I wont bother you this year too much, as the same seems to come up every year. We are now at the beginning of the 80th year since this Club was begun and, as you all know it has been on a downward slide for several years now because of falling membership. Eleven more members have departed since our last AGM last February. Moreover, in the past we used to have as many as 12 committee members and as many as 500 registered members. Look at us now. Those committee members who are continuing to give service have been sitting here for a long time. Most of us have run out of steam and badly need replacing. Myself, I have been here for more than twelve years as Secretary and 17 years as a member. Over those year’s I have kept us together through four different venues.
Some further facts and figures. The total attendances for the last year were 453 while the total for 2010 was 551, that is down 98 on the previous the year. I thank you the membership for your faithfulness to our club.
The highest meeting attendance, here at this venue, was on both last year’s AGM and on April 4 when we had 28 attendants. But our usual Christmas Lunch had the best overall with 42 diners taking part.
Regarding our membership, we had no new members joining us this past year while we lost 11 members leaving us with a net membership at the present of 188. Many of those we have never seen.
Mr Fitch who will be 102 in June this year is still our oldest and also longest member. Of those 188 members, 112 are over the age of 80 and 27 of those are over 90. That makes about two thirds of our membership over 80. Makes you think.
Lastly, I hope that all of you here will continue to support our Club in the coming year. As I mentioned before, this will be the 80th year since our Club was began in 1932 and it would seem a pity if it was to fold up now after such a lengthy time. As we have no speakers booked for this year, I will encourage you to come to the meetings, as we will endeavour to entertain you with various DVD’s on railways. If any of you have photos or even movies on CD or DVD on the subject of railways, we can arrange to show them to our members on the screen. Please let me know in advance so we can arrange a date.
As I now have the Treasurer’s job given to me as well because of lack of interest by anyone else I need to report on that as well.
After some initial puzzles to work out the balance as left by the previous treasurer I now have this under control. The main expenditure for the year was our Christmas lunch. This Christmas lunch including drinks had a total cost of $2555.00 while members contributed $1050 towards this. That means $1505.00 was subsidised out of our Club funds. After some minor expenses we still have a present net bank balance of $1874.52. The total of the admittance and raffle money received here at the venue was $671.00. As Jack Strapps, our Auditor is unable to attend this and the next meeting this is still subject to his audit. However I have ensured him that all the balances are correct.
If you have any questions about this report, I will try to answer them now?
