Executive Board Members Present: Kevin Chapman, Ron Russell, Andy Lupo, Jackie Stein, Ellen Vogt, Chris Thornton; Shawn Panson. Absent:.none

 

Others in attendance: Jeff Weinberg, Steve Lichtenstein, Sean Bluni, Nick Schiara, John Radey, Bill Kramer.

 

 

Minutes. Approved.

 

Treasurer’s Report (Shawn)  Shawn will distribute a draft budget to the exec board and should have public disclosure for next month. This is expense time. $25K for uniforms. Stocking concession stand. Paying out this time of year. Have some, but not all uniform invoices from Effingers. Ward Field maintenance costs came in. Doing fairly well. Balance sheets are handed out. Bonds show on the liability side. Have $100K on hand for the rest of the season. Should be sufficient to get through the rest of the year. Will have an idea when budget is done to see how much of a surplus we anticipate for next year. Shawn is developing history now.

 

Registration (Linda absent).  Linda reported 651 total registrations, off 15 from 666 last year. Down very slightly, but in general not too bad.

 

Softball report (Ron/Jeff).   All is well. Rookies tried to start early but got rained out. Now trying to get started this weekend. Will be trying to make up missed games. Softball minors are under way except for rain-outs. Some growing pains with new managers. Majors are also going fine.

 

Ron is starting to think about post-season, and getting started with the preparations for the 8-year-old tournament and also districts.

 

Baseball Report (Chris) Have played first games. All is well. Got new rakes for the fields. T-ball is well on its way with both morning and afternoon games. Catching clinics were a great success. Working on making sure to be able to update web site sooner re: rescheduled games.

 

Discussion of procedures for notifying league and volunteers when there are rain-outs.

 

Player Agent (Jackie)   Things are quiet. Remember that background checks have to be done for all coaches. Unless background checks are done, volunteers will not get credit for bond refunds (if volunteer work was coaching). No other issues at present.

 

Flyers will be circulating for nominations for memorial awards, including new award for an adult volunteer of the year.

 

Big Brother/Sister (Larry) – Larry has strong numbers. Everyone has been assigned.

 

Safety: Managers need to make sure that there is an injury report after every event, even minor ones. This is important for our insurance coverage. Filled out injury reports get sent to league PO Box. (Shawn Panson will collect forms) Barry Mathis will collect information and send in for insurance.

 

Equipment   (Dan) –Needs are being addressed as they come up. If managers/coordinators need anything, they should contact Andy and/or Dan.

 

Umpires: Mike Curran is doing a great job. Umpires are getting paid. Coordinators should get the word out to all managers to go to the site and fill out the survey after every game to evaluate the youth umps. Coordinators should also remind managers that they must have the name and contact phone number(s) of the youth umpire(s) assigned to their games with them at the field.

 

Sponsorships:  Teams are all covered. Ellen has a volunteer who is willing to call for signs and next year’s sponsorship. Working on still getting Cheeburger Cheeburger to pay up from last year ($1400). Will start calling sponsors who have signs up from past years but who have not paid.

 

Indoor Facility: Clean-up day went well. Facility is in pretty good shape. We need to replace tee stands for the tee boxes. Seems that there are some people bringing in small children who are playing around in the tees and may have broken the equipment. Also some adults/families using the facility. May need to have a bit more control over access. 

 

Concessions:   Through the first week. Working out the kinks. High School kids are gaining experience. A few adult no-shows. Many people are sending in buy-outs ($50) through Demosphere. Burner on stove is fixed. Knob needs work.

 

Movie Night : Have made decision about vendor. Will play 5:00 game that night. May 30^th. Will have DJ and games/activities for kids before the movie.

 

Web Site: (Bill): Have had a flurry of activity to get things up for the beginning of the season. Working on postings for umpire assignments (with Linda). Getting that ready. Umpire review survey link is up and active under Umpires. Trenton Thunder notice is up on the site.

           

Have created flyers/posters for field maintenance procedures (proper raking, etc.) and want to link to those pictures on the web site. Rules pages are up and simple links are active from several locations so that we can get there from multiple places and so if there are rules changes they will be in one place and can be updated efficiently.

           

Question about whether there is a function to show all games at all divisions on a particular day. Answer is ‘no’ for now. Also question about printing out schedule and making the print size bigger so it can be read.

           

Suggestion that the names and contact information for managers and coaches should be available on the web site. Sean will attempt to create the information for Majors to see if it works. Other coordinators will follow.

 

Game results: Ellen says that there was a glitch in the call-in PIN numbers and also manual updates. Coordinators can call in the game results, which are automatically updated on the web site. (cool)

 

Trenton Thunder Night – April 24. Need to get the word out about the league’s night. Need to get the word out so that people buy the tickets – it’s coming up very early in the year. Coordinators should get the word out.

 

Photo Day: Schedule is posted. Will attempt to get the raffle tickets out on Photo Day. Look on web site for team schedules!

 

Memorial Day Parade: Info will go out soon. Encourage everyone to come march if they are in town. 

 

Pepsi Pitch, Hit & Run. Don’t have a coordinator for this year’s event. Need to get somebody to run the event or we’ll skip it this year. (Volunteers??)

 

 

 

All-star/post-season registration: Ellen suggests that everyone pay when registering this year. If the kid doesn’t make the team, we’ll refund. Had problems last year with people who didn’t pay when we didn’t charge up front. Need to get deadlines for registration and set the fees for post-season. Want to cut back on cost of uniforms to keep the costs down. May decide to put names on the jerseys, but go with lower-cost uniform.

            Andy reports that Williamsport may change the rule about June 15^th being the earliest date that teams can be designated. Will keep us updated on that.

 

 

Awards Day – Suggestion that we could do movie night after awards on awards day. Suggestion that Kevin Chapman schedule the awards day events. Suggestion that raffle results could be announced on Movie Night (can’t do that if there is an announcement on the tickets or otherwise that the drawing will be on a certain date)  Kevin will submit a proposal for next meeting.

 

Summer programs. Will consider whether to have a softball and/or baseball summer program (non all-star). 

 

Catcher’s clinics – we have the option to continue catching clinics at $10 per kid. Should continue this.

 

May 15 High School Varsity Games note the date.

 

Adjourned 8:40 p.m.