names.  The work to do this tends to be as time consuming as the initial loading of an entire meet.

Finally, he noted the capability to efficiently verify registration (both pre and post meet) has been available and PVS is routinely using it for a few years.  He noted the capability to verify entry times (again both pre and post meet) is becoming available and coaches and others preparing meet entries should expect that PVS will begin to start using this feature. 

Age Group Chairman – Greg York:  Mark Faherty and Paris Jacobs were thanked for taking responsibility for coaching and managing the PVS EZ SC Zone Team.  PVS sent a strong team this year -- finishing in a hotly contested 2^nd place.

Greg remarked that the PVS 14 & Under Championship Meet had been fantastic and that we had selected approximately 90% of our 14/U Zone Team from times swum there.

He stated that many new ideas had been presented at the recent Competition Committee Meeting: (1) the concept of holding multiple short (2 hour) mini-meets at one venue; (2) increasing the pageantry of our championship meets; (3) revising the selection process for our SC Zone Team and (4) revising the selection process for our Zone Team coaches.

As Age Group Chair, York noted that he has run the last two Competition Committee Meetings.  He noted that Board members frequently outnumber coaches and asked the HoD representatives to return to their clubs and stress the importance of coaches attending. 

Thanking everyone for the opportunity to serve, he announced that Bill Marlin would be the next Age Group Chairman.

[As an aside, Jim Garner announced that next year would be the last year the Lewis’ would be running the Bunkey Lewis meet.  Therefore, if others wish to see this meet continue, they should be thinking about making plans so they will be in a position to bid it.]

Senior Chairman – Don Riedlinger:  Don Riedlinger reported that we continue to have excellent participation in our championship meets.  Entries in our distance meets, however, have had a significant unexplained drop-off.  Last February’s distance meet had a total of 67 participants in contrast to 220 in 2003 and 200 in 2004.  While he was not proposing any changes now, he plans to work with the new distance coordinator, Bill Marlin, in an effort to determine why.

Riedlinger also reported that the Board had approved a revision to the PVS Open and Resident Records Policy.  He indicated this review was initiated by a desire to clarify what "competition open to all PVS athletes" meant in terms of who could obtain an Open Record. The intent of the provision in the rule had been to preclude swimmers at observed high school or collegiate meets being swum within PVS's territory being eligible for such recognition. However, while it has not been implemented this way in practice, it could also be interpreted to preclude records being set at sanctioned PVS invitational meets that are not open to all PVS clubs. The rule change being proposed was designed to remove this ambiguity.

A second change was also made so that college swimmers who temporarily change their LSC of record from PVS in order to represent their collegiate team would still be eligible to establish a PVS record. Conversely, swimmers who temporarily change their registration to PVS would not be eligible to set a PVS resident record.

In response to Mark Eldridge’s suggestion that this new policy be publicized, John Hirschmann explained that he is was in the process of updating the records and that if people felt the records contained any errors, they would continue to be encouraged to bring it to our attention.

Operations Division – Ron Whalen:  Ron Whalen reported that PVS has replaced a large volume of equipment this year.  He noted that while he still receives many complaints on equipment malfunctioning, the Colorado VI’s have generally been working well.  We went over budget on equipment purchases last year when a decision was made to purchase additional pads when there were 4 clubs hosting meets on the same weekend. 

Officials Committee – Jim Van Erden:  Jim Van Erden had provided a report.  He stated that the committee realizes that it needs to recruit more officials and will be taking steps to that end.  Members of the committee are offering to come to clubs to speak with parents and are actively attending summer league officials’ clinics to advise them that attendance qualifies for initial and recertification for Stroke and Turn Judge.

Tim Husson suggested that the House be reminded of PVS’ policy of paying registrations for active officials.

Safety Committee – John McDonald:  John McDonald had provided a report.  It was noted by Whalen that Dave Macedonia was replacing John as Safety Chairman this month.

Coaches Representative - Bill Marlin:  Bill Marlin’s report was not available prior to the meeting, but is now provided.  [Also provided is an Update for Coaches from the USAS Convention.]  Marlin informed the House that the Competition Committee had endorsed to the Board a new Athlete of the Year selection criteria and a new Distance Meet Entry criteria.  A new Age Group Coach of the Year program has been adopted and an Adaptive Athlete of the Year program is being proposed.

Marlin stated that Dan Jacobs will be taking over as the Senior Coaches Representative and that candidates for Junior Coaches Representative were being sought.  He asked that names of coaches wishing to run for this position be submitted to Dan for the election to be held in July.

Results of Board of Review Vote – Linda Klopfenstein:  Linda announced that the following individuals had been elected to the Board of Review:  Kerry Ellett, Tim Husson, Jeff Roddin and Jim Thompson.  A motion was made, seconded and approved to destroy the ballots.

Athlete Representatives – Frani Hess:  Frani Hess was not present to give a report.  Linda Klopfenstein asked for nominations for the soon to be vacant  Junior Athletes Representative.  (Frani Hess will move from Junior Athlete Rep to  Senior Athlete Rep on September 1.)  None were offered.  She asked that nominations be emailed to her prior to the next Board of Director’s meeting scheduled for June 14^th.

Board of Review – Ward Foley:  Ward Foley was not present to give a report.  Jim Garner stated that Ward had attended a national level Board of Review Workshop earlier in the year and had made a presentation to the Board based on his attendance.  He also stated that he was pleased to report that the Board of Review had not had to meet this year to hear any cases. 

Treasurer Report – John Hirschmann:  The House had been provided in advance of the meeting the proposed 2006-07 budget as recommended by the PVS Board at its April 19^th 2006 meeting.  It also included actual 2004-05 results and currently projected 2005-06 results.

Hirschmann thanked John Ertter for his work as Controller -- not only for his attention to detail in both in keeping accurate and through records, but also in following up to make sure amounts to owed to PVS are in fact received.   His through work is responsible for the sound financial situation PVS now finds itself.

Hirschmann reported that the 2004-05 financials had been audited and PVS had again received a clean opinion for the third consecutive year.  The auditor also had no significant concerns and therefore did not feel the need to issue a separate management letter to the Board.  The Form 990 was also filed with the IRS for the 2004-05 year.  Both the audited financial statements and the Form 990 are available on the PVS website.

Hirschmann noted that the surplus for 2004-05 wound up being about $89,000 as compared to a projected surplus of $84,000 when the House met last May.  In the budget provided to the House, PVS now expects a surplus for 2005-06 of about $19,000 – though Hirschmann indicated the information available since the budget was prepared might make that number a little smaller.  A key variable remains the size of the PVS LC Zone team and therefore the size of the LSC subsidy.

Hirschmann stated that the projected deficit for 2006-07 is about $21,000.  He noted that for the two years, 2005-07 – the budget essentially reflects no expected gain or loss.  As a result, PVS cash balance of $577,000 as of August 31, 2005 is expected to be essentially unchanged as of August 31, 2007 – increasing to a projected amount of $579,000.

Hirschmann summarized the 2006-07 budget being recommended for adoption.  He noted that while PVS expects to collect $540,000 in registration fees, it only expects to retain about $185,000 – the balance going to USA-S as their share.  PVS sponsored meets are expected to get about a $5000 subsidy from the LSC – in part of recommended enhancements for championship meet support.  Club meets (including revenue from equipment rental) is expected to produce just over $50,000 in income.

He noted that support for the zone team (both SC and LC) was increasing significantly.  This was result of the desire to limit to desire per swimmer charges to $400 for SC and $500 for LC and the decision to attend the LC meet as a team starting in the summer of 2005.  The Board had approved this in February 2006, after giving notice to the House that it felt it needed to reconsider the actions taken by the House last May.  Many felt it important that in order to give the LC team concept a “fair test” that the team concept be continued for the summer 2006 – given the late date in 2005 at which several aspects of the program were announced – including significant changes that were made in May and then July.

Other changes in the budget were also reviewed as found in the introductory summary page to the budget submission.

Hirschmann asked if there were specific questions about the budget.  Mark Eldridge asked about the change in the funding that had occurred for the 2006 SC zones.  He stated that last year’s HoD felt that support should be the same for both the SC and LC zone meets.  It was explained again that a request had been presented to the Board from the Competition Committee to cap the cost to Zone swimmers at $400 for 2006 SC and $500 for LC starting in 2006.  The Board had passed a motion to request the Treasurer to use these caps in preparing the budget for FY07. Additionally, the Board was aware that if it took this action regarding the 2006 budget, it would be changing a position previously taken by the House.  Therefore, it had notified the House of Delegates (as provided for in Section 5.10 of the PVS by-laws) that a proposal would be on its February 8^th agenda to place these caps for the fees to be charged on the 2006 zone teams.

Kerry Ellett asked for an explanation of what was spent for last year’s LC zones.  Noting that the net cost to PVS was $ 21,828 for 61 swimmers, he wished to understand the philosophy behind this expense.  A detailed discussion ensued in which it was explained that there were many contributing factors:  (1) the Board had reduced the cost per swimmer from $590 to $500 in response to strong urging from several parents (2) participation had been lighter than expected perhaps due to the initial cost to the swimmers as well as late changes in the rules as to who could participate on the PVS  zone team and (3) apparently many did not realize that PVS would be requiring those wishing to participate to travel as part of the team – rather than with their parents as had been past practice.  It was explained that it had been Competition’s desire to use a team format and that there had been some overruns since some commitments had been made based on the expectation of greater athlete participation.

Various opinions were offered on the philosophy of subsidizing the LC Zone team.  Some attendees stated that it was important for the Board to back Competition Committee recommendations and thus should approve the budgeted amount for the upcoming year.  Others stated that the budgeted amount should not be spent on approximately 100 swimmers when over 7000 swimmers are registered with the LSC.

A motion to call the question on whether to adopt the budget without further discussion failed.

Mark Eldridge asked for an explanation as to the reduction in travel assistance per athlete from $450 to $250 for the USA-S 2007 Spring Championship Meet.  Riedlinger explained that there will be one National Championship Meet which we have retained at $450.  The recommendation was made to lower the funding for Spring Champs because its qualifying standards were lower and $250 would make it commensurate with how we fund the US Open.

A motion was made, seconded and unanimously approved to increase the Travel Assistance for the USAS Spring Champs from the proposed $250 back to $450 per athlete. 

Art Davis requested an explanation of the depreciation expense.  John Ertter explained that PVS uses the GAAP of three year straight line depreciation on all equipment purchases of $500 or more.  Equipment purchases under this amount are expensed rather than capitalized.

A suggestion was made to reduce the PVS registration fees and/or splash fees.  It was noted that despite budgeting modest deficits, PVS continues to run surpluses.  John Ertter explained that he believed the Board does an excellent in preparing its budgets, but PVS doesn’t always spend the money on the programs that are in the budget.  He continued by stating that this year’s budget contains on-going programs that, if implemented, will result in on-going deficits unless the programs are cut.  Items that have been funded in the past, but have not utilized the funds have been removed.

A motion was made, seconded and approved to close the debate on the proposed budget.

A motion was then made to adopt the PVS 2007 budget as proposed by the Board with the one amendment passed earlier.  The motion passed with two dissenting votes (Eldridge and Riedlinger).

Eastern Zone – John Hirschmann:  Hirschmann reminded the House that they had previously been provided a report on the May 13^th Eastern Zone Meeting held in Richmond, Virginia and that the complete minutes of the zone meeting have already been posted.

Hirschmann highlighted the fact that RMSC would be hosting the 2007 Eastern Zone Southern SC Sectional Meet.  Additionally, he reviewed the creation for the first time of qualifying times for the Short Course Zone Meet, noting that if all swimmers in a given event meet the qualifying time, they would all be able to attend the meet.

Old Business:  No old business came before the House for discussion or action.

New Business:  Jim Garner informed the House that the PVS By-Laws were due for review.  Our current by-laws were based on model by-laws that USA-S provided to us approximately 11 years ago.  We have now been informed that USA-S will be issuing new model by-laws in the Fall.

Manga Dalizu presented 3 possible proposed changes to the by-laws  that pertained to defining requirements and sanctions for clubs to remain in good standing as members of PVS.  They were initially presented at the House meeting and were not in specific legislative language.   There was discussion on the merits of the proposals. It was generally agreed that PVS needed to encourage its clubs members to take a more active role. It was also noted that some other LSC’s have similar provisions.   A motion was made, seconded and approved ( with 1 dissent  (Collins)) that the House endorse Dalizu’s proposals in principle and support having the Board, when it addresses the revisions received from USA-S, to also consider making these recommended changes in our by-laws. 

Cy Cyganiecwicz informed the House that he would not be able to hold his President’s Day Classic in 2007.   He had expected to hold it at the Freedom Center in Manassas next February and reserved the pool.  He later learned that VSI wished to use the Freedom Center for its own competition and therefore was withholding issuing them a sanction.  PVS indicated it had recently issued to VSI or its member clubs three sanctions to hold meets at GMU/FFX in summer 2006.  They were not aware of VSI’s decision when they processed these requests.

Adjournment:  A motion was made to adjourn and the meeting adjourned at 9:45 PM.

Respectfully Submitted by:
Janet Auger
PVS Administrative Assistant

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