• All three Hill Running Commission (HRC) office-bearers re-elected: David Armitage (Convenor), Mark Johnston (Secretary) and Mike Pearson (Finance).
• Mechanism to be put in place for election of HRC’s ordinary members. (At the moment they’re co-opted.)
• Liz McColgan to step down as Chair of the Board of Management by the end of the year. (See also the piece in Saturday’s Scotsman.)

Relationship between scottishathletics and hill runners/Clubs

• Geoff Wightman has visited 41 Clubs to date; would like to meet the rest. Maybe Carnethy should invite him some time?
• Excommunication no longer an issue, given the proportion of hill races taking out permits. (Carnethy’s doing so for Caerketton last week was cited as an example of improving relationships.)
• Mechanism for allowing individual members of scottishathletics to vote at meetings to be put to next year’s AGM.
• Minutes of Board of Management’s meetings now on web. (HRC’s will soon be too.)
• Members’ insurance said to cover public liability but not personal accident. Expect more on this from scottishathletics.

Finance

• Operating surplus for the year about £16k.
• Reserves now +£5k, compared with the -£30k after the VAT hiatus three years ago. They’re still uncomfortably small for an organisation with an annual turnover of around £1M.

Subscriptions and levies

• Individual Membership Fees (currently senior club member £15, senior unattached £27, junior club member £8, family £30) Board’s proposal for no change for 2006/07carried by 115-1. Carnethy voted with the Board.
• Club affiliation fees (currently £7 for first-claim athletes, £3 for second-claimers, £3 for everyone else) Board proposed no change, eventually carried 87-11 (Carnethy voting with the Board). But first…Falkirk Victoria Harriers (Falkirk) proposed (a) £6 for first-claimers and (b) zero for everyone else.
  (a) Falkirk’s argument was along the lines that the Awards Dinner had cost a lot and that the money would be better returned to Clubs. About one-third of those present agreed, but Falkirk’s proposal was defeated 78-39. Carnethy voted with the Board (against Falkirk), because scottishathletics needs money and is making a good job of its finances (see above). Income from non-governmental sources is particularly valuable because it reduces the chances of political interference.
  (b) Falkirk didn’t see why it should pay £3 a head for its volunteers etc. Carnethy voted with Falkirk (against the Board), because the argument also holds for our Running Club members who don’t enter races. Falkirk’s proposal was defeated 60-55, the Chair casting the dozen or so uncommitted proxy votes for the Board. The Board undertook to review the matter for next year, given the majority of those at the meeting supported Falkirk’s proposal.
• Non-members’ race levies to continue at £2. The Board has decided (not yet publicised) to raise the threshold entry fee from £1 to £2 (i.e., no levies to be collected at permitted races whose entry fee is £2 or less).

Presentation by Jack Buckner, Project Director of Athletics Project Board

For political anoraks only. Basically athletics in the UK was awarded £41M by the Government for having pulled the plug on the current World Athletics Championships, which should have been held in London not Helsinki. There was a thick piece of rope attached, namely that athletics ‘modernises’ itself according to a blueprint – the Foster Report. Jack Buckner, who won lots of medals as a 5000-metre track runner, is the person with the unenviable job of making sure it happens.

Two points emerged. First, Scotland is ahead of the rest of the UK in this particular race. Secondly, Jack has had to put up with a slow pace, lots of bumping, spiking, etc., and is about to make one of his decisive strikes for the line.