June Board Meeting

19/07/11 08:38

Treasurer’s report from Kevin showed a combined profit of 3K for the May event. This is great news due to the unusually low number of racers. Since there are fixed expenses with track rental to be able to come out ahead is wonderful and a testament to good management of costs. The Saturday night dinner was a money loser but a welcome change from the past. Driving Coach Tommy Byrne’s expenses were covered by sponsorship money. The cavalcade of volunteers made the whole weekend run smoothly despite the weather. Kevin met with a banker from Huntington who offered to extend the club a line of credit. John is in favor of it because when we need it, we might not be able to get it. Kevin will look into the idea. The treasury recently received some money from National PCA last month. Mike speculates that this is the membership quarterly rebate and the multi regions event rebate.
Frank quickly launched into his interpretation of the download of the Club Race and Drivers Education event that was held last week. It was unanimously decided that we will indeed host Club Race next year but plans to make a serious effort to change the date. He will work with the track to coordinate around the big national races. Another possibility could be a swap of a date with SCCA or use the existing August date that we already have. Frank really wants to try something new in order to address the declining attendance. He has drafted a letter to PCA National to let them know of our concerns and to ask for a face to face meeting with the National Club Race Chairman. The Nelson’s Ledges event is coming up in 2 weeks. This is a shared event with NOR and it appears that NOR made the track deposit alone. Frank offered to pay our portion and they decided to wait to see how the weekend went before dividing up the expenses. The Eastern Buckeye Region sent Frank an e-mail that indicated they are interested in a shared event in the future. The Rally Sport Region would like MOR to help them promote their event at Groton this summer. The Putnam Park event in July has had very slow registration action. At present, there are more instructors signed up than students. We have an opportunity to have Dan Clarke, a pro racer, help out the students over that weekend. The arrangement is to pay him $500 per day and charge the drivers $40 a session and he will get half. Other regions have huge sponsorships that help defray coaching costs. The August DE registration has not opened yet but it appears to Frank and others that interest is high. Jeff Dupler sent Frank his report from the Autocross events. They cleared $500 so far and have some joint events with the Mercedes Club. These events have been well attended and everyone has a blast. Frank speculates that we could possibly do an autocross event in the upper paddock at the August event.
Ron began his P2O report with a text from Bill Slone who is in Germany. He has done the Porsche factory tour, visited the museum and had lunch in Stuttgart. Next time take your board friends!!! Ron continues to tweak the offerings at P2O with the addition of a Thursday night band, “Needles”. He has reconfigured the square parking arrangement to include more cars. The proposed sponsors for the event include Porsche at the Village Dealership, Forge line, Griots Garage, Stoddard (who sponsored the tee shirts), Auto Extreme and Taj ma Garaj, EPR and True Performance. The sponsors who have paid will be featured on the tee shirts.
In the charity department, a nice dry erase presentation (Big) check was purchased and used for the JVC (School of the students who direct traffic at CR/DE in May) donation event. A small write-up was done by Maria (summer intern) to accompany the presentation.
To make the upcoming Third Thursday event even more festive, Brian had some MORPCA cold beverage kozzies made. Gerhard flung them around the table at each board member. The P20 logo glasses have arrived at Brian’s garage along with some of the tee shirts. The next Third Thursday is at Ron Thomas’ garage and the one after that will be at the Mexican restaurant Cantino Laredo at Polaris. The most recent Drive and Dine was wildly successful. The weather was perfect and the 14 cars that participated covered 200 miles of beautiful country. About 25 people stayed for dinner and social time. Gerhard speculated that maybe more people would attend if we added an autocross element to the event. Jeff thought an autocross element at Club Race would be fun. Jay added that maybe an auto cross could also feature a dinner afterwards to capture the enthusiasm. John liked the idea of a Gymkhana type event with lots activities going on at the same time. Gerhard reminded everyone to use the Mid-Ohio Vintage Race MORPCA discount that Bill Slone has secured. Looking ahead, there appears to be some interest in a Bourbon Trail Trip to Kentucky next year. Stayed tuned for details!
Doug reported through John that he took lots of pictures during the Club Race/Driver’s Education weekend. He will forward the best to Bill and Brian for DOS and the website.
ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION
Frank – The sponsorship budget covers Putman Park, Mid-Ohio and Nelson’s Ledges events which has and will be a big help for the club to put on quality events. Maybe we could have a party/reception that centers on these sponsors to show them our appreciation of their donation.
Kevin – To capture more last minute people for DE events, maybe we could schedule a tech session to check out cars at a shop the weekend before the event.
Mike – Maria, the summer intern, is graduating this weekend. She did write and submit a press release for Club Race and the JVS check presentation and the Wounded Warrior event.
John P. – Advocates buying additional track time at Putman Park if there is enough interest.
John B. – Some of the ALMS racers will be at Byers Imports before the race again this year! He would also like to formally acknowledge that the Club Race and Driver’s Education Chairmen, Ken Bigham and Frank Todaro respectively, did a wonderful job of organization and management of the event. It was a fun event for all involved.

The meeting adjourned at 8:30pm. The next meeting will be held at the King Avenue Five Sports Lounge on Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 6:30pm Plan to meet for cocktails and storytelling (the fun part) around 6pm.