The Tennis Club committee held a meeting last Thursday to discuss and resolve a few issues in preparation for the new financial year:
- The AGM will be held on August 14th at the Hall - time to be announced. All committee positions will be open for election. The committee positively encourages all members to consider standing for office.
- The work load on our Bookings Officer, Elizabeth Hall, has been considerable over the last year. Not only has she taken all bookings, she has also opened the gate for visitors, ensured covid provisions have been followed, collected court and membership fees, banked the takings and kept the books. The club has been considering two alternative book-keeping options in order to relieve her of some of her duties. One option has been a totally on-line system offered by Tennis NSW called Club Spark. This would require all members and visitors to book and pay by phone and another change to our court hire fee structure, moves we feel we are not prepared to make just yet. However we will utilise one part of the system which manages membership data and fee payments on-line. The second option has been to adopt a simple financial spreadsheet system developed by Doug Kohlhoff for the Residents' Association which uses public domain software called Libre. This system has been adopted by the committee and will form the basis of our financial recording and reporting for the forseeble future. Pat Brennan has offered to take over Elizabeth's financial duties and run the new system.
- Membership numbers have also grown significantly, again largely thanks to our favourite Bookings Officer with her ability to twist, without obviously breaking, arms. Numbers are not certain yet because of outstanding renewal fees, but if everyone comes back we will have about 50 family and single memberships. Which is all good, especially if we were to see more people on the court and actually playing the game.
- A look at our financial performance over the last year suggests that we have turned the corner over the last year after the changes in our fee structure. We are back into the accumulation of funds for for asset maintenance and equipment purchase. The club netted $1271 in 2020/2021 after payment of two Tennis NSW $725 affiliation fees, compared with only $916 in the previous year when we were not required to pay affiliation fees. As of June 30, the club had a bank balance of $3840 and a term deposit with a value of about $14700.
- The Covid cloud hangs heavier than ever right now and the committee is promoting extra caution. We will continue to enforce the existing club covid rules which include requirements for all players to abide by social distancing and sanitisation. We will continue to allow visitors access to the court for now providing they are able to assure no covid infection risk to our club.
Please book the AGM date in your calendars and remember to forward your membership fees as soon as possible.
Thanks, Tony Hann
