To
the Membership of EAA Chapter 493
On Tuesday November 21st,
the scheduled monthly meeting of EAA Chapter 493
was held at Joe’s Italian Restaurant as usual. The
members present were Gerry Hatch (reluctant vice
president), Andy Spinks (Treasurer), Bob Reece
(Founding Member and Chapter Technical Counselor),
Don Treadwell (Long time serving and award winning
Chapter Young Eagles Coordinator). Jim & Mitzi
O’Hara (Designers/Builders Extraordinaire).
At
this meeting, it was noted that at the previous
October meeting only two members were in
attendance. Those members being Andy Spinks and
Jim & Mitzi O’Hara.
EAA
493 president, Tony Marcum has notified the
chapter that due to his continuing out of town
work, he will no longer to able to serve as
President. Teri Matting-Clouse who volunteered to
temporarily fill the office of Secretary
will no longer able to hold that office as of the
end of June, 2017.
Chapter
493 currently has only 15 paid members. Rarely do
even half of these members attend the meetings. In
past years, the number of members were maintained at
more than twice the members we have today.
I
note the above not to blame anyone, but only to
state the obvious that the interest is EAA Chapter
493 has significantly declined. Many members are
no longer flying nor are members building aircraft
any more. For years now, we
have had a very difficult time getting anyone to
serve as officers. Currently, the officer
positions of President, Vice President and Secretary are unfilled
as of January 1st,
2018. We don’t even have enough regular attendees
to fill the officer positions. Additionally, we
have not had a Newsletter Editor in a number of
years.
It
was decided at the November 2017 meeting that
there is insufficient interest to even have a
Christmas party. Therefore, there was no December
2017 Christmas party/meeting.
It
was further decided to ask the membership to
please attend the January meeting to be held at
Skyline Aviation at the normal time of 7:00pm
on January 16th 2018.
The purpose of this meeting is to decide if
there is sufficient interest in maintaining EAA
Chapter 493.
If
not, we will discuss dissolving EAA Chapter 493. If
you cannot attend the January meeting, please
email the chapter reflector to state your desire.
Even if there are a large number of members who
want to continue Chapter 493, there will need to
be members willing to serve as officers in order
to move forward. Bob Reece has volunteered to fill
any officer position that is needed.
Please
respond to this email or attend the meeting to
make your opinion know. If there are few attendees
and/or few responses, the opinion of the
membership will then be assumed to favor
dissolution.
Sincerely,
Gerry
Hatch
Andy
Spinks
Bob Reece
Don
Treadwell
Jim
O’Hara