SLA bylaws voting (long post)

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From: Chris Orr (christineorr@mindspring.com)
Date: Tue Sep 20 2005 - 14:36:52 PDT 

Message-ID: <33388780.1127252213832.JavaMail.root@mswamui-cedar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 14:36:52 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
From: Chris Orr <christineorr@mindspring.com>
Subject: SLA bylaws voting (long post)

In short: I'd like to encourage everyone to exercise their membership rights and vote on the bylaws change at SLA. Go to http://www.sla.org/evote2005 for more information and to log in to vote.

Below is a commentary from the SLA Treasurer Gloria Zamora.

Thanks,
Chris Orr
SLA-SF President

---------------

Dear members of SLA Leadership:

The Fellows of SLA have been asking a number of questions regarding the
bylaws vote that is currently before the membership. I thought it would be
useful to share the responses developed by the staff and the Board with you.
If you find this useful, please share it with your chapter and division
colleagues. Also if you have additional questions, please let me know. My
contact information can be found at the end of the e-mail.

To the SLA Fellows,

Thanks for all of your comments and for the time you spent reviewing the
information. Let me try to address your comments and answer your questions.

To be sure, SLA is getting to the point where our expenditures will exceed
our income. Even if we were to do nothing else but to continue to provide
the current services, we would soon be in a deficit position because the
cost of business continues to increase. We would like, however, to provide
increased services for our members; services that the membership has
requested. Continued development of Click University is going to require
adequate funding. The members have asked for a more comprehensive and
globalized compensation study, rather than a salary survey of only North
American members. In order to make the online member experience truly
interactive and meaningful, we will need an investment beyond previous
efforts. We would also like to promote diversity within our profession and
possibly expand internationally. For these reasons and more, we need to
generate more income. The cost of services per member is currently well
over what the dues can provide, so the need to increase the dues is
important just to keep pace with inflation. In fact this increase will put
us even with the increases in inflation since the last increase. Continued
growth in the value of SLA membership just adds to the logic of this plan.
 
We also heard the concern from the membership that we needed to provide some
relief for those in our profession who are generally new to the profession
and therefore in a lower salary range. That was the rationale for a dues
restructuring and not a dues increase alone.

When the Finance Committee considered various scenarios we decided on an
expected return from the increase, factoring in the lowered dues for those
members making less than $35K. We looked at a $200,000 net revenue gain.
This number does not include the increased return to the units through their
allotments. According to the salary survey, there are approximately 1000
members who are under $35K who could receive the reduced rate. This number
does not include the students and retired members who would continue to pay
dues at an even lower rate. Their rate was not restructured. Of course we
do not have the legal authority to verify salaries. We will rely on our
members to be truthful regarding their salaries. So should we see a great
increase in members applying for the $35K we may have to rethink this
decision.

Finally, the Finance Committee did consider several scenarios regarding the
cap and the three-year limit on increases. The 12% cap is a very recent
invention. It was not in our bylaws prior to the last revision in 2002. We
felt like there needed to be some constraint put on increases in order to
provide some stability to our members, but we also felt it was important for
the Finance Committee and the Board to be responsible with the memberships’
dollars. Had we been reviewing the dues structure more frequently we may
not have had to increase the dues by the percentage they are increasing at
this time. So we believe some constraint is warranted but not two and the
Finance Committee chose to retain the three-year time frame and remove the
percentage cap.
 
I'd also like to address the matter of investing trust in the SLA Board of
Directors to make sound financial decisions for the Association. Quite
simply, the assignment of authority to the Board found in the SLA Bylaws and
the process for electing Board members are overt acts of faith by the
membership in the Board. Trust is earned by a Board, but members must
consider that their act of faith in assigning responsibilities to the Board
is a very critical factor here. Three dues increases in 20 years -- for a
total of US$70 -- is evidence that SLA Boards (which are made up of SLA
members) are historically reluctant to increase dues.
 
Friends, the Association's financial assets are not keeping pace with
inflation. Simultaneously, we must find ways to attract new entrants into
the profession. The proposal at hand is a great step in the right
direction, and I sincerely hope that you will openly support its passage.

Please be assured that the Finance Committee and the Board are trying to
balance the concerns of our members with the fiscal realities of the
present.

Thank you again for your responses. I hope this answers your concerns.
Please let me know if you have additional questions.
 

Gloria
 
Gloria Zamora
Treasurer, SLA
505 845-0811
gjzamor@sandia.gov

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