Club AGM: minutes

This year’s club AGM was held on October 11th. Minutes are as follows:

Prior to the AGM we enjoyed an excellent MapRun around Central Harrogate. Thanks to Quentin to organising. Most attendees then tucked in to their pre-ordered dinner.
Present: Quentin Harding, Alan Pounder, June Graham, Pamela Singleton, Katie Gray, Richard Kirk, Tim Evans, Will Drewe, Jemima Parker, Andrew Kelly, Linda Kelly, Susan Birtwistle, Kevin Francis, Bryn Jones, Andy Iddon, Graham Ramsden, Bill Hickson, Mike Cope, John Lebeter, Steve Fry, Ruth Ker.

1. Apologies received from: Chris Dicken, Kerensa Welsby, David Day, Maurice Kelly, Liz Drewe, John Birtwistle, Liz Potterton, Harry Dowdell, Vicky Bailey, Sharon Bowes, Andy Bowes, Nick Andralojc.

2. Minutes of the last AGM had been circulated. These were accepted, proposed by Richard and seconded by Susan.

3. Chairman’s Report – notes
As you will hear later on you are only supposed to do three of these but this is number five (and 6 as newsletter editor). So how is the club doing since last year?
BOF reckon we have 61 membership units (44 senior 17 families) which is broadly the same as last year. Of these 49 have some ranking points and 29 the full 6 . Top scorers Quentin Harding 109th, Luke Parker 118th; Women: Vicky Bailey 491st and Liz Drew 545th. Quentin and Liz have represented their country recently helping England win the VHI, and many competed abroad in Sweden and Denmark. But it is all the runners that make the club from the national champions to
those who just do the local events.We might not have qualified for the Compass Sport finals but our tent was last standing as we all stood around and chatted ( the cake may have helped)!
Last years events: Tuesdays for midweek seems to be well received numbers are up the chat in the pub after the lamp o s is always animated and well attended. The summer full-SI series goes from strength to strength . Jemima does a sterling job with the junior league arranging events throughout the year attracting a wide
range of runners but we need more youngsters We had Plumpton( almost 300 runners) – well done to Linda for the entries and to our dynamic organiser, planner, mapping and controlling team . This is why we looked at entry systems and we hope you like Racesignup. Dob Park tested our emergency procedure, so good that it happened whilst I was running and I know I am slow but was dealt with and closed out by my return (wow!). Brimham and Harlow Carr family days were excellent at getting novices to try orienteering and help the local community. Ripon City, saw some excellent courses by Andrew Kelly. Sadly we lost Bilton Meadows due to tree fellers, but we will be back! Thank you to all of you for helping with these events.
As newsletter editor it is always great to receive race reports from the travelling contingent and usually not much editing required. Our circulation is 140 so
twice the membership.
Next year we have planned for your legs and brains: Feb 12th – Brimham, Apr 23rd – Sprints (somewhere!), Jul 16h – Harrogate Urban (at last!), Sep 24th – Beecroft, Nov 18th – Hookstone Night; as well as the usual autumn, winter and summer series, and junior league. Thanks to Ruth Ker for organising these, although we think we need some new names especially for the summer events, as Spring Flowers doesn’t really work! Any ideas to the committee please!
For next year can you help? We need organisers for all events and planners for possibly 3 events.
So I think the club is in good shape. Numbers at regional events are still slightly down on pre pandemic numbers but our local events are thriving. As I said earlier, none of this is possible without you lot (!) so thank you for all that you have done. In this short speech I can’t mention you all.

4. Treasurer’s Report
Once again Claro has had another successful financial year, although making a loss of £465. Our programme continued to remain pleasingly profitable enabling us
to invest in more equipment to improve our events.
Points to note:
– The loss was due to major planned expenditure this year. We invested in more SI units, new start clocks and stocks of club kit. This was largely helped by our share of the profits made at the British Sprints Weekend.
– The YHOA reinstated club contributions, which it had refused during Covid, but at a reduced scale.
– Map printing for small events continued to be done in-house by Quentin which saves the club money. The cost is added as a footnote to event accounts.
– We continued to invest in our SI equipment buying a further 10 units. We now have 70 in total which will enable us to plan tricky courses and also run two
events over one weekend (like Brimham and Ellington Banks next month). We also purchased two start clocks. These can be programmed to beep a
countdown automatically on the start line making the start team’s job a lot easier and are easily seen by waiting competitors. We can choose to have them either
on the pre-start and start lines or use them at separate starts when two are needed, like at Ripon.
– Recurrent expenditure: admin costs cover the club’s affiliation to British Orienteering and website hosting. We were able to pay the entry fees for all
runners at the CompassSport Trophy. Printing costs is largely the cost of replacement ink cartridges.
– Insurance of our equipment is higher this year as the insurers changed their year-end date so we have paid for 15 months cover rather than 12.
– We now use Racesignup for pre-entries to most of our events. We have introduced late entries and entry on the day at a supplement this year. These are
limited to the number of spare maps ordered for each course but help competitors who are available at the last minute.
– We will use Google forms for our informal LampO series as numbers here are small and no processing fee is incurred. Golden season tickets are still offered to
make entry quicker for regular orienteers.
Future Expenditure
– New stock of our kit will be ordered when necessary to be sure we have it available for new members. Ordering has survived Brexit but we now have to
pay duty as well as VAT as the kit is imported from Bulgaria.

5. Auditing of the Accounts
In the absence of Harry Dowdell it has been confirmed with BOF that we can accept the accounts at the AGM subject to any substantive auditing changes by
Harry upon his return. The accounts were accepted by the AGM, proposed by Quentin Harding and seconded by John Lebeter.

6. Charles Lewsley Cup
This cup is awarded in memory of Charles Lewsley, a club member who died while orienteering. It is awarded to someone not on the committee who has made a
substantial contribution to the club. This year the committee are pleased to award it to Jackie and Alan Barnes who did excellent work on registration at events over
many years (until covid and pre-entries made their work redundant).

7. Committee Members etc.
At present our Chair is meant to stand for just three years. It is generally felt that, when we find our Chair agreeable, it can be favourable to have them in post for
longer than this. However we are also aware that there could be a time when we would prefer to change our Chair. Committee will discuss this however all members are invited to contribute their thoughts via any committee member.
Will and Liz Drewe have volunteered to join the committee as a single general committee member. One will attend each meeting while the other does childcare
at home.
The current committee members all agreed to continue in role and were proposed by Andrew Kelly and seconded by Jemima Parker. A list of club roles can be found in the agenda.

8. A.O.B.
Will Drew raised the challenges faced by newcomers. It was agreed that we would welcome Will keeping an eye on event information going up from a newcomer
perspective and suggest modifications to the event team. Also to link events to a FAQ page for newcomers which Will and Liz will draft. CLOK did a Couch to Green programme that was well attended. Tim to pick their brains. Kevin Francis suggested we could nominate an appealing event being put on by a neighbouring club (approximately once a month?) as a club outing. Anyone could volunteer to lead on this. Promote it, link people for lifts, take tent and feather if appropriate and nominate a pub or cafe for afterwards. Vicky and Kevin will get this started by nominating the YHOA Championships at Ogden as the first one.

9. Follow-up from last year
Claro’s Carbon Considerations were discussed last year and followed-up on this year by Jemima Parker. Driving ourselves to events is our primary carbon footprint.
Organisers are now doing a good job of putting public transport and cycle options before driving in their event details. Lift sharing is popular – championed by Quentin and Ruth who have also managed many events by public transport. Pre-entries is really useful for seeing who is going and suggesting sharing with them.
Pamela told us of their Knaresborough-based WhatsApp group who lift share. Jemima will write something for our website to form a Policy. We will join Zero
Carbon Harrogate (Jemima is Chair) and will be the first sports club to do so. Note – Ruth and Tim both have access to your membership details so can help
facilitate putting people together (while not transgressing privacy rules).

It was agreed that The Old Bell had been an excellent venue again and the AGM was officially concluded.