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
gmail.com)