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It has been my honor and pleasure to serve as AASCIF President for the past two years. Thank you for the opportunity.
We updated you last year on the modernization of our governing document, renamed our Articles of Association (from the old “Constitution”). We took the opportunity to tweak the Articles again at our special members’ meeting on November 2nd. The special members’ meeting was held in conjunction with the annual CEO meeting. The change to the Articles involved the process for approving associate members to AASCIF. For many years, the Articles required the full members to vote on associate members. This led to awkward situations between annual meetings, the traditional forum for voting; in a number of instances, associate member applicants filed their letters and membership fees, but were not officially associate members until a year or more passed and the next annual meeting came along. Some even paid two years’ fees before being approved, because of our billing cycle.
With the amendments approved on November 2nd, the AASCIF Executive Committee now has authority to approve associate membership applications, with the responsibility of notifying the full membership of the names of associate members at least annually. We will be sending a list of current associate members to the full members soon, consistent with the new requirement.
We took another action at the special members’ meeting. Because AASCIF’s financial health has been improving over the past few years, the Executive Committee recommended, and the members approved, a one-time waiver of full member dues for 2007. This is an unusual event—no one I know can remember it happening before. Because it is so unusual, no one should assume that we are setting a precedent for future years. This really should be viewed as a one-time benefit based on AASCIF’s current financial health. The waiver applies only to full members who paid their dues for 2006 and are in good standing.
I want to thank the AASCIF Executive Committee for their hard work this year: Ken Ross, First Vice President; Vice Presidents Dennis Smith, Don Smith and Lanny Hubbard; Past President Pat Johnson; and Secretary/Treasurer Terry Frakes. I also want to thank AASCIF Communications Director Jeremiah Bentley for a great job maintaining the AASCIF website and for publishing this newsletter. Special thanks also go to Temetria McVea-Smith, my Executive Assistant, who performed countless hours of hard work making sure all the details got done.
I look forward to working with the 2007 AASCIF Executive Committee: Ken Ross, President; Dennis Smith, First Vice President; Vice Presidents Don Smith, Lanny Hubbard and Sandy Blunt; and Secretary/Treasurer Jeff Tetrick. There will be a lot of work to do to address the many issues facing our members.
Thank you again for the opportunity to serve as President of AASCIF, and I look forward to seeing many of you in Big Sky, Montana next August.
Russell R. Oliver
AASCIF President
2005 - 2006
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