Welcome

[Bob Vehring]

It was suggested that BKC people needed a place where they could make their comments anonymously with out fear of repercussion
Here you have it, I don't censor, say what you want, others are encouraged to respond.

[flying squarrel]

I suggest members of BKC list 3 positive things about BKC and 3 things the don't like or would like to see changed.

Pros.
1.- Low fees
2.- atmosphere and friendliness of memebers.
3.- facilty

Cons.
1.- seat time on Race day (not enough)
2.- too many classes
3.- politics and rules not being followed.

[Bob Vehring]

Well Rocky, looks like right now its you and me.
Baring Red flags or scoring breakdowns no 1 in you "con" list is controled by no 2
Last year the 4 cy groups, which have their own meetings, voted themselfs, to get rid of Limited Mod. That saved one time slot. This last Sun they voted to combine both 4 cy Jr Sportsman classes into one group. That will save one more time slot. Until the 2 cy group desides to look over their structure and combine smaller classes, that's about all we can do.
Classes are not desided by the board, they are voted in by the membership, so it would also be up to the membership to take any out.

Now, No.3 on you con list I definately agree with......... but, I have no idea how to fix it.
My guess is were talking about 2 things here, 1 tech and the appeal/protest procedure. and, 2, race officiating.
Lets do #1 first. In the past we often had 1 or maybe 2 techman, now were up to 4 with a 5th just added for KK's The reason is simple, all but 1 have kids racing so there trying to spread out the load. The down side to this is, you could have several different individuales looking you over during the season. The easy part of tech is measuring something that has a spec and a proceedure, the hard part is many of the tech issues are bassed on visuale inspection. That may or may not be inturpeded differently by different people.
I can hardly wait for the " whats a dropable DQ debates next year".

Hears what I can add on point #2. While I do try to avoid any jobs of offical capasity here because of the obvious engine building conflict, I have certianly held those jobs both hear and other places in the past and was RD in the Snow X world until last year.
I hope this doesn't sound like an excuse, but honestly its the most common thing I hear about..
When a parent/crew member is standing on the fence, totally focused on their racer. They see everything that happens to him/her, and whats happening around them. Thats all their watching.
Now when your Flag or RD, you have the entire field to watch over. That can range from 10 of them going into turn 1 together or spead all over the 6/10s mile of the track. Your watching everyone. WHen something does happening, people come running to the bridge screeming " didn't you see that"? Often the answer is NO. When your the guy on the brdige watching the whole field, most times you don't notice a situation until what I term it" pops out of the toaster". by the time it happens and gets you attention you probably did not see the cause of the situation. Try it sometime go watch over an entire field, someone will let you know what you missed. Certianly they do try to focus on any troublesome situation when known.

I guess the last thing we could look at is Corner workers. Really we don't have corner workers, what we do have is a ever changing group of people, most out there only once a year, that help you out after the fact. If you have done any big series, corner workers are well trained people that are stationed right off the track. We can't do that for saftey reasons, these people aren't trained and are volentiers, basicly their job is to way a flay when a call is made. We've had the corner worker debate for decades, I think Regan summed it up best. "Their is nothing here to block your view. If your looking where you should and not at you feet, you will be aware of any situation well before any of our CW's stationed in the center of the fields can react".

Well I tried to pass on what I see, I'm sure there are other opinions and new ideas. I hope this conversation continues.

[speedracer]

We are new to the club this year and there are a few things I saw that might want some people not want to come back.

Saw a new person come in 2 weeks ago with his son (kid kart) and he started up his kart and drove it to the starting grid area and a BOD (not Bingo) came over and ripped him a new one. I think that was very rude. I don't think that person will come back...they were looking for a new track to call home...I know he was wrong but it could of been handled better. Some of the BOD walk around like they are gods and act like they are better than everyone else

I here other fathers telling people that "that guy" is cheating....that needs to stop it gets old. i know its part of racing but it gets old.

I think we should hold our own national events...Kid karts...Jr's...tag....Just like 4 cycle did a few months ago....It might not be a big turn out at first but its a start.

Try looking outside of Milwaukee area for new people to come to the track...Madison,Rockford,Chicago area are very close.

Charge more per race day $25 is not to much and give a discount if they have more than 1 kart


I know this will not solve any of the problems but I gave my 2 cents

[Chris Burke]

As for the #3 on the "con" list, it was much better this year than it was a couple years ago. For awhile there, it was pretty ugly. I know one family that stopped coming and another that comes very infrequently over politics.

We flat out don't have enough people to watch the entire field during a race, so that's where some of the perceived inconsistency comes from. As a corner worker, you can either watch for hazards and flag them immediately or watch for "inappropriate driving" as karts come into your area. We ask our corner workers to immediately flag hazards, so in most cases it's impossible to see if aggressive driving caused a wreck or if it was "just one of those racin' deals." That's especially true in the Sweeper because you have to constantly turn your head to watch karts coming in and going out of the turn, because you have to flag for the hairpin, too. A corner worker in the hairpin can see a lot, but we rarely staff that spot.

I don't know what you want to do 2-cycle wise to remove classes because you'll have to kill either the KT100 or the KPP classes unless you combine Junior and Seniors, which is hard because of the weight differential.

I had an idea for giving each class more than one bye week, so we'd have, say, 16 race days but each class would only race 12 of those days. That would give everybody more seat time, you could spread the work day requirements over a few days (so instead of having YBX with 10 people showing up and TaG Sr. with 4 people showing up, you could spread those 14 people over two days). Dawn told me it was too complicated.

[martym]

Obviously not a lot of BKC members know about this forum or there would be a lot more chatter on here.

I can only imagine the bullshit stories that are being told about me after they forced me out?

If only the members knew of the crap that really goes on behind the Board meetings?

A lot of current members very unhappy with the current Board.

[Cliff j]

I know that our team is a little upset what is going on with everything. Just don't understand why? All the BoD talks about is how they want everyones opinion on how to make the club better, but then do what they want to do anyway?! All this discussion about the LO206, do as u will but in mid season when kart count is 2-4 then maybe we will hear that this was bad idea!

[Bob Vehring]

As I sit here letting my balls thaw out from waist deep snow all day, I'll talk a little more about this. I haven't said much so far, but I know others are mis-representing our posistion on all this.

Some people are going to tell you this is all about LO 206, while LO was the issue on the table, our decission really has nothing to do with the class itself.
Most of you will remember the rules comm. meeting we held in the tech barn last Sept prior to Badgers Rules meeting. I started hosting those meeting 6 or 7 years ago so I, as your appointed 4 cy rep, could get your thoughs on anything effecting our classes, and where we wanted to go in the future. I then presented those thoughts to the board and RC

I brought up the question of bringing in LO 206 classes at Badger in our meeting, it was afairly long dicussion, several options were talked about. The end vote, was 34 to 1 to NOT introduce LO. The reason had nothing to do with the class itself, but rather the same goal the 4 cy group had worked to for several years. To reduce our structure to one class for each age group. This is seen by voting to eliminate Limited Mod two years ago, and combine the two Jr Spts classes we had in to one last season. Its clear what the 4 cy group wanted was one large class per age group, which IS what gives you good racing.

Now heres where it startes to get ugly. As said I reported the 4 cy meetings wishes to both the board and RC, Chairman back in Sept. For 4 1/2 months, not a word was said, never even came up in Badgers Rules meeting, not one offical said a word. Suddenly a month before all this went down, RT66 and whatever the other 2 cy series is called, both announced that they would both be offering LO 206 classes in their otherwise all 2 stroke class structure. WOW suddenly the 2 cy side of our board is all the fuck over this.
What happen next was one BOD made a motion for the class you now see they created I can only say dunbest class I have ever seen invented, it fails on so many levels. No need to get into that now unless you want, but how it went down is why we walked.
There were several weeks of some discussion over this, "some" is streching it quite a bit, it became clear that only Chris Burke was willing to talk out the issues with me, seam odd that others had very little to add to it. This did get drawn out a little because regan and I missed a meeting because of his sled racing. Bingo tried hard to hold this off untill there was a final meeeting on it, but two days before that meeting they pushed it through on a 5-3 vote.
Its not that I lost out on a vote, that happens often, I've lost on many issues. What set this apart was simply, the 2 cy faction of our leadership has forever,had very little interest in the 4 cy side on anything. What made this vote different was, it was clear from the 4 cy racers themselfs, 34-1 they did not want this, the 4 cy rep (me) didn't and the 3 4cy board members, all voted no on this issue, thats the entire 4 cy faction at Badger, yet 5 2cy officals pushed it through. Regan, Marty and I quit over the way it went down, not over the 206 class. Mike M was one of the Board nomines in line to replace us, he also would not work in this situation You now have an all 2 cy board

Ive typed enough of this crap tonight, just a last thought on this D Board. This as you can see, was made for our 120 sled racers to use, its for them. A year or two ago we put up this karting section for the simple reason that over the last decade Badger has come close several times to closing down its D Board, Some of your board members are terrified of having something bad said about them. Many years ago Bingo and I made Badgers first D Board, just like here, no names were required, pick any name you want, and say what you want good, bad, or downright ugly. Needles to say the board then, put the clamps on that. Personally I feel haveing to registar and use you real name basicly renders a D Board useless, The negative issues never come out, which is why Badger went that way.
Here I don't care who you are, or what you say, spit it out. I have never promoted this board, very few people from karting even know it exsists, it was here as a place just in case Badger dumped theres. I just want to be very clear on one thing, none of us are mad at the club members. We have spent 28 years as club members, that more then 3/4 of my kids lifes. We want the CLUB to survive and do well
4 CC will as always be there for our customers, we will be at Badger, we just will not work with this version of the board. I'm not saying all Board members are bad, one of the new guys hasn't even been here a full year yet but the ego and power trip thing by a few are more then I'm going to deal with now.
Feel free to tell others to post here if you want, Regan and I are working on a few things you might like for this summer, let us know what you want
Now I'm goint to fire up a 100 HP sled and go beat up some more snow.

[mustangracer]

Sugar River and their politics are not much better. A few quick examples for Jr1 class. On heat race #2 when field is inverted with slower karts in front it is a single file start. Some parents complained that their kids get wrecked or passed too quickly by the faster karters. #2. Passing through Fairman's corner ( big Tree esses) if a slower kart is infront of you it too is single file. No passing allowed through this area. Kinda takes the meaning of racing away doesn't it ?

[Bob Vehring]

First, welcome to the board.
Inverting, qualifying, heat races, has all been debated many times here. One of those deals where you will never get a simple answer. I think it depends on several things. First is the level of the racers in that race. If you have a lot of fast front runners in a class, then invert them, use a computer draw or pea pick, whatever if some of the fast people have to start in the back, especially if its a short race, well lets just say some won't be too polite coming through the field. Really, they have no choice, if others just as fast as them get a run going, they won't be able to catch them. Race over.
The other side of this is, if the new or slower people always start in the back, they seldom get much racing or passing, which is the thing that will make them better.
As said I think it depends on the race. At Badger we have both qualifying days and heat race days randomly spaced through out the season. At Regans Animal National races for sprint we just voted to have it done by qualifying. Reason is its a big field and many potential winners, we also have people who enter that just want to be part of the race. Here its a safety and potential damage issue, when you have 37 entries, that has to come first.

[Bob Vehring]

I hate to be that guy, The guy that has to open this can of worms.But, I guess I have to, it needs to be in the open.
If you read the other topics here, and if you know me, yes I will push buttons, stir things up.Yes I did it on purpose.
Someone has been asking, for months on status of the building project, I asked another, and asked for the thoughts from the Board. Heres something interesting, pick your favorite BoD click their name, see how active they are in keep their club informed. I think you will find only Bingo and Chris Burke as very active in answering and informing the club on any issues going on, which is their job.
First because many of our racer have only been here a few years, we need a little history. I've been here for 30 years, I think Bingo is around 25. During that time I don't think theres a position Bingo hasn't held. Beside being our President for much of that time, he also has always been our Race Dir.for most of it.Many here now don't know that he was also Race Dir. for WKA in Man Cup and Gold Cup for 10 years.He also has been RD for series like CES and many of the special race that come to Badger and In the days I promoted and ran races on my own, Bingo was always my man. Lastly, and the big one, for decades our race at Road America is what supported this club, many times it was over 1000 entries making it the largest race in the sport, for 15 years, Bingo was not only RD, he was Operations Dir., which means he ran the entire deal. He did the same for our Milw. Mile races years ago.

I'm pretty well connected in this sport, know alot of people, I can not think of anyone, anywhere with more experience and proven record in running races then Bingo

So, lets get to the point, by now everyone knows, last winter, 3 of us Board members walked away, despite some of the reason given, the real issue was we were tired of the battles, the ego's, the personal agendas and just the BS in general.
Since last spring, there has been a direct movement by SOME, to get Bingo out. Right now there is a vote happening on weather to get rid of Bingo and hire a different RD for the future. Somethings need to be made clear. Bingo did NOT asked to be replaced, while there has been some talk about him continuing here in the future, I can tell you the reason for that is whats going on with the board right now. Clearly the issue here is someone else wants to take over.
Personally, I'm usually not against change, I often initiate it. Regan, Marty and I walked away quietly last winter, We've watched to see what happens, I'm not liking what I see. There are lower entries then we've had in decades, we have pisted off sponsors, there has been nothing done to turn this trend around. It is normal to loose 20-30 percent of our membership over the winter. This needs to be turned around right now, not wait and start out next year at the 70 entry mark.

I want to be clear on this, I talk with Bingo as always several times a day. He absolutely wants to remain as your race director, contrary to some stories, he did not ask to be replace. He also fully intends to run for President this fall and continue the leadership he has always given us. With that now said, I will add that both Regan and I will also again run for the Board this fall. I have not talked to Marty but I think he will support this also. I also have talked with several new people about running. We have got to turn this downslide around now, there is no time to wait which is why I jumped in with the Sheboygan show next weekend.
I want to be clear I have nothing against the person looking to be the new RD, the point is why when numbers, which also of course mean dollars are we considering hiring a guy that has, well, last weekend as experience, and pay him $150 per day, when we allready have the best in the sport willing to do it for, as always free. I also want to be clear that it is not ALL bod members, as I understand it now Shirley and both Chris Horn and Chris Burke are standing behind Bingo. but the problem with a 8 person board is, 5 can pass anything they want.

After talking with everyone all summer, I understand, many do not want to comment politically because they fear retribution, I can't do anything about that right now, I would like to give it a shot in the future, but where at that point that if you loose Bingo, I don't see much of a future. Please let you feelings known