At the General Membership Meeting on Saturday, October 21, the membership voted overwhelmingly to ratify the revised Constitution and Bylaws. With our new rules in place, we now will proceed to fill in the committees so we have a little work for a larger number of interested members instead of a lot of work for a few overworked members.

Each officer will update their procedural report to reflect the new balance of duties and provide very specific details of what is done and when it’s done in that office so that in transition or an emergency, someone else will be able to step in and keep the group’s business going smoothly. The procedural reports must be submitted to the Vice President by January 1, 2007, and will be available for the Nominating Committee in February to give to anyone interested in learning about an office or considering running for an office. We will do our best to have choices for each office when election time comes in April.

Congratulations go to the Constitution/Bylaws Revision Committee for a job well done. It took many hours of consideration, patience, persistence, cooperation, writing and rewriting of proposals until everyone was satisfied with the wording and the intent. Harold Hunton was an excellent Chairperson; his instruction to us to carefully think through proposals before writing and presenting them saved us from throwing out ideas cold and thinking later, “I wish I’d said” or “Why didn’t I think of that?” This was especially effective in streamlining the amount of time required.

If you have a weekend or two to read, Sarah Marshall, as clerk, recorded a book’s worth of precise dialog. These minutes are available to anyone who would like to read the conversations that went on.