We had 115 members attend our AGM at the Remuera Club on 12 June where we reviewed our club activities over the past year and elected our new committee for the 2018/2019 year. We were sad to farewell three of our committee stalwarts, Bob Brown, John Gribble and Tom Ryan who have all served on your committee for a number of years including the office of President.
Two new members offered themselves as candidates for election, so we are very happy to welcome Anne Jaggard and Gaye Mears onto the committee. At the AGM we were unable to fill the vacant position of Secretary but at our first Committee Meeting on 11 July, Anne agreed to accept nomination as Secretary so we wish to thank Anne for taking on this task. The names and contact details for your new committee are shown at the beginning of this newsletter.
Your club can only function if members volunteer to serve on the committee and we need a constant flow of younger members to take over as old age catches up with some of us. This year we still have a vacancy for two more members to reach the number allowed by Club Rules. At the conclusion of the AGM we all enjoyed the excellent buffet lunch which was of the usual high quality and variety, followed by the drawing of the ever popular door prizes of bottles of wine.
President’s Report
Another year has passed and it is my pleasure and privilege to report on the activities of your club over the past 12 months. The club is in good health with membership hovering around the 600 mark. We have welcomed 40 new members and sadly farewelled a similar number who have passed away, resigned or have lost contact over the same period.
Our 6 monthly lunches here at the Remuera Club continue to be our most popular feature with 130 members attending last year’s Mid Winter/ AGM lunch. Following remarks that some members cannot attend Wednesday functions due to other commitments, we have moved this year’s AGM to a Tuesday as a trial. We tried to make the Christmas Lunch a really festive affair with sparkly table decorations and themed spot prizes and we hope the 180 or so members who attended enjoyed the atmosphere as well as the interesting talk given by our guest speaker, Jodie King, Chief People Officer at Air New Zealand. We are mindful of the space constraints here and have set a limit of 200 persons to ensure comfort and ease of movement for everyone. Your committee have had many discussions about potential venues with larger capacity but so far have been unable to find anything which is as easy to travel to, has good car parking and is priced competitively.
Over the year we organised three outings, with a successful trip to MOTAT in August 2017 attended by 36 members. We tried to organise a trip to Ardmore in October but experienced great difficulty making contact and so we substituted a visit to Bays Club, Browns Bay for lunch where we welcomed 38 members. We eventually managed to sort out the Ardmore difficulties and 32 members enjoyed a tour of the Warbirds Museum and AVSPECS workshop in early March this year.
Staff Travel have changed their on-line booking system and the iFly site has been replaced with MyID Travel. There have been some teething problems but most users seem to be coping and if all else fails, Staff Travel are still only a Phone call away.Our website contains an easy step by step guide to using MyID.Following comments from members, we have set up a sub-committee to review retired staff travel entitlements and kicked this off by surveying members to determine how many currently utilise staff travel. We have received a 60% response and wish to thank all those who responded. Our website content is continuing to expand with more news and useful information. Staff travel updates appear in both the posted and online newsletters.
This AGM sees the retirement from the committee of three stalwarts; Bob Brown has been on the committee since before 2002; John Gribble was President 2007/2008 and Tom Ryan was president 2013/2014. We thank them all for their years of service and hope that they can stay in touch.
Finally, I wish to sincerely thank all current committee members for their support over the past 12 months and without whose efforts the club would not be able to function.
Ian Steel - President