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Last 12 Newsletters available below
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Dec 2009 Governor's Message As the new governor of the Pacific Northwest District of JACL, one of my first duties was to attend the National Board meeting on October 31st and in the last newsletter, I promised you a report of my trip. I flew to San Francisco and made my way to the Masao W. Satow Building on Sutter Street with the help of Sheldon Arakaki who is the Vice President for Operations who also landed at the San Francisco Airport about the same time. There was an orientation for the new governors on Friday evening and that meeting helped me get acquainted with some of the national officers and what to expect at the business meeting that would occur the next day. The headquarters building has an interesting design. I’m told it was built to be a Museum rather than an office building so it has some interesting large spaces that would normally hold exhibits that have been used in some creative ways to accommodate the offices that you need to run an organization like JACL. The National Board meeting lasted about 7 hours with a small break for lunch. I’m told this was an easy one since we haven’t gotten into the budgeting process just yet. My next trip to headquarters will be in February, where the more difficult and complicated discussions about budgets will occur. Some of the Key Points from the October 31st Board Meeting included talking about the Credentials for the Convention will include checking for filing of 990 forms by Chapters to the IRS. Portland doesn’t have any problems in this area. The 2010 Convention will take place in Chicago from June 30th to July 4th. Many of our youth are fundraising and planning to attend! A motion was made and passed to send $7500 which will be matched for legal fees for to fight the CAFO lawsuit at Minidoka. This is plan that was approved by Jerome County in Idaho to permit feeding operations for thousands of beef cattle upwind of the Minidoka Monument. Every week, JACL puts out a JACL DC Digest. If you’d like see some of the digests, go to this link on the JACL website. http://www.jacl.org/public_policy/alerts.htm If you’d like to sign up to receive them by email, I do have that link too but it’s a long one. Send me an email at chiplarouche@gmail.com and I’ll send it to you. Some budget items that came up were the announcement that JACL’s Reserve account was reduced to almost at zero to help with cash flow and a motion was approved to move 230K back into investment revenue in the budget since investment income for the 3rd quarter had bounced back. This will also help with JACLs cash flow. The Los Angeles chapters made an Annual Convention Bid for the 2011 convention which was also approved. The VP for Planning and Development reported on the Scholarship Program. They added a $2000 national scholarship to be funded by a new $200K bequeathal. Carol & David Kawamoto also announced that they will resign from national scholarship management after the 2010 program. They’ve been doing it for 10 years. It should be noted that the Portland Chapter has volunteered to review the college level applicants starting next year. There was an update on the Nisei Veterans Stamp campaign. Floyd Mori informed us that there was an effort to make a stamp of the Nisei Veterans Memorial in DC vs. a Nisei vets stamp which is claimed to run contrary to the US Postal policy of not having stamps for specific military units. As mentioned before, I’ll be going to San Francisco again to attend a National Board meeting that will deal heavily with the upcoming budget. If anyone wants me to carry a message to the National Board, you all know that I’m only a phone call or an email way. Hopefully you are all looking forward to a New Year as I am, and I also hope your holiday season is filled with lots of love and pleasant gatherings with friends and family. |
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