Hello Everyone!
Happy new year! Hope you're enjoying the frozen stuff while we wait for Spring.
Our annual club meeting at the Boat Show is coming up. This year the Boat Show runs from Thursday, January 30th to February 2nd. This is the earliest that they have held the Boat Show that I can remember. So mark it down on your calendars.
Like always, our club meeting will be held the opening night of the show. So Thursday, January 30th at 6:30 will be our annual meeting. It will be held in room 200D. Please plan on attending. We will be going over the state of the club and upcoming activities. Besides, it's fun just being able to see and visit with everybody.
If you attend the meeting, AND you have paid your yearly dues for 2025, you will get one free ticket to enter the Boat Show. Please go to the club's website and pay your yearly dues now while you are thinking about it. You can pay using Venmo. You don't have to have a Venmo account to do this. Do it now and be done with it.
Now for the bad news.
Starting this year, the yearly dues for BOTH regular club members and emeritus club members is going up. A number of factors have caused us to have to raise the club membership fees. One, the drop in club members. Two, we are not getting many new members. Three, we no longer have a waitlist. Four, we no longer have bids to move up in the waitlist. Five, more and more members each year are becoming emeritus members. Six, the increased costs in fees, licenses, insurance, etc. that we are required to have. Seven, the costs of maintaining our courses and docks.
Basically, our expenses have gone up while our income has gone down. The result is we are running in the red. Our yearly expenses exceed our yearly income. For this reason, for the club to continue, we have no option but to raise our yearly membership fees to $175 for regular members and $75 for emeritus members. This is in effect now.
I know this comes as a surprise for all of you. But really, I'm surprised we haven't raised the yearly fees sooner. I have been in the club for just short of 20 years. Despite the fact that everything has gotten more expensive over the past two decades, the yearly membership fee has never changed during that entire time. But it has caught up with us. Come to the club meeting where we will be discussing this. You can share your feelings and concerns in person.
As of right now, the club website where it talks of fees hasn't been changed yet. It still shows the old fee of $125. Hopefully that will be changed in the next few days.
Let me know if you have any questions or problems paying your membership dues. If you have concerns about the new fee cost, definitely come to the club meeting.
See you at the end of the month!
Garn Arnold
VP of Membership
