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2007 Great Lakes Roundtableby Andy BellOn November 3rd I traveled to Ft. Wayne, Indiana for the 2007 Great Lakes Divisional meeting. This is the counterpart to the spring training meeting and allows the administrators and officers of the various regions to meet, review the year, and plan for the future. We had the area director Larry Dent present and Howard Duncan came in from the national office to talk about a few new programs that SCCA is rolling out. This year’s meeting had a strong solo turnout with representatives present from each region. Most had at least two attendees representing solo for their club. The meeting opened with some remarks from the national office and an open forum to ask questions. The hot topic involved the new temporary membership program. This idea was presented just prior to the last national convention, has evolved over the year, and is now ready to roll out.
Temporary MembershipIn general the temporary membership is a way to allow non SCCA member to participate in events with the same insurance coverage as a regular member. This is to prevent legal litigation in the event that a non member is hurt at an SCCA event. Should that happen, their coverage would run out long before a regular member’s and the resulting law suit often exceeded the amount that would have been covered under the SCCA membership.Temporary membership will be mandatory in 2008 for all participants (people in hot areas, workers and drivers) in Solo, Rallycross, and road rally events. Club racing has a similar requirement they have used in 2007 but it is structured a bit differently. (That won’t get confusing! ;-) ) The cost of a "temporary membership" will be shown as $15.00. The idea is that the club would keep $10 and we must pay an additional $5 to the national office per non member to get this coverage. It is up to each club to determine how to handle the $10 part. Most will just absorb it and charge the $5 difference. This is much better than the $10 to the national office that was originally proposed. Each temporary member will get a copy of sports car and a coupon for $15 off of a membership. They may redeem up to 2 of these coupons to submit with a full membership application. So in real terms, they can get a $30 discount, or you could also view it as making installment payments on a new membership. This is only good for new members and not for renewals! To make it even more confusing, road rally temporary membership is advertised at $20 for non members to cover both driver and navigator. (Why don’t they just say its $5 extra per non member and stop trying to dictate what clubs charge!)
Street SurvivalThere were some additional questions regarding steward observer reports that I’ll let the club guys cover, but then we went on to the Street Survival program presented by the Tire Rack. As I reported in the spring, this is a very exciting program to help the community. It is geared at drivers from 16-21 and is meant to put them in real life driving situations that will take them out of their comfort zone. Topics include learning the boundaries of the corners of the car, a skid pad so the student learns when their car gets out of shape, driving and stopping on wet surfaces, emergency lane changes and what distractions can do while you are driving. These are basic skills and we are not teaching them how to autocross or drive "at the edge". These are just skill to help keep young drivers alive by making the right decisions in situation they will face in real life. When I used to fly, we had a saying about young pilots. You start out with two bags in your hand, one full of luck, and empty one for experience. Throughout your life, the trick is to fill the experience bag without running out of the luck bag. The Street Survival program is a great way to start filling the experience bag for these young people. I talked to Howard Duncan at the roundtable and have contacted the national office and I hope to have OVR conduct a Street Survival class in 2008.
Solo MeetingsFrom there, the solo group broke out into their own room for our sessions. We opened up with a general forum to talk about anything solo. We started off by talking about budgets. I was surprised to learn that many regions do not establish a firm budget for their programs. I have no idea how they can keep track of their costs that way. We also talked about the number and severity of accidents in the solo community this year. Howard addressed this and said the actual number of incidents and their nature was about usual, but that WHERE they happened was alarming. Most of the incidents this year took place at or near the finish line and additional emphasis to the safety stewards is being stressed in that area. Larry Dent chimed in that we had just settled two large lawsuits and that we could expect an insurance increase for 2008, but we have no idea how much it will be yet. Participation at a regional level was consistent to slightly up in total numbers. We discussed the GASS traveling series and their return to an all SCCA format and one that concentrates on the GL division. I believe the regions will once again start supporting a traveling series with this format. I expect the series to evolve some as it adapts to new people and regions, but it is a step in the right direction in my opinion. We even talked about a traveling trophy to recognize the region that does best in the series and how we would try to manage that and determine a winner. Finally we wrapped up trying to define what the Spring training should be. There are two schools of thought. The first is that the Spring Training should be for administrators to contact each other, share ideas on running events, and plan for the division as a group. The second is to open up the training to more soloists and include hands on car prep, worker, and general interest presentations as kind of a "mini" convention. Both are valid meetings, but with totally separate goals and requirements. Ideally we would like to see both, but logistically this will be hard to do.The next session was a safety steward class taught by Marcus Merideth. I always try to attend these because it always puts me back on track for safety issues we might get lax on. Many good comments were shared among the group. At some point I’ll try to get my license in 2008. Raleigh Boreen presented his site acquisition information. At the national convention the group will roll out additional tools for the rallycross crowd to help them acquire sites. I brought up that we need to make sure we invite the rallycross chairs to the spring training. The afternoon wrapped up with Howard Duncan addressing some of the additional questions on Street Survival and the Temporary Membership that we ran out of time for in the morning sessions. We wrapped up the roundtable and I shot out of Ft. Wayne pretty quickly to get ready for Sunday’s fun run. 2007 November |