December, 2023 Board Minutes

December 7th, 2023

Palo Alto Golf Club Board Meeting

Attendees – Doug Marinkovich, Chuck Pickett, Christopher Walker, Franco Montes, James Kaku, Rafa

Carmona, Niraj Jain, Nick Williams

Absent: Andrew Clauson, Chris Dierkes & Jim Cowie

Meeting started 5:32pm

• November Meeting Minutes approved – Doug and Franco did not attend NCGA meeting 12/5

due to weather.

• 2024 Board Members – 3 board members leaving (Clauson, Kaku & Cowie), and we have 3

candidates. Franco Montes, Niraj Jain, John Driver were elected to board with no contest.

• Honorary Members – Discussion about how many members to extend to Baylands staff.

Currently Joe Zarnoch and Kevin Springer are Honorary members. Suggestion to increase to 4

members. Voted and approved. Will determine the other two from current staff.

• Q4 grace period has been removed by NCGA, so members joining before end of year would be

charged for two years (2023 & 2024). Club has turned off “new memberships” until 1/1/24. We

have turned away at least 10 members since 10/1/23.

• Newsletter – Franco shared plans for the newsletter. Asked for input on content. We will add a

note about upcoming changes to TOC points. Chris Walker will bring a proposal to the January

meeting for updated points. Facebook page is active again, with Bill Yang offering to take

pictures at events to post.

• Tournament Schedule – Idea was presented of a member-guest tournament, with focus on

ladies and juniors. The idea was received well, but we will need to plan the schedule. We will

either run it as a non-point event on an open weekend or wait until 2025 to schedule it. Will

discuss again later. Discussion was had about guests in general. President Doug won the Player

of the Year race for 2023. A new season started with the Corica Park team event. The last event

of the calendar year this Saturday is the 6-6-6 at Baylands.

• Team Match Play 2024 – Negotiated deal with Baylands to include food with each Green Fee &

Small bucket. Will be $79 Thursday and $99 Saturday. Brian Garcia/John Osness will Captain

Thursday, Nick Williams/Andrew Clausen will Captain Saturday. The club will collect all fees

from players and pay Baylands directly.

• Handicaps – 18 soft caps and 1 hard cap. 3 exceptional scores, including 2 at the TOC. There was

a member not posting scores outside of events. A discussion was had, and the member fixed the

situation.

• Membership – currently 172 renewals out of 402. Emails will go out the 15th

, 27th, and Jan. 1st to

remind members to renew.

• Junior Golf Donations – we have about $3600 available. We will divide evenly between Youth on

Course, First Tee of Silicon Valley, and Live in Peace. Will send to groups in December 2023.