Monthly Meetings
Over the past couple of months, club members have been provided opportunities to offer their suggestions for improving our club. A series of surveys culminating in discussions at the January General Meeting have identified many ideas. I want to thank everyone that contributed. The Board has begun the process of analyzing and implementing your suggestions as manifest in the upcoming February Chili Cook-Off meeting. Your involvement in helping implementing changes and providing feedback during the process will be needed.

Because many of you provided suggestions concerning our monthly meetings, I thought I would provide some background relative to your suggestions concerning our meeting location, day and structure.

One of the President's responsibilities is to schedule facilities for the general monthly meetings. Over the past several years, SLO Parks & Recreation has permitted us to schedule a year in advance. Therefore, this past October, a request for use of the SLO County Library Community Room for 2016 was submitted and scheduled. This gives us a base of operation. It does not mean we cannot cancel or make changes if other days or facilities are available. For example, the Library Community Room is not available in March on Wednesday but the Ludwick Community Center is available in March on both Wednesday and Thursday.

For your information:
The cost of the SLO County Library Community Room is about $100 per meeting.
The cost of the Ludwick Community Center for the Chili Cook-Off is about $300.
The cost of facilities for Potlucks range between $500 and $1000.

Suggestions have been made that our meetings not conflict with Farmers Market in SLO, vary in location within the county and be in facilities that exhibit more intimate physical qualities. For these types of changes to be made, we need your help in identifying possible facilities. If you have an idea, visit the facility and ascertain its availability, capacity and cost for one of our monthly meetings, and then let me know. This would be an enormous help in addressing the issue.

Our bylaws require one annual business meeting of the general membership during December to elect officers and conduct other business as needed. In addition, special business meetings of the general membership may be called but require written notice that includes the purpose and agenda for the meeting. Based on our bylaws, our typical monthly meetings are not officially business meetings - they can be structured in any way you desire. For example, it has been suggested that the announcement portion be shorter and the program portion be longer and that the program portion come before the announcements. The February meeting, for example, will be all social. We will vary the structure of our meetings during the coming year and look forward to your feedback and further suggestions.