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Hi Tom
I have not resigned although I have given it serious thought. It has been a very discouraging year.
On the Area front we are facing some serious issues. We are not getting the support of many of the chapters in the Northeast Area for our rally. As you may be aware under Sam's term of office the members voted at the annual meeting to sign a five year contract with the Champlain Valley Expo. Since 2008 when the economy took a hit we have saw a steady decline in vendors and coach display coaches. This was not due just to the economy but to a serious decline in Family coaches attending. Vendors have ways of keeping up on rally attendance figures and if we do not get a good showing of attendees then the vendors will not attend. In 2012 we had only 37 vendors and 10 display coaches. and 377 family coaches. Our normal attendance is between 500 and 600 family coaches and in the area of 60 vendors and 100 display coaches. Vendors and display coaches are where we make our money. Going into the 2012 rally we had about $15,000 on hand. The cost to put on a rally is between $60,000 and $80,000. We cut every corner that we could cut and received a $15,000 discount from the Expo and thanks to Tom and Connie Ziobrowski with their hard work getting sponsorships for some of the events and our advertising it as a fund raiser for the Veterans and getting veterans agencies to donate their time and resources we were able to come up with a small profit . We have already been told by the vendors and coach dealers that they will not be able to support us next year as many of them lost money this year. That leaves us no option but to cancel next years rally if we are able to work something out with the Champlain Valley Expo. Tom Oddy is discussing the contract with his Board and will get back to us in a week or so.
FMCA if it is to survive has to adjust their thinking. The Governing Board again rejected towables, Mororhomes are not selling and dealers are not stocking them . The younger generation cannot afford a motorhome and are buying towables. When we spoke to dealers prior to our rally they with out exception stated that they were not willing to spend several hundred dollars to bring a motorhome to the rally, pay for hotels and salaries only to bring the MH back without selling it. They stated that they are selling towables as fast as they can get them without bringing them to a rally.
With FMCA making the members pay for the FMCA Assist insurance themselves we are going to loose even more than the approximately 600 members a month that they now loose. Our membership is presently around 83,000 members and continues to drop. As with all insurances of this type the cost is determined by the total members covered. I feel that as membership declines, I am sure that the premium will increase. Looking at the declared canditates for president of FMCA for the June election, I see candidates that are opposed to allowing towables so I don't see any hope for a change on the National scene. If anyone is tuned to the economic scene you will see that the economy shows no signs of improving significantly in the near future. With fuel prices continueing to rise this will mean that motorhome sales will continue to be stagnate . This combined with the ageing out process that FMCA is currently experiencing will undoubtably be a serious problem. It has been estimated that it would cost around two million dollars to shut FMCA down if that becomes necessary Our reserves are currently around 6.9 million dollars. We cannot continue to bury our heads in the sand and not realize what the end result could be.
We must collectivly put our heads together and decide what direction that the Northeast Area must take.
- Is it to eliminate all area rallies?
- Is it to have smaller chapter groups?
- or is it some other course of action?
We could not even fill the vacancies in the area offices this year and had to postpone the meeting and send security out into the grounds to find Presidents and National Directors to make a quorum for the meeting. This leads us to believe that the interest is not there. If I were to resign ,I have been told that a majority of the Board will resign with me as they are discouraged also. If I do resign, a special election would have to be held at a considerable expense. My present thoughts are to hang in there until my term is up in June.
Paul
