My personal take on the ACTVAC AGM

The annual general meeting of the ACTVAC was held last night. There were about 50 or so members present - a 10% turnout, which I guess reflected the lack of anything particularly contentious on the agenda. For most of the first hour Dick Telford addressed the meeting, telling us some of his story and amusing us with his stories. He is an engaging speaker. Then we heard and accepted all the reports without too much discussion; although there are always differences of opinion around the budget whenever it is proposed that fees and charges be increased. however trivial those increases might be. Last night was no exception, but discussion was not all that heated. Any opposition to the small increases was deflected, ironically I would say, by a proposed amendment to make the increases higher. The amendment was defeated and we ended up with Nick's budget accepted without change. A good result. Then we elected our new office bearers, and I am delighted that six of the ten are members of the speedygeese, which reflects well on our group in that so many of us have volunteered to serve the club in this way. Finally there was one bit of controversy, with some members strongly for the club running its own T&F championships, and others strongly for continuing to combine with AACT as we have done in the last couple of years. There are good arguments on both sides, and my personal view is (a) if we continue to combine with AACT there are a number of issues that need to be sorted out (b) if we don't combine with AACT we need to get up to speed with officials qualifications, and (c) we need to state both sides of the argument and put it to club members for feedback, and do this quickly, e.g. by end July.

The new committee for 2010-11 is:
President: Rachelle Ellis-Brownlee
Vice President: Craig Wisdom
Secretary: Paul Archer
Treasurer: Nick Blackaby
Committee:
Heidi Johnston
Janene Kingston
Christopher Lang
Duncan Macnicol
Roger Pilkington
Kathy Sims

Some potentially controversial subjects never came up, e.g. our new website wasn't mentioned except for a couple of trivial teething issues, there was no mention of any redevelopment issues. And there was no mention of our new uniform proposals. Nor any searching questions about subcommittee operations. I think this all means that people are very happy with the way the club has been managed under former President Christopher and the out-going committee.

It was quite a good meeting, as these meetings go. Some hilarious moments, but that's normal for AGMs.