Annual Secretaries Report February 11, 2013

 

             I will make this as short as possible because not much has changed since last year. We are now at the beginning of the 81st 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. Nine 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 more 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 a member for 18 years, 13 of them as Secretary as well as 3 years as Treasurer. Over those year’s, I have kept us together through four different venues. And I believe this venue here to be very satisfactory.

            Some further facts and figures. The total attendances for the last year were 435 while the total for 2011 was 453, which is down just 18 on the previous year which is a surprisingly good result. I thank you the membership for your faithfulness to our club. We also welcomed a new member when Barrie White, formerly Train Controller joined our club.

          The highest meeting attendance here at this venue, was on June 18, when we had 30 members attending. That may have something to do with Ron Fitch’s 102nd birthday. But our usual Christmas Lunch had the best overall with 34 diners taking part.

          Regarding our membership, we still have 181 members on our list. Many of those we have never seen.

         Mr Fitch who will be 103 in June this year is still our oldest and also longest member. Of those 181 members, 109 are over the age of 80 and 37 of those are over 90. That makes about two thirds of our membership over 80. 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 81st 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.

         Regarding our finances, the main expenditure for the year was our Christmas lunch. This Christmas lunch including drinks had a total cost of $2061.00 while members contributed $875.00 towards this. That means $1186.00 was subsidised out of our Club funds. After some minor expenses we still have a present net bank balance of $1189.00. The total of the admittance and raffle money received here at the venue was $730.00 as well as $40.00 in donations. So in short, as our Christmas Lunch is really the only expense for the year and is funded from the raffle money we will have to increase the member’s contribution to our next Christmas lunch unless we increase our attendance and raffle price. Voluntary contributions are of course always welcome.

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