The ACBL board of directors is going through a massive overhaul. For years, the board of directors consisted of 1 director per district for a total of 25 people representing all regions of North America. Now we are reducing that to 12 regions, where D24 and D25 will be represented by one director.
Who Will Be The Regional Director?
The election has 3 candidates (in arbitrary order): David Moss from D24, Allan Graves from D25, and Mark Aquino from D25. They will speak to all of the voting unit board members tomorrow on a massive Zoom debate / speech pow wow / caucus. Should be interesting!
Why Would We Reduce the Board of Directors Size?
What does it mean? Well, perhaps it’s easier to get 12 people to agree on things than 25? The cost of subsidizing 25 people to attend NABC 3 times a year will be roughly cut in half? Keep in mind, the Districts remain intact for now. There are still 25 districts to send players to represent in the GNT and NAP events. There will still be masterpoint races by district. But I suppose there will no longer be a district director for D24 and D25. Just a lot of unit presidents (Adam Parrish is president of U155), and then one regional director.
What Does the Board of Directors Do Anyway?
Quite a bit is always discussed, and some things voted upon. Their motions and minutes are always posted on ACBL, if you do some digging. Of the many motions under consideration each year, some of the most impactful have been the decision to allow Districts to send 2 teams in Flight B and C – a decision that ultimately allowed our 2nd place Flight C NYC team to win the national finals!
Each director has equal vote, but districts were more or less equal in ACBL population (District 25 is about 50% larger than District 24 – but their land mass includes the vast majority of New England).
How Does the Voting Work?
Only board members of their respective units may vote. For New York City, it is the board members of the GNYBA! Each vote is multiplied by the ACBL member population of that unit, but divided by the number of board members who cast a vote in that unit (if 20 out of 25 board members cast a vote with 5 abstaining, then my vote is 5% of our unit). Our vote carries quite a bit more weight than most units, because of our large ACBL population. However, D25 overall has 8 units that total to far more votes than both NYC and Long Island.