Excerpt: President’s Report from
Minutes of the Annual Business Meeting
8 November 2013
Davis, California
Officers’ Reports
President
Alan Lewis presented an oral report to the members present, with highlights as-follows: It has been a trying two years since our last business meeting (in Q4 2011). No meetings were held in 2012, except by conference call. In order to ensure reasonable attendance, it’s necessary to hold the business meeting in conjunction with a technical session. The efforts of the Executive Committee over the past two years have been focused primarily on budgetary issues. Approximately one year ago, CIE-USA (as the US National Committee of the CIE), was suspended by the CIE for being more than 2 years in arrears with its dues. The history of this problem is long and complex…. The main point is that now “we are getting our act together.” No membership invoices have yet been sent out for 2013, but these will be sent out soon.
Lewis expressed frustration with a general lack of response from EC members over the past two years; we need to increase the level of participation and activity on the part of the Executive Committee.
Regarding the brief period of suspension in Q1 2013, Lewis remarked that “Suspension got everybody’s attention.” This was true of the CIE Board of Administration (BA) as well as the CIE-USA. There has been a real change in the relationship between CIE-USA and the international body. Through the good work of Yoshi Ohno, Lorne Whitehead, Martina Paul and CIE President Ann Webb, the CIE BA was able to come up with an innovative way to get us out of suspension. This involves making periodic partial payments to maintain a grace period…. There is a tradeoff, however: During the grace period, we sacrifice the income that CIE-USA would ordinarily receive from U.S. sales of CIE publications. Discussion: The income lost is relatively small compared to our annual dues.
Our bills are significant: Annual dues are approximately $45k per year (depending on the US Dollar to Euro exchange rate)…. Lewis outlined the potential consequences of a failure to support and maintain CIE-USA: The U.S. would lose all representation in the CIE; this includes both individual memberships in CIE Technical Committees (TCs) and the right to vote on proposed CIE publications – or revisions to existing publications.
Lewis outlined the EC’s strategy to restore CIE-USA to financial viability: To pursue multi-tiered corporate sponsorship, as well as aggressively pursuing support from various U.S. Government agencies with a critical interest in the work of the CIE, including appropriate agencies of the DOE, DOT, EPA, NIH, etc. Large companies (annual revenue >= $200M) would be asked to make an annual contribution at the $5000 level; smaller companies at the $1000 level. (Dues for individual members would remain at $75 per year.)
Discussion: Should there be an option for a lower level of corporate support? Lewis presented the rationale that $1000 represented the typical cost for an individual to travel to attend a meeting; therefore, this seems like an appropriate minimum level of support. Ron Daubach asked: What are the benefits for each membership level? This led to a lively discussion, which continued off and on throughout the remainder of the meeting; key points are summarized in the Annual Business Meeting report.
Alan Lewis
President