2022 Petitions - How your board of directors voted

[Ian]

21 hours ago, MR2 Biohazard said:

 

My two big takeaways is I wish we could get more participation in the processes from more members. Having around 50 members comment and vote on these out of thousands is really terrible.

 

2nd is it is really great to see what members want, what the board voted and how it came out. Now we need to have meeting minutes/notes come out here also. Per the bylaws, which is legally how the board and organization are supposed to be run, then we have to meeting minutes and make them public. The entire purpose of the secretary is to take those notes and get them published. I am not sure why these have never been published or maybe they were not done, either way, we have to fix this going forward as it is in the bylaws.

 

 

 

I think the low percentage of member responses has to do with how the response system worked this year.

 

Most members don't have have an opinion on all petitions, and none are an expert on all.

 

By forcing full completion to allow form submittal, you require people to vote on things they may not want to.  You also increase the time it takes to get through the process.

 

If I don't have a firm understanding of an issue, I don't want to vote on it.  This year, I scanned the petitions and would have preferred only to vote on a dozen or so.  The rest I'd have left blank.  Instead I had to waste time slowly scrolling and clicking.  We need to streamline this process, make it fast and easy, and more people will take the time to vote.  Especially if we institute a rule that forces the BOD to vote with the members if we vote above a certain percentage.

 

And yes, all voting and minutes should be public.

[Rodger Coan-Burningham]

3 hours ago, Ian said:

 

I think the low percentage of member responses has to do with how the response system worked this year.

 

Most members don't have have an opinion on all petitions, and none are an expert on all.

 

By forcing full completion to allow form submittal, you require people to vote on things they may not want to.  You also increase the time it takes to get through the process.

 

If I don't have a firm understanding of an issue, I don't want to vote on it.  This year, I scanned the petitions and would have preferred only to vote on a dozen or so.  The rest I'd have left blank.  Instead I had to waste time slowly scrolling and clicking.  We need to streamline this process, make it fast and easy, and more people will take the time to vote.  Especially if we institute a rule that forces the BOD to vote with the members if we vote above a certain percentage.

 

And yes, all voting and minutes should be public.

I agree with the streamlining and making it optional to answer individual items. I also wish we could get better participation and maybe that will help if easier and simpler. 
 

I also think there are certain major items, like tires, that we must have that participation before making a change. If we propose a tire rule of some sort it should be required that every team captain must vote on it when they register for a race. It will take some time (months) to gather the input but needs to happen. The change is too important to not gather that level of input because the series makes a major move when something like that is changed.  The BOD can decide which ones those are and it should be infrequent. For the most part the membership elects a board to make decisions for the club and should have some level of faith in their ability to manage the majority of issues facing the club. If not, then throw the bums out. 
 

 

[enginerd]

5 hours ago, MR2 Biohazard said:

Maybe we are at different races and most members think we should do something about it. Having worked pit lane at multiple races I have seen it and continue to see it.

 

It is not giving up a free body to at all. How does it take up so much resources. As a person who has worked pit lane, give me a radar gun, please please do. We all have headsets on. Done! Most volunteers are bored most of the day. It would give me a reprieve from saying, visors down 1,000 times. If you think I can not hold a radar gun and hit a button every so often and still say visors down then you have zero faith in our volunteers.

 

The process in detail.

Person in pit lane, pulls up radar gun, this is an easy item to use, hits button, radar gun reads 31, pin lane guy then reaches hand to headset, pushes button on side, says car XXX was going 31 on pit lane, Jimmy is on the same channel and expects that person in black flag in like 5 minutes. He writes down number.  Race control calls black flag station on car XXX.

 

You do that at a race or two and I bet most speeding violations stop.

 

Personalty, the issue I see is all this happened the day I was at VIR. The only issue is the team had the stern talking to at pit out, which equated to nothing. They got to pit out early so it gave them time to get yelled out each time. So did they, nope, next pit stop same thing, did that stop them, nope, next pit stop same thing.

 

The members want it, it is in place, we should do it.

It already is a rule in the supps. Would putting it in the rulebook instead of the supps suddenly change enforcement or manpower or compliance?

Edited September 26, 2021 by enginerd

[Team Infiniti]

26 minutes ago, enginerd said:

It already is a rule in the supps. Would putting it in the rulebook instead of the supps suddenly change enforcement or manpower or compliance?

unnecessary

Edited September 26, 2021 by Team Infiniti

[Snorman]

lol...of the members who voted ~85% voted against the tire petitions. 

Just like ~80% voted against the two fuel petitions (eliminated +2 for cells and additional vents), so the BOD went ahead and made a huge change to the fuel capacity rule. 

[Racer28173]

For those that think the BOD voting should match the member voting, I think you are missing an important point.  The BOD has the responsibility of making a rule that fits a number of criteria:   It is understandable; it is enforceable; it doesn’t cause big changes for lots of teams.  (Yes - they fail that one a lot).  Having a bunch of members say “we’d like to fix the problem with tires/fuel/etc.” is like the American electorate telling their officials to solve the opioid crisis.  Much easier said than done.  
 

A huge improvement to our process would be to have an additional step where the BOD takes the petition feedback and creates a sample rule book amendment for members to vote/comment on (for each item that has reasonable support)

[MR2 Biohazard]

23 hours ago, Ian said:

 

I think the low percentage of member responses has to do with how the response system worked this year.

 

Most members don't have have an opinion on all petitions, and none are an expert on all.

 

By forcing full completion to allow form submittal, you require people to vote on things they may not want to.  You also increase the time it takes to get through the process.

 

If I don't have a firm understanding of an issue, I don't want to vote on it.  This year, I scanned the petitions and would have preferred only to vote on a dozen or so.  The rest I'd have left blank.  Instead I had to waste time slowly scrolling and clicking.  We need to streamline this process, make it fast and easy, and more people will take the time to vote.  Especially if we institute a rule that forces the BOD to vote with the members if we vote above a certain percentage.

 

And yes, all voting and minutes should be public.

Good point. Then maybe add no opinion as an option when voting.

[MR2 Biohazard]

19 hours ago, enginerd said:

It already is a rule in the supps. Would putting it in the rulebook instead of the supps suddenly change enforcement or manpower or compliance?

Being in the sups is really meaningless. I think being in the rulebook is what would make it real or at least make it a real rule to follow and enforce.

[BollingerChump]

Good on the BOD for recognizing that <50 member inputs (many from this forum) and 2-3 loud voices does not reflect the opinion of entirety of the membership.

 

Thank you!

[mhr650]

On 9/26/2021 at 12:19 PM, enginerd said:

It already is a rule in the supps. Would putting it in the rulebook instead of the supps suddenly change enforcement or manpower or compliance?

Nope, the same rule has been in place for the entire history of the series, just never enforced. 

 

One line of code in a black box sitting on the dash of every car would stop speeding on pit lane instantly. 

Edited September 27, 2021 by mhr650

[Rodger Coan-Burningham]

3 hours ago, BollingerChump said:

Good on the BOD for recognizing that <50 member inputs (many from this forum) and 2-3 loud voices does not reflect the opinion of entirety of the membership.

 

Thank you!

 

Especially since 20 something of them were from one team.

[gundy]

I have been keeping a list since the beginning of 2020 started to see what car #'s are not used. The upside of this list is I have found that we have over 1200 cars in our club, I will say that there could be a 5% error because some teams change names or #'s and show up twice.

The point is if we have a 1000 teams with only 2 members each why do we only have <50 take the time to express their opinion?

pinion 

[Ian]

4 hours ago, gundy said:

I have been keeping a list since the beginning of 2020 started to see what car #'s are not used. The upside of this list is I have found that we have over 1200 cars in our club, I will say that there could be a 5% error because some teams change names or #'s and show up twice.

The point is if we have a 1000 teams with only 2 members each why do we only have <50 take the time to express their opinion?

 

 

Because some of us are more lonely than others?

[BollingerChump]

16 hours ago, gundy said:

I have been keeping a list since the beginning of 2020 started to see what car #'s are not used. The upside of this list is I have found that we have over 1200 cars in our club, I will say that there could be a 5% error because some teams change names or #'s and show up twice.

The point is if we have a 1000 teams with only 2 members each why do we only have <50 take the time to express their opinion?

pinion 

One conclusion to draw: the *vast* majority (sounds like ~1950 ppl at minimum) don't see a major issue with any of the rules and don't prefer any changes?

 

Another: 50+ petitions turns a lot of people off to the whole thing?

[Team Infiniti]

4 minutes ago, BollingerChump said:

One conclusion to draw: the *vast* majority (sounds like ~1950 ppl at minimum) don't see a major issue with any of the rules and don't prefer any changes?

 

Another: 50+ petitions turns a lot of people off to the whole thing?

OR the rest of the folks do not pay attn/know/understand the emails they are getting.

 

Obviously there is a percentage that do not care and only want to race. Does anyone have a generic (random, not champ related) stat on that?

[ManhattanMcC]

1 hour ago, Team Infiniti said:

OR the rest of the folks do not pay attn/know/understand the emails they are getting.

 

Obviously there is a percentage that do not care and only want to race. Does anyone have a generic (random, not champ related) stat on that?

 

STATS! We did some math with rugby semi recently, b/c why aren't more people involved is a general 'club' thing. The results were basically in line with other "Tier II" sports & I'd expect auto racing to kind of follow that spec. *All numbers rounded for easy math

~110k registered members across ~2500 clubs, 3300 'admin' 2900 'officials' 5500 'coaches'. Of that 2600 are dual/triple/etc.. roles. (for example I'm 3x Coach/Official/Player so count in multiple buckets, but 1x in the total)

 

So if we look at a generous ~4k people at any moment who are going to have strong enough opinions to let it be known. Then that's in the 2-3% properly involved folks you're seeing here. Sounds about right to me for a "club" like this.

 

If we go a bit more OP/ED from here, of the 4k in the model above at any moment with strong opinions, they sort of fall into 4 groups:

1) 2k of those folks are only wound up b/c they're unhappy with whatever the latest hot topic is, of those 1k have a legitimate concerns/issues to bring, 500 have bothered to put it coherently in writing, and 250 might be actually dealing with direct impacts, 125 are qualified to deal with the topic, and you'll actually hear from 5 of those on any particular item...

2) 50 People who are employed/hold roles that require they care.

3) 50 people with genuine altruistic intentions

3) 1900 folks who have time/inclination to stir the pot or gate-keep.

 

And that is why I got out of ruggers after 20yrs and into racecars... oops.

Edited September 28, 2021 by ManhattanMcC

[Racer28173]

18 hours ago, gundy said:

I have been keeping a list since the beginning of 2020 started to see what car #'s are not used. The upside of this list is I have found that we have over 1200 cars in our club, I will say that there could be a 5% error because some teams change names or #'s and show up twice.

The point is if we have a 1000 teams with only 2 members each why do we only have <50 take the time to express their opinion?

pinion 

Just one data point:

 

I firmly believe that an uninformed opinion is worse than an unexpressed one.  In the years that I have time to read all of the debate on the forum and discuss with people I disagree with and agree with, I provide feedback on petitions.  Otherwise, I don’t.  

Edited September 28, 2021 by Racer28173

[Bill Strong]

The vast majority of the membership don't care about the politics, drama, or anything else to do with the club. They pay their fees. They come to a track, they pop a wristband on, and hop in a car and go race. They get out., talk about how much fun they had, or how bad the slow cars are, and go home.

Two months later.

 repeat.

 

I hear this at every single event. 

 

Then you have the people who have vast folders of data on all the cars and teams that race on their computer. They look for strengths and weaknesses. Ways of beating everyone. There are not a lot of them. Just a few.

[gundy]

9 hours ago, Racer28173 said:

Just one data point:

 

I firmly believe that an uninformed opinion is worse than an unexpressed one.  

I agree completely, just wish more would take the time to get informed.

[mgoblue06]

20 hours ago, Team Infiniti said:

OR the rest of the folks do not pay attn/know/understand the emails they are getting.

 

Obviously there is a percentage that do not care and only want to race. Does anyone have a generic (random, not champ related) stat on that?

I am a full member and have never once received an email from ChampCar regarding anything

[Rodger Coan-Burningham]

24 minutes ago, mgoblue06 said:

I am a full member and have never once received an email from ChampCar regarding anything

Have you registered for races? How have you gotten race information if you have? You may want to check you spam folder. I guarantee an email was sent to an email address if so, you just haven’t been getting them for some reason. 

[mgoblue06]

34 minutes ago, Rodger Coan-Burningham said:

Have you registered for races? How have you gotten race information if you have? You may want to check you spam folder. I guarantee an email was sent to an email address if so, you just haven’t been getting them for some reason. 

I registered for a race, got those emails, but never any general communication from champ car. And checked my spam. Nothing. 
 

 

I guess I should have said general club emails instead of race emails. 

Edited September 29, 2021 by mgoblue06

[Rodger Coan-Burningham]

36 minutes ago, mgoblue06 said:

I registered for a race, got those emails, but never any general communication from champ car. And checked my spam. Nothing. 
 

 

I guess I should have said general club emails instead of race emails. 

 

So you should have received an email on:

Sept 1 - 2022 BCCR Release

June 23 - New BOD Member

June 2 - BOD Annual Meeting

Mar 17 - Spring Update

Feb 3 - Championship Eligible (if you were eligible for the championship)

Jan 13 - Volunteer Job Listing (not sure this went to everybody)

 

At first glance these should have gone to the entire membership, with noted exceptions.  I probably missed some, just what I have in my inbox that I haven't deleted.

 

 

[petawawarace]

I don't get any of them either. Neither does my father.

Edited September 29, 2021 by petawawarace

[Rodger Coan-Burningham]

11 minutes ago, petawawarace said:

I don't get any of them either. Neither does my father.

 

Sounds like something Bill might be able to help with.