4/15 Msg to OGC membrs- PLEASE share with other club members

[Seismic Sam]

First and foremost, I would like to thank the membership for attending the April meeting, and approving the range development plan. You have no idea how hard I have worked to make this happen, and up until the 11th hour with some of the BS going on, I thought it might not happen. I think you will be pleased with the results, and it will help a LOT in getting us into better compliance with NRA and thus Minnesota state statutes to keep the range open. I would like to state that while I knew fully about the current shortcomings, it was not my place to say anything, and I wasn't about to go public with information that I wasn't authorized to release. That's Bryan's call as a certified NRA Safety Officer and also Board member, and I trust his judgement on this. So I knew a lot more than I was saying previously, but it's his call and not mine.

I have heard from several people about the meeting, and it sounded like a wowser!! To touch on a couple of issues before I get to my main point, there was a person at the beginning who showed up with handouts trying to derail the whole process and complaining about how alternate designs had not been considered, which at that point was a flat out lie, and I am pissed about this personally. For the record, The Construction Review Committee was tasked with deciding what to do with the current plan, and was NEVER charged with considering all plans. Despite that, we identified a lot of shortcomings in any plan with vertical baffles which would have to be replaced regularly, and even worse, the fact that the load bearing vertical posts for these baffles would get shot up in short order and become structurally compromised, and perhaps collapse on somebody. Going back to this person who is totally hung up on ANY design but the current one, one of his proposed ideas was movable plastic sashes on each shooting table to prevent muzzle rise and thus, IF the system worked 100% of the time, keep bullets on the property. Well, I reviwed this idea, drew out the geometry, and discovered to my horror that the length of the gun was a determining factor in how much the sash had to be pulled down. With a 50" long benchrest rifle, having the sash 3" above the rifle barrel was sufficient. With a 16" Smith 500, however, 3" would allow the bullet a full 10 degrees up of flight and it would be over the trees and out of here. I actually tried firing my Smith 500 with a piece of polycarbonate above it to see if the muzzle blast would fog the plastic, and while it didn't, the recoil from the gun hit the plastic hard enough to rip the front sight off my Smith 500!! Can you imagine somebody coming in two days before hunting season and having something like this rip his front sight off so he couldn't go hunting that year??

Another design was to have big concrete pipes at the 100 to prevent bullet travel upwards, and it was going to take 40' of pipe to do this. The first drawback is that even with sound insulation, people who have shot with them say they are noisy as all hell! But Petar did his usual thorough pricing on such a setup for the 100 to try and placate this person, and the total cost for this "much cheaper" alternate solution was $413,000, which was more than the $386,000 that Petar had calculated for the current design!! Plus those pipes would cover so much ground that we would have runoff issues, and the area near the backstop might turn into a swamp, and we could have a problem with the swamp water leaching lead out of the backstop!! ALL this was done well before the meeting, and this person didn't sway his course to derail the whole process a bit. I know one thing - this person owes me a new sight for my 500 for testing out one of his alternate solutions!!

Now, I loved the whole bit about Tom's dismissal coming up, and I was wondering how it was going to turn out, and I again congratulate you for knowing what is right and what is wrong, and forcing the people on the EC who supported this to take Tom back, and for the record, nobody even told me as a Board member this was going down, and I was AT that meeting, so I have an axe to grind personally myself now. Unfortunately, the same people are still there, and if Tom were to go back he would be subjected to even MORE abuse, because you just can't fix stupid!! I should also note that Petar is pissed becuase now he has a construction project for a club with no GM, which is going to be a PITA. While Tom has a very justifiable legal beef and very good counsel to go with it, suing the whole club is not a solution, so he really can't go that route.

The main message I therefore want to get out to all of you is that this situation came about to some extent as a result of member apathy, and I most certainly was one of the guilty ones who just used the club and didn't participate in the process or come to meetings. Well, I have taken responsibility for my past lazy actions, and you got to see the results at the last meeting.

What is needed NOW are MORE good people to step forward, and run for Board positions, and take back this club from the Kool-Aid drinkers. General qualifications are to know what's right and what wrong, and call a spade a spade, and not put up with any BS or under the table dealings, and stand up for the club and do the right thing to keep improving the level of Club Safety to get everything up to NRA specs, while at the SAME time being fiscally responsible and not spending the club's money without due consideration AND membership approval!! So here are the positions you can start considering, and getting organized among yourselves:

Vice President: This position HAS to be filled by a new person more than any other, but apart from that, simply being a club member with some solid history with the club and doing what's right, that about it for qualifications. The old VP Pat is still very much around, and Al Lierness would be an EXCELLENT choice in my book.

Secretary: Somebody who can take near perfect notes, AND who knws right from wrong AND is willing to say something about it!!

Treasurer: Here you will need somebody who is almost a full fledged bookeeper or CPA and has a sense of caution and the ability to plan ahead and be fiscally responsible, and also stand up for what is right and make sure the membership knows what is going on.

Other positions I won't go into: You know who the board was last year, and you know who is still left over, and you can make your own informed decisions about who should stay and who should go. Some may have not had the will to stand up for what's right for the club, and some may have hidden agendas to force the club into default and make the land available for sale at a few pennies on the dollar, and some may have not cared or just gone along for the ride. It's hard to sort all that out, but in the end I have faith in the general membership of the club being a very diverse and fairly well educated group, and so again I would ask to to start organizing and getting ready for the elections this Fall. Start NOW, and keep working on it, and talking among yourselves and gathering support and concensus for people YOU want to see running this club.

[sawgrass]

Are the mentioned board positions open?
Did anyone resign?

[bstrawse]

Are the mentioned board positions open?
Did anyone resign?

No one has resigned.

The annual meeting in December is where elections happen. If nothing else, that's the place to ensure that we continue to elect folks that have the best interests of the members in place.
B

[sjuhockey10]

When I ran into Petar at OGC the other weekend, I mentioned that part of my reasoning behind volunteering to fill the youth director vacancy was to put another... clear-headed, let's say, mind on the board. That unfortunately didn't work out for me, but I'd love to become involved in some capacity, should the right opportunity come around at the next annual meeting or in the meantime.

[Erud]

How did the need for these improvements come about in the first place? They sound pretty major and unlike anything I've ever seen at any other gun range I've ever been to.

Just curious here, I have not been a member at OGC for almost 10 years.

Thanks,
Erik

[Seismic Sam]

When I ran into Petar at OGC the other weekend, I mentioned that part of my reasoning behind volunteering to fill the youth director vacancy was to put another... clear-headed, let's say, mind on the board. That unfortunately didn't work out for me, but I'd love to become involved in some capacity, should the right opportunity come around at the next annual meeting or in the meantime.

Thanks for the reply. Our new Youth Director is a bit of a "ringer" if you've met him, in that he looks like a relative kid, but is actually 60 years old and has grandchildren whom, I suspect already know how to shoot!! It's no damn fair how young he looks!! Other than that, pick a position where you think you could make a contribution RIGHT NOW, state your reasons why you would be an asset to the club and that you're a stand-up guy and aren't going to take no BS off nobody as a Director, and throw your hat in the ring in the next few days.

[bstrawse]

When I ran into Petar at OGC the other weekend, I mentioned that part of my reasoning behind volunteering to fill the youth director vacancy was to put another... clear-headed, let's say, mind on the board. That unfortunately didn't work out for me, but I'd love to become involved in some capacity, should the right opportunity come around at the next annual meeting or in the meantime.

Thanks for the reply. Our new Youth Director is a bit of a "ringer" if you've met him, in that he looks like a relative kid, but is actually 60 years old and has grandchildren whom, I suspect already know how to shoot!! It's no damn fair how young he looks!! Other than that, pick a position where you think you could make a contribution RIGHT NOW, state your reasons why you would be an asset to the club and that you're a stand-up guy and aren't going to take no BS off nobody as a Director, and throw your hat in the ring in the next few days.

He's 60?! Holy Crap!
b

[sjuhockey10]

When I ran into Petar at OGC the other weekend, I mentioned that part of my reasoning behind volunteering to fill the youth director vacancy was to put another... clear-headed, let's say, mind on the board. That unfortunately didn't work out for me, but I'd love to become involved in some capacity, should the right opportunity come around at the next annual meeting or in the meantime.

Thanks for the reply. Our new Youth Director is a bit of a "ringer" if you've met him, in that he looks like a relative kid, but is actually 60 years old and has grandchildren whom, I suspect already know how to shoot!! It's no damn fair how young he looks!! Other than that, pick a position where you think you could make a contribution RIGHT NOW, state your reasons why you would be an asset to the club and that you're a stand-up guy and aren't going to take no BS off nobody as a Director, and throw your hat in the ring in the next few days.

I wasn't able to get out to the meeting if he was there, and I don't believe I've met him in the past. Glad to see the club has some people willing to step up, though -- I remember past years where it was like pulling teeth to get people to volunteer for the board.

Reading between the lines, should I take this to mean that there is going to be an effort to remove people from the aforementioned positions?

[Seismic Sam]

I wasn't able to get out to the meeting if he was there, and I don't believe I've met him in the past. Glad to see the club has some people willing to step up, though -- I remember past years where it was like pulling teeth to get people to volunteer for the board.

Reading between the lines, should I take this to mean that there is going to be an effort to remove people from the aforementioned positions?

Depends on what YOU and other members want to do about this situation, and it's no secret that things have been seriously out of whack with the Club for the last 16 months or more. To begin with, a loan was taken out for 6 figures against the title of the land the club owns with neither the knowledge or permission of ANY of the membership, and the project was pushed ahead in near secrecy. It wasn't until Tom T. started waking some of us in here up about what was going on that I and a lot of other people really got wind of how big this thing was, and I started sounding alarm bells about possible reflected noise issues, and the fact that NOBODY had even looked at this effect in erecting 300' long concrete walls on the 100, despite the fact that the project was filed with the City of Lake Elmo as a Sound Abatement Project, rather than an overall safety upgrade. (Still don't understand that....) In addition, the project WAS slated to begin November 19th last year with an $80,000 winter construction cost penalty, which immediately blew the original budget out of the water, and was only stopped when the membership at the November meeting stood up and said "No way, Jose!!" Now, at that time, the blueprints were STILL only in initial draft form, and had serious errors and gaps in them, and the club was on the hook for 100% of the cost for all the change orders. The dimensions on the width of the 100 is off by at least two and more likely four feet, so all the structural steel could have showed up two feet too short and we would have had to buy new stuff. (And no, you DON'T get credit for the short stuff you already bought!!) Worse yet, if you looked at some of the footings for the center row of posts on the 100, there was NO REBAR in those footings, so a strong wind from any direction could have cracked those columns below the ground level where you wouldn't know about, and the whole house of cards could have collapsed. And with an error like that, the insurance isn't likely to have to pay out anything. To add to this whole thing, the City of Lake Elmo was specifically told that the price for EVERYTHING on the prints (with an estimated cost of $4,266,553.00) was only $450,000, and it wasn't until Jerry Marah and Petar went back to Lake Elmo earlier this spring that the inspectors found out about this. The club's very existence was floating in the air like a leaf for a few minutes, and they were relieved that we weren’t going to hold them to only having to pay for a $450K project when the real number was $4 1/4 mil. However, can you imagine the ruckus that WOULD have happened in due time if the project HAD started, and the inspectors came over, and all they found was the Short Range fixed up, a 180" long concrete wall with serious frost heave issues, and the 100 yard range with at best 3 of 10 sets of baffles needed to close off the blue sky, and nothing else?? Can you say “Red Tag”, boys and girls?? Sure, I knew ya could!!

And the final hidden land mine, which was discovered by Al Leirness and Petar during the Construction Review Process that I was part of, was that the original loan was a fixed payout, with no possibility of getting more until the original note was paid off, so with the $80,000 wasted for winter construction, plus all the design changes, plus Lake Elmo having been deliberately misled about the project, the club would have wound up with an unfinished project and no way of going any further. That wouldn’t have been good for keeping up the income from public shooting, and with the blue sky not even close to cut off on the 100, we would still have been just 1 shot away from getting closed down for YEARS to come.

And as far as the recent issue with the departure of Tom T., which for the record was neither a formal firing nor a resignation on his part, (so WTF was/is it??) it takes no great stretch of the imagination to see that if Tom hadn’t woken up some of the club including me last fall, this whole Titanic of a construction project would have launched, and now this very precious club of yours would be in very dire straits indeed, if even still open.

So, to the members of the club: Do you feel the future of the club is currently safe in the hands of some of the people on the board, and how much does this club mean to you personally?? What lengths would you go to so as to ENSURE that it stays open year round for members to enjoy shooting and thus exercising their 2nd Amendment rights? Seriously, what is it worth to EACH one of you, PERSONALLY?? All that’s needed is for 6 to 8 of the 1500 of you to step up to the plate to be counted, and then you get to sleep soundly at night knowing that the club is OK, because YOU personally are taking care of it.

Despite the hundreds of hours of work and getting up at 4 in the morning to try “just one more baffle layout” because I couldn’t go back to sleep, I have no regrets at all about taking on the job, so don’t be afraid to take a shot at being a Director of OGC. I can pretty much guarantee that it won't be as bad as it was for me, because now we have GOOD construction plan that fiscally prudent, we can replicate our progress on the other ranges, and keep going forward.

Step up, people!! The club NEEDS you!!