The magazine is coming out and this year there are two contested elections for club officers. These elections are many times decided by a vote or two since so few members vote. You may be the deciding vote on who will be the next Membership Officer or Vice President. After six years as Treasurer I am running for Vice President and retaining me on the board is the best way for me the help Steve Assrilant get acclimated to being the new Treasurer. Here is a statement on why I think I should continue to represent you on the Club board:

Let me share with you my thoughts on why I think I would be a great Vice President who can help lead the Club and MOGH in the right direction. Recently questions have been asked about what the candidates can do to help take the Club to the next level and beyond. Here are a few answers to some of the questions many of you have been asking.

I have been on the Clubs Board of Directors for the last 7 years as Treasurer so I have seen and discussed hundreds of suggestions/ideas/complaints from the members. The Board has taken EVERY idea that was emailed to us or posted on one of the chip collecting boards and we discussed each of them at the Board meetings. Many times there were 50 or 75 items to discuss at each board meeting. Some of these ideas were great suggestions that we implemented. Some were just totally impractical. Many others were good ideas but just not able to be implemented because of cost or some other major problem. The point here is that I have looked at EVERY idea the 1200 member Club has come up with to help improve the Club and while we have done many things to make the Club better there has not been any “silver bullet” that will solve all of the Clubs current problems.

With the falling Membership numbers it has been getting more difficult to keep the books balanced. Membership is more than simple numbers for the Club. It includes attendance and dealers tables at the convention. The convention is our largest expense and money making opportunity. As Treasurer I think I have done an excellent job of making sure the books stay balanced by calling attention to problem areas. But it is getting harder to do. Since taking over I have renegotiated our magazine costs cutting them by $10,000 per year and saving $1,000 on the convention program printing cost. I also have been active in ensuring that we collect the money for ads placed in the magazine and program which had become a problem. We also saved almost $10,000 by moving the convention to the new space and cutting the convention video costs by $1,500. At the convention we also had to cut some of the refreshments budget. It just isn’t reasonable to pay $4 for a can of soda or $50 a gallon for coffee when we are fighting to keep the convention running at break even. Yes we will still have refreshments, they just will not be unlimited. We have also saved money by cutting back on the volunteer banquet cost which is a shame since the volunteers are one of the strongest foundations of the Club. If I become Vice President I will make sure to continue to monitor the Clubs financial status and push for continued savings. In addition I plan to help the new Treasurer get acclimated to the job.

In my mind the “silver bullet” that I mentioned earlier to solve a lot of the Clubs problems would be a $1 million donation to the Club or MOGH. I know that sounds ridiculous but that is the amount we would need to get a brick and mortar museum running. Many of the suggestions made in the past involved applying for grants to fund our projects. The big problem there is that the people who issue such grants want you to have a brick and mortar operation going. This is also one of the reasons we changed the name from a Club to an Association since we will stand a better chance of getting grants in the future as an Association. As far as what we are doing now with the MOGH displays, I think they are a great start and should continue to expand. The MOGH account still has about $100,000 in it so we can continue to fund and expand these mini-museums for quite a while. Until we can find a way to get $1 million or so in the treasury we need to continue on our current course.

Another recent idea was to hire an Executive Director for $75,000 per year. The problem there is that the club only has $116,000 today in the two accounts available to pay such a person and continue to run the Club. And the overwhelming response to the recent story in the Club magazine was that few if any members would be willing to pay an extra $75 per year to pay this person. This also would bring us to the slippery slope of who else would want their job to be paid instead of being a volunteer position? To put this into perspective, last year the Board decided not to raise dues simply because we did not want to lose more members. If they will not pay $5 or $10 more per year in dues to be a member they surely would not like an added surcharge of $75.

Membership is one of the biggest problems we have in the club. Our members are, for the most part, old and getting older. What can we do to increase membership? I am not sure what more we can do other than try to get every member to help recruit new members. If one member in ten would recruit a new member every year our membership role would stop falling. That is not unrealistic. But as a group we have offered many inducements in the past to get new members with little results. Things like reduced first year fees, free chips, etc. The funny thing is we don’t need more members just to help support the Club (since 80% of the dues just pays for the magazine there is not a lot left over) as much as to help the whole hobby. If we can get more people into the hobby then there will be more interest and demand for casino collectibles. That means stable prices for chips and other casino collectibles as well as more dealers and members at our conventions.

One question that was asked was what do we see for the convention in five years. We are locked into the South Point for three more years and then have to decide if we want to continue there or move somewhere else. There are several other properties that are as nice as the South Point and could accommodate us but each has it own disadvantages (no poker room, few restaurants, older property, etc). I was on the committee two years ago and looked at everything available and hope to do it again since there were some interesting alternatives to the South Point. Our dealer base has held pretty steady but if it falls more in the coming years then we may need to consider a smaller room to save costs. This year we are reducing the number of tables at each of the Clubs operations to save money. There have also been Board discussions concerning selling tables to non-casino related dealers and I have no problem with that. If a dealer wants to pay the fee and sell antiques or coins then I think it is okay. Each table brings in a lot of money to the Club and the various types of dealers could bring in people who would not normally go to a chip show. It is a win-win for the Club.

Social media has also been discussed and I think expanding it can be used to get our name out there. The ChipGuide is doing a great job getting our name exposed to the public with its almost 200,000 scans of casino related items. I know I have been pushing hard for three or four years to get our Club website completely rebuilt which I think is a most important step. Again the problem becomes money. We can pay a company to get us a new site but then we are stuck paying them a large fee every year to “maintain” it. Currently we have a volunteer working on the website but progress has been slow. Hopefully he will be able to take the website to the where it belongs.

In 2002 there were several Club Board members who quit suddenly. I was asked by then President Nate Pincus to become Vice President. I served on his board for a year during the Brass Core problem and spent hundreds of hours on emails during that trying time. In early 2009 I noticed that the club lost $30,000 the previous year and I started asking questions as to why and what could be done to get the Club back on its feet. That led Doug Smith to appoint me as Treasurer when he won the Presidents job. I have held that job ever since. I feel I can do even more to make our club better in the future. I hope you can give me your vote as Vice President so that I can continue my work for the Club.

John Zoesch