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President's Page

Dave King

Column Index

	Title	Date
Select	A Last Thought	11/11/2007
Select	A rare honor for me	5/22/2007
Select	Winter is a busy time in kayaking	3/1/2007
Select	KCCNY and You, doing it together	12/1/2006
Select	A poem by Tom Masters	11/12/2006
Select	Traditions	8/30/2006
Select	Making the Most of One Weekend	6/28/2006
Select	Good News About the Lehigh	2/19/2006
Select	The Short Answer	1/22/2006
Select	The Year Ahead.	11/21/2005

With apologies to Dan Kirsch for poaching on this page in his first day as KCCNY President; several folks asked me to post the address I gave at the beginning of last night’s meeting.

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It has been a privilege and a pleasure to serve KCCNY for the past two years as its President. I would like to thank the board and activity chairs for their support in operations of the club and the membership in flattering me with the honor of being elected by you to this position.

We will be hearing shortly from the various activity chairs regarding the activities of the club in their areas but I’d like to make you aware of a few club wide items and some changes first.

One of the first things I did as president was establish with Jack’s help the President’s Page on the web site. This has allowed me to keep members informed of activities within the club and ongoing projects as well as form the first volley for me to launch a campaign to make members and non-members aware of the value of KCCNY and all paddling clubs to the paddling community. I hope whoever is your next President will continue to use this venue to communicate with the membership and anyone who visits our site.

As I mentioned it has been one of my goals to make the paddling community aware of the value of club membership. That it is through continued support of clubs that conservation and access efforts are supported, that organized training is supported, that pool sessions are provided and the list goes on. You may recall that in the spring of 2006 a non-member actually posted on our forum the words “proud to be an independent paddler”, I think today a lot more of our members would be able to quickly articulate why they are more proud to be members of and give support to paddling clubs in general and KCCNY in particular. Gee, you can’t even buy a tank of gas for the $20 it takes to be a member, is it too much to ask?

I also have sought over the past two years to make some changes in the way we do business as a club.

First, is the use of an annual budget to remove some of the hassles that used to bog down the board’s time. A few years back there was concern about whether or not cake could be provided at an annual dinner because the funds had never been specifically appropriated. I don’t want to count the number of messages posted on our Executive Forum to clear up that small item. This represented useless delays and energy wasted that could have been better focused elsewhere. So after we passed our first budget in January 2006, a few months later a member came to Ken about purchasing some passes for the Youghigheny and reserving camping to organize a trip, Ken was able to reach into his activities budget and provide the money to front this trip so the member would not have to. No board approval was needed and no time was lost in getting this activity organized.

Second, is that I have sought to decentralize the operation of the club. Activity Chairs deserve the trust of the club and the board to run their department without having to have each detail of their operation micromanaged. Activity Chairs are empowered to act as they see fit and not lose time and energy seeking approval every step of the way. Some instances include;
> If Wayne feels like running a CPR course, it’s in his budget and in his prerogative to do so.
> In the May meeting we gave Dan the nod to go forward and negotiate pool sessions as he saw fit.
> When Jack & Ellen have the time and energy to add another instructional; mazeltov!

Some other changes or improvements of the past year include the hard work Dan Kirsch and Pierre deRham put in to clearing up our insurance confusion and how to organize our waiver situation. It is now a lot clearer what is required of pool and trip coordinators and a lot easier to perform that task to the benefit of the club.

Ellen has established cost accounting for the club, reorganizing the books so that we can have a better snapshot of where we stand at any given time. This helps avoid some of the confusion of the past that I felt had lead to some occasional hard feelings.

The board worked together in our March meeting to finally figure out how we can as a club add activities other than paddling to our calendar and find a way for us to continue to socialize together and stay fit and have fun when not on the river. If you look on the home page of our web site you will see these activities listed under “Other Fun Stuff”.

As I mentioned it has been a privilege and an honor to serve you all as KCCNY’s President. Quite honestly I especially enjoyed the chance to occasionally spout off on public forums on our behalf. But due to mounting professional and personal and family obligations I have found it difficult in the past several months to perform this task at a standard I would like to keep and so I am sorry to say that for this reason I felt it necessary for me to step away from this office at this time. I will try to remain as active as I can in support of the club especially assisting Rhonda with the Morristown pool and assisting John Coraor with the Esopus race as well as continuing to organize our annual “Old Timer’s Day” paddle during the July Esopus release.

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