As our official business meeting for the year, the Annual Meeting on June 8 followed a formal agenda but with some additional special elements. The meeting was dedicated to Ray Bennett, our dedicated volunteer office manager, who we miss so much. A memory book was circulated for comments and presented to his daughter, Laura Bennett, who made moving comments about her dad — and who has joined our League.
Key elements of the Annual Meeting included:
- An Annual Meeting Kit, with the material for the meeting and also informative 2016 – 2017 Committee that reports biographical information on board members.
- Our membership is 317, and like many Leagues, we have had a surge of new members.
- We reviewed the past year’s budget and adopted the 2017–2018 budget.
- Dues barely cover our expenses, so fundraising is very important for program activities.
- We voted to add Arcadia, Bradbury, and Duarte to our service area, and this has been
authorized by the state and national Leagues.
- We received nominations and elected the new Board of Directors.
- We heard observations from our delegates to the California LWV convention.
- We spent an hour in table discussions for each committee, discussing plans and priorities for the 2017–2018 program year. These priorities will appear in the annual Members Yearbook mailed to all members in September.
- Our guest speaker offered observations on the rise of women’s activism.
- We recognized Fifty Year member Susan Caldwell.
Our guest speaker was Désirée Zamorano, who spoke on “The Rise of Activism in our Community”. Ms. Zamorano taught in PUSD and now runs the Community Literacy Center at Occidental College as well as being part of the Teacher Education program at CSULB. She is also an accomplished author and activist. She shared her resources and thoughts, and discussed various grassroots political action groups, such as Indivisible and Huddle, that have appeared over the past several months. We will also form groups to plan actions for next year based on committee priorities discussed in January.
-- Marge Nichols
