It’s hard to believe another year has gone by, and what a busy year it was! We have continued to try and educate ourselves in our monthly Hot Topic Luncheons, the Great Decisions Group, and our TED talks.

But with the mid-term primary and election, we were extremely busy with voter registration and education. We held about 50 Voter Registration events, with our Indivisible partners and held a candidate forum in Newark. Thanks so much to Patti Christopher and the Indivisible group for all their hard work trying to coordinate and cover all these events. In addition, we gave close to 30 people rides to the polls on Election Day.

This fall the Board held a Strategic Planning Session with new and creative ideas, including ideas for the 100th anniversary of the League and the 19th amendment for 2020. We also set in place a new way to develop our budget and to let our needs drive our fundraising. There are several initiatives the Board will be putting forth, and we hope some of these items will be of interest to you to help fund. In Dec. we received a most generous donation from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Newark and are very grateful for their support.

We had a three- year audit review and are in compliance with bank statements and financial practices. We are in the process of reviewing our policies and procedures and the Bylaws and recommended changes will be distributed to the membership prior to the annual meeting in June. We are also redesigning our structure and flow chart so that new members and Board Members can better understand how the League functions.

Most importantly, we gained about 40 members and we continue to meet up with people who are interested in the League and its mission.

Going forward, we are looking forward to bringing greater emphasis to local school board elections and hope to create a Vote 411 system to educate and inform citizens regarding their local school boards. We will be working with the Dept. of Elections to educate the public regarding the new voting machines, which might be in place for the school board elections. We will be working on converting the LWVNCC to a 501c3 entity, which will enable us to have a single budget (instead of LWVNCC and LWVNCC Ed Fund budgets), and will make all donations tax deductible. This will cost some money and will probably take a year or longer to work through the process, but the Board felt it was worth the effort and the expense. And we will be planning several Meet and Greets for members to get to know each other and to also get together with some of our partnering groups. The first of these will be Jan. 17, 2019 at Mc Glynn’s Pub.

I look forward to meeting more of you at the upcoming events and wish you all a very Happy New Year. May 2019 bring you renewed determination, resolve, and political action!  

-- Marj Johnson