Ice Arena Authority

NORWICH ICE RINK AUTHORITY MINUTES FROM MEETING HELD March 15, 2012 Authority Attendance: Mike Goldblatt, Doug Barlow, Rich Wolak, and Mike Schermerhorn Absent: Cheryl Ritacco Guest: Jim Sanca, Deb Hinchey, Pete Desaulniers, Rodger Moss, Matthew Koehler, Rob Francis, Haley Jensen, Ashley Koehler, Ashley Smith, Mike Arnone, Theresa Bodinger, Mia Sanca, Lori Lesko, Dante Vincigverra, Yulia Borissova and Alexei Khoudyakov. MINUTES Meeting was called to order by Michael Goldblatt at 6:01 pm, a quorum was present. Minutes from the February meeting were reviewed. The February minutes were unanimously approved with the correction that Rodger Moss had attended the February meeting. Reports Jim Sanca reported on the following: The Learn to Skate Program now has 150 members enrolled. Thirty children are in the Tot Class. Many surrounding towns have flyer distributed through the schools. There is also information broadcasted by internet and The Bulletin. The Norwich Skating School now has 50 skating members. The Norwich Nighthawks will host an open house on Saturday April 28 th at 4 pm. Tryouts will be held on May 1, 2012. The goal is to get 30 female skaters for both teams and to also have alternates for each team. The Norwich Figure Skating Club will be operating a Figure Skating Synchronized Team for the upcoming season. Candidates 12 to 19 years of age may participate but they must be at the level of Freestyle four or above. Haley Jensen and Tara Foy will be coaching and managing the team. A discussion continued about the difference between the Figure Skating School and Figure Skating Club. The Zamboni had to have the right rear wheel axel U joint and rectifier replaced which meant that a men’s league game had to be rescheduled. The rink is current operating with one compressor so that the motor company can re- wind the Super E replacement motor. The repair company has lent us a stand by motor, should it be needed. Progress on the weight room/locker rooms has been suspended because the changes have not gone through planning. Jim explained that he did not think a building permit had to be pulled since some of the work was taking the room back to its original design. The following are a list of the Spring /Summer hockey Clinic at the rink:  April 18-June 20: Bernie Cassell Skating & Skills Clinic (Ages:6-10)  April 18-June20: Bernie Cassell Skating & Skills Clinic (Ages:11-15)  April 18-June20: Bernie Cassell Skating & Skills Clinic (Adult Basics)  June 25-29 Girls’ Elite Hockey Camp. This is the first time this camp has been provided. It was noted that Bernie has been teaching these camps for 12 years. Special Olympics completed their season ending competition on Monday, February 27th. Over eighty athletes participated. Aspire Program (Funded through No child Left Behind Act) is being held on Friday afternoons in March. The St. Thomas More hockey players are volunteering their services to assist the skaters. Ashley Koehler explained the program and said that 75% of the 158 Middle School participants could not skate when they entered the program. Public Comments A letter dated 3 March 2012 had been sent to the Rink Authority via Charlie Jaskiewicz with 15 questions. The letter was not signed by anyone. There had been a meeting with Rodger Moss, Norwich Recreation Department Director, where a group had presented this document to him. The rinks books were questioned and it was agreed that the City of Norwich audited the books twice a year. Dante Vincigverra brought up the topic that the figure freestyle skating times where sometimes changed with no notification. He felt there was no consistency with this ice time. Jim agreed that this had happened recently because a makeup high school hockey game had to be squeezed into the schedule. It was noted that this type of thing was going to happen but there had to be more communication 1. Bylaws of the skating school, these have not been provided after several requests. Laurie Lesko said she has not been contacted by anyone requesting bylaws but that she did have them if anyone wanted them. Hopefully they will be put on the Rinks website. 2. Bylaws of the skating club not provided after several requests. Theresa Bodingers reported that she had not been asked for the clubs bylaws but she did have them. She said they had not been up on the clubs bulletin board but now they were. There will be an effort to add them to the website. 3. Bylaws of the rink have not been provided after several requests. No one at this meeting has ever seen bylaws for the rink and most were sure there were none. Deb Hinchey will be looking into how that is handled. 4. United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) Dues-Skaters were required to pay dues to participate in shows Nutcracker and Little Mermaid. Money was collected by the rink management. Dues were not paid to USFSA. USFSA currently only has 6 members on record at Norwich rink. These funds cover insurance from USFS for sanctioned events. Where is the money? The Little Mermaid was not a USFSA event. No dues were collected. Fees for costumes and sets were assessed and the rink collected the gate to pay for ice time. The Nutcracker was a Norwich Figure Skating Club event who is a member of the USFSA program. Discussion continued of what the USFSA provided. At this time Dante said he had to leave but wanted to know if the new girls’ hockey program would affect the figure skating ice times. Jim answered that it would not since most team member would be traveling a distance and practices would be later in the evening. He did mention that it would affect the adult hockey programs. Rob Francis questioned the number of members that the Figure skating School currently had signed up. It was pointed out that the USFSA website had only six members for Norwich and the school had received pins and documentation for the 150 they had records of in the program. Laurie was going to check to see if the website was current. 5. During open skate, the number of Norwich residents attending is exaggerated, making the day’s admission collection lower than actual attendance. A review of the current fee schedule was discussed and how money was collected. It was noted that more security cameras were to be installed in the box office and other locations. The office keeps all passes that are returned for credit and that they are currently accepting competing vendors’ coupons for certain items. 6. What positions do the Sanca’s hold at the rink? Jim Sanca is the general manager, Mia Sanca is the operations manager and skating director (double jobs, double pay?). Jim Sanca is the president of the skating school and on the ISI board. How many hours per week are they required to be at the rink, and how many are they actually doing. Mia gave a very in-depth summary of her responsibilities, pay, and hours. Everyone at the rink punches a time clock except Jim, Mia and Mike. It was established that Mike and Mia should also punch the clock for their hours. Jim is currently the Norwich skating School President, the Rink manager and the head coach for the Nighthawks. 7. Full financial disclosure has not been given to the Team members who went to worlds in Minnesota. The financial plan stated Coach Borisova was to be paid $900.00, she was not paid this amount. Laurie had records with her of the financial accounting for the trip to Minnesota. Coach Borisova was paid $862.50 for the eleven and a half hours of service she provided. She was also paid $1000.00 for ice fees the school felt she had earned. Rob mentioned that Yulia was not personally questioning this amount. 8. City Credit card used by the rink needs a full audit. Possible personal spending on the city card. The city credit card gets audited by the city auditors. All receipts are given to Mike, who in turn records them on the MasterCard site. 9. Who runs the Pro-Shop? Items purchased as new appear to have been previously used. No hours posted or adhered to. The pro-shop is run by the rink. The hours are 5:30 to 9:30. Items that are for sale have an item number on them. Tights, tape and sharpening can be purchased through the front office. Some items may seem used because they have been opened and looked at and then put back in the bag. Used equipment has been sold in the past but has been labeled as used. More attention will be paid to what is being sold as used. 10. Poaching of students from Coach Borisova in violation of USFSA rules with the knowledge of rink employees. Matthew Koehler spoke to a situation where they moved from Coach Borisova to another coach at the rink. Matt and his wife were not happy with the coaching situation and they were given the option to look at other coaches by Coach Borisova. They have switched coaches and are now happy. A contract between the coaches and the rink is currently being drawn up. 11. Double booking of ice time, hockey games scheduled for the same time as freestyle ice, then freestyle ice was cancelled at the last minute. We had already covered this item earlier in the meeting. There was no mention of another time when this had happened. 12. Gym is being converted into a locker room for girl’s hockey, why? The room is being converted into locker rooms and a workout room so there is more income to the rink. Doug Barlow pointed out that we had mentioned to Jim we wanted to get more income from the space. 13. When Sarah Sanca stopped figure skating, a women’s hockey team started, taking freestyle ice hours away from the schedule. It was pointed out that Sarah was still figure skating. Jim did not anticipate that figure skating would lose ice time to the girls’ hockey program. 14. Harassment and threats towards former employees by rink management. No one at the meeting could give us any details of when or who this was about. 15. Rink is dirty, no true cleaning or maintance. The rink is dirty compared to what? Other rinks where in similar shape. The rink wishes we had more money to update items that are broken or not working as well as we would like. It was proposed that there be a list in the rest rooms that could be signed when the room was last cleaned. New Business Deb Hinchey requested that an agenda be posted at least one week in advance of a meeting. Rodger Moss wanted the minutes to be sent to the city clerk within twenty four hours of the meeting. Old Business Rodger asked Mia if she has secured the video of the figure skating coach interacting with a couple figure skaters. She told him she had. With a motion by Rich Wolak and seconded by Mike Schermerhorn the meeting was adjourned at 7:58 PM. Respectfully submitted, Doug Barlow