For sure you had all noticed that the June issue of Driveline was not issued in June, but it is finally out now and being mailed along with the July issue. The delay was a matter of concern that there appeared to be dozens of names on the mailing list that were not matched with any verified record of dues payment. For the past few years the club treasury has been running in deficit spending mode. We are definitely not broke, and serious steps are being taken to balance the budget. Since printing and mailing of Driveline is one of the largest expenses of the club, the correctness of the membership list is of great concern. The membership list with matching dues collections has now been verified, and I am happy to report some interesting facts.

We currently have exactly 300 names on the roster (as date of this writing). I believe this now amounts to a record amount of dues collections for this club for a single year, and no known cases of non-payment of dues. For sure this will eliminate any deficit between dues collections and Driveline production expense (but perhaps not all expenses). It also means that we now have a record number of members in the club (at least valid members).

This new roster has 55 more members on record than we had last August, and there are still the 66 names not renewed from last year (still needing to pursue that problem). This appears to account for 111 new members since August, which has to be another record. I have only one word for that. WOW !!! This means that 37% of the current membership is new in the last year. I hope we can all be especially nice to new members.

On the other side of the list are the 66 non-renewals from the 245 members on record last fall. That would be a 27% non-renewal rate. I know some of these people are still active in the club, and some of them are still coming to the membership meetings, so maybe there is some failure to communicate on the part of the club. None of those people are on the current members mailing list, but if any of you are reading this on the club web site, please consider contacting the Secretary to renew your membership. Hundreds of people here would be happy to talk to you about the value of this club and your membership.

Now this issue of Driveline has to go to press in about an hour, and I don’t have time to catch up with the “Welcome New Members” article, but I will see to it in the next issue.