1. Melrose Little League
Merger Conversation

2. Agenda Discuss objectives and flow of the meeting (David Fox)
Review Pro’s and Con’s
Committee’s recommendation
Examples of potential decisions and next steps
Discussion

3. Merger Committee Eric Taitano (Major league rep.)
John Orlandella (Information Officer)
Lori Siciliano (Vice President)
Chris Nault (Treasurer)

4. Pro’s
Financially when we combine we eliminate some duplicate expenses - the league/charter dues ~$2,600 and the web site expenses ~$675
Increased pool of volunteers to help run the league – assuming we have roughly the same number of board position in the combined league we will have more people to pull from and less required positions
Combined pool of Melrose kids when forming teams to compete in tournaments
More teams in the league allow us to always play the same teams over and over (we accomplish some of this today with inter-league play)
Cons
Financially we will lose some sponsor revenue due to the fact a number of companies currently sponsor both leagues (not sure the amount)
Need to merge what has been different cultures on how to approach little league baseball
Lot of work and decisions to make when merging the two organizations

5. Committee’s Recommendation
Merge the two leagues
Strong benefit from combining resources of two leagues to run one combined league
Recognize it will be a lot of work and require a number of decisions over the next months
Opportunity to leverage offer from Steve Tarpy and David Fox to assist in the workload involved in the merger
Community feedback very positive on the merger

6. Examples of decisions
We have time to make these decisions and this is not a complete list but just an example of some of the things which have to be worked out as we merge two organizations
Combined charter / constitution
Common rules
How to run Opening day
How to handle federal league
Registration fees
How / if we divide the teams

7. Next Steps
End of season – CALL vote on merger (National League will have to do the same thing)
Assuming we vote to move forward…
Combined board election in September
Would run the two leagues / divisions at the major/ minor league level the same as this year
September – April committee (lead by Steve and David) would work with board and the D12 Little League group to facilitate the decisions
Roll out many of the changes for the 2018 season