Cruiser News

August 4, 2009

National Director's Report
FMCA National Convention, Bowling Green, Ohio

Kent and I attended the National Convention in Bowling Green, Ohio July 20-24, 2009. The Candidates Forum was held on Sunday, July 19. We attended that forum followed by the Northwest Area meeting to discuss some of the issues prior to the Governing Board Meeting. On Monday, July 20, we arrived at the Governing Board Meeting at 7 a.m. We registered and were treated to pastries, fruit and coffee. The meeting started promptly at 9 a.m. There are 501 delegates and there were 422 present for an 84% quorum.

Standing Rules were adopted and then we proceeded with the Treasurer’s Report and the Proposed Annual Budget with a deficit of ($299,556) which did not include Medex. The Treasurer, Doug Key, reported that income is way down due to the closing of several RV Manufacturers who were large advertisers and supporters for the magazine, membership is down 21% since 2004, and 22,000 members pre-paid on the 5 years for the price of 4 years program,. He announced that salaries had all been cut by 10% and staff had been cut to 47 full time and 2 part time employees. They have suspended matching the Employees 40lK Program, cut travel costs by 50%, reduced mileage by 50% to standard IRS rate. They did more business by tele-conference and email and the Governing Board was cut back 50% on their reimbursement. The largest item to be removed was Medex. This brought on a lot of discussion and several different motions and substitute motions. The final outcome of this Line Item was that Medex would be put back into the budget and would be funded from the Rainy Day Fund (Reserves) as they felt it was pouring rain. By doing this, we would now have a deficit budget of $794.072. A few more items were discussed, but the Budget was approved at the minus $794.072 with the operating costs to be funded by the operating reserves. We do have approximately eight million in the reserve fund which was put there in better times for a rainy day.

We broke for a 40 minute lunch and then resumed at 1 p.m. We heard some more reports and then went into the Policies and Procedures. All the proposed Policies and Procedures were approved with the exception of Proposal #10 having to do with Interactive Electronic Communications--it was referred back to Committee to be revised and a Member Proposal changing Nominations and Elections to a one year term was voted down.

Under New Business there was a motion passed for a Committee of five members, not to include more than two Executive Board Members, to explore Medex or a similar program for the 2011 budget and present their findings to the Executive Board by November 7, 2009.

There was also a motion passed to increase 2011 dues by $5.00. With the procedure of notification to begin this year.

Max Durbin, who passed away in February, and his wife Joanne, were awarded a Life Time Membership for their many years of service to FMCA.

FMCA will continue with two International Conventions as follows:
Winter 2011 Perry, GA Summer 2011 Madison, WI
Winter 2012 Pomona, CA Summer 2012 Indianapolis, IN ?

Election of Officers followed, with the following being elected. Note: Bob Beers withdrew for health issues.

Charlie Schrenkel, President
Judy Czarsty, Vice President
Joanne Durbin, Secretary
Wilburn Young, Treasurer
The meeting was finally adjourned at 8:35 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Karen Pratt, Alternate Representative for Columbia Basin Cruisers

Note: I have all the information in the Governing Board Booklet if anyone is interested in seeing it.

February 9, 2009--Message from the President

I downloaded from the FMCA web site the recommended Formats for the Bylaws and Standing Rules. I went through each document and made the revisions following the FMCA format. All board members were sent a copy of the proposed revisions and were asked for input. Any input, where applicable was added. Click here for the final recommended revisions. Only the sections with recommended revisions are included here. All the
remaining portions will remain the same.

Marlene Laughton, President CBC

 

December 1, 2008

Thank you to all our friends in the club who sent cards, letters, or called or came to the services. Duke enjoyed you all very much. He loved our new motorhome and going to rallies and visiting with friends was very important to him. Thank you for caring about him.
Sandie

Duke Blakley, National Director for the CB Cruisers Chapter, went home to be with the Lord on Monday, December 1, 2008. Services were held on Monday, December 8th, at 2:00 p.m. at the Cathedral of Joy in Richland, Washington.

Dues for the 2009 Chapter year
were DUE on October 1st. If you have already paid, Thank You! We look forward to seeing you at another fun-filled rally year. If you have not paid yet, please send your check for $20 to Pat Stegeman, Treasurer, 1661 Charvet Road, Grandview, WA 98930-9705 to avoid being removed from our active roster.

Here's your last newsletter of the year.

After more prodding from the webmaster, Marlene submitted another great dish for our recipes page. Hope she makes it for a potluck. Oh, she gave up the recipe! Now anyone can bring it.

For more about this spook, click the picture to go to the Rally reports page.

Some of the new features on the site include a "Classified" section. It you have something you'd like to sell, just email the webmaster and give the details of the item, including your asking price. There will be a form on the site (coming soon) for you to fill in online and submit. You may also wish to list an item you're searching for. Maybe one of our members can help.

Another new page is recipes. We have a lot of potlucks and somebody is always saying, "How do you make that? It's so delicious!" We'll soon have a form for you to submit recipes, and remember, you MUST take credit for it. No anonymous giving, please. Until we get the form ready, just email your favorite recipe to the webmaster.