In Kansas City, you will receive my full report on CLEAR’s activities during this past year. Right now, I’d like to use this forum to highlight a few exciting things that happened this year.

First, in keeping with my promise to engage CLEAR in strategic thinking, both the Advisory Committee on Strategic Initiatives and the Board of Directors have done a lot of work toward developing a new plan for CLEAR. In September, the Board will approve an online membership survey that will provide you with an opportunity to comment on the direction you'd like to see your organization take. I'd like to encourage you to help the Board with its planning process by taking a few minutes to complete the survey.

The second exciting “adventure” for the Board this year took the form of a summer trip to CLEAR’s headquarters in Lexington, KY. It is the first time since May 1997 that the Board has met in Lexington to combine a face to face meeting with a visit to CLEAR’s head office. The meeting was very successful with most of the Board members attending and I know that our staff, who do such a wonderful job year round but only meet all of us twice a year, really appreciated the visit too. Our visit to Lexington was so successful that we hope future Boards will make the effort to meet in Lexington and visit our head office at a minimum of every second year!

I’d like to also thank the Board of Directors for making some difficult decisions. You should know that this Board is truly dedicated to CLEAR, with thoughtful, deliberate members. It is a privilege to work with a Board that understands duty of care and is willing to move strategically for the organization’s good, even if it means stepping outside of the box. You may find their recent decisions of interest, so here’s a synopsis of what happened.

Several issues prompted the Board of Directors to meet by teleconference on July 29, just two weeks after it had met in Lexington, Kentucky. First of all, as had occurred in 2002, there was only one nomination received for each available board position and for the office of president-elect. Complicating matters was that, for the first time in CLEAR’s history, the candidate for the office of president-elect was an associate member. The Board’s dilemma was whether to follow the precedent established in 2002 of suspending the election and accepting the slate of candidates, or to leave the organization without a president-elect.

During its teleconference, the Board made the following carefully considered decisions designed to save CLEAR the cost of printing and mailing ballots that would never be counted:

1. Took the position that there is not an apparent impediment in the current bylaws to allowing an associate member to serve as President.

2. Took the position that there is an impediment in the bylaws to more than one associate member serving on the board at any give time. The Board drafted and distributed for comment bylaws language that is intended to limit the number of associate members who may serve as an officer of CLEAR to one while also providing for one other board member to represent the associate member community.

3. Set aside the requirement that the members of the board of directors and the president-elect be elected at the annual meeting and, following the 2002 precedent, accepted the current slate of candidates into office by acclamation. As a result, I'm pleased to announce Linda Waters as CLEAR’s 2004-2005 President–Elect and David Montgomery and Deborah Worrad as re-elected Board Members.

4. Established a working group to conduct a thorough review of the bylaws and report back to the Board.  Any proposed changes will be circulated to the membership for comment and you are certainly welcome to send staff any comments you'd like forwarded now to the working group while it is still deliberating.

In closing, please permit me to put in one final plug for CLEAR’s great annual conference in Kansas City. You're certainly welcome to register for the conference on site for everything except the NCIT programs, which are filled. I hope to see you there!

Next