We had our AGM on Thursday, November 20th to settle up everything on the year and start the preparation for next season.
On the Agenda …
Financial Report:
The bottom line on the Financial Report was pretty much bang on what we forecast at the beginning of the season. We credited the long-standing teams to the tune of $5200, put on a $2000 tournament at no cost to the teams and paid out more in prizing than we ever had in the past – and ended up losing about $6500 on the year (after we settle up the bases). This is what we intended to do at the outset as we were carrying too much cash for a non-profit organization. We managed to get our accounts down to a more reasonable working level while giving back to the teams that created that excess – so don’t look for the team credits again next year!
Outdoor User Groups Report:
The meeting with the City which I attended prior to our AGM answered a few of our questions concerning the diamonds, but we’ll have to wait and see if all actually goes as planned. The Plan calls for $250,000 to be injected into the lighting situation (among other items) at the Guelph Lake Sports Fields and the hope is that the work can be started over the course of the winter (and hopefully completed before we start next season).
Also of concern (to us, anyway) was the condition of the access road. Whether anything comes of that, we’ll have to wait and see. They are aware of the condition of the road and will do what they can to make more permanent repairs. One of the issues on that road is the speed at which cars travel – it’s posted at 20 KPH but … well, you know how it is when you’re running late for a game.
Of concern to the city is the situation with the light keys – they haven’t been returned by a lot of groups in the past and they don’t have an accurate idea of how many are out there. They are seriously considering re-keying some of the facilities (they did not mention if Guelph Lake would be one of them) and have asked that all keys be returned by November 28th. Any groups who have not returned their keys by that time will forfeit any money they have tied up in them as a deposit. At $20 per key, 5 or 6 keys to a set and 28 sets out there for our group alone, that is quite a chunk of change which we DO NOT want to forfeit.
If you have not returned your keys, do so as soon as possible. Drop me a line and we’ll set something up or swing by Kingsway Sports and drop them in with Gerry – we NEED them back! There is a $200 fine associated with not returning your keys!
Constitutional Amendments:
Without going into too much detail about the changes made to the Constitution, I will say that we had a committee looking into it to deal with a lot of the picky maintenance items that we seem to get year-after-year, and we sped through it (in less than an hour ). The main items were to incorporate the guidelines we set forth at the beginning of the season, making them officially part of the Constitution.
- The Bat Policy, which has been in effect and relatively unchanged for the past 3 seasons, was added as it stood at the beginning of the season.
- Our Scheduling Guideline was incorporated with an added provision for rescheduling.
- The Divisional Alignment Guideline was adopted as it stood in the spring.
- The Masters Guideline was revised somewhat (what was taken out was adopted in another part of the Constitution for the whole league) and added in. There were no changes to the rules, just to where they were set out.
The full extent of the changes will be entered into the Constitution and will be available for everyone to look over shortly.
Executive Elections:
There really wasn’t much in the way of an election (again!) as there didn’t seem to be anyone rushing to put their name in. A motion was made to re-elect the entire Executive in their present roles and, since all are willing to serve another year, that’s the way it ended up. I won’t deny I feel we have a great team running the league, and the results pretty much speak for themselves, but – I feel we can’t continue to rely on the same group of guys and we will eventually need to inject some new blood / fresh ideas into the league management in order to be the best we can be.
I will do what I can to update the Constitution on the site and there’s a pretty major overhaul of the site on the way (it’s coming, but it may take some time). I guess that pretty much wraps it up for another season …
Come back again and see us as we go through our changes!
