<p> Soderville Athletic Association Board Meeting Minutes</p><p>Date: January 10, 2010</p><p>Board Members in Attendance</p><p>Greg Zimmer President Mike Laciskey Treasurer Steve Miller Brad Hensler Tom Dreshar Steve Rajtar Heather Lund Jim Doyle</p><p>Not in Attendance </p><p>Brian Braden Vice President Derrell Singh Secretary Dale Blonigen Nick Braden</p><p>Others in Attendance</p><p>Nancy Nelson Chuck Richards/St. Paul Saints Evolve Systems (Marnie and Don Raleigh)</p><p>Meeting called to order by Greg Zimmer at 7:30pm.</p><p>Mike L. made a motion to approve the December 13, 2009 meeting minutes, Steve M. seconded, motion approved.</p><p>Public forum – none</p><p>New Business</p><p>Soderville Outlaws/Eric Collins – Eric did not show up for the meeting.</p><p>Chuck Richards/St. Paul Saints Baseball – Chuck Richards introduced himself as a representative of the St. Paul Saints Baseball organization. He has been working with Nancy on getting a date set for SAA to have “Saints Night”. Chuck said Nancy has chosen August 12th to have our kids come to one of the Saints games; Chuck said that last year we had 75 people from SAA buy tickets for our designated game and he would like to see that number increase this year; Chuck handed out flyers with the information for what they are offering this year and wanted our input on that; Nancy would like to get some feedback from some people that have gone to the game and we also talked about having them host a clinic or at least have someone representing the Saints come to some of our tournaments or something like that; Chuck wants to have good communication with them and us so we can see if we can better the program; he would like to promote it more this year – maybe he could come to our registrations and hand out the flyer there and then SAA could send out an email again before the August 12th date; Mike L thought a bus service would help get more kids to go as many are not sure about going somewhere where they are not familiar; they do spotlight night and inter inning promotions during games; we discussed using this to promote our fundraiser more and maybe have the top sellers from that be recognized at the game too; Chuck hopes this is the start of a good relationship between Soderville and the Saints association. </p><p>Evolve Systems – Marnie and Don introduced themselves and they are from Evolve Systems, Greg and Tom have been in contact with them, they started this company 7 ½ years ago and work with companies like us on their merchant processing systems; VISA/MASTERCARD is called Merchant processing, which is what the parents are paying for online; Tom sent her a monthly analysis from our current merchant so they could compare that to what they can offer us, it seems they think they could save SAA about $3,000 according to them; with our current system we are locked into using these rates because Echo is tied to our website, Greg said that we really like our website and our webmaster and our webmaster takes all these kids and categorizes them into different groups so we have to make sure we are still going to have the same options we do now for forming teams, setting up schedules, etc.; Evolve may be able to put a link on our current website that would bring families to another website in order to make the payment for registration so that is the avenue we will be exploring with them, Evolve would also like to see us putting a credit card machine into our concession stands to give families that option for payment; there was much more discussion around the pros and cons of SAA switching from Echo to Evolve as our credit card merchant and Evolve is interested in talking with Steve Voss, our webmaster, before going any further. Steve will be able to answer many of the questions they have about the website.</p><p>After Evolve left the meeting Nancy asked if we are going to meet with other credit card merchants to compare what they have to offer, Nancy has been talking with Marco from 21st Century Bank and the Board agreed it would be good to talk to them also. We don’t think they will be able to offer any options to help compile our registration information that we need though like Evolve would. The Board also discussed if we are going to try to implement a new system before the February 1st registration date and we are thinking that will not be possible but are not sure how fast we would be able to get everything switched and added to the website.</p><p>MYAS/Team formation – Greg had a meeting with MYAS and Tony wants to see something in our by-laws about how we form teams, they need us to have our draw area listed in writing, other associations want us to have boundaries and we have to come up with some sort of criteria to form teams and they would like us to have try outs for recreation ball; Greg will get something to Nancy with a write up of our draw area and we will send it around for everyone to review.</p><p>Blaine meeting - Greg Z., Mike L., Steve M. and Nancy N. went to a meeting with Blaine Little League tonight. Tim S. from Blaine High School would like to see our two associations merge together and with BATBA so that is what was discussed. Blaine Little League is considering having a rec. ball league and a little league option this year and if they do that we would not be able to combine our associations. They want to have both so they don’t lose their Little League sanction because then many of their players would move to the Coon Rapids association. This could also take players from SAA that play rec. ball as Blaine used to just offer Little League. It was decided that for this year we would have our older boys play each other a little bit and just see how it goes and we can always add more age groups in next year if it is successful. These discussions will continue in the future.</p><p>Committee Reports: </p><p>Concessions – Nelson – no report . Umpires – Hensler – Brad let the Board know that the scheduling company we have been using is going out of business so he and Gail are looking into other scheduling companies, Bard will also check into League Lineup, our current website, to see if they offer any program like that.</p><p>In-house fast pitch – Lund – no report</p><p>In-house baseball (Junior) – Greg Z. – no report</p><p>In-house baseball (Senior) – Rajtar – no report</p><p>Traveling fast pitch – Miller – Steve let the Board know that the traveling association has been swindled by a parent of a player that was going to play on one of our teams, they were told they had an opportunity to buy some equipment for $500 to get a good deal and that check came back saying there were insufficient funds in his account, they have filed a police report and found out this gentleman has bigger problems than with just us and is wanted for other things too; good news is they had their second clinic at Blaine High School and it was a great success for the fastpitch girls; they had a catcher from Washington State there to help with the catchers and she was great; Steve M. wanted to mention that any girls are welcome to attend these clinics, they can be from anywhere; Tom Dreshar said that they do a very nice job at those clinics as his daughter has been attending.</p><p>Traveling baseball – Zimmer – no report</p><p>Field/Game Scheduling – McArthur – no report</p><p>Equipment – Braden N. – no report Treasurer – Laciskey – no one has contacted him with any changes for the budget so he will work with Nancy and finalize based on the numbers we have; we are donating $3,000 to East Bethel this year to be spent on fields; we would still be paying the field fees besides so with this donation we are contributing about $6,000 this season to East Bethel.</p><p>Fundraising – Braden – no report</p><p>Uniforms – Singh – no report</p><p>Photos – Nelson – no report</p><p>Operations Manager Report – N. Nelson</p><p>Field requests – Nancy talked about the Ham Lake field requests being due Monday by 12pm. She asked the Board to make sure she is aware of all the weekends we need to request to use the fields. Nancy does not want to use Booster for the 8U boy’s tournament again this year as it is the same weekend at Booster Day up there and the park was a mess when we showed up on Sunday. We could use EB just for Friday night though. The Board agreed about Sunday and Steve M. mentioned that traveling will probably not be using the HL City fields that weekend for their tournament so we could possibly have the 8U tournament there. It was determined that we could not use field #3 there for them though with the grass infield so we may have to use some neighborhood fields that weekend also. </p><p>The Board discussed that BATBA has been hosting the 13U in-house rec. state tournament for a while now and Greg Z. talked to the BATBA President, Ernie Johnson, about that. Ernie agreed that it is odd that a traveling program is hosting an in-house tournament on fields occupied by SAA. It was decided that we are going to let them use the field but we need more involvement out of it from SAA so SAA and BATBA will be working on hosting this tournament together this year.</p><p>Fees for 2010/Registration, late, volunteer</p><p>Nancy needs to finalize the flyers and have Steve finalize the website for registration information so we have to decide if fees will stay the same. Mike L. said that he does not have fees increased in the budget and we should be fine financially with that for this year. Nancy would like to see the late fee increased though since we are trying to get people to register earlier this year and not allow so many late registrations. The Board decided that for the week after registration there would be no late fee, the following week there would be a $30 late fee and after that the late fee will be $50. Of course there will be reasons for late fees to be waived and Nancy will look at those on an individual basis and refund that portion of the registration if she sees fit. Nancy will make sure the website is very clear that registrations need to be done by February 28th this year.</p><p>Background check change this year</p><p>Nancy let the Board know that there is a change to how the background checks will be done this year which will save on Nancy’s time and therefore SAA’s money. When the coaches register they will be asked to click on a link that will bring them to a website where they will enter there own information for the background check. Nancy will need to cross reference the coaches that register to the checks to make sure everyone does one still. This should be a more secure way for the background checks to be done also so coaches should be pleased with that.</p><p>Old Business – </p><p>Other </p><p>The next meeting is set for February 21, 2010 at 7:00pm. </p><p>Motion to adjourn the meeting made by, Steve R. seconded the motion, Steve M. motion approved and meeting adjourned at 10:05pm. </p>