| Secretaries Report 2004 |
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| Annual Secretaries Report February 9, 2004 . Before I say anything I must thank everyone here today that brave the heat and turn up for our first meeting for the year. Much appreciated! Well, another year has gone by and yet again I have been talked into staying on in this job. Despite all our efforts to find a replacement no one has come forward willing to volunteer. This will be my sixth year. And as I will be turning 76 this year it is time for me to retire from this job at the end of this year if not sooner. Anyone thinking about it will be given any help needed and I am still willing to do the paperwork and look after our Internet site. Sort of like an assistant secretary. But I would very much like to be relieved of the main secretary responsibility especially the continued hunt for speakers. Besides with the upcoming second grandchild due next June I will be having even less time to spare. The past year has been a very turbulent year with our meeting venue closing and several meetings cancelled because of it. However, we have managed to get our act together again in this venue at a very reasonable cost. For that reason we had only 23 meetings and events in the past year, down 2 on the previous year. We had 728 attendances at those meetings for an average of 32 per meeting. This compares with 862 the previous year in 25 meetings, down 134. Considering the falling membership I consider this an excellent performance and I must hereby thank those faithful members who so regularly attend. Regarding membership, this now stands at 341, down 17 from 358 last years. We had 6 new members for the year while 23 members passed away during the year. With this falling membership I cannot stress to highly that a greater effort is needed to obtain new members. As we still have several rail systems working in this State there has be a continuous flow of persons retiring. Regarding the years activities, the highest attended meeting was as always our Christmas Lunch with 45 attending against 57 the previous year. And I believe the food and service was excellent with the expense of free drinks turning out to be very reasonable. The lowest attended meeting was on the 4th April when just 25 persons turned up. Of the total 341 membership 63 members attended one or more meetings. That is down from 65 the previous year. Our extended tour to Kangaroo Island was a great success despite only 20 members taking part. The coach was fully booked with other customers from the coach company. In an attempt to get more of our members attending I have sent out 70 programs to existing members in the hope that some will turn up. Also 4 have gone out via e-mail. Anyone with an e-mail address please let me know as it is a lot cheaper than postage. Has anyone any questions about this report? Thank you all. |