McHenry Sportsman’s Club Newsletter (August 13, 2006)
Dear Members and Families:
It has been almost one year since the November 2005 newsletter was published.
There was a newsletter issued on April 28, but it was not mailed out.
You had to visit the club's website to see it.
It is still there if you wish to read it.
Club Family Picnic
The flyer for the 2006 Annual Club family Picnic has been prepared and probably attached to this newsletter.
If you do not have it, you can see it on our website or hanging on our clubhouse wall.
Part of your membership dues pays for you and your family to come to the picnic so there is no charge for admission.
Main dish food and soda are included, please bring a side dish or dessert to share.
The purpose of the picnic to let you and your family meet the families of other members,
have a good meal and introduce your family to the wonderful sport of Trapshooting.
You and your family can shoot for the cost of targets.
The club does not make money during the picnic.
So, please mark your calendars for August 27, come out and enjoy the day.
Annual Turkey Shoot
We are pleased to announce we are having our annual Turkey Shoot again this year.
The two-day event will be the weekend of November 11 and 12.
Not much will change.
Our freezer "died" so we have to formulate a plan to distribute the frozen turkeys to the winners.
This is one of the best events your club hosts and anyone can participate and win.
Club Home Grounds
This last year has presented your club with many challenges that had to be managed by your board.
The biggest was the sale of the Club’s Home Grounds.
The McHenry Sportsman's Club has been in existence for over 60 years.
The club was founded by Louis Pitzen, which has operated as a Trap Shooter's club up until this day.
Louis purchased the land with the intent of operating a trap club.
Louis passed away some time ago.
He is survived by his wife and children.
The family made a decision to sell the club’s Home Grounds for personal reasons.
The property was purchased by three members of our club.
Each year, the club renewed its lease with the Pitzen family during the Turkey Shoot for the next year.
We pay the lease annually on that day for the next year.
This means we have a prepaid lease until the end of 2006 (December 31, 2006).
The new owners purchased the land so the club can be preserved.
They own the property and therefore control its destiny.
The new owners will be leasing the property to the club, but the lease amount and terms will more than likely change.
Please remember, the McHenry Sportsman'ss Club and all of its equipment are owned by the Club's Membership.
As far as I know, our Club never owned its home grounds.
This is typical with many commercial facilities.
I was not involved in our Club in the earlier days (1950 through 1980) when Louis Pitzen was alive and part of the club.
I do know that as long as I have been associated with our Club, the Club leased the property from the Pitzen family and everything worked out fine.
We should work for and assume this will continue in the future.
Shooting
Shooting this past year has been down.
There may be many reasons for this and for us to speculate as to why would be pure guesswork.
Most other clubs have noticed the same trend.
Your club has taken some steps to address this issue,
but the only ones who can really help put the club back on track are the Club's Members themselves.
This can be accomplished by shooting more or telling us what we can do to get you back at our club shooting.
Please help us out with your constructive comments.
Remember, the board is made up of members, we are not paid professionals and we do need your help if you see something is not right.
On a brighter note, it seems that over the past several weeks, shooting has greatly improved.
If this trend continues, we will be fine shape.
Thank you to those who have come out and supported our Club.
Club Financial Information
We have discovered that we never clearly informed our membership how the club determines how much to charge
for a round of trap or how much the annual membership dues has to be for the Club to operate.
The scheme is quite simple and should be understood by all:
Our club has two major sources of income,
Membership Dues and Line Fees and their use is very structured.
Other income is generated from special events and simply goes into the cash account and can be used for whatever bills need paying.
All income is allocated into special funds (accounts) and is used to pay bills when they become due.
Some bills must be paid every month while others are paid when required (such as Insurance, Lease costs and Targets).
Membership Dues:
Your membership dues are used to pay all Lease Costs, Insurance Premiums and the cost of the Annual Family Picnic.
This means all non-shooting expenses.
Last year we raised your membership dues because Insurance and Lease Expenses
had risen to the point where our surplus funds for these expenses were depleted.
When these funds become depleted, instead of charging members a special assessment,
we simply cough up the money from other sources until the next year,
when we raise your membership dues to the new levels required to pay these bills
and back-fill the money used to pay the larger than expected bills.
When we raise a fee charged to our Membership,
we attempt to determine the immediate need and what will be needed over the next couple of years.
Immediately after we raise a fee,
allocate the money to the appropriate funds,
replenishing a possible deficit,
and start building a surplus.
When the costs rise to the point where the surplus is exhausted, the cycle begins again.
In a perfect world, this is how your tax bills should be computed.
In 2004, the surplus funds from the previous increase in membership dues were exhausted.
We knew we had to raise membership dues in 2006 and we notified the Membership.
The cycle has once again started.
Based on expenses in 2006 and if there are no increases in 2007, the dues will remain the same.
However, that may not be the case because we do not know as of this writing what our Insurance costs for 2007 will be.
Remember, our Home Grounds were sold and are now owned by different individuals.
Just the act of selling the property will have an effect on the real estate taxes, not to mention how the land was purchased.
These parties will determine what our 2007 lease amount will be.
Small increases in these expenses will not change the dues, but large ones could and probably will.
The club will keep you posted when we have all of our numbers for next year.
Trap Line Fees:
Line fees are what you pay when you step up to the counter and want to shoot a round of trap.
Line fees pay the cost of shooting.
This includes Targets, Trap Help, Equipment and Grounds Maintenance, and Utility Bills.
Utility bills include telephone, gas, electricity, refuse disposal and last but not least, the Porta-Potty.
Non-members pay a surcharge when they shoot at our club.
This surcharge goes toward what members pay for when they pay their membership dues,
which is their share of non-shooting expenses.
Special Projects:
The club maintains a special projects fund that is used to do things like purchase Trap Machines and Tractors.
The cost of repairing the Clubhouse, fixing the equipment used for shooting, such as trap machines and voice callers also comes from this fund.
We try to keep a minimum of one thousand dollars in this fund so we can keep our equipment in repair.
If the account dips below that number, we aggressively try to replenish it from any means possible.
If the club decides to sell an old trap machine or any other type of equipment we have, the proceeds go directly into the special projects fund.
When we purchased our Pat Traps and voice caller equipment, they were purchased out of this account.
Shoot Coupon Fund:
The club sells shoot coupons.
The money received goes into a special fund.
As the coupons are turned in,
the face value of the coupons are subtracted from the shoot coupon fund
and placed in cash (the same way cash rounds are accounted for).
The money in this fund cannot be used for anything except the members shooting with their coupons.
Think of it as a loan from the members, but the club cannot use the funds for anything.
In the event the club closes down, the money goes back to the members owning the outstanding coupons.
We keep track of each coupon and how many each member has outstanding.
Cost Per Round Issues
You now know some information as to the scheme of how your club handles its money.
You know there are two "knobs we can turn" to make sure we can pay our bills; Membership Dues and Line Fees.
You know we do not raise membership dues to cover shooting expenses and do not raise line fees to cover non-shooting expenses.
For those of you who visit our website, and look at the "cost per round" information,
you are probably wondering how we are getting the job done.
Well, it certainly looks like we were not.
If our average cost per round is higher than 3.25, we are PAYING YOU TO SHOOT AT OUR CLUB.
There are months that typically will cost more than that amount, and others that cost less.
The cost per round must average out over a year to be 3.25 or less.
This is a very complex topic and it is fully discussed on the website.
Visit the site to learn more about this.
To make a very long story short,
we have had months with an average cost per round as high as 5.01 while our average for the past five years has been 3.41.
This number has risen too high.
If you remove the real high months, you get very close to 3.25.
We did a model of our club assuming everything was done perfect
and we had the right amount of trap help for the right amount of shooting that is typical of our club
and we arrived at 3.24 per round.
This is not good, because no one can know exactly how much trap help we need for a specific day.
Our Operations Manager did a very good job,
but she was going to error on the high side because if there was not enough trap help,
people "jumped all over her" and complained that it was taking too long for their squads to go out and shoot.
Interesting to note, some people actually complained what there was too much trap help, but not as much.
OK, as most of you know, we no longer have an Operations Manager.
We will save a few bucks there, but that means all the work she did now has to be done by members.
All things considered, she did a great job and it will be hard to find someone to replace her.
If you hire another Operations Manager, he or she will have to be trained and paid.
If you can get one that will work free, we are "all ears", talk to us.
I am personally scheduling the trap help for now until the board can figure out what to do about it.
I am going to error on the low side and go out there and pull squads myself if I have to,
(or if I am not there, you will have to get members to pull some squads),
but I am going to get the cost down from four to five dollars a round back to target.
Speaking about "target", targets and the expense of getting them to the club keeps going up.
>The target increases are reasonable and expected.
It also takes a lot of fuel to get one of those big trucks full of targets over here.
The companies who produce targets are tacking on fuel surcharges to our vendor (who is Recob Enterprises).
So far, our Recob passes these costs without markup to us and Recob does not charge a surcharge for the delivery from their facility to our club.
They are not going to "pay us to deliver our targets" too much longer.
It is simply a matter of time before Recob is forced to do the same thing.
Add to this the fact that there is a national target shortage and it appears that very few people can actually guarantee target deliveries.
Remington is no longer producing Gun Club grade targets.
One of two major plants that provide the pitch needed for the manufacturing of targets has shut down (or at least not in the "pitch" business anymore).
The second facility, to take on the added demand had to go into early plant equipment shutdown for maintenance.
This kicked off a target shortage expected to last into the fall.
We received a little better than one third of our last order (last month) and were very lucky to receive it.
This was only possible because we ordered early enough which allowed Recob time to work for us.
Some clubs were not so lucky.
We have no room to store additional targets.
Our order point is when we are down to three skids.
Our skids are 72 cases instead of the customary 63 cases that allow us to cram more cases in our crowed storage garage.
We typically order fifteen skids.
Recob may enlarge their Inventory to make sure all clubs that he services will have targets when they need them.
When they do this, it will cost them money.
If they do this, we would expect target prices to rise again.
Personally, I would rather pay a little more for targets and know we will have them,
than try to work deals and end up not being able to operate because target deliveries had to be delayed.
At the request of members in the past, we have been down that road before.
We are at the end of our "cycle" with line fees.
If targets go up a nickel a case more than they are, that single event will force a line fee increase.
This is because we are that close (within pennies) with our shooting expenses to the end of the line fee cycle.
We can go on and on about this for many pages,
our website has the information needed to understand the "cost per round' issues and their impact on our club.
Please, if you are interested in learning more about this topic, visit our website and read about it.
OK: This is going to happen
For our club to continue operating in the future,
be able to schedule the proper amount of trap help and continue to receive targets
from a vendor that will do everything possible to insure we get what we need and when,
our Club must raise its line fees.
The last time this happened was announced in November of the year 2000.
We, as a board have always been against taking this type of action,
but now we realize we have no choice.
It takes time to reap in the revenue from a line fee increase because
so much of our revenue comes from shooting coupons.
Coupons were pre-purchased at a price lower than the current price when cashed in.
We are still honoring the yellow coupons at 3.00 per round (for those few who still have them).
Before we get into what it will cost to shoot at the Club, the coupons you now have WILL CONTINUE to be good.
We have done this before and everything worked out.
I personally make up these books and they really are a pain to produce.
We have a small inventory and we are not going to throw them out.
As before, they will be sold at the old rate until they are sold out.
However, we will not produce any more PINK books.
When they are gone, they are gone.
Just like the yellow ones before 2001.
The coupon book scheme is still the same as it always was.
You get one free round with each book purchased.
The following line fees will be in effect effective September 1, 2006:
|
OLD |
NEW |
| Member: singles |
3.50 |
4.00 |
| Member: doubles |
5.00 |
5.50 |
| Non-Member: singles |
5.00 |
6.00 |
| Non-Member: doubles |
7.00 |
8.00 |
|
| Coupon Book: |
52.50 |
60.00 |
|
(3.28) |
(3.75) |
Parting Comments
Many of you know me.
My name is Tom Carneal and I have been serving on your Club's board as your Club Treasurer from 1998
and as a Director prior to the assignment of Treasurer.
I am the author of this and all newsletters published by our Club since 1998.
Together, the boards that I served with made many accomplishments in these nine years.
Some of these accomplishments were the following:
Made our Club financially healthy.
Established strong accounting procedures that may be audited,
used for analysis of the condition of the club and used to make decisions on future expenditures.
Converted our Club to Automatic Trap Machines from hand set manual machines that required personnel stationed in our trap houses.
One by one, replaced the Automatic Trap Machines with state of the art Pat-Traps, (in all but one trap house),
allowing us to throw doubles targets.
Provided and maintained voice release systems on all fields.
Installed air conditioning in the Clubhouse.
Built a garage to store our tractors and target inventory.
Rewired most of the clubhouse and all the trap houses.
Provided maintenance to our equipment and grounds including grass cutting and other landscape projects.
Increased the overall level of service to the members.
There were many other accomplishments that your board has provided, too numerous to mention in this article.
On the request of some of our members, I, personally at my expense,
established, authored and hosted our Club's website at NO COST to our Club.
That's right, the website and all of its content was provided at no cost to our Club.
Other members have done the same for your Club in other areas.
Just try to imagine sitting on a tractor on a hot humid July or August day cutting the grass that grows at our Club.
Not just our trap fields, but also their fallout areas,
the parking and picnic areas and the grounds in between.
I have been here when this work was being performed and believe me when I say this: it is a lot of work.
Members and Guests come to shoot on the weekend and all this work has been completed.
It may not even be noticed.
Do they do this for pay?
What do they get for this?
Nothing
Now we give them a coupon book so they can shoot a couple of rounds of trap
(and allow your Treasurer to track the targets and other costs).
When equipment "breaks down" during the Club's operation, one or more of us stops what we are doing and attempts to fix the problem.
If we cannot fix it in a reasonable amount of time,
we end up coming in the middle of the week and spend sometimes days making sure things are fixed and working properly.
It takes a lot of work to run the Club's operation.
Most people have no idea what is involved.
Remember, nobody on the board receives any pay.
Yes, we get to shoot some free rounds occasionally,
but some would have to shoot free trap rounds for the rest of their lives every day and that still would not make up for these people’s contributions.
I personally never accepted free rounds until the last couple of years when the club started to mature financially and was able to afford it.
Believe me when I tell you this, there are far better ways to come up with shooting money than the amount of work performed for a couple of free rounds.
The work was done because we want our Club to be successful and be there for all of us to enjoy.
Our current board is "tired".
Some of our Members and Board Members feel new blood is needed to meet the challenges that our Club will be facing in the upcoming years.
Some of the current Board Members will probably not be available for their positions next year.
We need some of you to become interested in serving on our board.
No, you are not required to perform this service,
but there are people out there who would like to and want to help, and have the talent necessary to make things happen.
I for one will not be running for Treasurer in the upcoming election of officers.
I have very strong feelings for our club, which made this a very hard decision.
Not all decisions in life are pleasant and this one was not pleasant.
I feel I have an obligation to notify the Membership of this situation in this newsletter because we have to
find a new Treasurer as quickly as possible so we can spend the time necessary for a clean turnover.
Please, do not expect us to do this at the end of the year.
It would be impossible and just make things more difficult for the Membership and myself.
We could end up with nothing at all.
Our operation has grown over the past few years.
This position cannot remain vacant.
There will be enormous challenges in the upcoming years.
This year I started to lose "touch" with our Club.
My professional and personal responsibilities are becoming greater with each year passing which leaves me little time for the required work needed to make our Club function.
You will need a Treasurer who can spend the time required to insure the successful continued operation of our Club.
It makes me sad that this may be the last newsletter I will be writing to you, but we all must move on.
I will continue to maintain a presence at our Club, still helping as much as I can.
I will continue to provide and administer our Club's website.
However, the Membership needs to start looking for someone as quickly as possible.
We can vote this person into office in the December meeting
and our new Treasurer can officially take office and start with the first Quarter of 2007.
GOOD SHOOTING TO ALL
Sincerely,
Tom Carneal, Club Treasurer