Coast
Rifle and Pistol Club
November
18, 2009 6:00 p.m.
There were 16 members present for the October monthly meeting including the following Officers, Board members and chairmen:
Dennis Ingram Paula Wiles Andre Champagne
Joe Newman Hale Switzer Larry Shook
John Stubbendick Ken Hablitzel Tom Wiltz
The meeting was called to order and the following items were discussed:
1. A membership report was giving as 814.
2. The treasury report was given as follows: an overall balance of $102,928.04 was reported during last month’s meeting. The following checks have been written:
$5,800.00 skeet machines
$23.00 MMSA
$34.50 NSSA
$200.00 Monty Ashley
$510.00 Robert Lee – maintenance
$82.09 Joe Newman – briefing sheets
$369.41 ABF Freight – skeet machines delivery
$202.09 Southern Pipe
$5,079.00 Blanchard Construction
$26.45 Ken Hablitzel – furring strips
$59.12 Don Evens – safety tables
$255.00 Robert Lee – maintenance
$88.28 Chester Abbott – Lowe’s/pull cords
$12,728.94 spent
this month
The new bank balance = $102,928.04 - $12,728.94 = $90,199.10
3. Andre will set up a new bank account for the donated 4-H funds. This account balance will be $1,423.00. Tom Wiltz and Jean will be in charge of the 4-H funds including any future donations and/or expenditures. This is a charitable account and no taxes reporting will be required.
4. Interest will be due on the club checking account in the near future. Interest is expected to be approximately $212.00.
5. Robert Lee has been performing maintenance activities for the club. Board and club members have agreed that maintenance costs are exceeding expectations. Robert’s duties will be revised. A motion was made/seconded and a vote taken to have club members again be responsible for loading skeet and trap houses and machines. The vote was one opposed, all others in favor. The motion passed and club member will now load houses and machines. Robert will no longer load or move any clay targets. A list of his other activities has been provided to him. Andre has requested that Robert provide a daily log of his time and all activities performed on each day he works.
6. The newspaper ad has not been published in the past few months. Guy Saenger was charged with investigating costs and availability of advertisement. (on 11/19/09 Guy emailed verifying that he had worked with Andre and secured the ad for the next three months for a cost of $864.00). Post meeting discussions between John Stubendick, Glen Dawson, Chester Abbott, Tom Wilz, and Andre Champain put a hold on advertizing in the paper do to increased costs and return on investment.
7. Member Herb Hill has made additional request for club documents. Chester Abbott has invited Mr. Hill to attend the monthly club meeting to request and/or discuss any items with the entire board. A motion was made that board members will not respond to members request except at the scheduled monthly, ad hoc, or yearly meetings. The motion was seconded. A vote was taken. The result was unanimous to pass this motion and respond to all requests at meetings only. (see attached emails – showing previous correspondence with Mr. Hill)
8. In the October monthly meeting, Guy Saenger offered to resign his position as a club director. He was asked at this meeting if he was still willing to resign. He stated yes. Ken Hablitzel was asked if he would be willing to fill that director position. Ken agreed. A motion was made and seconded. A vote was taken to have Ken Hablitzel to replace Guy as a director. The vote was unanimous. Ken Hablitzel is a director for the club. Ken’s term will expire in May of 2010.
9. This weekend, club members would like to build fences for the new skeet field. An estimated cost for materials is $575. The fence will be a good neighbor type fence, 8 foot sections, 32 feet long, regular dog eared posts with three stringers. A motion was made to purchase the materials and have club members complete the construction. The motion was seconded. A vote was taken. One member abstained, all other were in favor. The motion passed, the materials will be purchased.
10. A discussion was held concerning the dirt work and dirt stabilization for the new skeet fields. Dirt work is almost complete. Options at this time included doing nothing, grassing, or sodding. If no stabilization is attempted, members felt all or most of the dirt work would have to be re-done. Grassing did not seem to be a viable option due to poor soil conditions, fertilization, etc. A lengthy discussion was held concerning sod. It was estimated that two loads of sod would be required to cover the area at a cost of $1500 per load or $3000 total. The monetary value was discussed and alternatives to compete sodding were discussed. A motion was made to purchase one load of sod at $1,500 and use as appropriate to stop erosion but not cover the entire area. The motion was seconded. A vote was taken. It was unanimously agreed to purchase one load of sod. The skeet shooter will investigate the option of collecting donations to purchase the second load of sod so that the entire area can be covered. Post meeting skeet members donated the $1500.00 for and additional load of sod. Post meeting Henry Parker, Henry Parker Jr., and Jimmy Dobson planted the area south of the skeet pavilion with winter rye and Bermuda grass. They put on 500 lbs of fertilizer for the two acre area. They prepared the ground and planted the seed at no cost to the club.
11. Joe Newman reported an incident that occurred at the club recently. A member contacted Joe and got permission to bring an additional guest for a total of three guests to shoot pistols. The member was granted permission to have three guests on the facility. These men were shooting on the first 22 range which has now been changed to 22 rifle range only. These men were confronted by other members. One member was very nice about shooting the pistols on the rifle range and explaining that this was now a 22 rifle range only. But another member was not so nice and very confrontational. The three guests were considering joining the club but after this confrontation are no longer interested in becoming members. As they were leaving, the member and his guests stopped to talk to Hale and report what had happened. The member who initiated this confrontation was described. Chester Abbott will contact this member to inform him that this is not the policy or practice of this club or its members and it is obviously not the image that should be projected for this club. This club and all of its facilities are for every member and their guests.
12. Ken reminded everyone that on the 28th and 29th of this month there will be a gun show at the coliseum. He requested volunteers to help man the booth and recruit new members for the club.
Meeting was adjourned.
Comment from the President.
When I worked for OMARK Industries they published a monthly news letter and on the back of that new letter they always put “When your green you grow and when your ripe you rot.” The point was that new personnel and ideas is a good thing for the company. It brings a new perspectives and new approaches to problems and issues. If you look at the current board and this year’s elections we had only two positions with more than one person running for that position out of 7 possible positions that come up each year. One was the president’s position and a director’s position. As a club member you should not and cannot expect the same people to stay in office for ever, it is not good for the club or that individual board member. So this year at the May annual elections please consider running for a club officer’s position, one new person can make a difference. I would like all of you to attend monthly meetings, so we have a larger cross section of members represented, your input is wanted.
If you take time to review Mr. Hills requests to the board, you can see that he has knowledge of how a non-profit organization should be run. If any member has such knowledge and time to donate to ward club operations please contact the board and make yourself known. Mr. Guy Saenger (Director) went on record that he would step down and give his position to such a person or a person that is willing to take his position.
Mr. Hill has requested from each officer and director a record of their actions for the past three years with each member, officer, and director that they have talked to during that period about club issues. I do not keep such a log of my actions and do not intend to do so in the future, I just do not have the time. If you can recall when I talked to you and what the discussion was about would you please provide that information to Mr. Hill. Mr. Hill’s e-mail address is hill524@bellsouth.net.
A little club history from your current
president
For those of you that have not been a member of the club all that long I’m going to jump up on the stump for you and give you a little history. I took office in 2004 as club secretary and after about six months was thrown out of office by the board for stating that it was my intention to spend every dime the club took in on the club. Some of you that know me might say that was a very poor move by the board, but wait, let me give you just a little back ground. That board and the previous board from two years prior had just saved the club from going under. Some of the previous officers ( not all) which had been in office a very long time could not account for a bunch of money. A group of members found out that there was not sufficient money to pay the lease on our land. So they took action and saved the club from closer. So here I come along and inform them that I can solve a problem like that because if we spend all the club money on improvements no one can make some of it disappear. In 2005 I ran for treasurer and was elected. In 2006 I ran for president and was elected along with a complete new board, which most of them are still serving today. We have only change secretary’s and treasures position since 2006. Last year I step down from president in mid year and Randy Brownlee take my position. I thought that Randy would do a better job than I was doing. Later I changed my mind and ran for president again this year and was elected. I have continued to have the same policy that got me thrown out of office in 2004, I still plan on spending all the club income on the club each year, but our cash reserves ($50,000.00). Starting in 2005 and up to the present we have made a lot of changes to the club property. We have built 385 feet of covered ranges, we have remodeled all the ranges to be more accommodating and useful to are members. We have two separate bath room facilities, were we had none before. We have cleared most of the property of brush, improved parking, built new skeet and trap fields. We are in the process and planning for building three additional pistol ranges, we plan on making changes to long rifle range, add one more trap field, and add new bath rooms to new pistol range area. We hold four shooting events each month which are open to the public. We sponsor the 4H South East regional shooting event in April of each year and have offered to host the State 4H shooting event next year. We have completed a 3 year plan the board implemented in 2006 and we are in the process of developing a new 3 year plan to carry us forward.
If you think I have been patting myself on the back with what I have stated above your wrong. None of the improvements I have pointed out has been done by one person. If happened because we have had a good and hard working board over the past eight years to make this possible, a few members that have come out to the club and donated their time and effort, and you as members that have voted to increase and pay dues over the past few years. Because, without the money from dues we would not be where we are at today. Has all this been done the most efficient and cost effective way, absolutely not. Tom Wiltz (Vice President) and I were talking the other day about what has taken place over the last few years and Tom had been thinking about what had taken place. He pointed out that the first thing we did was build a new covered pistol range and this year and last we tore it down and moved the cover to the new range. I pointed out to Tom that his concern was very legitimate. If we as a board could only consider and implement the most efficient method of getting to where we are at today, we would have basically closed the facility, cleared every range off and started from scratch. That would have required all the members to pay their dues for a couple of years without being able to shoot. Please keep in mind that we all possess 100% hind sight and your current board does not have the ability to see into the future. I feel we as a board have done the best we could with conditions and constraints that we have had. When you hear someone at the range running the board actions down or how the range is being run please ask that person when was the last club meeting he attended, were did he get his facts. Out of 815 members at the October meeting we had 15 members present including the 9 officers and 4 shoot chairmans. That meant that only two regular members were present at the club meeting.
Chester Abbott
President.