MACA Board Meeting Minutes
January 29th 2017
Panera, Cambridge
Minutes prepared by Bob Messenger
President Nathan Smolensky called the meeting to order at 12:12 p.m. Present were Treasurer Bob Messenger and Directors Paul Arond, Jeff Caruso, and Dmitry Barash. Vice President John Sadoff arrived at 12:18 p.m.
The board approved the minutes of the November meeting by a 5-0 vote.
Treasurer’s Report
Mr. Messenger pointed out that $10,000 which had been recently donated should be getting a higher rate of return.
MOTION 0117-01: Move to create an Investment Committee chaired by Jeff Caruso to make recommendations to the board for investing money (Messenger/Smolensky). PASSED 6-0.
Tournament Committee Report
The Massachusetts G/60 Championship will be held on April 23rd. The Massachusetts Open will be held on Memorial Day weekend.
Scholastic Committee Report
There have been problems with the Boxborough site which we’ve been using. It’s under new management and has been renamed from the Holiday Inn Boxborough to the Boxboro Regency. Mr. Barash said that he and Oleg Poliannikov were investigating alternative sites.
Education Committee Report
Mr. Smolensky reported that he had met with Bernadette Ricciardelli, who is our primary contact at the Medford public schools. MACA’s Early Education Initiative may be able to introduce chess during school hours. There is a problem with time constraints at the school. MACA may be able to provide educational material and chess sets.
Publication Committee Report
The Holidays 2016 double issue has been published on the MACA web site, has been printed, and will be mailed the week of January 30th.
Election Commission Report
Election Commission chair Jeff Caruso had emailed a report (see below). He had also created a MACA Elections Handbook to provide guidance to future election commissions.
MOTION 0117-02: Moved to appoint Oleg Poliannikov to fill a vacancy as a director on the MACA board (Barash/Messenger). PASSED 6-0.
New Business
MOTION 0117-03: Move to authorize Robert Messenger to organize the 2017 Massachusetts Senior Open, a state championship tournament, as an independent organizer, with no financial involvement by MACA. (Messenger/Arond). AMENDED: Move to authorize the MACA Tournament Committee to organize the Massachusetts Senior Open as an annual state championship event. PASSED 6-0 AS AMENDED.
The next MACA board meeting will be held April 2nd starting 12:30 p.m. at the Panera restaurant at the Fresh Pond Mall in Cambridge.
The meeting was adjourned at 2:07 p.m.
Election Commission Report emailed by Jeff Caruso:
January 29, 2017
As previously minuted, a new Elections Commission was elected by the Board on November 6. All commission members have accepted election.
The Registration Announcement was published in the Holidays 2016 issue of Chess Horizons. In addition it was posted on the MassChess.org website in the Chess News section, and emailed to the membership. Considering the multiple notifications we have chosen not to announce the Registration requirements via an additional postcard mailing. Several new registrations have been received. The Call for Nominations announcement was posted on the MassChess.org website and emailed to the membership. Several nominations have been received, including some outside nominations. The Elections FAQ on MassChess.com was updated to reflect the registration announcement and 2017 dates. We continue to maintain the free SurveyMonkey.com account which was used for online voting in 2015 and 2016. We are also considering other options which are more geared toward running elections than conducting “surveys”. One possibility we are investigating is ElectionRunner.com, which seems to have a well-run website with responsive customer support. They charge $15.00 per election of up to 100 voters. According to their support people they handle 30 to 50 elections per day and had processed over 100,000 votes in the first two weeks of January 2017. They also have solid testimonials and were given an 86% Trusted rating by scamadviser.com. The projected timeline for the election is as follows:
February 15: close of nominations
February 15 - March 9: resolve any MACA membership issues for candidates
February 28: deadline for voter registration
March 15: deadline for candidates' statements
April 5: publication of candidates' statements
April 24: mail out paper ballots
April 30: send out electronic ballots
May 24: voting deadline for online ballots
May 26: voting deadline for mailed paper ballots
May 27: voting deadline for hand-delivered paper ballots
May 27-29: publication of results
Respectfully submitted,
Jeffrey Caruso, Chair of the Elections Commission
Promotion Committee Report emailed by Edward Chiu:
To follow up discussion at the last meeting concerning creating a forum or some online channel as a service our affiliates, I asked Bob for a list of current affiliates. As of November 2016, MACA has approximately 9 paid affiliates. They appear to be predominantly scholastic organizations who participate in SCS. This list of current paid affiliates does not represent a comprehensive representation of clubs and organizations operating in Massachusetts. I recommend that the board work on increasing the number of paid affiliates so that a MACA service can benefit as many organizations as possible, not just scholastic organizations.
Please make sure to like MACA on Facebook, follow @masschess on Twitter and help spread the word about MACA events by forwarding our e-mails to interested parents, players and coaches.
Edward Chiu
Board Member
Scholastic Committee Report emailed by Steve Frymer:
With variable attendance scholastics ran Q #3 in December, and the Grade School Championships and Winter Team Challenge in January.
Bob Messenger did his usual outstanding job as TD, supplemented by Andrew Hoy at the Grade School and Chris Bird at the Winter Team.
We did have a hotel new ownership rental raise threat in January, but we found a way to survive. We'll deal w/ this issue going forward, and especially when we begin to plan for the next season.
Financially, the scholastics program may not be earning the profits it managed to generate in past years, but that's ok as long as we can balance our yearly budget overall.
We have tentatively scheduled our girls championship for 7 May at BCC.
steve f.
scholastics chair
Prison Report emailed by Steve Frymer:
We have now mailed over 14,600 chess magazines to about 230 facilities, which includes multiple mailings in some cases, since the program began in calendar 2015. This includes an assist from Dr. Dom Cangelosi of Baton Rouge, who did some mailings to facilities in Louisiana after i wrote to their wardens and received interest from 3 of 8 facilities.
Howard Goldowsky is hoping to generate a visit to MCI-Norfolk in the next two months.
Anyone interested in partaking of this charitable effort please contact me directly.
steve f.
prison chess coordinator
Living Memorial Chess Fund Report emailed by Steve Frymer:
We have issued some grants this season:
1. Nicholas Sterling rec'd chess sets for Newton Comm. Ed./elementary school programs;
2. Larry Eldridge also rec'd chess sets for Newton Comm. Ed./elementary school programs;
3. Larry Eldridge rec'd chess sets for a Belmont elementary school program; and
4. the Springfield Renaissance school, which competed in several grades at the Grade Championship, rec'd several dozen chess magazine back issues for its on-going chess teaching program run by teacher Micah Winston.
steve f.
LMCF coord.
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