The President’s Desk

I began the balloting for Vice-Presidential Elections on 1/31/06, with balloting ending on 2/3/06. The original nominations for Vice-President (12/09/2005) were Wayne Unruh and Marcus Jones. During the presidential elections, we had agreed that whoever did not win as President would be eligible to run for other offices. After the presidential elections, Robert Havens said he would run as Vice-President, and Marcus withdrew in favor of Robert. This made the ballot between Robert Havens and Wayne Unruh. However, Robert Havens withdrew, citing new work responsibilites. This left Wayne as Vice-President by default. Marcus Jones did not wish to contest this result.

Rey Treviño organized and led an Official’s Clinic, in Charlotte, NC, on January 28-29. The clinic included refresher courses for all levels of officials, a Road C course & test, a Road B upgrade course & test, and a C Motoref course. Chips Chapman assisted Rey with the C level course & test. The B upgrade and Motoref courses were led by Dave Miller, a Nat. Comm. from Pennsylvania, who has helped establish the Motoref curriculum, and currently serves on the USAC Technical Commission.

The meeting was fairly well attended, with many folks coming from out of state to participate in the B upgrade and Motoref clinics. Congratulations to Laurin Stennis for acquiring her C license; to Ruth Reid, Judy Rhyne, and Wayne Unruh for successfully upgrading to Road B; and to David Johnson, Dean Lyons, Larry Norris, and Don Sprinkle for acquiring their Motoref licenses.
Several of the brand new rulebooks were distributed, the rest are supposed to be in the mail. Kudos to Rey, Chips, and Dave for a great clinic.

There was some discussion about how administrative officials tasks were to be handled, as well as discussion about event assignments, equipment management, and incentives for officials. It is still harder than it should be to collect a full crew to work events, especially while trying to keep travel time and expense to a minimum. We don’t have enough experienced, active officials. Chief Officials are paid around $100 a day (plus mileage), with Asst. Officials paid about $50 a day (plus mileage) for what is typically a ten hour or more day. In the current system, Officials are frequently required to help setup and tear down the finish line staging & systems, as well as their other duties. Incentive and mentoring programs were discussed. USAC has severed relations with its vendor for official’s clothing, so Chips Chapman approached a local custom embroidery shop for help in manufacturing official’s polo shirts, and brought an attractive and affordable sample. It was agreed that we would assemble and place an order.

There was some paperwork that needed to be filed with USAC, and certain privileges had to be activated for me in the USA Cycling online system. The first part of this was accomplished by January 20, with other parts done by January 30. USAC has been developing an online system for managing rider upgrades and event permitting for some time. The online system seems to function fairly well, although there are some issues…

USAC is encouraging clubs to initially apply for a permit for their event online. This has the benefit of getting the basic information, and the application fee, into the system quickly. But it doesn’t really address the issue of event organization oversight, which is one of the most important and time consuming parts of the permit process. Permitting a race with a prior successful history, with an experienced promoter, isn’t such a big deal. If no major changes have occurred, there isn’t much to worry about, or to double check.

But if venues, schedules, or participating individuals have changed, or an entirely new event is contemplated, the process gets exponentially more difficult. And many of these questions and issues cannot simply be handled by shuffling paper. An experienced individual is needed to look things over and check things out.

This is another issue of oversight and control that bears discussion. There is not currently an established policy for the education and discipline for promoters. As officials, every effort is made to be flexible, and to refrain from cancelling races. But there have been numerous instances where promoters had difficulties, the race was allowed to go on, and then the problem would recur again the next year. We have rules and penalties for rider misbehavior, but none for promoters (other than cancelling the race). It would be prudent for us as an association to adopt rules for promoters, so that problems can be handled and corrected in a fair and impartial manner.

I spent time talking to Kathleen Gleason (of Tri-Cyclists and a practicing lawyer), who has been contributing her time pro bono to manage our attempts to incorporate as a non-profit entity. I also caught up with David Poole, who has been treasurer of the CCA for a number of years, and treasurer for the NC District Association before that. I was trying to get up to date about what had been done, and where we stood on things. On the legal side, we need to complete officer elections, and discuss/ratify/adopt bylaws. On the financial side, we currently have about $30K in the bank. Our annual operating expenses and income from equipment rental fees generally run around $1K respectively. The reimbursement from USA Cycling from annual licenses is around $8K per year. I made contact with a CPA who is willing to advise us on the tax consequences and bookkeeping requirements that we’ll need to face in the future.

David & I also discussed issues concerning equipment ownership. Currently, the NC Association owns one set of gear used for event promotion, which includes two way radios, a finish line camera, a PA system, a lap board, a portable copier, and some other miscellaneous equipment. Basically, it’s a system tailored to fit in Chips Chapman’s car, and he has been in charge of keeping all the parts and pieces in working order, and delivered to the races he would work as Chief Referee. It did not include any finish line staging, barriers, cones, tents, chairs, tables, or the like (mostly for logistical reasons). And it has been awkward from time to time trying to handle more than one event handled on the same day, or getting the equipment to and from Chips in the event that he was not Chief Referee.

Some Local Associations require that much of this equipment be provided, set up, and operated by the promoter. Providing and operating the finish line camera is often handled by the officiating crew, with equipment provided by the Local Association. Some associations have a full promoter’s race kit, including all of the equipment mentioned in the previous paragraph, plus race marshal vests, whistles, brooms, generator sets, lights, etc., all stored in an enclosed trailer.

We’re likely to need to invest in a second race kit, and also to address a system for shipping that equipment where it’s needed. There are many ways to address these issues, and we’ll need to discuss what is in the best interest of our association’s members in order to make the best decision.

I fielded a lot of email and phone calls concerning event scheduling conflicts in early January. Some of these problems, unfortunately, had advanced to a stage where nothing could be done to resolve them.

Previously, all such issues went through Chips Chapman, who singlehandedly managed the scheduling process, and presented the schedule for final dissemination (and some discussion) at the annual meeting. This process had the benefit of being simple, as there was only one person to deal with. But if you couldn’t reach Chips, or you disagreed with his decisions, you weren’t left with many options. The new process is going to be more collaborative, and therefore more complicated. And we’ll need to try to fashion a workable procedure and timetable for building our annual schedule.

No one is happy with the current collision of dates and priorities, and we’ll just have to hope that things don’t go too badly for any one promoter that is involved. If nothing else, this problem has served to motivate folks to get involved in fashioning a better management solution.

One tool that I think we’ll need to develop will be a template calendar for the year, listing holidays, traditional local race dates, and regional/national events that affect rider attendance. We’ll also have to determine an impartial policy for resolving conflicts. Will the decision be based on historical precedence? Prize list or number of classes? Date of application? Vote of the board? Vote of the membership? And how will we deal with conflicts with bordering associations?

We’ll discuss these issues in more depth at the upcoming annual meeting, but these are some of the points I’ve been thinking about.

George Heagerty, our Regional Coordinator with USA Cycling, conducted the election, which concluded on December 27, 2005. He announced that I won, 15 – 9, over Robert Havens, with 24 clubs voting. There was some confusion about which clubs voted. I did not receive a list of participating clubs from George until 1/12/06, and there were still discrepancies. None of them seemed likely to affect the outcome of the election, but it was disappointing not to be able to get an accurate and complete list of which clubs had participated, and their email addresses.

One of the problems with conducting association business by email is the lack of feedback. How can you tell when club contact information is incorrect? How do you safeguard against qualified clubs being excluded from voting? How do you conduct a rollcall by email, to find out if you’ve established a quorum of participants?

I’ve attempted to encourage folks to reply to association emails by *at least* replying with “I’ve received your message, I will consider your proposal, and I will reply by (date).” Then it would just be a matter of deciding between us what a reasonable lag time should be.

It seems likely that at least some association business can be conducted by email, as long as we establish some workable rules.

I officiated the January 7th cyclocross race in Mt. Airy, sponsored by Ridge Rollers Velo, alongside Chips Chapman and Ken Putnam. Congratulations to Marty Biggs, Ron Gillespie, and all the members of Ridge Rollers Velo for putting on a successful event.

I had several long conversations with Chips Chapman about where we stood as an association, and where I thought we should be going, and what contributions Chips would like to make. As many of you know, Chips has been past president of our association, and acted as Local Coordinator for several years before that. Besides the enormous amount of time and energy that Chips has devoted to working as an official, Chips is a walking encyclopedia of racing event history in the Carolinas. He’ll be a valuable resource in our efforts to manage the scheduling process, and also to measure the success and growth of our activities.

Hi, Folks.

This is going to be in the nature of an experiment. The purpose is to keep the general membership of the CCA up to date on what is happening, what I’m doing as your president. We’re such a large organization, and moving in so many directions, that it can be difficult for someone to tell what is going on. Even if you are directly involved in one aspect of the association, it doesn’t mean you’ll know about other activities. This blog will be an attempt to help make the workings of the association more transparent.

I’m also allowing commentary on this posts. Polite commentary, that is…

Like much else that we’ll be doing this year, I’ll have to modify this effort to match evolving conditions and needs. If we find something better, I’ll try it. But in the meantime, this should provide a decent start.