President Update 2/8/2023

Happy New Year! It’s amazing how fast time can get away from you. Since my last update it’s been pretty much a whirlwind of highs and lows and like too many of us, time just kept marching along and here we are, February!

DISTRICT VP ELECTIONS

I want to take a minute and congratulate Chris Silveira, Don Rybarczyk and David Rocha II on their elections to Vice President. I was able to attend the elections in the North and Central Districts in person at their January meetings. Unfortunately, when making the schedule last year, we overlooked the fact that the South District and the Central District had their meetings on the same day, so Don, my apologies for not being there to congratulate you.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS

There has been a tremendous amount of work done since my last update regarding land use, association business, and the like. As we travel into this new year, I have a better feeling of work accomplished and the path to travel forward. I have been working with a committee I formed with Past Presidents Robert Reed, David Douglas, and Don Spuhler to clean up a slew of loose ends in the association and to make your association more effective and more efficient. I can’t thank these three men enough – I have been secretly referring to them as the three wisemen. Bob, Dave and Don – thank you for your incredible insight, work and support, you guys are incredible.

If you haven’t noticed, Request for Proposals has been published for In Gear editor, web page editor, database administrator and QuickBooks analyst. Suzy Johnson is a powerhouse of a woman and has continually gone above and beyond for this association for a very long time and when she announced that she was favoring retirement over continuing to work, I knew we had to start this process immediately. Six months ago, when this committee started to peel the layers of this onion back to get a clear and concise picture of what our contractors and employees do, it was perplexing and maybe even overwhelming. I was apprehensive to say the least, but I can now say that we have made incredible progress and have a clear picture and plan moving forward with tons of data, which makes me feel better about the future of this association than I ever felt. I am excited for what this New Year brings, and I am very excited about the future of this great association. I’ll be talking more in detail about all of this at Convention in a couple of weeks at the Lamp Liter Inn in Visalia – speaking of which, do you have your tickets yet?

CONVENTION COMING UP

Amy Cave, this year’s Convention chair has been going above and beyond to make this year’s Convention awesome! Amy and her group of volunteers have all sorts of exciting and fun things to come and check out from seminars, vendor shows, and car shows. Friday night is the infamous hospitality night which each district will be fighting for your love/support as they whip up some incredible cocktails and food while you can roam around the room and talk to other illustrious members of this association. The whole weekend is jam-packed with awesome things to do and see and if you haven’t got your tickets to attend, why not? I beg of you to change your plans and come down for a day – you don’t have to be a delegate, just a member of Cal4Wheel and I promise you, one day at convention will make you yearn for next year’s convention and bring a broader, brighter vision and love for this great association. Please, don’t be shy and cancel whatever other plans you have and come on down – look for me and I’ll introduce you to some people and after a few minutes, you’ll feel like you’re at home with a family you never knew you had. Not to mention, Saturday evening, I’ll be picking the winning ticket for this year’s incredible Raffle Vehicle built by Varozza Off Road and spearheaded by our awesome, newly elected North District Vice President, Chris Silveira! We will also be unveiling this year’s new Raffle Vehicle and will be selling tickets for it so you can win that in February of 2024!

Registration for Convention closes today (February 8, 2023) at 5PM PST. Go to cal4wheel.com/convention for all the details.

Speaking of Convention, we’ll be electing a state treasurer this year and if you’re thinking about getting more involved in Cal4 and have a great understanding of accounting/bookkeeping, this would be awesome for you and the association. The committee and I are working on cleaning up the financial side, as in how we do business and will ultimately make the state treasurer’s job a million times easier. There are no bylaws this year to vote on and I’m looking forward to seeing all the members and delegates at general session on Saturday to reflect back on this past year and plans moving forward into this new year and more importantly, getting to talk to each and every one of you in person and seeing how I can better help you and your club and how I can improve to be a better president to all of you.

Truth be told, being your president over the past year has been one of the most gratifying experiences I have ever done and I couldn’t be more proud to be here promoting Cal4Wheel and having the great support of not only the board of directors, but the entire membership of this incredible association. Thank you for this incredible opportunity and if there is anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask.

I could write a novel about land use issues going on and if you have been at the district meetings or on social media, you have (hopefully) read our incredible Natural Resource Consultant Rose Winn’s reports. There are issues all over this state and throughout the country that are starting to get to the point where we’ll need your help and support with writing letters, making phone calls and such coming up soon. Over the past year, I have been working closely with other land use organizations, bringing unity to all of us which is very encouraging because working together makes us stronger and stronger keeps public lands public.

I am going to keep this short as my ‘whirlwind’ of tasks keeps coming as I am packing up and heading out this weekend for my club’s 75^th anniversary! I hope you get some time to get out of the house and go enjoy the outdoors this weekend and I look forward to seeing each and every one of the following week at Convention!

‘Til the next update…