Houston Area Road Runners Association

Board Meeting

August 18, 2003

 

The meeting was called to order by John Phillips at 6:00.

 

Members present:

            Audrey Christiansen, Annie Hadow, Bill Dubinsky, John Phillips, Noah Matthews, Randy Carlson, Tom McBrayer, Ralph Collins, Zach Gonzalez

Others Present:

            Gregg Felts, Sadie Greenman, Susanne Bynum, Bart Nay, Roy Lira

 

Reading of the minutes:

            The minutes for July were corrected for the number of members and approved.

 

President:

Reports of Directors and committees:

 

Treasurer – Audrey Christiansen

            Audrey briefly addressed the financial statement that was forwarded by email to board members. At this time we are in the black.

 

 

Power in Motion: Noah Matthews

            PIM is off and running with about 50 people signed up at this time. Based upon previous numbers they are expecting another 100-150. There will be an entire column on PIM in the Chronicle in the near future.

 

            Ralph added that he is now associated with the Gallway program and will pitch HARRA to them.

 

V.P. of Road Race Management: Randy Carlson

            Tom McBrayer and Randy discussed the HARRA race requirements for series races and what to do with non-compliance with the requirements. The triggering issue was that one of the races in the series was getting equipment from their sponsor. It was concluded after some discussion that since the sponsor was providing equipment that there was no violation of the race requirements.

            Noted that he received a call from Pappa’s restaurants indicating that they were starting a running club.

            Sean Smith will be meeting with us at the next meeting to discuss a cross-country run as part of the spring series.

            The Parks Dept Master plan has raised the ire of the baseball and soccer groups. They have exerted some apparent influence upon the city Council. The Texas DOT is discussing putting a Tollway through the park that will have an elevated portion with significant impact.

            Randy introduced Roy Lira and Merry Nelson to the group to discuss their handling of the Just for Kids Fun Run. Information was exchanged and Bill Dubinsky would help obtain additional information and details about the run.

 

V.P. of Communications

            John introduced Susanne Bynum and Bart Nay to the group. Susanne has been doing the layout for Footprints for the last several years and Bart Nay has been the printer for the last year. Bart was here to discuss options for printing  and publishing Footprints. Amongst the options was the possibility of taking over the editorial work of Footprints and gathering more advertisers to help defray the costs of printing. The main drawbacks of this approach are that we would have to pay for an editor. We would have a choice on what to contribute as far as content. To also help contain costs we would have to significantly reduce the size of the issue. Randy asked if Bart felt that there was sufficient advertising to go after. Bart indicated that he had an advertising department that was trained in this aspect of publishing. In order to determine how much would be available he would have to do some research. Generally he viewed taking over editorial work and advertising as a last option since HARRA would lose much of the control of the publication. Noah pursued the issue regarding contracts and publication right. Bart indicated that this would all be contractual in nature. Bart did say that he would help to broaden our advertising base without taking over control of the publishing. He gave as an example that for the Marathon issue it would seem reasonable to approach HP for some advertising as well as seeing if they would like some special printings of their portion of the issue for their own usage.

            Bart concluded by offering to put together several different options and getting back to us by the end of the week.

 

Students Run Houston – Zach Gonzalez

            Zach is taking a slightly different approach and going through the HISD offices to reach people at the schools who might help to identify other students for the program He felt that although the program has been successful that it might not be reaching some of the students that could really benefit from this type of a program. In the past many of the student were already accomplished runners. He would try and reach out to kids that were truly at risk and might need this kind of program. He also wanted to try and make it a little more comprehensive and have a more disciplined training and participation regimen.

 

Membership – Annie Hadow

            Membership was now at 695 and would rise to 697 when John and Bill paid their dues. She was looking forward to signing up new members at the Marathon Kick Off Party

 

New Business

            The RRCA was going to bill on the basis of number of households and not on number of bodies.

 

Meeting adjourned at 7:25.

 

Respectfully submitted,

Bill Dubinsky