Dave: Very well said. Rev votes yes. On Tue, 22 Nov 2005 09:14:27 -0500 "Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ" <dsumner@arrl.org> wrote:
All Directors: At last Saturday's Administration & Finance Committee meeting there was a discussion of our doing something to help members in the military who are deployed to the theater of operations. The subject was first raised by Bernie Fuller because of the large number of reservists who are being called up and sent overseas, with considerable disruption to their lives. The conclusion of the discussion was that the A&F Committee decided to ask the Executive Committee to direct that a mail vote of the Board be taken on a resolution to continue their memberships for the duration of their deployment without charging dues. After discussion the Executive Committee unanimously agreed to offer the following resolution for Board consideration by mail vote in accordance with Article 6 of the ARRL Articles of Association: "Resolved, that the Bylaws with regard to dues payment and delivery of QST are temporarily suspended to the extent necessary to permit the Executive Vice President, upon request, to maintain membership privileges without charge for the duration of a member's active military deployment outside the ARRL operating territory, with or without the delivery of QST at the member's option." A&F Committee members will note that this is slightly different from, but in the same spirit as, the Saturday discussion. The objective is to ensure that a member who is put on active duty and deployed overseas can maintain his or her membership for the duration of the deployment without paying additional dues. This would not be automatic but would be done on request. In some cases the member may want QST delivery to be suspended, in others not. There was discussion of whether to limit this to troops deployed to a war zone, but the committee felt that in the current environment it is difficult to define "war zone" and we should err on the side of flexibility, given that we don't have a huge number of members who stand to be affected. A&F Commitee members with senior military experience say the best way to implement this is for a member to send a copy of his or her deployment orders, as the orders give the expected duration of the deployment. The A&F Committee preferred to have this policy implemented as soon as possible rather than wait for the January Board Meeting. If it is adopted by mail vote it would be appropriate for the Board to ratify the decision at the January meeting. On behalf of the Executive Committee I offer this for your consideration. 73, David Sumner, K1ZZ Secretary