Draft Minutes of Ottawa Orienteering Club 2008 AGM, January 10, 2009, 3:45

Attendees: Michael MacConaill, Cherie Revells, Rorry Harding, David Agar, Gord Hunter, Jeffrey, Anne and Eric Teutsch, Bill Anderson, Bill Meldrum, Karen Tippett, Lorna and Richard Guttormson, Linda Connell, Andrew Cornett, Stefan Bergström, Randy Kemp, Jim Lauder, Alan and Barbara Gravelle

1. Minutes of previous AGM – in the absence of the secretary, the minutes were deferred to next meeting.

2. President’s Report – attached Richard further mentioned there will be a change of fee structure from OQ/COF for 2009. This will mean we will need to rethink our fee structure.

3. Director’s reports

a) Treasurer’s report – attached. Linda C. moved acceptance of 2008 financial statement. Seconded by Andrew C. Carried

The 2009 budget projects a deficit of $6800, which would leave us with an equity of $16193. Discussion: how would running the COC 2010 affect our finances? Response: COF takes 25% off the entry fee for all races associated with the event. If we fail to get the Trillium grant, which we have applied for to help with the mapping, we could still manage. It was noted that the 1996 COC’s brought us sizable revenue.

Bill M. moved acceptance of the budget, seconded by Cherie. Carried.

b) Membership report – attached. It was felt we could not set and approve membership fees until we hear further from OQ/COF on levy charges.

Michael MacConaill – president of OQ reported that COF is planning to remove the current per member levy and will replace it with a participation levy + an insurance levy . The insurance cost is less than $2 per member per year + about $ .30 - $.40 for day participants. (Secretary note – the insurance cost will be $3 per member and 50 cents for day participants in 2009). Therefore, the current thinking is that OQ will charge all pass through costs based on final word from COF + a small amount for OQ operations. He noted that with the new structure, all members will be full COF members, eligible to enter age class events, essentially eliminating our classification of ‘limited members’. The only other service ‘full membership’ has given is the COF newsletter , which is now on the web and they propose to notify members, through their club, when a newsletter is out. They will also explore the idea of having the COF newsletter mailed to those who wish it, for an additional $5.

Proposed by Bill M. – that we have a single membership level and that the new board be directed to determine the fee to a maximum of $20 per member keeping consideration for junior rates and family maximums. Seconded by Andrew C. Carried

c) Local Meets – click here for html on IE else click here for Excel Andrew expressed thanks to all volunteers who ran meets and also to the mappers for providing new maps on which to run. He also invited qualified meet directors to contact him to get early choice of dates and maps on which to hold their events.

d) Promotion – Linda C., with her many hats , first reported that she has reviewed our list of officials with the COF list and will be reporting 14 new OOC names to COF for upgraded qualifications. She recommended we could use a theory course and an A-meet to get some folks upgraded to level 2 qualifications.

Linda next distributed a revised registration form which contains a new waiver and a minor/adult version and, when approved, will need to be translated to French. In light of the new information regarding levies, this form will need to be reviewed as to meet fees by the new board.

Linda will be getting email addresses of those who have not renewed their membership and will follow up with them as to why they did not renew. She will also follow up with day event folks who do not join. She suggested that at the first few meets of 2009, there will be separate membership table.

Linda reported that the BOD had decided to increase the distinction between OOC and LGOC so that folks recognize that there are 2 clubs in the area and can recognize this choice of membership and that we are not responsible for LGOC meets. The LGOC meets would be on another page of the web site – or a link to their own site. The membership at the meeting indicated they wanted a single calendar of all local meets and that the distinction between meets of the 2 clubs should be made in some other fashion.

e) Junior Program – Cherie reported that Stefan and Randy coached the advanced juniors while Robbie and Jeffrey ran beginner sessions for 4 Sundays. There was lots of out of town participation by the advanced juniors and they received support of $100 per junior per out of town meet to a max of $300 each. Half of this money came from OQ, the other half from OOC. The program is seen as a model across Canada.

4. Other Reports

a) Orienteering Quebec – Michael MacConaill – OQ has lost the Viking Club, previously a strong club in the Montreal area. The new board will be looking at developmental programs in schools and youth groups.

b) Sport Ident – Eric Teutsch – We have purchased 10 new units and 20 SI5 dibblers. Eric is now the repair man for SI for all of North America

c) 2010 Canadian Orienteering Championships planning – Lorna – attached – She further noted that Gord Hunter has begun to work on sponsorship and that anyone who might be able to get sponsorwhip for the event should consult with him before confirming any agreements. Although we have not yet received confirmation from COF of acceptance of our bid, nor are the dates yet confirmed, David offered to begin promotion of the event through Attack Point and suggested we should get it listed on the US calendar of events as soon as possible.

d) Mapping – Bill A presented a display of the new areas that have been mapped or are currently in process including March Highlands (north extension of Kanata Lakes), Carp Ridge (to be used for COC’s), Beaverbrook sprint, 4 high school properties and adjacent park land, and Foley Mountain near Westport, ON.

5. Election of Officers – Bill M. – the slate of officers presented by the nomination committee is as follows:

President – Richard Guttormson

Treasurer – Karen Tippet

Secretary – Peter Laurich

Events Coordinator – Andrew Cornett

Directors at Large:

Membership – Steve Buchko

Publicity – Linda Connell

Rorry Harding

Randy Kemp

Anne Teutsch

Gord moved acceptance of the slate and Cherie seconded.

It was noted that efforts would be made to recruit a new president for 2010.

6. Plans for 2009 – It was noted that 2009 will be the 40^th anniversary of the club.

A question was raised as to whether we might be following the OQ lead of working through schools.

A suggestion was made that we have more ‘regular’ meets in the fall program.

7. Rorry moved adjournment of the meeting at 6pm. Seconded by Linda.

The meeting was followed by a pot-luck supper and an entertaining presentation by Emily Kemp of her experiences at the Junior World Orienteering Championships in the summer of 2008. In thanking her, Richard indicted how proud we all are of both her and Robbie’s performances at JWOC this year.

REPORTS

4. Ottawa Orienteering Club

Annual General Meeting

January 10, 2009

President's Report

2008 was another year of good orienteering in Ottawa, thanks to the efforts of our hard working volunteers in planning, organizing and running meets. The registration and SI teams, instituted a couple of years back, are continuing to be an example of good organization and dedication. Our meets are consistently well run and of high quality. 2008 was also a year of outreach and planning as OOC volunteers aided materially in making the 2008 Canadian championships in New Brunswick a success and are starting planning for the 2010 Canadian Championships here in Ottawa. OOC members also continued to have noteworthy results in Canada and around the world. My report can but touch on a few highlights, with more details in other reports. Any omissions are a result of personal memory laps and not an indication of relative merit.

This year, the club lost a true friend in Pat de St Croix. Pat was not only our past president but had been president of the Canadian Orienteering as well. She was the spark plug that got us to organize the 1996 Canadian Championships and with a gentle hand and innumerable pot luck dinners cajoled the organizing committee into pulling off a highly successful event. She and Dick had long been active in mapping and brought many new areas into use as orienteering venues. For the last several years, Pat had trained the club's crop of qualified officials, about 22 overall. We all miss Pat's ready smile, bubbly personality and plain hard work.

The Club held 24 events this year, including 3 A-meets and 9 B-meets, three ski-O's, four score-O's a Rogaine and an adventure run. In addition to these 24 events the Junior program was very active with seven training sessions.

Overall, attendance was down, with 1105 starts compared to 1471 in 2007. Could it be that there is a correlation between our attendance and the top weather story of 2008 being the wet summer in Eastern Canada??

In contrast to the overall reduction in participation, our A-Meet saw increased participation, in part because the COF had sufficient confidence in our ability to put on high quality meets that they nominated our National Capital O-Fest as the sole national team selection meet. Many thanks to organizors Bill Anderson, Robbie Anderson, Brian Graham, Peter Laurich, Bill Meldrum, Isabelle Robert, Judy Meldrum, Gord Hunter and Richard and Lorna Guttormson.

In the area of promotion the Club was again very active, led by Linda Connell who produced and distributed our new 'permanent' full colour brochures, created a new banner, contacted every local paper in the area and organized Welcome Meet, and, along with Lorna Guttormson conducted a series of four City of Ottawa Women in Sports orienteering sessions.

There were, overall, 5 Ottawa events during the annual National Orienteering Week, a national coordinated orienteering promotion: the welcome meet, our annual beginner clinic, a B-meet, one of the Women in Sports sessions and a B-meet by Loup Garou.

Lynda Scrivens and Linda Connell, coordinating our meet registration teams this year. As a result of their hard work and outreach we had more folks involved in volunteering for these types of meet organization tasks than ever.

Eric Teutsch has kindly taken on the role of SPORTident equipment manager and is actively working with SPORTident in Germany to make equipment maintenance simpler for us.

Our web site continues to be one of the best and most active in Canada. Our on-line registration was used not only for the National Capital O-Fest in May but for the 2008 COC's in New Brunswick. The computer code Lorna developed is also being used as the base for the 2009 COC on-line registration.

We had a very active year participating in events outside Ottawa. At least 32 Club members journeyed to the Canadian Championships in New Brunswick. They did not come away empty-handed: 16 firsts, 12 seconds and 11 thirds amongst Canadian runners. Laura Teutsch again showed she will be a force to be reckoned with by taking 3 firsts. Brother Alex got two firsts and a second. Michael MacConaill took two firsts.

Our Juniors showed well at the Junior World Orienteering Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden with Robbie Anderson and Emily Kemp putting in the strongest Canadian performances.

In the North American Orienteering Championships total time results, OOC took 2 firsts, 2 seconds and 5 thirds, with the first place finishes going to Ian and Molly Kemp.

Closer to home at the Ontario Championships OOC gathered 24 firsts, 13 seconds and 5 thirds, with first place sweeps by Michael MacConaill, and Ian, Molly and Emily Kemp — Emily in the elite category. Jon Torrence won the elite men's long distance.

All this running in the woods would not be possible without maps and the club has been active in this area. We used Bill Anderson's new Sedburg map for the middle and sprint distances at the O-Fest. We have negotiated permissions with the city and two key landowners to use the Carp Ridge area and Bill is continuing work on the March Hills area, north of the old Kanata Lakes map. We are also looking at two areas south of here towards Kingston. Bill will give more details shortly.

The 2009 mapping program (again details from Bill) is very aggressive and we have applied for Ontario Trillium Foundation funding to assist. Wish us luck.

A group of members has been working on the possibility of the Club hosting the 2010 Canadian Orienteering Championships, the Board of Directors has agreed with their proposal and the application has been submitted. I am confident the application will be accepted. I have agreed to organize the orienteering aspects of the 2010 COC's and Lorna is undertaking to organize the non-orienteering aspects. More from Lorna later. We are very anxious to get help in this area.

2009 plan and challenges:

The 2008 decline in participation needs attention: why and what if anything should we do about it?

We have a number of sprint maps, with more in the works, but no coordinated sprint program.

The Orienteering Info-Line has been running for many years and is not expensive nor onerous but is it needed?

We need to select a date and a meet director for the Capital O-fest. Any volunteers?

Speaking of volunteers. You all know that without volunteers there would be no club and no events, so don't be shy, offer your help with meet planning and organization, meet operations such as registration and SI, publicity, land-owner relations and.... For many tasks, neither experience nor training are needed; where training is required the club will provide it.

Thank you and have a great 2009!

Richard Guttormson

2009-01-10

OTTAWA ORIENTEERING CLUB
STATEMENT OF REVENUE AND EXPENSE
		Year ended	Year ended
	2008	November 15,	November 15,
	Budget	2008	2007
	$	$	$
Revenues
Net B meet revenues	5,000.00	5,481.82	6,626.30
Net A meet revenue	2,500.00	2,758.10	3,476.37
Adventure Run	1,000.00
Rogaine	1,000.00	1,355.46	993.25
Membership	3,000.00	2,565.00	2,774.00
Training and clinics	200.00	90.74	-2.90
Sales of maps and other	1,000.00	976.84	1,616.34
Sale of O-clothing	0.00	112.00
Rental of SI cards	400.00	402.00	470.00
Interest	600.00	732.91	783.93
	14,700.00	14,474.87	16,737.29
Expenses
Sport Ident	2,000.00	2,730.76	211.85
Mapping	9,000.00	10,878.50	6,560.59
Levies	4,000.00	2,214.00	3,600.00
National Team Donation	750.00	750.00	750.00
Capital O	500.00		368.08
Equipment and Supplies	1,000.00	109.04	1,121.87
Promotion	500.00	579.29	202.36
Software	600.00		380.97
Junior Program	2,000.00	1,354.07	204.57
Miscellaneous	800.00	1,227.34	607.70
	21,150.00	19,843.00	14,007.99
Net Surplus (Deficit) for Year	-6,450.00	-5,368.13	2,729.30
Opening Members' Equity	28,611.78	28,611.78	25,882.48
Closing Members' Equity	22,161.78	23,243.65	28,611.78

OTTAWA ORIENTEERING CLUB
2009 BUDGET
			Year ended
	2009	2008	November 15,
	Budget	Budget	2008
	$	$	$
Revenues
Net B meet revenues	5,000.00	5,000.00	5,481.82
Net A meet revenues	2,500.00	2,500.00	2,758.10
Adventure Run	0.00	1,000.00
Rogaine	1,000.00	1,000.00	1,355.46
Membership	2,600.00	3,000.00	2,565.00
Training and clinics	200.00	200.00	90.74
Sales of maps and other	1,000.00	1,000.00	976.84
Sale of O-clothing	0.00	0.00	112.00
Rental of SI cards	400.00	400.00	402.00
Interest	600.00	600.00	732.91
	13,300.00	14,700.00	14,474.87
Expenses
Sport Ident	2,000.00	2,000.00	2,730.76
Mapping	9,000.00	9,000.00	10,878.50
Levies	3,000.00	4,000.00	2,214.00
National Team Donation	750.00	750.00	750.00
Capital O	500.00	500.00
Equipment and Supplies	1,000.00	1,000.00	109.04
Promotion	500.00	500.00	579.29
Software	400.00	600.00
Junior Program	2,000.00	2,000.00	1,354.07
Miscellaneous	1,200.00	800.00	1,227.34
	20,350.00	21,150.00	19,843.00
Net Surplus (Deficit) for Year	-7,050.00	-6,450.00	-5,368.13
Opening Members' Equity	23,243.65		28,611.78
Closing Members' Equity	16,193.65		23,243.65
Note:
1. Members' Equity is intended for future major mapping costs and
capital acquistions related to the Club's purposes.

Ottawa Orienteering Club

Membership Report 2008

New membership sales for 2008 were down compared to 2007, with 43 new individuals joining the club, compared to 62 the previous year. This year’s new membership numbers are comparable to membership sales in 2006, when we gained 41 new members. While this year’s new membership sales were strong for the spring season, we only gained 8 members in the fall.

As of the end of 2008, the club had a total of 98 active mailing addresses, representing 184 individual club members. This is a decline from 2007, when we had 112 active mailing addresses representing 220 individual members.

Over time, approximately 10-15% of the people who join our club in any given year will stay with the club over the long term. The decline we see in total membership numbers this year is a result of lower membership sales in 2008 compared to 2007, combined with the high new-membership years of 2004, 2005 and 2007 settling down to that average renewal rate.

Full OQ Members: 62 of the 184 active members, or 33.7% of the club

Limited Members: 122 of the 184 active members, or 66.3% of the club

As a result of strong membership growth in the last 3 years, just under half of our club membership consists of relatively new members:

Orienteers who have been with the club for 10 years or more: 28.3%

Orienteers who have been with the club for 4 to 9 years: 25.5%

Orienteers who have been with the club for 3 years or less: 46.2%

Membership Fee Proposal For 2009

The OOC board of directors is recommending that member ship fees remain unchanged in 2009. The proposed membership fees for 2009 are as follows:

Full Membership:

$35 for the first adult, $20 per additional adult family member, $10 per additional junior* family member, $5 per additional limited family member

$20 for an individual junior* membership

Limited Membership:

· $15 for the first adult, $5 per additional limited family member

· $10 for an individual junior* membership

*Juniors are those not yet 21 as of December 31, 2007.

This proposal is identical to the 2008 membership fees.

Steve Buchko

Director-at-large, Membership

2010 Canadian Orienteering Championships Committee Report Jan. 10, 2009

As Richard mentioned, in 1996 OOC, led by Pat de St Croix held the Canadian Orienteering Championships. This event, which should be run in woods that have not been used ever before, or at least not for a long time, is shared by major clubs across the country. We feel it is our turn again and have bid/offered to hold the 2010 COCs in August of that year. Holding such an event gives the area an opportunity to open up new woods for orienteering, to see top runners in the woods, and to bring the sport to the attention of the community.

We intend to use newly mapped city land in the Carp Ridge area, north and east of the town of Carp. A number of folks have been actively working to secure permissions and access to this land and work out the logistics of holding such a meet. With so much work being done by so many, but no one ready to take on the meet director position, Richard and I have offered to share the work - Richard taking on the orienteering related tasks and myself the support roles. We have met with an initial planning group of some 10 OOC members and started the ball rolling. I have also talked to a few others and gotten great support from the membership in taking on key roles but I will be talking to more of you as the plans evolve. If you want to be involved, don't wait for me to approach you, I welcome your help as I hope that we can share the load and will have the largest participation of OOC members ever at this event - that is, that I want to work it such that most volunteers will also be able to participate.

The COC's are not just your regular A-meet. They are more. They involve a full week of orienteering activities. The COC's themselves, are sprint, middle and long distance events with a 'model' event to acquaint the visitors to the type of wooded land in the area. There are typically other events, usually novel formats (relays, farstas, score-O's), in the week preceeding as well as a very popular junior camp and a COF workshop. The COF workshop, although we don't know at this time the format for that year, could bring to Ottawa, to you, some valuable O sessions on skill sets such as course planning, route planning, environmental issues, landowner negotiations, promotion.

We are looking at 5 days of orienteering starting Wed., Aug.18 and culminating with the COC's themselves on the weekend, Aug. 20-22. Next fall, 2009, we will be bringing in an expert mapper from the Czech Republic to help with mapping. If anyone knows of a good place to put him up in the west end, I would appreciate hearing from you. The Carp Ridge is a wonderful area with woods, trails, marshes, rock outcroppings - I'll let Bill describe further in his mapping report. It is an expensive endeavor to get the area mapped but after the event, the area will open up new orienteering woods to explore and enjoy for our yearly A meet and for weekly B meets.

We hope to showcase the sport in Ottawa and our club across Canada with this event. I know, that with your help, we can put on a truly professional meet for all, from the beginner, thru the recreational, to the elite orienteer.

Lorna Guttormson,

Co-meet director