CBA News Article

Board Minutes Synopsis--2/2010

CALIFORNIA BLUEGRASS ASSOCIATION

SYNOPSIS OF THE MINUTES OF THE FEBRUARY 13, 2010 BOARD MEETING

CALL TO ORDER:
Rick Cornish, Chairman of the Board, called the meeting to order at 9:50 at the home of Lisa Burns in Mountain View.

ROLL CALL WAS TAKEN AND THE AGENDA WAS SET.
Board Members Present:
Montie Elston, Lisa Burns, Rick Cornish, Tim Edes, Deb Livermore, Craig Wilson, Bruce Campbell, Rich Evans, John Duncan and Darby Brandli.

APPROVAL OF THE JANUARY BOARD MEETING MINUTES:
The Motion to approve the January board minutes was passed by unanimous vote.

PERSONS DESIRING TO ADDRESS THE BOARD ON UNAGENDIZED ITEMS:
John Hettinger would like to get the cell phone numbers for all of the board members. People will give them to him today and John will e-mail this out to all.

OLD BUSINESS
Winter Camp Update Burns
We have 163 students from all over. It would be interesting to know how many of them are CBA members. We had a lot of signups from the music camp website and the Mandolin Café website. Instructors did promo as well.

IBMA rules and conflict of interest Cornish, Burns
IBMA does not have a written policy regarding having relatives of members of bands being considered for hire on the hiring committee, but they do have some suggestions. The suggestions state that if you have a commercial interest you should not be on a hiring committee.

Action: Lisa to write a policy on band booking and committee composition.

Archive Fund Hogan
This topic was postponed until the March meeting. We will ask Mark for a written plan before we commit any money to this project.

Final wording - Official Comp Policy All
Montie sent out proposed guidelines for this. We will discuss this at the March meeting and vote on it then.

Final wording - Official Campout Fees Policy All
Deb will get this from Steve Tilden and we will work on this at the March meeting.

Grass Valley band schedule
The Grass Valley Band schedule was presented and some suggestions were made. There was also discussion on how to fill the Pioneer Stage.

Note: there will be a new Pioneer stage this year – the old one is being torn down and rebuilt.

Morgan Hill Concert
This concert is featuring the Gibson Bros, with The Tuttle’s opening. Tim has already received $4100 dollars in sponsorships and has sold 65 advanced tickets. Looks good!

TAG Report

The TAG team is gathering materials and took suggestions from the people attending the meeting. Please send other suggestions to Mark Varner.

NEW BUSINESS

Comps to Stuart “Slim” Sims
He will be getting 2010 FDF volunteer comp tickets for all the volunteer work he and Charlene do throughout the year. Rick is to follow up with them and Bill Meiners.

Mercantile Report
Jack Hyland emailed his report this morning. Remember that we had a fire sale on our old inventory and then we ordered some new stuff, which is why it appears that we lost some money.

We thought we had given Jack an assistant to will help us get online. Also, right now we are not collecting sales tax from customers, even though we are paying it.

We probably have about $20K worth of inventory at this time.

Ad sales
Mark Varner is talking to Ryan Robertson regarding ad sales. He responded to our query to replace Chris Smith. Ryan is very interested. Mark sent him vendor lists yesterday. He will come on board as our new ad salesperson. Rick and Mark recommend we increase our commission rate.

The motion to increase the commission for Breakdown ad sales was approved by unanimous vote.

Grass Valley sponsors
Tim Edes and Rick Cornish volunteered to go to Grass Valley to pursue sponsors for the festival. Rick and Tim will schedule this in the next 60 days. We could also involve Ryan Robertson in this.

Sponsor levels for GV 2010
Lisa is to communicate with Ryan Robertson on this. There is a shoe company interested in sponsorship. Lisa is to follow up.

Fairgrounds Contract Status
Montie has the final contract and will be reading and signing it this week.

Life membership nominees
Several names were suggested. Everyone is to send their formal nominations and bios by e-mail so there can be a vote in Sebastopol. They are to also send a copy to Diana to print and take to the March meeting.

Volunteer camping fees, music camp volunteers
In September we agreed that since we had to pay camping fees to the fairgrounds for the days prior to the festival, we were going to charge festival volunteers for the extra camping days if they came in before the festival at $10 a night, (the same as we are charged) for any days up through Tuesday night.

Note that music camp volunteers are comped into the festival.

Ingrid would like to pick up the music camp volunteers camping fees. We have no problem with this. The Breakdown article regarding volunteer camping fees is approved as written. (There was no motion as we had already handled this in August).

Spring campout potluck
Chef Mike is willing to do the spaghetti feed again. AJ and Max are going to do the volunteer work for this. This will be done on Saturday night this year because of kid involvement.

Hooked on Bluegrass book
Carl and Rick have been discussing the 250+ Hooked on Bluegrass articles and publishing it in book form. David Lange will handle this. Cliff Compton will help by using his publisher that he has used for his poetry.

Do we need to have written permission from the folks to use their web based story in a book form? Carl and Ed disagree on this.

Rick believes that if we have to get written permission we may never publish this book. Darby volunteers to talk with Dwight. Lisa suggested “opt out” – we send an email indicating our intention to publish the book and ask people to let us know if they DON’T want to publish.

We could pre-sell the book online. Sales price would be $13 to $15.

48 Hour Jam
This was beyond our expectations. The first year we had about 65 people, last year attendance doubled. This year we had about 250 to 300 people!

This year we put all our people in one area and consolidated jamming areas. There were a few glitches but all in all it was great. There were some sound issues for the band scrambles – going to move that for next year.

Dates for next year – weekend after New Year’s. A debrief was held and some changes will be made for next year. There was a large Southern California turnout for this event.

Full Hookup Lottery report
Lottery is going strong with the highest turnout ever. There have been 52 original applicants, one non member and one opted out. We have the largest waiting list ever (15).

S.H.A.R.E.S. Cards
The cards have arrived. Bruce ordered 100. It was decided that any money derived from the use of the S.H.A.R.E.S. cards should be divided equally between the general fund and reserves.

Action – Bruce to write an article for web site and Breakdown.

Board Election 2010
The board had an extensive discussion about the coming 2010 board election. There was universal agreement that we simply have to have new people running for the board of directors this year. Many ideas were put forward for ensuring that new candidates throw their hat into the ring. A sub-committee of the board, comprised of Rich Evans, Tim Edes and Rick Cornish, will work together to try to generate interest in running for the board among members heretofore uninvolved with the Association’s leadership.

Wednesday night program at GV
There will be an end of music camp concert. Ingrid will focus on this after Winter Music Camp.

REPORTS

Membership
Carolyn reported that we have fewer lapsed members. Current membership is at 2903. Carolyn would like to upgrade her internet service.

The motion for the CBA to pay the difference in cost between the dialup and broadband services for the members

Posted By: Diana Donnelly