AGM News In Brief

[Scott]

From memory:

• The increased membership fees passed
• The whole panoply of levy motions passed - so no junior-only exemption, three juniors count as one senior, and increased fees for next year
• Both the BOF-member discount motions passed (so it will be up to clubs whether to apply it at level 3 events)
• However, proposal 10 passed (I think about 330 to 250, but I could be wrong), so there are now four levels (and the status of the above motion is therefore unclear)
• I asked (amongst other things) about the planned BOF online entries system - apparently it's "under review"
• I didn't get elected

[NFKleanne]

Thanks for the update. Sorry you didn't get elected

[Mrs H]

Oh but Scott - you were my favourite

so who now decides which events are "quality" events and which were not

[Scott]

Oh but Scott - you were my favourite

I expect I'll survive

so who now decides which events are "quality" events and which were not

That wasn't entirely clear, but apparently (according to the proposer, anyway) nobody will stop a club deciding at which level they want to register an event.

[andypat]

From memory:

• However, proposal 10 passed (I think about 330 to 250, but I could be wrong), so there are now four levels (and the status of the above motion is therefore unclear)

Wonderful - another year or two of confusion. Have to say that BOF need to take their share of the blame for this one. From the discussions on here its obvious theres been a fair bit of confusion surrounding the 3 level situation. Thats got to be down to communication from the top.

[awk]

That wasn't entirely clear, but apparently (according to the proposer, anyway) nobody will stop a club deciding at which level they want to register an event.

Really? So an extra level is to be introduced for 'high quality' events, but nobody is to control that quality, and nobody knows how to define it? Surely you must have mistaken what was said Scott?

[Scott]

My memory is that DIck Towler said that nobody would tells clubs that they couldn't register their events at a certain level (in his final summing up/response to questions bit, I think). But I have to admit that I wasn't exactly taking notes, so I'm prepared to be corrected on that by somebody else who was there. No doubt all will become clear when the minutes come out.

Somebody (and I can't remember who) also made a big deal out of the fact that associations shouldn't be interfering with a club's event organisation.

[mappingmum]

Don't shoot the messenger!

[frog]

Thanks for the update. Shame you didn't get in and alot of the motions I voted against got through. Hope you have another go at getting in.

[mike g]

I couldn't care less whether we have 3 or 4 levels but am disturbed that BOF has got away with ripping off clubs and members with the levy increase (proposal 7A).

By my reckoning it is an increase of about 13.5%, not 3.4% as the supporting statement claimed. I e-mailed several board members a week ago to point this out and received no reply (not the first time I have been ignored when raising something with BOF as a club treasurer that it has found inconvenient).

In my view this shows an alarming lack of basic financial competence. A 10 year old could work out that increasing the lower levy by 10.2% (from £1.95 to £2.15) and the higher levy by 18.3% (from £3.00 to £3.55) will produce an overall increase of somewhere between 10.2% and 18.3%, not 3.4% or anywhere near it. Yet this simple arithmetic seems beyond the combined comprehension of the chairman, treasurer and chief executive even after it has been pointed out to them.

If this resolution is implemented despite people having been so grossly misled by the supporting statement into voting for it, the board should expect there to be a proposal for a substantial levy reduction at next year's AGM.

[distracted]

Mike - I'd agree with your basic maths, but without access to the actual data set/spreadsheet that the calculations have been made on, no-one will know whether or not the figures we have been given are correct.

The passing of the "3 juniors = 1 senior" rule makes the percentage of juniors participating at an event key to the relative proportion of levy you'll pay. A rough calculation across various participation levels (from 75 to 1000) shows that the current system and the "status quo" presented at the AGM would match up if every event had a 79/21 senior/junior participation ratio. In practice, it will vary quite a lot from event to event and so this is a pretty big simplification of the system.

So to get an idea of how things change with the senior/junior ratio, I've chucked some numbers in:

- At 79/21 - 12.5%+ increase in payment for events over 100 participants (which makes cost at 100 about 45 quid rather than 40).

- At 75/25, events of 100 people or under pay *less* levy than with the current system, those of 125+ are 5%+ increase, rising to 10% at 250 people (GBP308 vs 280).

- At 70/30, you'd pay less levy on events up to 165 people, and the 'magic' 3.4% increase is only reached if you have 340+ people at the event.


With any change, some clubs will benefit and some will lose, in this case it seems quite dependent on the types of events the club hosts. The new system certainly looks to benefit those clubs encouraging junior participation at their 'standard' events or those who had schools leagues etc that didn't previously have the junior-only exemption from levy.

[Spookster]

The senior/junior ratio of events in 2009 was 75/25, averaged across all events. The ratio for the SLOW events that Mike included in the letter to directors (which wasn't ignored) was 92/8, and hence the increase will be larger for those sub-set of events.

As distracted has pointed out, the impact of the 3 juniors = 1 senior for levy purposes is that events with a high proportion of juniors pay less levy than under the existing 1 to 1 system.

However, there are other variables in effect. For example there is a trend towards more smaller local events, which each have less participants, and pay no levy or a relatively small levy. At the same time some larger events are getting less participants (we hoped for 800 to 1000 runners at the Northern Champs National Event, but only got 740). If this trend continues in 2011 then it will reduce the levy income.

[EricH]

The points made by mike g were also raised by several people at the AGM itself. The answer given (by Spookster and Neil Cameron) could have been better better if they had some detailed figures to back up the statement - a speadsheet was mentioned on which all the calculations had been done. I don't know if this has ever been published.

The point they seem to be making is that there has been a decline in attendance at events that have enough people attending that result in a levy being paid and also that there had been an increase in the number of small events that paid little or no levy. So, in order, to obtain a 3.4% increase in actual levy received the actaul events that pay levy need to have the levy they charge increased by around 16%.

This then leads to the question is the current levy model sustainable going forward?

[King Penguin]

To me, the key factor regarding the "financial" motions was the significant size of the majority on each of them. This effectively meant that no matter how those present at the AGM voted the motions were already carried by proxy votes (assuming these were submitted before the meeting and not down to lots of people empowering just one who was present to make their minds up for them).
I'm struggling to see how people could cast a proxy for motion 7, given that they could not be sure what they were voting for until after the outcomes of motions 5 and 6 were known. I have to question the legitimacy of proxy votes where interdependent motions are concerned.

[SeanC]

I'm quite surprized that there aren't another 100 posts on the topic of the victory for the 4 level proponents. Perhaps everyone extended their visit to Devon and are now too relaxed to debate this topic.

I can see my next club committee meeting taking some time to debate the implications for the events we are planning now. These are the immediate questions that spring to mind. Any thoughts/answers?

1) What level should our bog standard* yearly regional be registered at? And

2) I assume our yearly district event can now be registered as level 3. Will we be able to load these results into the ranking list?

3) Will the controller level required map neatly into event levels (ie level 1 for level 1, level 2 for level 2, level 3 for level 3, none for level 4?)

4) Will fixtures committees at national and regional level co-ordinate events in levels 1-3, and not level 4?

5) Must an event in level 2 display results by age class, or can it continue just displaying results by course (as our current regional does... though I'd prefer if we did both).

* I say bog standard, but it's every bit as good as more popular regional events such as the Concorde Chase and Chiltern Challenge, but we are more peripheral hence lower attendances/less established brand at our big regional.