Rich Hass <<email>> writes:

Our first day of meetings started in a full-scale blizzard. Many of the directors are having a very tough time getting here. Several have been forced to cancel. My notes below are from the handful of committee meetings I attended. Please note, these are my own personal notes and are not vetted by committee chairs or anyone. The exact wording of motions, for example, should be close but the wording may differ when the chairs prepare their reports.

Site Committee

Mark Gaskill did an excellent job of describing his experience in working on the Point-of-the-Mountain project. Many of his ideas will be incorporated into the site development guide that Jon James has put a lot of work into. The Site committee will recommend adoption of the Site Development Guide.

Bob Kuczewski attended the meeting, asking for Site Committee support for adding the Torrey Hawks to the Soaring Council. The Site Committee did not agree with Bob's premise that the best place for resolution of hang gliding and paragliding issues is at the Soaring Council. There was a strong preference for both hang gliding and paragliding pilots to work within the framework of our own flying community and not involve public officials or members of the Soaring Council. The Site Committee turned down Bob's request for support.

Safety and Training Committee

Much time was devoted to the role of the accident reporting system and the need for confidentiality. Dave Broyles, chair, believes the system will only have integrity if 100% confidentiality can be assured. There are conflicts with the need to report accidents that may involve 3rd-party liability to USHPA counsel and USHPA's insurance carrier. These motions came out of this discussion:

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION: (Dave Broyles) Joe Greblo and Dave Broyles will direct the Executive Director to ask Tim Herr (USHPA lawyer) to review the safety reporting program and determine if USHPA can protect the integrity of the reporting program. (or words to that effect…) PASSED

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION: (Dick Heckman) Notification of requirement that instructors report accidents be included in renewal material. PASSED The term, 'Instructor Administrator' will be established and other terms dropped from the Standard Operating Procedures documents.

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION: To revise the titles for USHPA officials responsible for issuing ratings for a common terminology. The new term will be ‘Instructor Administrator’. The position of Special Observer is scheduled to be phased out at the end of the year. The effect of this change is that only instructors will be able to issue H1, H2, P1, and P2 ratings.

Executive Committee

The EC discussed the need to have a plan in place to address budgetary shortfalls in the event the economy takes a toll on membership renewals. Mark Forbes and I will prepare recommendations for potential cuts, should they become necessary. At the moment, USHPA is operating ahead of budget and there is no immediate danger.

The EC discussed the pros and cons of allowing USHPA meetings to be recorded by anyone. At Tim Herr's suggestion, the EC adopted the following resolution:

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION: (MF/LT) No recording devices can be used at USHPA meetings without unanimous prior consent of the participants at the meeting. PASSED by unanimous consent.

Regarding Torrey Pines, the EC is unhappy with the way the dispute has been handled, to say the least. The EC did not feel that it should focus on this issue at the Spring Meeting when there are committees (and an open session) where this should more appropriately be addressed--if it is addressed at all.

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION: The EC requests that Bob K. take his request to the appropriate committee within USHPA and ask the committee to review and make a recommendation to the full board if the committee deems it is appropriate. PASSED by unanimous consent.

Paul Montville asked for EC support in reallocating a portion of the marketing budget in order to establish a better financial arrangement for USHPA with the marketing coordinator. This change will create a retainer than can be terminated by either party.

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION: To allow the ED to reallocate the budget to allow for this change. PASSED by unanimous consent.

Finance Committee

There wasn't a whole lot to discuss at this meeting. We did consider one financial request:

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION (LT/BH) To investigate the cost and feasibility of digitizing the USHPA film archive. If it is deemed to be a reasonable and prudent cost, Finance Committee will make a recommendation to the EC. Passed w/o dissent.

Competition Committee

My complete, unabridged notes are as follows:

Dunlap PG National Meet—Both Jugdeep and Connie Locke have had a tough time communicating. JA has asked to have Connie dropped as a co-organizer and meet director. Connie Locke believes this comp will be in jeopardy if the local flying community is not involved. Connie Locke is that connection. Connie Locke does not want to be taken off and believes her commitment to the landowners and locals.

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION: (Dick Heckman) To reject both requests for changes to the Dunlap sanctioning application. PASSES w/o dissent.

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION: (Rich H./Dick Heckman) To Request that the co-meet directors agree to binding arbitration with the Urs K. and Dave Wills as to how the meet will be managed. Both parties must agree by noon tomorrow to binding arbitration and the binding arbitration must be substantially complete within one week. If the parties do not agree to participate in the mediation, the sanctioning will be pulled. PASSES w/o dissent. Mike Haley will call Jug and let him know what the CC has decided.

Competition Validity Discussion

In a discussion of Greg Babush’s proposal, Mike Haley believes points are only available from the top-15 pilots. Rob Sporer believes we need to listen to comp pilot feedback, not worry about points for the lower-tier pilots that aren’t affected by NTSS standings.

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION (Steve Kroop/Rob Sporer) Use the existing validity system through 2009 and until a new system is fully evaluated. Dennis Pagen suggests withdrawing the motion until the revised proposal can be fine tuned to adjust for counting the top 15 pilots only or a way to push the values down further in the rankings. Steve Kroop wants input from the competition community (pilots and meet organizers) before voting on a proposal.

Steve Kroop agrees to withdraw his motion.

Dennis feels the current system has too steep of a curve, there is room to move the curve down, bring more pilots into the calculation. (Steve Kroop agrees.) Dennis liked the Babush compromise except upon learning that the calc only counted the top 15 pilots.

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION: (Pagen/Hass) Table to validity issue until later in the meeting in order to give committee members an opportunity to fine-tune the Babush proposal. PASSES w/o dissent. Dennis remembers that Riss made a proposal which Steve modified. Dennis’ original proposal involved normalizing each meet to 1,000. Steve suggested normalizing the results for each day.

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION: (Pagen/Kroop) To choose the national hang gliding champion from a combination of King Mtn. and Big Spring based on the total sum of the daily score of the pilots. These daily scores will be normalized to 1000. The national champion in each class will be chosen from the combination of both meets provided; a minimum of 10 class 1 pilots compete in both meets; a minimum of 3 female pilots compete in both meets; a minimum of 5 class 5 pilots compete in both meets; otherwise the national champion will be chosen from the King Mtn. meet for 2009. PASSED w/o dissent but with 3 abstentions.

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION: (Pagen/Grubbs) To approve Josh Cohen’s scoring system for scoring the paragliding nationals provided; the definition of ‘fully valid’ shall be 900 points; and provided the sentence “for each event, the first 7…” shall be struck. PASSED w/o dissent.

PARAPHRASE of the MOTION: (Kroop) The Competition Committee will only accept sanctioning applications with a single meet organizer. The signor of the sanctioning application shall be the meet organizer, who has primary responsibility for the meet. PASSED w/1 dissenting vote.

Closing Comments for Day 1

Being an optimist, I am reasonably confident that the Comp Committee will find an acceptable compromise that can be voted on and implemented tomorrow. Steve Kroop isn't so sure. We were both at the same meeting. Steve was talking and I was listening, I should add, which may account for our different takes! Steve and others did a very good job of representing the feelings of the comp pilots, I should add. Yes, there continues to be mistrust and some confusion over what is being proposed but the big picture isn't all that far off, in my optimistic opinion. I really want to see this resolved with a common-ground solution when we go home tomorrow. USHPA looses if we don't.

Rich continues later:

The Competition Workgroup and Competition Committee was unsuccessful in getting a revised validity scoring system in place for several reasons (in my opinion). First, none of the counter-proposals were well prepared. They had elements of vagueness and there were some important elements that just weren't ready to go. If everyone had tried, they could have worked through these issues and prevailed but there was limited common ground and not much interest in working together. It is very unfortunate, in my opinion, as there was room for a win-win solution.