11/24/07

As many of you may know our Corporate Legislative Chair Mike Hays Passed away on November 14, 2007.  Mike was a personal friend as well as an excellent Legislative chair. At his funeral were people from the legislature, music industry and Confederation of Clubs as well as Brothers and Sisters from CMT/ABATE. We must, despite this loss, continue on with our fight as I know Mike would want.

I am happy to report that thanks to the STR and memberships, we are in solid financial condition at this time. The hard work of Dean Lucas has  helped fix the membership problems.

We are working on a team for legislation this year, to bridge the gap left by the death of (Twanger) Mike Hays, our Corporate Legislative Chair.  Our Helmet choice bill will start out in the Budget committee this year. We will need all the support we can get to have it voted in and sent to the House for a Vote.

We are still having problems with the Newsletter which we will ask our Newspaper chair to address at the Dec. 9th BOD Meeting at the American Legion.

We should be voting on a new charter called Iron Mule in the Columbia area at the Dec. BOD. We will have several Corporate and Non-Corporate board positions coming up. Resumes for State Director, Corporate Secretary, and Corporate Treasurer need to be in by January 9, 2007. The position of Membership/PR and Activities do not need a resume, and you can put your name in right up to the voting time. All positions are voted on at the March BOD.

We have corrected a lot of problems and issues over the last 18 months which had accumulated over seven or eight years. With these addressed we have a number of things still to do. Now that we are united in purpose we need to do a better job of recruiting and promoting our message and what we have accomplished.  We need to establish written policy and procedures and Job descriptions for our board  positions. We need to better oversee and  coordinate what board members are doing.  We need to put tools in the hands of our members that will let them help achive our goals.  I had a number of goals when I was elected. I soon became aware that the one thing that had to be achieved before anything could be done, was to get united. This has been a very hard and trying ordeal to accomplish. Despite this turmoil we have done many things. We now work together well with the Confederation of Clubs. We won two Awards for our legislative work from the AMA and MRF. We cut costs and are overcoming our financial problems. We have some great core board members and are recruiting more. I and most of the board want to see us continue in the direction we are going. I will work over the coming years to see this happens.  I believe we need to keep on a firm consistent course in order to be successful. I hope you will join me on this difficult but rewarding journey.

 
Brooklyn Tom
Corporate Director
CMT/ABATE of Tennessee