Good afternoon Chapter Presidents,

   And Happy Father's Day to all from your National Officers and the CPOA. Hopefully with the warmer weather approaching your Chapters have a lot of great things planned for your communities and your membership. Just to keep you all in the loop.........

1. Membership - this continues to be the biggest ongoing area that we need to work on. Our membership numbers have pretty much held steady to dropping slightly over the past several years. If our association is to grow and continue to do great things, it all comes back to having members who will commit to and contribute. We need to constantly be looking to find Chiefs who are not members and get them onboard, active, reserve or retired. does your Chapter have Membership Chairman? If not then consider it. Although we are all "recruiters" for our association, having someone to coordinate those efforts helps keep it focused, on track and efficiently done. And on that note also if you see from the monthly mailing that Tom send out that we have lost a member in your area for either a cash or allotment issue, please engage them and see about getting them back on the roles.

2.Convention - yes it is fast approaching. Have you made your reservations? Are you planning on going? Is a member of your Chapter going? If not are you looking for a proxy to represent the interests of your Chapter there? I realize that getting back and forth to a Convention being there for the week is not cheap. And a lot of Chapters being smaller are not too excited about emptying the bank for that purpose, if it cuts down on what they are doing in their community. Hopefully everyone knows or remembers that the National Office can give you and interest free loan to help cover those costs. But if you can't be there this year, it is never to early to start planning for next year. Convention is the time where you all ensure that the Officers are running our association as you want it run. and again if your Chapter will not be there, then seriously consider designating a proxy to represent your Chapter and send them informed on how your Chapter wants to vote on any issues and to keep you informed of the daily events.

3. The By-Laws and OpsMan - the By-laws revisions have been submitted as NO Resolution #!. It was sent to all of you, was posted on the web site and was in the most recent issue of The Chief. We are still looking for any feedback and comments from you on  them. This is the huge issue that we need to get through at Convention this year. so please let us hear your thoughts.

4. Transfer season - we are into the annual transfer season, if the Officers of your Chapter change as a result of that, or for any other reason please let me know so that we can update the records at national and on the web site. The only want that we can keep you all in the know is to have the most recent and current information for your Chapter.

5. CCCAF - congratulations to Stuart Royal for winning this years CCCAF competition. He is the son of BMCS John Royal (ret).

   And as always if there is anything that I can do to help you all or your members please let me know. I do hope to see many of you in NOLA is a few short months. But if not then I'll do my best to keep you all up on events on hopefully a daily basis down there.

Yours in service,
Bruce