Flyfunston

Proposed Fellow Feathers Bylaw changes

1) Meetings every quarter, rather than monthly. Jan, April, August (races), Oct.
First Sat of the month or later in August.
Noon, meet at setup area unless bad wx.
Club BBQ same day

2) All references to votes by Executive Committee - replace by majority vote of club membership.

3) No safety director, replaced by safety coordinator
Safety is EVERY pilots responsibility - if a pilot is uncomfortable discussing with offending pilot, ask another pilot, but first effort to resolve should be by observer.

4) Voting includes online voting. All votes on major issues to be put before entire club - one month to respond and vote online or by mail.

5) Eliminate/combine board positions:
VP - unnecessary - if the President, can't make it, someone else can be appointed to preside.
Secretary - should be combined with President
That leaves President/Secretary, Treasurer, Clubhouse mgr, safety coordinator, IT - two less positions to have to find someone to fill

6) Allow all FF club members at least one vote. If they have over 20 hours, they get proportionally more votes. 20 hours = 2 votes, 40 =3, etc. This may seem unwieldly - we could just cut it off at 2 votes. But it rewards pilots who truly HAVE put in the time at the Fort flying. And keeping track is not as hard as you may think - with smartphone tracking software just as Kinetica or Strava you can log every minute your in the air.


I have felt for some time that the structure of the club has not changed with the changing times. After 32 years of flying, two consecutive years as President, and one year as safety officer, and seen all the problems we've had to deal with, I think its time to rethink how we fly together as a club.
I also see many long time pilots - with thousands of air hours at Funston, who spend tremendous amounts of time and effort to improve the flying site (Chris and Kurt in particular, but there's many others) who don't come to meetings for good reason, but then are not served by the structure of the club meetings.
The club meetings in the clubhouse are at evening times that make it out of the way and inconvenient for most pilots unless they live in the immediate area. The rule that votes must be by members present effectively rules out most of the south bay and most east bay pilots unless they really want to go out of their way to come to the meetings. There is very little that goes on that couldn't wait for several months. Also the pizza/drinks cost runs us $1000-1500 year which some people have complained about.
That's why I'm proposing quarterly meetings, to coincide with BBQs and the air races. This will save us up to $1000/year.
Also, by having the meetings on a weekend and early in the day (that may be flyable) it makes it much more likely south bay and other pilots will attend.
If there is an issue which requires quick attention, there's no reason why notice can't be given by email & Facebook & the usual cliff-network and then the entire membership can have an opportunity to vote on it in a timely manner.

Regarding the Executive Committee - there have been too many cases where an arbitrarily created small group gets to make decisions for the club. There is no reason why the entire club membership can't be informed and make decisions on ALL major issues.
That goes for all the areas that the Executive Committee deals with -
- deciding who is/isnt voting members (meets 20 hour criteria)
- deciding who are the 3 exempt voting members
- contracts made by the club
- approval of the budget
- suspensions of longer than 7 days

And if we believe in the concept that every pilot should have a vote, then we should offer online voting to allow more of the membership to participate. Frankly, there are some people who get intimidated by certain pilots who attend the meetings, and do not attend for that reason. I'm not going to push this issue - if we change to quarterly meetings and weekends, its much more likely we'll have everyone who's high or low time pilots attend, so we can just make hand votes. But it makes more sense to give people time to think of the issues and vote on them after they've had time to reflect and be able to make their decision in private without others knowing how they've voted (and avoid possible recriminations).

The safety coordinator's job is to help create a plan and/or update existing plans (if needed) to implement safe flying conditions at the Fort. USHPA has asked us to provide plans, and we have done so, and we should continue to update our training and safety system. Safe flying is the responsibility of ALL pilots. Most of our problem issues can be resolved one-on-one and should be, before escalating it. If a pilot can't get resolution himself, he should talk to another pilot who may be able to - it primarily comes down to respect. The pilot needs to find someone that the offending pilot will respect, or its a waste of time, they are unlikely to get a change in behavior.
Ironically I believe HAVING the role of safety director in our club creates an atmosphere which tends towards the opposite of the desired effect. Pilots too often want to think - oh, that pilot shouldn't do that, but its the safety directors job to talk to them - then don't follow through so nothing happens. By eliminating this role and making it clear that it is EVERYONE's responsibility, it increases the likelihood that something will be done when there is a problem.

From the money we'll save, we can afford to pay for all the BBQs - and we usually get donations that cover the costs anyway.
Kurt says "BBQs, strippers and beer, 4 times a year!"

Tom, you have some really good ideas. Thanks for sharing them in detail. I have comments on a few in order.

tom rust wrote:1) Meetings every quarter, rather than monthly. Jan, April, August (races), Oct.
First Sat of the month or later in August.
Noon, meet at setup area unless bad wx.
Club BBQ same day

I'm concerned that fewer meetings would lead to more business being conducted in private when it can't wait 3 months, and members would feel disengaged, especially if they miss a single meeting. We haven't had a lot of short meetings lately.

tom rust wrote:4) Voting includes online voting. All votes on major issues to be put before entire club - one month to respond and vote online or by mail.

I like the idea of more people being involved who can't normally make it, but my problem with this is the members attending the meeting have to sit and listen to multiple viewpoints before they vote on issues. They are forced to become more informed on issues than they would by not having to listen to anyone talk about it and just doing a click of the mouse. Isn't that the reason for having meetings?

It would also open up the possibility of vote tampering, technical problems, and proxy voting fraud. I don't think we have enough members to need electronic voting.

tom rust wrote:6) Allow all FF club members at least one vote. If they have over 20 hours, they get proportionally more votes. 20 hours = 2 votes, 40 =3, etc. This may seem unwieldly - we could just cut it off at 2 votes. But it rewards pilots who truly HAVE put in the time at the Fort flying. And keeping track is not as hard as you may think - with smartphone tracking software just as Kinetica or Strava you can log every minute your in the air.

I'd like to see virtually all members having a vote, and their vote counted the same as someone who has flown thousands of hours at Funston. As an arbitrary line, I'd like to see something like any H3 who has flown a hang glider for one hour at Funston any time in the last few years to have a vote. High requirements favor pilots who only fly Funston, and I don't think it's right that a small group of pilots should be given control of the club and the site and exclude the rest of the HG community. Such exclusion is undemocratic, to say the least. There are easy ways to keep requirements that exclude PG-only pilots and other groups from gaining a voting seat, such as the example above, while being inclusive to virtually all HG pilots.

But I also think we should require that a voting member hasn't completely retired from flying. The voting member needs to have some sort of stake in future hang gliding at Funston.


The rest of your ideas I didn't respond to sound fine to me!

Diver Dave

"4) Voting includes online voting. All votes on major issues to be put before entire club - one month to respond and vote online or by mail."

Tom, How can you forget the hugely attended club meeting where you brought up online voting?!? This was discussed and debated for a LONG time and the overwhelming consensus was the membership didn't want it. This question has already been decided, quit wasting everyone's time and let it go.


"6) Allow all FF club members at least one vote. If they have over 20 hours, they get proportionally more votes."

We live in a democratic Nation where each person get's one vote, and only one vote. You are proposing changes that would undermine our society. This is just wrong.

These are all bad ideas, and they should all be rejected.

If the pizzas are too expensive, buy from a less expensive place or don't provide pizzas. Changing the bylaws due to the cost of pizza is bloody poor thinking.

Tom, if you’ll recall, the club unanimously voted at the Nov 2012 meeting to immediately begin buying the pizzas at Costco to reduce the amount spent. You were one of the members who voted for that change. You then used the club’s debit card to buy the expensive pizzas at the Dec 2012 meeting even though another pilot picked up the inexpensive pizzas from Costco for that same meeting. It was a waste of the club’s funds and a violation of the agreement with the club.

The annual club budgets are approved by the members, not the board. The 2013 budget reduced the allotment toward pizza and drinks for the monthly meetings to $900 since we are now using Costco. Last month’s food expense was $40, so we may actually spend far less than the approved $900.

Each barbecue costs the club $300. So how does eliminating the 12 evening club meetings a year and instead have 4 barbecues equate to saving the club $1,000 annually? I don’t understand your math.

Daniel Pifko wrote:These are all bad ideas, and they should all be rejected.

If the pizzas are too expensive, buy from a less expensive place or don't provide pizzas. Changing the bylaws due to the cost of pizza is bloody poor thinking.

Ditto...

This is like a recurring bad dream where I continually wake up in the middle of a colonoscopy...over and over again.

Make it stop...please.

-CRV

The bbqs have all held donations and typically get enough from the donations to pay for the food.

I should also point out the Park people would like us a lot more. Its a pain in the ass for them to wait up after dark to close the gate after the meetings. We've been locked out several times because they forgot we were having meetings. Its past sunset for almost every meeting by the time they end.