Present: Gil Major, Phil Vance, Samantha McKinney, Brad Davy, Doug Pilcher, Clark Hymas, Adi Kochav, Jeff Marsuchek, Alex Dreiling, and Steve Sides
Absent: Mike Karnes
Guests: Ray Morton and Primo Rivera
Meeting began 9:00 p.m. EST.
Welcome – Gil Major
Gil welcomed Primo Rivera and Ray Morton as incoming regional directors to the BOD. The BOD is looking forward to working with both of them.
IMAC Forms and Rules – Steve Sides
Steve wanted to make a change to the contest guide relating to how it would apply towards the SE Regional Championship. Steve said that he had been at Tucson and hasn’t posted his recommendation to the BOD forum. Doug will check back with him.
Budget – All BOD Members
Mike has sent the IMAC budget in Word format to Phil. Phil has reviewed the budget that Mike has presented. He believes that the projected income is high. The projected income is at $20,400 for 2019. Phil informed the BOD that November and December is the biggest months of the year for income received. Adi believes that IMAC will grow Internationally in 2019. It will take precedence in Italy first, and then grow from there.
Phil informed the BOD that it is hard to budget the expenditures. We don’t know costs for the 2019 International Judging School. We know the each region can send up to two members. Also for 2019, we will only be charged $200 a month for website maintenance going forward.
Phil has made some changes, except for the expenditures that he knows of currently. Phil will discuss the projected budget with Mike and get final numbers. The Executive BOD will discuss the budget and present at next month’s meeting. A motion was made to table the budget til November’s meeting for the numbers to be finalized by Brad Davy and seconded by Doug Pilcher. Motion passed unanimously.
Basic Split to Novice Class – All BOD Members
Adi believes that we have nothing to lose on splitting the Basic class. Basic is supposed to be a class that isn’t intimidating. If we want pilots to try IMAC, the Novice class will give them the opportunity and the Basic class will remain competitive. We can still use their scores and judge them. Their scores will not be included in IRPS.
Brad is opposed to the split in the Basic class. He believes that we are doing something that is very complicated. He questioned that is this something that we try and it fades away. Brad says we don’t need to enter their scores in the score program; just hand them the score sheets after the judges are done. Doug believes that we should enter the scores. This allows the pilot to see how the scores compare to other competitors. By entering scores, Brad says that this is considered complicated and extra work on the scorekeeper. With entering scores, it would give the pilot a chance to feel what IMAC is about. We could offer reduced registration fees. Currently, in the Basic class, a pilot can fly whatever they want to fly.
Adi believes that this would give an option to the pilots who don’t want to compete. The ones that don’t want to compete are the pilots that show up with a smaller aircraft. Currently, Brad and Steve are against the original proposal, but several BOD members are in favor. Brad says that if we split the class, it would have to be done during a rules cycle. It requires AMA rule change, due to redefining the class. With the original proposal, we are not changing the rules. It is giving the CD the option to change. To AMA, we are still Basic class through Unlimited class. With IMAC, we are simply adding another class. With most contests, there may only be 2-3 guys that are interested in this class. It is the same principal as a boot camp.
With the original proposal, its intent is to get rid of the intimidation factor. Brad believes that the only way to get rid of this is size limitation within the class. With size limitation, this would eliminate the 3D pilots that would give IMAC a try. With this limitation, it takes an AMA rule change. We cannot have any AMA rules change until 2021. Adi agrees to a size limitation in Basic and Brad disagrees. Brad and Primo have not seen anyone who is intimidated by the size of the aircrafts. It is the pilots that don’t show up who are intimidated. The pilots say that they don’t have faith in their own flying abilities.
A question was asked about a pilot showing up with a 40% aircraft and the CD says he can’t compete under the Novice class. This pilot would be able to fly the Basic class, but he wouldn’t be able to compete against the pilots with smaller aircrafts. Adi believes that this proposal won’t work if we don’t have a size limitation.
We could do an advertisement on the new class, if the BOD passes the proposal. This would be a good campaign and can do it now without going to the AMA. In the future, we can make the rule change with Basic and the size limitation.
Gil asked Brad to write up a proposal for the 2019 contest guide and present at the November meeting for a vote. With Brad’s point, we can introduce Adi’s proposal without going to AMA. The original proposal and Brad’s proposal will be discussed at the November meeting.
International Issues – Adi Kochav
Adi has made the proposal to split the International region into three: Latin America, European, and Asia Pacific. We currently have ARDs in these regions. Each region would have an RD and an International coordinator. They want to make these regions even bigger. Each and every region will have its own premier contest. The premier contest would be every 2 years and the Worlds would be every four years. To participate in these contests, it will be mandatory to be an IMAC member. We could even have a premier event within the United States. In the USA/Canada, we cannot enforce membership.
Adi wanted the BOD to consider his three proposals. The first proposal is to take the International Region and split into three, which would put two more RDs on the BOD. The second proposal is creating regional premier events. The third proposal is to make it a requirement to be an IMAC member for the premier contests. Adi said that only IMAC members can compete in the 2020 European Cup. There isn’t anything preventing the premier contests in the International region. Brad recommends that we delay the proposal to split the region and adding two more RDs to the BOD until the new BOD in January of 2019. We could consider having a special election for the International region in the Fall of 2019.
Membership Cards and Profiles – Steve Sides
Steve has many questions about the email that was sent out regarding completed member profiles and the membership cards. They are requiring that the member profile be completed for the membership cards can be sent to the members. The cards were also created for the IMAC members to receive a $20 discount at contest registration. The judging instructor signature line is just for informational purposes that the pilot has attended a judging school. This could also be an alternative for a judging school’s certificate. Some other ideas that were mentioned for this was giving an additional discount for attending a judging school. In the $5.00 range was discussed as a possibility with Ty Lyman and Doug Pilcher. To this point, only has been an idea.
There is a banner above the election ballot that says your vote will not count in the election unless your member profiled is completed. This suggests that if our member profile is not complete, you cannot vote. This is against our By-Laws. Steve’s second question is why are we requiring this. Brad and Steve’s argument is that requiring member profile being completed changes the voting process.
The voting was setup by our webmaster and Doug has no knowledge of this being tied to the member profile directly other than regionally. Our By-Laws state that we must publish the election method on when the election will take place. The voting process was never voted on by the BOD. Mike made the forum post two months ago on the voting process, timing, and method two months ago on the Member’s forum. Mike posted in the Member Forum on September 13. It was opened a few hours earlier due to the hurricane. A motion was made that all members in good standing should be allowed to vote by Steve Sides and seconded by Brad Davy. By roll-call vote, motion passed unanimously.
Samantha made mention of receiving an election letter from one of the VP candidates. Alex was also caught off guard being receiving this email. The BOD was not aware that members had access to member profiled information. Doug is currently contacting the webmaster to have this removed for all members, except for the BOD. European law has been passed that their citizens cannot have their information posted on websites.
Doug has drafted an email (During BOD Meeting) to the changes being requested by BOD to the webmaster. These include the removal of the “Member Profiles being completed to vote” banner and a “Member Lookup feature to be removed from the site as it was intended for BOD members only.” *See Addendum*. A motion was made to accept Doug’s email on the changes to the webmaster by Brad Davy and seconded by Steve Sides. By roll call vote, motion passed unanimously. Email was sent to entire BOD and Webmaster at 9:33 p.m. CST during meeting.
Brad suggested that the voting be extended by two weeks from the date the banner and the coding is removed from the website. A motion to extend the election by 2 weeks from when the banner comes down on the voting restrictions on member profile for just strictly the website and will do an email blast letting members know the change was made by Brad Davy and seconded by Steve Sides. Motion passed unanimously. *See Addendum.*
Treasurer’s Report – Phil Vance
At the end of September, the balances in the IMAC accounts were as follows:
Checking $29,231.86
PayPal $13,453.20
Total $42,685.06
The current balance as October 22 in the IMAC accounts is as follows:
Checking $26,256.00
PayPal $13,566.06
Total $39,822.06
The balance in the IWC account is $4,909.29, which is included in the IMAC General Checking account. All IWC bills have been paid. A mention was made to make a donation of $1,200 to AMA for the IWC. We can buy a brick or just given them a donation.
Phil wanted to get some clarification on the amounts for the International Judging School. In the past, we set aside $700 per person for 2 members from each region to be sent to the Judging School. On the International region, Phil believes that we should cover the whole cost of the airfare. Phil says that is is imperative that we have them attend these schools. A motion was made to cover up to $1,100 per person for Adi and Manrico to attend the International Judging School in 2019 in Phoenix by Phil Vance and seconded by Doug Pilcher. Motion passes unanimously.
Phil received a letter today on our domain name via Weebly. Doug will check into this letter and get back with Phil and the BOD.
Regional Issues and Updates – All RDs
Brad reported that the Northwest Region has its 2018 season wrapped up. Jeff reported that the North Central Region ended up well. There were some new pilots that came to fly Basic. North Central had a very good season and have started working on dates for the 2019 season. Jeff is currently working on ordering the jackets for the IRPS regional champs. The Northeast region finished their season in September. Clark said that they didn’t have as many attendees as they would’ve liked. The Southeast regionals will be held the first weekend in November. The South Central has a first-time contest this weekend in Pampa, Texas. The contest is at an AMA district representative’s field. Doug said two weeks after that contest is their IRPS finish in Sherman, TX. Alex reported that the Southwest region is getting ready for regional contests.
Gil would like to see the Worlds moved away from Labor Day weekend. Adi reported that the Worlds will be in August of 2022.
Meeting adjourned at 11:06 p.m. EST.
**Addendum**
The request to Webmaster during this meeting, to remove verbiage of any voting restrictions had been completed before the October 22nd meeting had concluded. Throughout the meeting and over the next roughly 12 hours, Doug had been in correspondence with our webmaster, with entire BOD included. Webmaster advised that there were no voting restrictions in place at the time of the election different that years past web election process. Each member needed to have the “State and Country” field completed to place their vote for the Regional Director only. There was only one contested election for Regional Director, the South Central Region, so this restriction only applied to South Central members in that race and as it applied to State and Country only. With no other voting restrictions in place, the BOD had not pressed in the BOD forum (nor replied to email chain with last email exchange at approximately 7:51 a.m. on the 23rd of October CST) for the need to extend the elections by two weeks. This appeared to be a non-issue with the BOD members who raised this issue with no replies following and with the Webmasters explanations supplied.