Attendees

Norma Guerra, Mark Reyes, Ruth Castillo, Barb Swafford, Forest Marler, Tom Crane, Anthony Guerra, Aaron Guerra, Brandon Flores, Jesus Olivares, Gabriel Guerra, Kimberly Garza-Guerra, Vish, Renate Garcia

Agenda

2019 Super State Scholastic TCA Meeting Agenda

  1. Reading of the minutes of previous meeting by the Secretary
  2. Financial report by the Treasurer
  3. President’s Semi-Annual Report to the Members
  4. Old Business
    1. By-Laws Updates
  5. New Business

Meeting

A motion to not read the old minutes was made and seconded as they are available on line.

The President made his semi-annual report to the members present.  This is attached for information.

The Treasurer reported we have ~$6,000 in the Wells Fargo and $3,100 in the Bank of America Account.  The President noted we are going to have our books audited.  This is for two reasons – (1) It’s good business, (2) When fundraising potential donors, especially business’ ask questions and one of the first is when was the last time your books were audited.

Significant discussion(s)

Continental Chess has had tremendous success after several years of doing a tournament year over year in the DFW area as compared to the Texas State and Amateur and SW Open.  Some potential reasons for why they do so much better and what we could do to improve out turnout was discussed.

  1. Reasons they do better:
    1. Guaranteed $30,000 prize fund (though they charge a >$150 entry fee and we charge ~$80-100).
    2. Norms
    3. They advertise better – post cards are sent out.
  2. What could we do to improve our turn out?
    1. Advertise better
    2. Raise the prize fund – which is probably the number one reason higher rated players come. When the higher rated players come, they draw other players and this perpetuates itself.

The By-Laws are being updated to account for several years of meetings that should have resulted in the By-Laws being updated, but did not.  The Presidents plan to get this completed is to implement the ones that are critical right now and get the rest completed for approval at the SW Open membership meeting.  The updates will be available for discussion on line around Memorial Day.  Highlights of things that need to get changed include accounting for Texas Knights going on-line and the corresponding ripple through out the document, the fact that we do elections on-line and numerous other area’s.

Current motions that are necessary for implementation.

Article IX: Tournaments

Section 2. Policies of the Conduct of Tournaments

  1. Organizers of TCA events involving scholastic players shall make a good faith effort to ensure every volunteer has complied with the normal vetting process employed by schools in the state of Texas meaning they shall have successfully completed the on-line background check.
  2. Any organizer approved/authorized to run an event defined in Article IX., Section 1 shall submit a Profit and Loss Statement to the TCA President, the organizer of the event, and the TCA secretary. This statement shall contain all the components of a normal business profit and loss statement to include but not be limited to:
  1. Revenue
  2. Expense details such as cost of venue (if applicable), cost of trophies, prize fund, ratings fee, TD fee’s and any other applicable expenses.
  3. Profit(s) including who received them/or loss who or what entity took it if applicable.

These items were voted on and unanimously approved.  The President noted these were for immediate implementation and they not wait to go into effect until the first part of January 1st, 2020.  This was agreed to also.

We also discussed whether it was necessary to have a yearly election.  A motion to change to a two-year election cycle was voted on and approved.  Rationale – TCA has contested election once every three four years.  We spend money to do elections that could be spent on other chess related activities.  I am suggesting we implement this motion except for Presidential election.  If someone wants to run against me, we will do the election so it’s not misconstrued that I pushed through this amendment to avoid an election this cycle.