Hi All,

This has been a fun month.  The hurricane scare aside, it has been a little cooler and better weather for top down driving.  I was sorry that the Purple Feet Festival had to be postponed but I’m looking forward to seeing many of you at the Balsam Mountain Inn. This should be a great trip. I understand that there will be 15 Miata’s on this trip.  Gina and I will be meeting up with you at the Balsam Mountain Inn since we can’t leave as early on Tuesday. I also understand that the Purple Feet Festival has been rescheduled for November, so check out the website and watch for emails to provide info.

Kudos to my wife and co-pilot, Gina, who has taken over the tasks of updating the activities and info on our website. Everything is now up-to-date and she will continue to add things as they are scheduled/happen. For the sake of everyone’s sanity, please flow all info through the club Secretary (Tom Pane) and the Events Committee (Ron Carmichael). They will be the clearing house for what gets into the web site and under what heading. Thanks for your co-operation on this.

We will have our General Membership Meeting later this month (I’m thinking at the Black Finn Restaurant or Pilot House in Wilmington) with the exact date, time and place to be determined and sent out in a separate email. This will be an important meeting because we will discuss some additional changes to the By-laws.  The executive committee met and talked about the length of service and the order in which elective offices would expire. For the sake of continuity, we were thinking that the President and Secretary should be elected in different years so that they would not be new at the same time. The same approach with Treasurer and Vice President. That would necessitate each office to be elected for two years so that they could be staggered. We were thinking that would help with continuity on the one hand and minimize the risk of one person being stuck in a job forever. The Committee chairs would be for a fixed period as well with term limits all around. I also want to remind everyone that these office positions are not gender specific.

I will appoint a nominating committee to seek people to fill offices that may be vacant in 2018 based on whatever you all decide at the meeting. Elections will be held, as tradition has been, in January at our Annual Holiday Celebration/General Membership Meeting (celebrating the Club’s 24^th year).

I look forward to seeing you all at the upcoming events and at the January Holiday Party and Annual Membership Meeting.

We continue our first Saturday of the month morning gathering at Bitty and Beau’s and I look forward to seeing you there.

Safe driving,

Ken Schiess