President’s Corner

2020 Has Left the Building!!!

Peter Olliviere , President

Its 7:00 AM on November 30th as I sit down to write this article. You won’t see it until January 2021, so I won’t spend a lot of time on past events since most of those things would have been covered by the immediate Past President. My intention is to focus on the New Year and to set a tone for 2021. As I see it, as the new President, I have a couple of challenges that the Club needs to be guided through. As can be guessed Coved 19 is one of them.

In 2020 because of the Virus, we were forced to take steps to minimize the exposure of our Club members. The only way to effectively accomplish that was to move events later into the year hoping that the virus would clear up. When that didn’t occur, we were forced to cancel those events. Some events did occur, such as the North Carolina event, but for the most part we have been shut down. As I write this, the virus is once again on the rise, but the hope is that with the advance of a vaccine and therapeutics, we will begin to get the pandemic under control. You as an individual have the right to make your own decisions as it relates to exposure and risk to your health, but as a Club the Board of Directors must follow the directions of the National Organization on how much exposure we allow the membership at PCA sponsored events.

With that being said, we are working to introduce new events that are more interesting to our members, but still keep everyone safe. We will be introducing more touring events. Although Florida is not the most scenic of states, we do have several interesting roads and small towns in the northern part of the state. We can do overnight drives to these areas and enjoy the scenic beauty that these areas offer. Most of these drives will be two-day events. We could leave on Saturday morning, enjoy the drive, dine together that night, and then return home the next morning. I believe that a number of our members do not want to drive several hours to a destination and then have to drive home the same day. So along with two-day events will be closed-loop events, such as poker runs that are somewhat competitive but end were we start. The bottom line is that if you like to drive you will be able to do a lot of it in 2021.

We will continue to carefully monitor our social events and try to walk that fine line between enjoying ourselves and keeping every one safe. Social events are the hardest to manage because by their very nature people are intermingling in a small area, thus creating the highest level of risk. But our Social Directors will continue to work to create events that overcome the obstacles and are fun.

By now you should be aware that a new region has been created from the northern portion of the Gold Coast Region. I’m not going to go into detail here because I will be dedicating a special article to that topic and its impact on us, but the new region creation will provide many positive opportunities for us in Gold Coast.

My priorities for 2021 is membership participation, the goal being to get more of you, the members, interested enough to volunteer your time in bettering the Club experience. All too often in groups the old rule takes over: 20 percent of the membership does 80 percent of the work. We have to change that and the only way I can see that happening is to offer opportunities that align with your interests. You the membership must be made more aware of what’s going on internally so you know what decisions are being made on your behalf, and you are given the opportunity to get directly involved. I want your questions, thoughts, and suggestions; they can only make the Club better.

Forget 2020, Put your foot down, and let’s go flat out for 2021.

Peter

HELP WANTED RONALD McDONALD HOUSE