Yes, attendance at the 2019 ACDGC Annual Meeting, January 12, 2019 was unprecedented!
Unfortunately, this is NOT good news.
The Air Capital Disc Golf Club (ACDGC) was established 30 years ago, in 1989, just about a year after the fledgling KDGA had wrangled a deal with the local Wendy’s Hamburger franchise to purchase the equipment for the first disc golf course in Wichita and got permission from the Wichita Parks and Recreations department to install the course in Central Riverside Park.
Having been introduced to this sport in 1982 in Norman, Oklahoma
while working as a DJ at KATT FM I was an enthusiastic supporter. I had moved
back to Wichita in ’82 and sorely missed the opportunity to play and learn more
about disc golf. It was my privilege at the time to become acquainted with the
guys responsible for getting the course installed and to become friends with the
likes of Harvey Barger, Buddy Kassner and Bill Paulson.
It was in the winter of 1988-89 that Bill, Buddy and others, including myself,
gathered to discuss the possibility of forming a local disc golf club and from
that gathering the ACDGC was born. Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances
I was not able to continue serving as an officer of the club over the course of
the year but Buddy and Bill persisted and have been active volunteers and
supporters of the club from it’s inception. That is why Bill Paulson is still
honored to claim 0001 as his ACDGC membership number.
Over the course of the next 10 years, the club would undergo a lot of changes, some good, some not so good and by the early 2000’s it was unclear, at least to me, if the club would survive. Buddy, in my opinion, was primarily responsible for keeping it going following some fractious events. He was eventually joined by Bob Decker who took on the responsibility of running weekly league at Herman Hill, which was, at the time, the only 18-hole course in Wichita. Under their leadership the club began to grow again, I soon began to assist in running weekly events and together we began the process of rebuilding a formal organization capable of raising funds to grow the sport in Wichita.
On Oct 2nd of 2004, our work culminated in the adoption of a set of by-laws on a majority vote of the known eligible voters and in early 2005 the Air Capital Disc Golf Club (ACDGC) was incorporated in Kansas as a non-profit organization and the first officers of the ACDGC Board of Directors was established. Since that time, according to the by-laws, the club has convened an Annual Meeting in January to give an accounting of the club funds, the previous year’s activities and to elect officers to serve throughout the remainder of the year.
Attendance at the Annual Meeting has varied considerably over the years, often times there was a struggle to even get enough members on hand to have a qualifying vote by at least 20% of the eligible membership. It was with this in mind that the practice of getting proxy votes in advance was established. Still, even though the numbers were low there has, to the best of my knowledge, always been at least a dozen or more members present, including current ACDGC Officers.
This year was startlingly different! The three officers who chose not to serve on the board again in 2019 were not able to attend (Congrats on the new baby, Daniel?) but proxy ballots were obtained. Still, that left us with a quorum of officers that were able to make binding decisions with a unanimous vote. Not ideal, but it was O.K. and not completely unprecedented. However, there was only 1 other ACDGC member,
This clearly fell short of the 30 votes required by the by-laws to constitute a binding election of ACDGC officers. Faced with this situation the board conducted our usual business first, including the Treasurers report and the President’s presentation of a summary of activities of the ACDGC in 2018. And we placed in nomination the names of the volunteers who stepped forward to serve as ACDGC officers throughout the remainder of 2019. Following that there was a motion to recess the Annual Meeting for an indeterminate amount of time with the goal of reconvening within two weeks to hold an official vote. We elected to do this in keeping with the spirit of the by-laws which were established as they were to maintain trustworthy and reliable leadership and governance of the organization on a year to year basis.
Even though we did not officially establish when the meeting will reconvene, we do not want nor do we intend for this to become a means of retaining our roles in the ACDGC without membership approval. When we come back from recess, we will either have the number of votes in hand and/or in attendance for an official election or we will take the steps necessary to dissolve the Air Capital Disc Golf Club and dispense of our remaining funds in accordance with the ACDGC by-laws.
The ball is now in the court of our membership. We, as responsible officers of the club will do our best to make it possible for anyone who wants to vote to do so. And, we will announce at least one week in advance the date and place of our re-convened Annual Meeting and we encourage any and all members to attend.
It has been my hope and goal of making 2019 a year of celebration for the Air Capital Disc Golf Club as we completed 30 years of service to the disc golf community in Wichita and South-Central Kansas. And, I still hope that can be the case.
It has been my great pleasure to serve on this board over the years and as President over the last 5 years. No matter how this plays out I will continue to do all in my power to grow and support disc golf in Wichita.
Thank you
Jerry Sherwood
ACDGC President
