AzEuph

What does non-member mean? They don’t get paid, go on first but can compete at finals? Anything else?

What’s a normal duration length? 17 of 23 seems excessive. Any reason why they’ve been allowed to stay on so long?

Awesome news. Happy for the corps. If this isn’t a wake up call to fix the organization long term then they don’t deserve to be successful. However, the fact the staff is a strong signal from these professionals that they have faith in the corrections this organization has made. Now please just cut the stupid excess expenses and we should be fine.

Gotcha. So it feels like you want to hurt SCV because they hurt you. And rather than working with them in a way that the organization deems acceptable, you prefer to torch the organization down since they didn’t interview you in 2019 or take you up on your offers in the last year or two (based on previous comments in SCV alumni FB). Generally speaking, I’ve followed your content since SCV announced last year and mostly agree with your points. But the approach of torching isn’t going to help your opportunity to convince SCV you can help them. Unless your end goal is helping to officially end SCV ever fielding a corps again.

So it sounds like you want SCV to not field a corps again and to not exist anymore. And for a purge of I assume BOD and leadership. Is that a fair assessment?

@Richard Lesher, I’m genuinely curious: what’s your preferable end result? Are you trying to get back on board, get current board terminated, become director, destroy VMAPA? I genuinely can’t tell and have been curious all of these past 9 months.

Exactly. And if you’re an alumni of SCV, are you really going to come back to march SCVC? No. You’ll go march another elite corps and then SCV loses out on their tight window to recapture some of their superb talent. If VMAPA is serious about a 2024 return, it absolutely has to be SCV if they ever want to be competitive in the next few years.

Whelp, SCV gonna SCV. Onto yet another ED for the corps. Is this our 8th in 20 years?!

I think the better solution is RIP to your fandom. A lot of nonsense and inaccurate statements in there. But hey, you can always watch your legacy shows on DVD.

Did I miss something; was she let go from SCV as part of an expense cut? I assumed she was still with VMAPA.

The presentation put out by SCV executive director is a joke. So bingo is down, California labor laws making it more difficult, there’s a recession coming. And yet, the solution is a second bingo hall and assumption that bingo will come back fully. What if it doesn’t? Now you’re stuck with more liabilities and a decaying revenue stream. The “alumni” questions were softballs designed to spin into an ask for donations. Maybe answer the more important questions that alumni were asking online. Thanks for the history lesson on 2022 economics and inflation. Even people living under a rock knew about inflation, it was a pointless section for excuses. Pretty sure other corps were in the same inflation era… They started the budget in July 2021 and claim there was no way to know…except inflation concerns had started in at least May 2021! Instead of making it sound like gas prices just went up during tour months, talk about what was missed the 3-4 months before tour! The most important part should’ve been the debt of $650k. They mentioned it at a high level as vendors but didn’t go into the debt structure, what caused it to rise, long term or short term debt, etc. This was a failed attempt at calming the alumni.

The snowball started before COVID, that just accelerated the pain. IMO, the BOD have a huge responsibility to avoid this situation and get in front of the problem worsening. My biggest fear, and only a gut feeling, is that VMAPA took on risky debt to finance previous tours. With the decline of bingo coming at the worst point, VMAPA had a call loan this week that forced their hands. If this is accurate, or somewhat, then the BOD definitely led to this corps potential fold and deserve all the heat.

And even worse, they’re blaming this on the delayed approval of a second bingo center that was supposed to get approved 4Q21. Their 50 year old bingo center is declining in revenue and the idea is to open up a 2nd decaying operations?! Hahaha. At this point in time, I’m taking a worse-case approach until they come out with more details. Not that they have too though. And that worst-case scenario is VMAPA defaulting on loans and risking assets like the bingo hall and trailers. Nevermind missing a year, that’s a scenario of a corps going BK.

Prior to SCV, I marched a year with a semi-finalist corps. That corps was more open and welcoming than SCV, by far. Every day, from the January camp, we were informed we weren’t good enough. That we were beneath others. I’d like to see this patches culture due but even reading the alumni FB group, people try to outweigh others from their years marched. I remember seeing the 2018 age out photo and there was a small group in the front center that all purposely showed off their patches. Clearly indicating patch culture is still here.

From my experience seeing alum post on different social sites, BD alum have always been by far the most supportive of each other I’ve ever seen. I think they all acknowledge the goal of winning and as long as BD is still winning then that’s cool. I’ve heard good things about their culture being competitive and supportive. Once you’re in, you’re in.