AMCA Membership fees to increase to $40 in July

[RichO]

FYI, I don't involve myself in the politics of the club anymore. At one time I was a National board member and have always been active in my chapter since it's founding. That includes it's National road runs and regional and National swap meet. I was on the board when Pete Gagan became our President. Since then the AMCA has had to recover from putting the magazine out to the public (a loss), the picking of a treasurer that didn't take care of business properly, (costing us our old tax system), and making us create the Foundation (a loss), buying the Torque 4 (a win?), giving away a pick-up (a loss), and probally something I can't remember. Steve Dawry wanted his wife's travel reinversed for his work traveling as the Chief Judge, As it had never been done before it was rejected. The President of the Blackhawk chapter nutts up on Spag and his chapter backs him and thus no more National at Davenport. Joe Gimpel decides to move Eutis which his chapter has the right to no matter how vendors feel about it. His chapter just provides the venue for them if they choose to take advantage of it. The national board just ok's the chapters request to hold one. Kevin resigns as Chief Judge because the board again won't pay for Markey to go with him on his duties has Chief Judge. All this a southern member feels that Spag is to blame for. He puts a sticker on his bike's windshield disrespecting Spag. When (I don't do facebook) the problem arose about Kiser and the youth coordinators program again Spag was the default setting. This is not in his defense because it appears that Spag can take care of himself and chooses to take the high road. But I as a more then thirty year member who's small chapter just so happen to win this years sign up of the most new members with as many active member as a certain southern chapter I'm just a little tired of a certain gentleman's rants concerning Spag and the board. By the way, do the math, 10,000 members at $10 equals the new Director yearly pay. At least it doesn't come out of the exsisting treasury. Peace to all and I'll see you on the road in N.H., Wisconsin, and Yosemite. What's the cost of Cycle World per year? No meets or rides, or chapters with that subcription. Rich P.S. Can't we just all get along and ride our bikes. The past is past and I know for a fact we're a lot better off today than we were since after Bob left. May he rest in peace.

[shelbyinparadise]

As a complete outsider to all of this it took me some time to find additional information. The AMCA Manual is 59 pages long so I could have missed it, but as far as I can tell the National Board sets the schedule but doesn't dictate precise locations. If this is the case, moving the location (but not the date) of the swap meet didn't violate National Policies.

Applying For a National Meet
"Any Chapter considering hosting a National Meet should give serious thought to several things before applying. First and foremost, the full support of the Chapter is needed because it takes more than a handful of people to plan and run a National Meet. You should consider a location carefully. There should be plenty of room for camping, vending, show activities and the riding of motorcycles. Ample parking is a must. There must be adequate sanitary facilities. The site should permit tight gate control. There must be adequate nearby motel/hotel accommodations and the site should be easy to get to. If your choice of sites does not meet these conditions, do not apply." Renewing for the following year still must meet the same requirements as applying for the first time, please note how many times the site is referenced as important

The Sunshine web page forces the viewer to wait for 13 MB to download each time they visit before they can click on anything else so a friendly suggestion is they might want to redesign their website to make it more visitor friendly. But, I see that there are 7 Board members (none by that description, but counting the Trustees, Pres. Treas., etc.). Since they are elected they have to count as "input." From what I infer from your post not all 7 agreed on this move of venue, but I have no way of knowing if it was 5 to 2 against the move (with the 2 being the ones who spoke to the National Board misrepresenting themselves as speaking for the majority) or 6 to 1 for it. But, either way, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that the National Board would assume those 2 spoke for the majority of the Chapter Board when asking for the venue to be moved. Or, since I can't find the venue mentioned in the AMCA Manual, were these two simply informing the National Board of the move as a matter of courtesy, not seeking their permission?

Anyway, no venue is perfect so there will be complaints no matter where it is located. The fact that the new venue has worked well enough for four years, i.e. that the move wasn't immediately abandoned, seems to say it wasn't a disaster. It just generated different complaints than the old venue. Perhaps there are more complaints now, and perhaps the venue is demonstrably worse than the old one, in which case the majority of the Sunshine Board have it in their power to relocate it again. Since they could have done this any time during the last four years, why didn't they? Are you implying the new venue has remained in place the past four years over the objections of the majority of the Chapter Board? That doesn't seem to make sense. If there was no problem why would the Board require Joe Gimple to attend a National Meeting to discuss Problems?

"II.Sunshine Chapter Representative, Joe Gimpel: Joe Gimpel was invited to the meeting so that the Board could discuss the parking and sign problems associated with the Sunshine Chapter National
Meet at Silver Sands. Joe informed the Board that the Chapter is attempting to alleviate the problem
with several options. The Board offered to help the Sunshine Chapter with this matter and have the
Executive Director become involved." From The Minutes of the Annual Meeting
of the Board of Directors
of The Antique Motorcycle Club
of America, Inc.
October 10, 2014

No matter what, if the National Board avoided acting on input of elected Chapter representatives on any matter until they had separately solicited broad input from the members things would grind to a halt. If the majority of a Chapter Board votes to do something that turns out to be a bad decision, the members have the opportunity to vote them out. Maybe the National Board made a mistake in the example you gave, but the information you provided and that I was able to find myself doesn't convince me this was the case. That said, I would be surprised if someone couldn't cite examples where they actually did make mistakes.

The issue isn't whether mistakes were made in any particular case. The issue is whether the National Board makes too many mistakes (whatever "too many" may mean to different people) because of the way it is presently structured, and whether a different structure would result in no mistakes while still being functional.

I have quoted the Append. E in P&P above in your text in red, which defines what the National Board approves yearly, if there were no problems they would not have assigned the Executive Director the task of finding solutions behind the scenes. This is documented in one of the past board minutes published in Magazine. also see above

Before we get accused of beating a dead horse again, you asked for an example of lack of complete accurate input and I provided it. I have all the emails to back it up. One board member died the other was reduced to a non voting position of the original 9 at the time. You can not read today what was changed years ago, with all due respect.

Again I apologize for getting off topic answering a question publicly, My hat is off to all members wanting to help with offers and opening their chapters to include non voting guests.

Shelby Withrow 940 748 2555 shelbyinparadise@compuwise.net I have nothing to hide, and as a Chapter Board Member I am required to read and understand past and present policies to comply at local level.

[fillibuster]

Fillibuster, If you want to call it charity that's fine. Whatever definition anyone calls it as you said it was an offer to any person in need.

Our Bear Mountain Chapter welcomes ANYONE to our rides, meetings, or other activities, member or not. Old, young,male, female or other. LOL They cannot vote however we welcome anyone.

and I think that you are practicing the finest of recruiting tools. Kudos to you and your chapter!

It must have been about 20 yrs ago, heard rumors of a few prominent individuals who had lapsed, intentionally, on their national membership dues, trying to slide by on chapter dues only. The nationals stepped in, enforced things, got the chapter in line with the rules, humbled the offenders, .. not sure of the details because bad news details are kept on the q-t, and it's always been that way (seems). And I'm not an avid student of that 59-page manual of p&p, so I can't tell my peers what exactly keeps us in compliance or results in violation, and I especially don't know a thing about consequences. So if we have chapter meetings and rides and informal swap sessions, and play host to Joe Public as well, we are probably recruiting, but might be in violation of national lines. The fun goes on, hang the watch-word.

'Suppose the responsible thing to do is read the dam book. Maybe we'll assign that task to the guy least likely to do it, and then ignore him if he does.

[BoschZEV]

By P&P rules for Swap meets, the schedule is fixed for the year at the Sunshine Meet in March by the National Board. Eustis Fairgrounds was approved again after 15 years at that location, and the Chapter advised the Vendors their spots were safe for another year.

Fast forward to Wauseon National Board Meeting that summer, and two Sunshine Board members asked the Board for a non emergency permission to move the event to a new location that had a lot of disagreement as to the wisdom of the move by half the Florida board members, not only with the mid year change but the suitability of the location.

...The National Board approved the move,
... The last 4 years have now proved the problems to be true enough to have Keith look into it.

... in the end we were stuck with a good ole boy decision to just allow a chapter to violate the National Policies just because they asked.

As a complete outsider to all of this it took me some time to find additional information. The AMCA Manual is 59 pages long so I could have missed it, but as far as I can tell the National Board sets the schedule but doesn't dictate precise locations. If this is the case, moving the location (but not the date) of the swap meet didn't violate National Policies.

The Sunshine web page forces the viewer to wait for 13 MB to download each time they visit before they can click on anything else so a friendly suggestion is they might want to redesign their website to make it more visitor friendly. But, I see that there are 7 Board members (none by that description, but counting the Trustees, Pres. Treas., etc.). Since they are elected they have to count as "input." From what I infer from your post not all 7 agreed on this move of venue, but I have no way of knowing if it was 5 to 2 against the move (with the 2 being the ones who spoke to the National Board misrepresenting themselves as speaking for the majority) or 6 to 1 for it. But, either way, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that the National Board would assume those 2 spoke for the majority of the Chapter Board when asking for the venue to be moved. Or, since I can't find the venue mentioned in the AMCA Manual, were these two simply informing the National Board of the move as a matter of courtesy, not seeking their permission?

Anyway, no venue is perfect so there will be complaints no matter where it is located. The fact that the new venue has worked well enough for four years, i.e. that the move wasn't immediately abandoned, seems to say it wasn't a disaster. It just generated different complaints than the old venue. Perhaps there are more complaints now, and perhaps the venue is demonstrably worse than the old one, in which case the majority of the Sunshine Board have it in their power to relocate it again. Since they could have done this any time during the last four years, why didn't they? Are you implying the new venue has remained in place the past four years over the objections of the majority of the Chapter Board? That doesn't seem to make sense.

No matter what, if the National Board avoided acting on input of elected Chapter representatives on any matter until they had separately solicited broad input from the members things would grind to a halt. If the majority of a Chapter Board votes to do something that turns out to be a bad decision, the members have the opportunity to vote them out. Maybe the National Board made a mistake in the example you gave, but the information you provided and that I was able to find myself doesn't convince me this was the case. That said, I would be surprised if someone couldn't cite examples where they actually did make mistakes.

The issue isn't whether mistakes were made in any particular case. The issue is whether the National Board makes too many mistakes (whatever "too many" may mean to different people) because of the way it is presently structured, and whether a different structure would result in no mistakes while still being functional.

[D.A.Bagin]

Fillibuster, If you want to call it charity that's fine. Whatever definition anyone calls it as you said it was an offer to any person in need.

Our Bear Mountain Chapter welcomes ANYONE to our rides, meetings, or other activities, member or not. Old, young,male, female or other. LOL They cannot vote however we welcome anyone.

[fillibuster]

Without researching the "rules" on honorary members I'll ask:
Are those revered members who were granted honorary membership (I think that's the term) paying any dues to national or chapters?
and, is there something very wrong with a chapter welcoming "prospects" to attend events with them? They wouldn't be getting a magazine, and meet hosts (at national events) would be required to charge them a gate fee, right? Maybe these prospects are on the edge of an annual 2-300 dollar leap with limited funds, but couldn't we "nurture" them at the chapter level? I presume they would need rides to the national meets, maybe some young muscle in the wrenching field, or a keen eye with paint, maybe just the enthusiasm from peers, ... it might be cheap to attend a chapter event or meetings, but to play on the national level is another several hundred bucks, we must all know that.
How about the "associate member" category? Could this be broadened to accommodate those who keenly discriminate between necessity and choice?

John, Shelby, D.A., however noble and generous your offers may be, I don't think the average fella wants charity, but rather he prefers dignity. I think the chapter level should be afforded an avenue to work with that.

In reflection of my peers, we who read the magazine cover to cover may be as scarce as the percentage who visit the web site and or forum. .. Enigma?

[T. Cotten]

i can give you luland's email and you'll save the $40.00

Bobby's always entertaining!

But don't forget my vendetta against the judging system.

....Cotten

[rwm]

Lucky me, Folks,...

I deduct my dues as a business expense.
But with no Meet in my region, and little personal interest in the magazine, its come down to annoying some on this forum that makes my membership worthwhile!


.....Cotten

i can give you luland's email and you'll save the $40.00

[shelbyinparadise]

Just got back from a ride on one of my old junkers after a hard day and figured I would check this topic. Funny how a thread that was started on the increase of dues turned into another discussion in another area. Here JWL made an extremely generous offer to personally make up the difference on a senior's dues and someone finds fault with it. Amazing. I am going to bring this topic up to our Bear Mountain meeting this Sunday. We have NO MONEY. NONE. If the members vote against sponsoring someone TRULY in need to maintain their membership I will personally sponsor any 10 in need members as JWL said to keep them in the club. Find fault in this. John, PM me on this please.

No reasonable person would find any Fault in what you wrote. As Membership Director of the Cherokee Chapter I am required to contact members that are behind in National or local dues once a year by Fred Davis the National Director of Chapters. I will not remove someone for being tardy from our mailing list or refuse them notice of local events. We make every effort that no votes are cast by non members but we welcome their input to make our Chapter better. Being open and friendly gains us a steady line of people joining, we signed up over 30 at the Pate Swap meet and had quite a sum donated by people who enjoyed our 135 antique Motorcycles on display for the public . We had gone from 36 paid members to now 250 in just over two years. Lead By Example. "Only the lead cow breathes fresh air" Shelby

[shelbyinparadise]

Shelby, can you expand on what you mean by "input"? Surely members of the Board listen to what people tell them and take it into account in making whatever decisions they make. But, you must mean something different than this(?).

Before I try to give you a real example Please allow me to thank exeric for his thoughtful response, there are a lot of good people in this Club that really want to make it better even though out of context it may seem posts are negative.

Allow me to use a real example of the Move from Eustis by Sunshine Chapter. I was and still am a member in good standing of the Chapter and long time vendor there, 20 years.

By P&P rules for Swap meets, the schedule is fixed for the year at the Sunshine Meet in March by the National Board. Eustis Fairgrounds was approved again after 15 years at that location, and the Chapter advised the Vendors their spots were safe for another year.

Fast forward to Wauseon National Board Meeting that summer, and two Sunshine Board members asked the Board for a non emergency permission to move the event to a new location that had a lot of disagreement as to the wisdom of the move by half the Florida board members, not only with the mid year change but the suitability of the location.

The National Board approved the move, without anyone thinking of how this would affect the vendors, losing their favorite spots where their customers we used to finding them. The thought of moving under emergency conditions, most vendors would do what was best for the event. But to be required to move to a new location on short notice was unacceptable to most, even those that did it for the good of the event.

No input reached the National Board about the traffic study done by two Board members of the Chapter who just happened to be experts, working for the Florida DOT as traffic engineers, or input by another Board member that noted that comparing aerial views that the new location was just the size of the Eustis Parking lot, and would seriously restrict the Event size in future years. Another Board member visiting the site questioned the suitability of the dirt floor and improper drainage.

Once the decision to move was approved by National Board Both Vendors and Members questioned the Wisdom of the decision and the Chapter became quite split as to how good an idea it was. They had little to no knowledge of the facts so most played follow the leader blindly. The last 4 years have now proved the problems to be true enough to have Keith look into it.

There is a large paper trail of emails to and from the dissenting Board members and Chapter members but in the end we were stuck with a good ole boy decision to just allow a chapter to violate the National Policies just because they asked.

Just in case you heard the rumor they spread around that the Eustis fairgrounds was closing, I have proved that false by renting it for the 5th year, and if I had not rented it several Florida Board members were planning to do it also out of their pocket.

I know this bores the hell out of most folks but you ask a specific question and I did my best to show how many people were effected by a simple National Board Decision without detailed information.

Davenport could be another example, if the national Board had not lost the $17,000 in vendor fees paid to national. Would we still need to raise the membership fees. Please note they do not get any fees from regional events which are becoming more popular due to high travel costs. Shelby

[D.A.Bagin]

Just got back from a ride on one of my old junkers after a hard day and figured I would check this topic. Funny how a thread that was started on the increase of dues turned into another discussion in another area. Here JWL made an extremely generous offer to personally make up the difference on a senior's dues and someone finds fault with it. Amazing. I am going to bring this topic up to our Bear Mountain meeting this Sunday. We have NO MONEY. NONE. If the members vote against sponsoring someone TRULY in need to maintain their membership I will personally sponsor any 10 in need members as JWL said to keep them in the club. Find fault in this. John, PM me on this please.

[BoschZEV]

acting on the will and input of members, ... input to the decision making process. Input from roots...

Shelby, can you expand on what you mean by "input"? Surely members of the Board listen to what people tell them and take it into account in making whatever decisions they make. But, you must mean something different than this(?).

[frichie68]

Originally Posted by jwl
I, for one, would certainly hate to lose any senior members over a $10 increase in dues. The older members are a valuable asset to the club and a valuable connection to the past. Maybe the board should look into senior discounts for those on Social Security. They are already talking about helping out new young members (a good idea). In the meantime, while I certainly don't have "unlimited funds", I will send $10 to the first 10 senior members that can't afford the increase. Just send me your address and proof of age. I will send you a check for $10 made out to the AMCA. You can send it along with your $30 when renewing your membership. All I ask is in return is that you share some of your wisdom and experience with the next junior member that needs some guidance. John Lindemann

John's offer is much appreciated and has to potential to keep 10 older guys in the club for ONE year. How do you figure how many NEW members-of all ages-were put off by the $40 start-up fee? 2? 10? 100? No way to tell is there?

I see Tom Cotton chimed in a few posts ago . . . What's he thinking? Perhaps the BoD needs a bubble test???

[shelbyinparadise]

I, for one, would certainly hate to lose any senior members over a $10 increase in dues. The older members are a valuable asset to the club and a valuable connection to the past. Maybe the board should look into senior discounts for those on Social Security. They are already talking about helping out new young members (a good idea). In the meantime, while I certainly don't have "unlimited funds", I will send $10 to the first 10 senior members that can't afford the increase. Just send me your address and proof of age. I will send you a check for $10 made out to the AMCA. You can send it along with your $30 when renewing your membership. All I ask is in return is that you share some of your wisdom and experience with the next junior member that needs some guidance. John Lindemann

John you are truly the kind of person this club needs in spirit and a very unselfish offer, Please allow me to point out the one problem with your post. To all reading this I apologize if it seems I am taking anything away from John stepping up to the plate, not my intent.

"They are already talking about helping out new young members" It is the all knowing THEY I see as the problem, depending on a good ole boy National Board in the past has not worked well, although with Keith there may be hope

There are 11,000 members with at least 1,000 that have life experiences and skills that could help correct problems without causing more problems that need to be corrected later. This Club is being run like the Supreme Court, where all decisions are edicts and only a select few are allowed to argue before the court. I believe a Chapters Presidents council, acting on the will and input of members, should be able to have input to the decision making process. Input from roots are important. Shelby

[exeric]

I agree with every post on this topic. I like the way people like Shelby, Robbie, John L., T. Cotton, Jerry Weiland express themselves, and how obviously they love the AMCA. I think this club is diverse, and healthy and it shows in these posts. 40 bucks; I'll pay that in December, and enjoy the benefits for the rest of the year.

As a side note, I have a friend and AMCA member who loves to bitch about club politics. He says; why can't the magazine be more about projects, history, or tech. My short answer to him is always; contribute. The AMCA doesn't pay for these articles, it's our members who take the time, and make the sacrifices to share what they know. You can't get any more democratic than that.