Work the other angle also, what changed? a developer built more houses, work with the developer to help him understand how this will hurt him. usually developers are already plugged in politically. get them on your side and you will have more pull
Building an improvement plan. I see way too many folks come to the lake ski the same sets day after day. Talk about trying to get better and stay the same. How to build an improvement plan for a whole season would be a great topic going into 2021
Idea: Once per year each Region is allowed to have an "advancement rated" tournament. This tournament must be a record capable event and the chief judge must have an instructor rating (not sure how you get to be one of those people but thats a separate question). This tournament can be a substitute for the regional nations requirement. It actually might be better because there is more time for evaluation and instruction then you will ever get a reg/nat event.
1. lets overlay the existing regional and national tournaments with a handicap event. there is no need for a rule change to implement this.
3. Each event (maybe not all) ( maybe you set a cut off like there has to be at least 10 participants in the division) has the regular podium based on raw scores of course. Then there is a handicap podium. We can debate different handicap methods but that would be phase 2 of the project.
The result hopefully would be more competition. The "masses" i.e. the 80%+ of skiers who have no chance at the regular podium would have a chance to win.
A few specific rules would have to be set up, like a minimum number of scores to qualify and some sort fo system to throw out low scores form not running you opener etc.
The only down side is a few extra bucks for medals.
One more comment. The objection I hear the most is. "Regionals" needs to have enough participants to justify the expense of putting on the event. I think thats only because we add too many self inflicted costs. First there is no need to have assigned judges and drivers.(Its nice and certainly prefered but does it have to be mandatory?) Use volunteer officials and save a lot. Also regionals should be allowed to be class C. This would enable a larger group of sites that may not have all the equipment and expertise to host the event.
Would it require a AWSA rules change to allow the west region to sub divide? Allowing a region to sub divide regionals seems like an easier "experiment" then restructuring the entire BOD and AWSA structure. It also pushes the decision down and eliminates the hurdle of getting the AWSA BoD to agree on something so "different"