Green Mountain R/C Club

GMRC Officers

Green Mountain R/C Club President's Message

Hello GMRC members and fellow flyers,

Tis almost the end of the year and the holidays that we all love and enjoy are upon us. Hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and were able to share it with your loved ones. As we did last year, I’ve proposed that we skip the December meeting and hold our next meeting in January. A quorum at the last meeting agreed and so our next meeting will be Wed., Jan. 5th and unless you hear otherwise, will once again be at my place.

The Green Mountain RC club held its’ annual meeting in early November (the only one the bylaws say we’re “required” to have) and as usual we made it special by having a dinner meeting with guests. This year it was at my house and was a pot luck. Thanks to everyone for coming and hope that you all enjoyed the evening. Plenty of interesting conversation (mostly hobby related of course), and it was really nice getting to see everyone even if you didn’t have a transmitter in your hand. Mark B. says we should do it all over again next year, same dinner, same place, and hopefully the same or more members and guests. I’ll say yes now tentatively, and ask permission from the “boss” later. Peggy enjoyed having everyone over and I’m sure she’ll be happy to host again next year.
 

At the presentation portion of the dinner meeting, we elected our 2011 officers and covered a few bylaw changes. The new GMRC officers for next year are, Mark Lucia as President (yes I’m stepping down after 3 years, not that I’m leaving town or anything, just changing things up a little, read on), Matt Reed is the new Vice President taking over for Mark Berardo. A huge thank you to Mark for all he’s done for me and the club these past 3 years (Mark has only been in the club 3 years, I recruited him to be my VP right out of the box, a wise choice on my part I thought in retrospect), Fred Towler remains on the board for 2011 as the Secretary/Treasurer. Thanks Fred, you’ve been a real trouper, a great help in this role, and especially for volunteering all your time. John Fitzgerald will be taking the reins in the Safety officer position from Jason Cooper. Thanks Jason for helping be our safety “guy” and all the help and knowledge you provide to the club. Tony Hoffman as accepted another term as the Member at Large / Contest Director. Many thanks to Tony for all his efforts to create this year’s WNFC (Wednesday Night Fight Club) and fun fly contests and providing the leadership to keep things running smoothly.

For bylaw changes, we discussed a new membership fee structure and weighed the pros and cons of increasing the dues too much vs what the needs of the club are now and will be in the future. Last year, it became quickly apparent that a dip in membership and the condition of the road left the checkbook in the red. So to balance the books we initiated a one time additional $10 road fee for each member. This, along with some very much appreciated fun fly donations, gave the club the finances it needed to complete the year with positive revenues. So when looking to the future it becomes obvious that our current dues needed to be increased for the first time in nearly 3 decades. The club members voted to the following dues changes. Regular members dues will now be $50/yr, Senior members dues will now be $35/yr, Junior and non-flying member dues will now be $15/yr. Also we will modify the bylaw charter to allow the non-flying members to not require an AMA registration with the stipulation that without an AMA card those non-flying members will not have pit access due to the lack of insurance. It was felt that some non-flying members may want this option. Another bylaw addition added was to provide a means for the club officers to screen any donations that are offered to the club. Donations are,of course, welcome. However, sometimes a well meaning donation is not always in the best interest of the club, and so, a new article in the bylaws will be added to require that a board members’ approval will be necessary. Finally, it was decided that the club needed a plan to put aside a part of the yearly dues for new equipment or improvements. Since these items generally are more than what the club can afford from the yearly intake of funds from the club dues, a motion was passed to save 10% of the yearly dues in a special fund to cover these larger expenses. As the need arises the board will use this special fund to purchase big ticket items like a new mower or pay for improvements like road or shed work. We all owe a hearty thanks to the winners of this years WNFC contest, Mark Lucia, Mark Berardo, and John Fitzgerald. As an amazing gift and donation, they took their winnings and together donated $350 back to this new special fund. Way to go guys, awesome gesture.

Another topic at the meeting was the creation of a new organization called Vermont RC Aero Chapter (VRAC). In October, Mark Berardo and I attended a meeting with 4 other RC clubs in Vermont , Vt. Barnstormers of Barre, Rutland County RC of Rutland , Green Mountain Renegades in Pownal, and Guildhall Fun Flyers in Guildhall. The purpose of the new charter is to help with organizing all the Vermont RC clubs to promote the hobby and to have events that all the clubs can attend. To this end we all talked over our intended events for 2011, decided when each of us should have these events so that they didn’t contend with each other (as much as possible) or with other “main” events like Joe Nall and NEAT. The GMRC club has designated June 4th and Sept. 10th as VRAC fun fly’s for 2011. Hopefully we have good weather and the GMRC club will be an excellent host club for the first ever VRAC Fun Fly event on June 4th! Other benefits of this new chapter will be a bonding between all the clubs in our area. This is something that I have been trying to accomplish for many years as an individual by keeping in touch with all the members of other clubs. Another benefit will be to expand the knowledge from new “chapter” clubs for safety ideas, building tips, and general help. To top it off, the chapter events will get published in the AMA magazine, Model Aviation. I also plan to list all of the events on our calendar and VRAC will have a Google calendar as well. As if you haven’t already guessed, my future plans to help the GMRC club will be to continue being your web site content manager and as a chapter representative, pursue the VRAC initiative of bonding the Vermont RC clubs into one large RC community.

Thanks to everyone for your past support and I’m sure I join you all in wishing the new board our best wishes for a great 2011 flying year.

"Officially" a Lame Duck President now,
Al