Hi Martin, I can't speak for Todd (all I've seen is the email I shared), but I want to start off saying that I think it's unnecessarily inflammatory to call his actions an 'attack'. To quote Jon Stewart from The Daily Show: "Scrutiny is not an attack." Good grief. Why aren't there more adults in the room? When you position yourself that any challenge or questioning is an 'attack', you make dialogue nearly impossible. This is unnecessary. FWIW I feel he is performing his duty as a board member by speaking up. I feel like my vote for him was worth it. If he's got concerns that aren't being addressed by the rest of the board, then by all means he should speak out. (The critique about logos or what have you seem a petty distraction.) I'm so sick of devotion and mindless trust that some here spout. I will say this again: TRUST IS EARNED. You're losing my trust, fwiw, Martin. You would not get my vote for another term, and I would be happy to tell people why. My trust is eroded with statements like 'the board has chosen to[...]' when it actually hasn't fully agreed. While only one board member formally objected to the vote, it's very possible some other board members voted begrudgingly, as this environment often has expectations of drone-like cooperation. (Other comments on this post literally say anyone disagreeing should vacte the board!!! Buh-bye democracy!!) And please, Martin, consider how telling it is when a 'challenge' is described as 'an attack'. Do you see where I'm going with this? Do you see why this language is so inappropriate and harmful? And have you never voted along with something that you weren't fully on board with? Sure, the vote was 7:1, but that doesn't actually mean all 7 were happy with it either. It could very possibly be 'the best of all the bad options'. It's actually very easy to simply go along with what the majority says. Bravery comes from being willing to stand for what you actually believe in. Moving on, I still feel like the organizational expenses are being misrepresented, and falling into a 'technobable' word salad scenario that most people don't actually relate to. I think people understand when you say 60% went to paying people. And that's quite high for a non-profit. I think it's misleading when you say 'well technically only 20% went to administration because this technical detail and that technical detail blah blah blah'. You want trust? Speak honestly and in terms people can relate to. I'm not opposed to paying people at all (I also stated this in my blog post) - but why not be direct about it? Martin, you practically admit that you're blending in the expenses to intentionally obfuscate the details to members. And you're putting words in my mouth, I don't believe I've ever said the spending is wasteful, and I have no idea what's going on with HopOn. (In part because I don't believe those numbers were actually shared last year, at least before I wrote my blog post. But it probably also deserves some scrutiny. Do a quick search on my blog post where I mention HopOn just once.) (Psst - you could ask me you know. Lots of ways to reach out and check in with me if you wanted clarity on something I've said. Or even read my blog post.) So because I didn't say it was "wasteful", I'm pretty sure what I actually expressed was that I was concerned at that scale of spending given the total expenses of the organization. (Gee, that's a bit different!) It'd be nice to argue the points I actually make, Martin. Not have yet more words put in my mouth and not only be misrepresented, but somehow expected to defend those. But let's not screw around any more, here's what I actually wrote on it: SALARIES According to the 2021 Financial statement ( https://cyclingbc.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/20211231-Financial-Statements.pdf ) $564,715 was paid in wages and benefits, and $193,108 as “Subcontractors”. $757,823 total. Total revenue was $1,246,689. 60% of CyclingBC’s total revenue goes to pay people. IMO a lean and efficient organization does not pay 60% of their total revenue to staff/workers. And raising membership fees to cover that isn’t fair. I’ve read Erin’s annual salary is ~$114k. If so, that’s 10% of TOTAL organizational revenue, or over 1/4 total revenue from memberships in 2021 ($471k revenue from memberships and licenses.) This is also a significant jump in percentage of revenue from 2020, wages & subcontractors were $432,976 & $124,798 respectively. Total revenue in 2020 was $1,062,476. This was still 52% of the total. It’s not even a creep; wages are steamrolling to higher and higher costs. What’s the situation with other cycling orgs? Looking at the Ontario Cycling Association (financials here: https://ontariocycling.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2021-Ontario-Cycling-Audited-Financial-Statements.pdf ) $486,634 was paid in wages and benefits. They don’t list subcontractors, and none of the rest are obviously paid workers to me. Their annual revenue was $1,711,391. That’s 28% of their total revenue. Granted they have different opportinuties to generate income, but it seems much more within reason of their budget. OCA website lists over 9,200 members for the record, the revenue from that is comparable to CyclingBC oddly, with 4600 members the same year. Are Ontario racers getting better value? I should be clear I’m not at all opposed to paid staff and would happily make the case it’s necessary for CyclingBC, but the value to members needs to be factored in, and I’m not feeling good value right now. From: https://abouttheride.ca/cyclingbc2023fees/ If you want to discuss what I've said, Martin, please actually reference what I've said. The blog post has been there over a year. (But honestly I want to move past the 2021/22 shenanigans, and dig into the 2023 shenanigans.) And to be perfectly clear: I'm not angry. I didn't write this in anger. Am I frustrated? Sure. And I don't hate Martin. I don't even dislike Martin. I think I've only met Martin a handful of times and he seems perfectly nice. I appreciate that he's stepped up and taken on this responsibility, it isn't easy. And I can be a real pain. Do I agree with everything Martin has written? Obviously not. And you know what: that's actually okay. Take a deep breath. Everything is fine. We're actually allowed to disagree. It's often a good thing! Last year these disagreements resulted in CyclingBC dropping $120k from their budget, and greatly reduced membership fee costs from the proposal. I'm quite willing to bet that this had a favourable overall outcome. Was it all because 'we agreed' and 'we trusted the board'? Absolutely not. And it shouldn't be. This is how healthy, functional people operate, and improvements happen.

Just to chime in on one particular aspect - a really great fee structure to consider is a sliding scale. An example for a TS membership might be a scale of $15-45. So a member can choose to pay anything between $15-45. (And be sure to briefly explain why.) I've organized a number of events with this format (like the Save-A-Turkey Trot), and the majority of people select the highest point, but it also leaves room for those with less money. The Trot is a fundraiser event, and in the past we'd use a set entry, and since we've switched, we've raised considerably more. (Going from like $300 to $1200, despite fairly similar numbers of participants). If you give people the opportunity to be generous, they often will be. Another option, if that won't work, is to add a sort of 'tip' option on membership checkout, with the explicit note that this will be used to offset membership fees for those who can't afford. Lots of possibilities with a bit of creativity. And there were a number of past racers who I spoke with this year, asking why they weren't racing, top answer was 'license is too much'. I think those who think 'the price is fine' are living in a bubble. Good for them, but it's really not cool. (And not saying this for CBC, mainly TS memberships...but there is potential elsewhere.)

Hi all, I've got more I'm going to post, but to start with, I'd like to highlight that the CyclingBC Board is not united on this, and at least one board member is challenging the proposal and encouraging members to vote no. I'm going to add one quick comment - it was mentioned on the Spond thread that 'a small group of disgruntled members' are implied to be the only people unhappy with this propsal. First, that's simply not true, given that a majority was needed to suspend the vote at the EGM. Second, it's important to consider who is questioning this. In many cases, it's people who organize, and have to work with CyclingBC. Like Normon below, who organizes perhaps the largest (by participants) race series in BC (possibly Canada.) This was the case on the EGM as well. Third, just a year ago the Tripleshot board was also considering options that could move Tripleshot away from CyclingBC. So while certain people are pretending that this is a non-issue, it most certainly was, and remains. Moving on, here's a copy of that email: I am bringing this notice to your attention as its quite important.  The last Board meeting the board discussed increasing membership and licensing fees for 2024.  There were a couple of us on the board that voiced serious concerns for this and has resulted in a EGM.  As well, the document provided in email does not include proposed fee increases for clubs?  Rationale The PSO a non profit organization is currently above the threshold  for salaries and wages. The standard or status quo for Non Profits is 15% - 30% of overhead/budget we are running at 40%. Its not a good position for an organization that is supposed to run as lean as possible.  The consequence is there's inadequate funding going towards club development, Track and Race events, we need to work on this area.. I proposed offering discounts to clubs that are actively involved with race events and activities that are actively growing our sport.  These clubs should be rewarded as they are doing the bulk of the work.  Also, there should be license discounts for people that are in a club.  Anyone applying for a new license should be encouraged to be registered with a club.  We should then offer a discount to those participating. This would help establish stronger and robust clubs with like minded individuals to grow the sport further. This is how we keep clubs healthy and growing.  In many EU countries you can't get a license unless you are in a club. We should be modeling our organization similar to successful Cycling Organizations and not creating a hybrid do it all PSO.  What now "The ship needs to be set on course" There are things we could be doing to make our organization thrive but hiring more staff is not the answer. We need to be sustainable and run a leaner organization.  We also need to be accountable to our membership for spending as well as a like minded board that understands how the sport should be governed and operate.  I would like to see others with the same passion get involved and move things along.  The PSO primary responsibilities are to provide Governance, Licensing, Race Development and support the sport of cycling for all.  These are the primary roles of the PSO to provide oversight of the sport and not to be consumed with other extraneous initiatives that are overlapped with other organizations such as BC Cycling coalition, Vancouver Cycling coalition and Hub to name a few.  Many of the Cycling BC initiatives overlap with these orgs, I would encourage anyone that is interested to check them out.  Closing This has been a labourious time trying to reach consensus on Membership and licensing but it was necessary to raise these concerns, as a board member it is incumbent upon me to ask these questions.  How can we ask members for approval on rate increases without tightening up in other areas?  The PSO currently has 8 staff as well as outside contractors and at the current funding levels this is not sustainable and needs to be addressed before proceeding forward with increases. I would encourage you reach out to your club and members to reject the increases at the EGM  PS mark your calendar Nov 21st and don't forget to vote! Yours in cycling, Todd Hansen CRC Race Director Cycling BC Director at large