Ice Arena Authority

NORWICH ICE RINK AUTHORITY MINUTES FROM MEETING HELD September 15, 2011 Authority Attendance: Mike Goldblatt, Doug Barlow, Rich Wolak, and Mike Schermerhorn Absent: Cheryl Ritacco Guest: Jim Sanca, Deb Hinchey and Pete Desaulniers MINUTES Meeting was called to order by Michael Goldblatt at 6:09 pm, a quorum was present. Minutes from the August meeting were reviewed. The August minutes were unanimously approved. Public Comments There were no public comments Correspondence A letter from Richard Bazinet, the concession vendor, to the Norwich Ice Rink Authority. A letter from the Board of Health to Richard Bazinet. Reports Jim Sanca reported on the following: A new Learn to Skate program started on September 11th in Norwich with signs of good growth. The Connecticut College program that will start in October should have good numbers also. The CC program has grown steadily since it began. The Skating School boosts 63 members with a goal of 100 by January of 2012. The CT Bobcats Elite AAA 2002 youth hockey program scheduled 14 hrs of ice for this season so far. This is a new customer to the Norwich Ice Rink. They opened their season Sunday Sept.11, vs. Valley Junior Warriors. Freestyle income is up $5,000 compared to last year. Many new users have graduated from the Learn to Skate program to Private Lessons. We discussed how cyclic the figure skating part of the business continues throughout the years. A discussion followed of how to make this a more steady income stream. Jim felt that the Learn to Skate program policy of not pushing the students towards private lessons and the Skating School helped keep more participants in figure skating. The Norwich Figure Skating Club will host the Nutcracker on Ice Nov 19th & 20th after missing a year. They have added an additional matinee show on Nov 19th for a total of 3 shows. After a tour of the facility Pete, Deb and Mike G. wanted to know what the plan was for the back room that has served many purposes in the past. Jim said he is currently attempting to rent the room to another outside vendor or turn it into another locker room and rent. We discussed the letter from Richard Bazinet to the Ice Rink and he is upset that food from outside the rink is brought in and eaten in the rink. He would like us to prohibit any food including drinks from entering the building. Being a public building we were not sure that that was possible. Jim was going to look into that for the authority. The letter from the health department was in response to Rich stating that too many people had access to the kitchen equipment. Jim reported that this happened at a time during the summer when one of the camps let the participant store their lunches in a refrigerator in the morning. Jim was going to look into this also. Rich Wolak made a motion to accept the 2011-2012 fiscal year operations budget. Mike Schermerhorn seconded the motion and with no further discussion it was accepted unanimously. With a motion by R. Wolak and seconded by D Barlow the meeting was adjourned at 7:13 PM. Respectfully submitted, Doug Barlow