And we're back...

Back to the whole finance issue -

They struck the list of suggestions; they substituted: Refer to the Board of the Directors and Finance Committee, development of policies, procedures and/or rules as appropriate relating to fiscal planning and financial reporting.  President St. Peter informed the body that this was already being planned and launches at the board meeting tomorrow.

But we still had to vote to refer it. And we did and it was referred.

The final new business item was withdrawn because it was so similar to the previous one!

It's 3:52 p.m. and we're done with new business!

The president of PSA, Kelly Morris-Adair, then awarded the "Official of the Year" to Gale Tanger.  Kelly is finishing up her term this year, but will now be the PSA representative to the USFS board.

What's left? The budget! Susan Keogh presented by the budget and then Lucy Brennan got up and asked to have $100,000 from the operations budget, specifically staff salaries. Morry Stillwell called it unfair burden to the staff and asked to vote down the request. Voted down!! and Lucy, if your skating magazine is late in arrival, don't be surprised.

George Rossano wanted to know if they could defray some of the capital projects such as the new membership database for a couple of years. Another bad idea - USFS is decades behind in technology and developing a database isn't inexpensive. He moved to push the $$ for the membership database software out another year. ($500K) Voted down! and George, if your membership record is lost when the database finally dies, you shouldn't be surprised!

And after all that, we approved the budget!!

Nominating Report:
Dann got up and read the list of the board members being elected.
Athletes elected to the board: Lindsey Weber, Mark Ladwig, Brandon Forsyth and I missed one of the names. sorry....
Committee chairs were approved by the President.
USOC rep: Charlie Cyr & ISU rep: Gale Tanger

New nominating committee members:
Elliot Schwartz, Anne Cammet, Kim Moore, Kathleen Krieger, Larry Kriwanek  & Phil Deaver
Athletes: Kathleen Renzie, Lindsey Weber, Angela Nikodenov (I know I spelled that wrong)

Finally we got to see the Haydenettes World Performance - very cool! 

We adjourned at 4:48 pm! Yeah!

Is it time for the President's Reception?  Yep!

New Business

Time for new business!!

1) Presented by Gerald Miele to add subsection 11 to rule 3432 to read as follows:
B. Event Referee
  A. May bring an electronic format of the rulebook, but no other form of electronic communication system to the judges stand.
This will give the event referee the opportunity to have access to the rulebook during an event in an electronic so that he/she may make an informed decision prior to leaving the "field of play."

The debate was mostly against allowing it. One of the speakers was an individual who didn't even like the electronic version and that we should have printed copies. Voted down.

2. Presented by Mark Ladwig, Athlete Delegate
Requesting to adopt a fill-up rule for pairs and dance at Junior Championships. This would promote younger dance and pairs by having the maximum number of competitors at the U.S. Junior Nationals. Passed!

3. Wendy Enzmann proposed to amen rule 3432. IJS Duties of Event Officials - All Disciplines
Allowing a technical controller to to be an assistant technical specialist in discipline in which they are certified at a non-qualifying competition. This would expand the pool of technical panel members for non-qualifying competitions.  It was requested to be made urgent - then that was amended to have the date of June 1st.  Everyone wants to use it as soon as possible. 
PASSED!

4. Was a very confusing request about changes to MR 34.11- Basic Skills competitions We sent it to committee.

5. Request to create a competition rule that would withhold a sanction from any competition or event that limits photographing or video-taping by parents or legal guardians of their own skater. The guy asking for the rule seems to own professional level camera and wants to be able to use it at event - cuz the rest of the parents with smaller, easy to hide camera are doing it anyway. There are so many aspects of the organization that would be impacted by a decision/rule like this.
Referred to committee - where I hope it dies a fast death...

6. Request to require a formal business plan covering five years including a five-year LINE ITEM budget. Seriously?  That is just not realistic and cumbersome!  The individual who made the request then requested to refer her request, not to the finance committee, but to the board. The written proposal wasn't written as a rule, but more as an idea. Very general in its writing. Tom James, legal counsel suggested that the language be clarified and the maker of the motion agreed and we took a break while they worked on the words!

Break time!!!

And my mood was so good...

Lunch was great! My mood upbeat.

Then I returned to the meeting room and we were back to #302! 

We were tortured with a request to rescind and then a request by the same guy to take back his request to rescind so he could refer it back to committee. The adult skating committee has discussed the topic ad nauseum and there was no need to send it back to committee.

Next up was the Administrative/Legal group (Winston Burbank, group coordinator). Winston, as well as all other coordinators and chairs, praised the staff at headquarters. It is praise well deserved as the staff are wonderful to work with!

Time for the report from Terri Levine on the 2011-2014 Strategic Plan. And she brought a powerpoint! Oh joy!  We heard about the goals for five strategic area - Marketing & Communications, Leadership Development, Revenue Framework, Membership and Athlete Development. There are no tactical plans yet, but we have goals. The board approved the plan and now it is on to implementation.

And no items isolated in Administrative/Legal RFAs.

We had one item isolated by Dorothy in the board's new business regarding the rules for the new Introductory Membership category. Since we had amended the bylaw regarding the introductory membership, Dorothy wanted to make sure we had the language in the rule was not conflicting with the bylaw. Easy and done.

Time for new business!  Be back with that info

Last half of the morning...

 And we're back in the cold room... (I know there is sun somewhere!)

We've reconvened with a discussion around #302 - lowering the passing average of the adult and masters MIF test. An amendment was added about the coding of the tests and names of the tests. For instance, when an adult takes the Intermediate MIF test with the lower passing average, it will be coded at HQ, it would be the Adult Intermediate MIF (AIM)  not just Intermediate MIF (IM). There would also be a Master code: MIM. Seems to be sensible. And the it was easily approved to be amended. 

And you think we would move on from #302, but NO. Some guy stands up and asks to rescind #302 in its entirety. What? I was surprised that there was actually support for the rescission. 

Diminishing skill sets. Those words were in the request for action written by the Adult Committee. Every time they are used in the discussion about adults, the speaker mentions that "those are the words from the adult committee" to make sure everyone understands that we are not dissing the adult community.  Poor Lexi, I'm sure she regrets it.

And the discussion went it on and on until Janis Engel asked to postpone the item of business until after lunch. Agreed!

Rocky Mountain FSC guy isolates #308 - to rescind the decision eliminating qualifying rounds at U.S. Collegiate Figure Skating Championships. Rick Kern, chair of the competitions committee spoke about the reason for the request and that it came from competitors and officials from the last year's championships. As a collegiate competitor, it would be a bummer to travel and be eliminated early in the week. Qualifying rounds make it more difficult for clubs to host the competition because of the amount of the ice needed.

The vote was overwhelmingly against rescission and we were able to move on. Finally Hal was able to leave the dais at 11:45 am.  Considering that the technical services group used to take hours and hours to get through their RFAs, it's impressive that it only took a couple of hours.

The morning ended with the remembrance of those we lost this year. 

Lunch time!!

Obviously the coffee kicked in

President St. Peter called the meeting to order promptly at 8:00 a.m. I'm pretty sure that the number of people in the room at the time was equal to the number of people still in line at the Starbuck stand trying to get their morning coffee.

We watched a video of Charlie & Meryl's original dance from the Olympics - one of my favorites! 

First up was the announcement about the 1961 World Team Tribute film, RISE. Twin sisters from "LookALike" productions are the producers for the movie. The two are very familiar with skating as having worked with ABC and NBC sports. They wan the film to be a story of humanity and how the dreams of those who perished in the crash have not gone unfulfilled.

An impressive group of skaters have stepped forward to be part of the film. The producers are gathering in one room (!) Peggy Flemming, Dorothy Hamill, Scott Hamilton, Brian Boitano and Michelle Kwan, all of whom have benefited from the Memorial Fund.  Paul George, who was a student of Maribel Vinson-Owens and a friend to many of those who perished on the plane, spoke about Maribel.

The cost of the movie will be about $1.3 million and David Raith, USFS Executive Director, has been raising money and I know he will be successful. The movie will premiere on February 17, 2011 on the 50th Anniversary of the crash.  We were all given this magnet frame/promo.

The business meeting started with Membership Development group  (and their leader - Mike Meyers) doing their business. BL Wylie shared wonderful stories and pictures of basic skill skaters and how the program is wonderful success with so much more potential for growth.  Lots of "Aawww's" for the cuties!

The technical group led by Hal Marron was up next to talk about the majority of RFAs with only one isolation. #307 regarding international skaters wanting to compete in the U.S. qualifying competitions. The athletes were the ones who isolated it with concerns for dance teams and synchro teams.

Hal had worked with the athletes to create acceptable language for all.

With so few items isolated, there is much more relaxed atmosphere in the building.

Then that ended with a new isolated item - #346 - the Intermediate Triple Jump. The RFA was regarding having the option of a triple in the Intermediate short program.  One woman decided to share the story of her grand-daughter who was injured by while trying to learn a triple.   After a nice lengthy debate ensued.  Then the vote - too close to call.

Time to do tallies by HQ staff. Plus it gives a good chance to stretch.  The vote was 330 to rescind and 510 to not rescind and for the triple jump option to remain in the Intermediate short.

Ah, the old times of Governing Council are back... And those usual annoying people have woken up.

Short time!

We came back after the break at 4:15 p.m. The three isolated items from the Athletes Services Group were on the docket.

Heather Nemier, the individual who isolated the items, requested to amend and clarify the list of individuals who would serve on the each of the subcommittees of the newly restructured athlete development committee. It was so basic: Of the two additional members selected by the chair and the national subcommittee vice chair, one should be an athlete.  Easy. We passed it and Heather was able to withdraw the isolation of 102 & 103.

Then something happened that was even more shocking!! President St. Peter adjourned the meeting at 4:35 p.m. - a full hour ahead of time!

Susan Nymen (sorry if I spelled your name wrong) called it the Stepford Governing Council as there is hardly any dissension. Maybe it's the California air, who knows!

Now we have a nice long break before tonight's Athletes dinner. Won't be live blogging from that, but my goal is to take lots of pictures and post those both on Facebook and the blog.

Toodles!

Bylaw Joy!

Since the silence of the isolations have sped up the meeting, we dove into the Exhibits for all the bylaw changes.

Rules Chair Heather Nemier was up front presenting each of the exhibits with the help of Dorothy.  The flow of the meeting almost hit a wall when Dorothy started picking out problems with the first exhibit and explained to the group that some of the issues need to taken one at a time!  Groan!!! Fortunately we were able to vote to change the procedures.

Exhibit A passed, Exhibit B passed, Exhibit C passed, then D, E, F & G. Then we actually hit the wall with Exhibit H (the introductory membership).  A proviso to have Exhibit H take effect June 1st instead of September 1st. But then people were obviously waking up and started to nit-pick the proviso. Why June 1st instead of July 1st when the membership year starts? The idea was to make it easier for clubs with summer ice starting in June. Because of the fuss, it was switched to July 1st.  That proviso passed and you would think we could move on... BUT NO!!

The question was raised if introductory members could join as individual members and not with a club. We took a break to work out the language and added information that clearly states that it was only good with clubs. When it was brought forward with new language, all the editors had to word smith the language more. 

Finally Exhibit H passed and we now have introductory memberships!

Break time!!!

A Lack of Isolations

We're all sitting here in absolute shock!

Dumbfounded!

Planning a Saturday afternoon at Disneyland?

We just finished going through the Interim  Report of Action where individuals may step forward to isolate items that they wish to discuss further or revoke the action of the board.  It was so quiet!  (Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)

Only THREE items were isolated. That's it! All from the Athletes Services Group - Items 101, 102 and 103 that change the structure of the Athlete Development Committee. 

President St. Peter wanted to make sure everyone understood what we were doing and we went through the isolation process a second time to give everyone a second opportunity.  Oh, the quiet!

Next up bylaws!

The meeting begins

First up - a wonderful video celebrating U.S. Nationals in Spokane. Fun to see the cut of Amanda Evora talking on the phone telling family and friends making the Olympic Team.

Amanda and Mark welcomed the delegates by telling the story of their eight year partnership. Best quote: "Everyone fails but everyone who learns from those failure become champions." Mark introduced a video clip from Olympic roommate, Evan Lysacek, who couldn't be with us since he was skating in Cleveland at the time.  He ended his message asking us all to be sure to vote for him on DWTS.  After his clip, they played a video of his Olympic gold medal performance, which will never get old.

We were also fortunate to have Frank Carroll in attendance to talk about his experience with Evan as well as working with skaters at every level.  Here's a photo of Frank at the Olympics with our fabulous friend and Olympic team leader Lorrie Parker (R) and choreographer Lori Nichols. (Photo stolen from Lorrie's Facebook photo album)

Frank Carroll told a story of a random person at Spokane Nationals who asked him how long he was going to be doing this. He was taken aback, but shared with us that he will continue to coach as long as he has the physical and mental ability to do so.

At 2:07 p.m., Ms. St. Peter called the meeting to order.
The magic numbers for this year's meeting: 591 Full Member Clubs, 15 Provisional Member Clubs with the possibility of 1293 votes. Currently registered: 341 Delegate votes, 421 Proxy votes and 205 Athlete votes for a total of 967 votes.

Since none of the positions have more than one nominees, we voted to forgo the candidate's forum. Yea!!!

Pat St. Peter talked about all the new sponsorships that happened this year including the infamous Snuggie! Part of the deal is that Pat has to wear a Snuggie at all official events and she has leopard version and modeled it for us. She also told us that next year, each section will have their own color (just kiding, we hope). We'll look like a cult!

Looking up at the leadership on stage, I noticed that their chair were nice leather-looking executive chairs. I don't begrudge them these chairs, but just wish we all could have them. These chairs are like sitting on rocks. If the delegates get crabby later, I think it's because of the chairs.

These are people who care

I'm sitting in a large cold room with a few hundred people who love this sport. They care about the athletes - from the basic skills to our Olympians. They care about our officials and our volunteers.  It's fun to be with a group with so much passion and compassion.

We had a moment of silence for Laura Maki and Ann Dougherty stood up and thanked everyone for their support for Laura in the last two years.

We had a standing ovation for our Olympian Mark Ladwig.

Nominating Committee: Kathleen Krieger was nominated for Upper Great Lakes representative and Kim Moore was nominated as the Southwest representative. Both were easily elected as no one else was nominated in their region.  We all get along so well!

And we finished up an hour early. Time to get lunch before our 1:30 start for the big meeting.

See ya!

Appointments!

Here is the list of all individuals who received National appointments yesterday:

National Singles & Pairs Referee: Lisa Erle

National Synchronized Referee: Wayne Hundley

National Accountant: James Achtenberg & John Marasco

National Announcer: Stephen Masten

National Music Coordinator: Michael Wittman

National Singles & Pairs Judge: Mary Hiser, Cassy Papajohn

National Dance Judge: Douglas Mankovich, Michael Ricigliano

National Tech Controller-Singles: Kimberly Heim

National Technical Specialists - Singles: Konstantin Kostin, Stefanie Mathewson, Julie Newman, Lindsey Weber

National Technical Specialists - Dance: Jamie Whyte

National Data Operator - Singles, Pairs & Dance: Laurie Johnson, Susan Miller, Laura Murphy & Scott Wendland

Oh, and Devon Beck walked by and said hello and told me to blog it. Which I've done. So there!

Bubble Wrap & Apps

Started the day with the Membership Committee breakfast. It was great to have all three of the Vice Presidents (Kathy Slack, Ann O'Keefe & Jessica Gaynor) and President Pat St. Peter in attendance for our breakfast. Pat talked about the budget and how now, unlike the years when we had the ABC $$$ contract, membership dollars contribute to one-half of the USFS income. Membership retention and attraction is so much more important to the future of USFS as ever before.

Next up was the Midwest caucus with VP Kathy Slack leading the meeting. We recognized our long time judges, referees and clubs. The highlight was a new award for retiring/retired Olympic Judges - Midwest caucus honored Nancy Meiss.

It was fun to have Kathy to start the meeting introducing the all the Midwest individuals who serve in a leadership role within USFS - it seemed to go on forever as we so many people serving our organization.

Pat St. Peter came in the meeting, speaking to us as our USFS president. As she said, she was coming home. Pat is sporting a lovely cast on her left hand - she missed about seven steps while at the World Synchro Comp in Colorado Springs earlier this month.  I remember that she broke her leg just before the 2008 Nationals, so I'm thinking we're going to need to wrap her in bubble wrap. (and keep those bubble wrap poppers away from her!)

There's an app for that! David Raith announced to our caucus that USFS will be looking into the creation of mobile applications for skating - say a rule book or live scoring?  All iPhone geeks (such as myself) say thanks. And I'm sure it won't just be apps for iPhone, but also for Android and Blackberry.

More later...

End of the day

A short update at the end of a very long day.

The afternoon seminars that I was able to attend were really informative and had some great discussions.  The "Attract and Retain Members" session had lots of information that had to be presented in a very short time span. It was like speed dating with powerpoint presentations. Susi showed a wonderful promotional video about skating that was really well done and all the attendees were given a copy. Of course, my only question was if it was on YouTube yet?  It wasn't but we'll get it up there soon. I just don't have the bandwidth to do it from here.

Next was the fundraising session. Stacy Marsh, the new development director for US Figure Skating hosted a panel that discussed a lot of different ways to do fundraising for your club. Ryan Jahnke gave a great presentation on his new venture, MySkatingMall.com - it is a great way for clubs to do fundraising and a great way for skaters to sell their gently used skating outfits.
Susi Werhli talked about raising money by having a Skate-a-thon and then Susan Bonn talked about a San Francisco event that helped raise money and awareness.

And then it was time for Debbie Downer - me. I talked about doing traditional ways of fundraising that don't involve butterbraids or frozen pizza - straight charitable gifts. But the downer part happens when I share the do's and don'ts of fundraising and how the clubs have to be aware that fundraising that provides financial credit for the skaters is not appropriate and can run their clubs into some trouble with the IRS.

Grabbed a quick bite to eat and then back to the InterClub Forum. Lanie DeMore organized it and there was a great turn-out with representatives from all of the interclubs. I think it's always good for interclub councils to share information and talk about how they do things.  My role was to talk about bylaws and reminded them that bylaws should be reviewed on a regular basis and that bylaws that haven't been changed since 1959 may need to be updated. (to say the least)

I didn't make it to the Synchro session, but was told by various attendees that the majority of the conversation centered on changing the team sizes and the cross-over skaters. More tomorrow at the caucus session.

Tomorrow starts early for me with the membership committee breakfast at 7 and then the Midwestern Caucus meeting at 8:30. Will blog from there.

Good night all!

That's it for now folks!

Skating people complaining about the cold

I'm guessing the hotel's maintenance staff thinks that a skating conference should have very, very cold rooms! I'm freezing people - I'll have to head to the USFS merchandise room and buy a sweatshirt. Brrr...

Right now in the Critical Issues Q&A where the majority of the questions are regarding the technical RFAs (request for action). Which shouldn't be a surprise!
We started with questions for the Athletes Services Group - nothing.
Then on to Membership Services Group - just questions regarding the Introductory Membership. I think Mike, Maureen & Susi were able to quell their fears.
So my poor buddy Hal Marron (who is the technical group coordinator) is getting the majority of the questions. He is having to go through the RFAs page by page. The best description of an RFA was by Hal describing the Adult Committee's request to lower the passing average for adults taking standard MIF tests - "It's like getting a senior discount."

I always enjoy the fact that most questions about new rules are focused on the systems of how something  will be run. I wonder if people just don't trust HQ or our leadership to figure out how to manage and/or create the need processes. Just pass it instead of obsessing about the infrastructure & such.

Oh, Heather Nemier  just told us that the infamous "green sheets" will be out by 6 tonight. The green sheets have the all the decisions that were made in the board meeting yesterday and today.

Heather Nemier, chair of the Rules Committee, is describing how the committee went through all the bylaws and updated the language to make it more understandable. As a bylaws geek, it's nice to hear that "Shall" will be gone since it is such a wishy-washy word.

Off to "Attracting and Retaining Members." Let's hope it's warmer in that room.

Photo by Balakov

Is really already Thursday?

Good Morning!

Being still on Central Time while in California, I was awake at 3:15 am. It didn't take much to force me to turn back over and stay in bed. The Hilton in Costa Mesa is the site of this year's Governing Council and I've noticed two pluses for it. Fast elevators and a great location with restaurants and shopping nearby. Haven't been inpressed with the restaurant yet, but they have the opportunity to improve.

Thursday is the day for all the seminars and since I can't be at all of them, I'm hoping to tap into others to help me out with information. I'm starting the day with a judges school - to get certified to judge the new Moves-in-the-Field.  That runs from 9 -11.

There's a Marketing & Publicity seminar that runs from 10:30 to noon, so I'll run there as soon as the judges school is over.  I do marketing and publicity for my real-life job, so I know it might not make sense that I want to attend, but when I attended the session two years ago, I criticized the seminar as being "Death by Powerpoint" and I want to see if  A) He (RB) is no longer creating a Powerpoint Hell and B) if he talks about Social Media Marketing (my passion).

I'll attend the "Critical Issues Q & A" from 1:30 to 3:00 and then the session "Attract and Retain Members" from 3:30 to 5:00. I'm on the panel for the Fundraising Session at 5:30 - I'll start a timer to see how long it takes before someone brings up having accounts for skaters where the funds they raise go into. It comes up every year, regardless of the topic (such as last year's Bylaws 101 session).  And the delegates rarely like my answer and try to think of ways around the IRS (good luck with that one).

Since the fundraising session runs at the same time as the Synchro Session, I'll need to find a guest blogger to get the information for you.

The evening ends with the Interclub Open Forum - where I'm also on the panel to talk about your favorite topic and mine - Bylaws!  It just wouldn't be a Governing Council without me talking about the joys of bylaws and how to avoid getting in trouble.

Okay, technically the evening will end at the bar (they have a great selection of wine - always important for any US Figure Skating event).

As the days pass, please feel free to leave comments on the blog, email me at MEHarty (at) usfamily (dot) net or leave a message on Facebook.  I hope to post on a regular basis (at least a couple of times a day) and share fun things, serious things and, as usual for me, completely random things!

Now, I have to finish my oatmeal before I go to school.

Why I do this

I love writing. I love telling stories. I think I'm a better writer than talker, but I know there are lots of people who would disagree. 

The original purpose of the blog was to keep my home club members updated on what was happening at Governing Council. Sort of self-serving, too, since I can't get my expenses reimbursed until I submit a written report. The blog is my written report.

But the blog is also to keep me engaged in the meetings and presentations. I have ADD and unless I have some way of keeping my focus, I don't last at these types of events for long. (My every-day blog is called "Random Thoughts from My ADD Brain")

It's now a week away from all the fun and games in California. I can't wait to get there and see all my friends. So many people can't figure out why I would so enjoy going to a three-day meeting on governance and rules and such. Having Dorothy Demarest as our rockin' parliamentarian has increased the fun about a 1000 percent (that's Dorothy on the right), but for many of the US Figure Skating officials, this weekend is like a family reunion.

Last weekend, our family lost a beloved member - Laura Maki - a wonderful judging friend from Michigan. Laura helped out everywhere and had such a passion for the sport, that she will be missed and a difficult person to replace. Fortunately for me, the news about Laura's passing came when I was at a competition, when I was with my skating family, and we got a chance to remember Laura together. We'll do the same next week. 

And so it begins...

Welcome to my Governing Council 2010 Blog. I'll be attending my 15th 14th Governing Council and I believe this is my fourth year blogging from the event.

The original purpose of my blog was to provide my home club board members with updates of what is happening at Governing Council. I started sharing it with individuals beyond the board members and then, last year, with the combination of Facebook and Twitter publicity, the audience for the blog grew significantly bigger.

During the pre-meeting activities, I'll try to share information from the session I attend, but obviously I cannot be at all of the sessions and when it comes to the Sectional Caucus meeting, I'll be attending the Midwest caucus since, well, I'm in the Midwest Section. I'll be tweeting when I can - you can follow me @MEHarty. 

I'm planning on attending the Athlete Advisory Committee dinner on Friday night and I'll share pictures from that evening.

This coming Monday night, April 12th, I'll be attending a meeting that is hosted annually by the Twin City Figure Skating Association to learn about the potential bylaw changes and the various Requests for Action. It's a huge benefit to have the background information prior to Governing Council.  The three Sectional Vice Presidents will be covering the Governing Council materials during their monthly call.

So, welcome to my blog. Stay tuned because I most likely won't be posting again until the week of Governing Council unless I find something interesting.