Ditchmen • NUCA of Florida January Ditchmen | Page 4

Looking forward we still face financial difficulties as we have not replaced our income from CNA, but we have closed the gap considerably. Many of our chapters have had success in driving up membership numbers, which certainly helps the dues income. Hopefully the success of the conference will continue its upward trend and help our bottom line. Our confidence that our long term finances will work themselves out is high, particularly with the new additions to the Board and the energy they bring.

The biggest challenges we face (over which we have some control) are likely legislative. While we have started to stabilize our finances and membership numbers, we need now to focus on driving up our PAC and building a strong legislative presence.

I want to invite each and every one of you to our upcoming Legislative Days in Tallahassee. Walking the halls of the legislature is an experience every one of us should have. The impacts it has are real and the bigger our group the more impact we have. Bruce Kershner is getting out information on what is happening in this upcoming session, please read what he is telling us and get involved.

Just a reminder, we are trying to get a strong legislative committee going, if your chapter has not sent us the name and contact information for your member of this important committee, please do so as soon as possible. I would hope that all proposed members of this committee can join us in Tallahassee for our Legislative Days on February 1st and 2nd. See our web site for details.

Tom Woodward

"This time of year is a good one to reflect a bit on the past and look forward to the future."

We have survived extremely difficult financial times as an organization. We lost one of our major sources of income (the insurance company’s allocation for being our sponsored carrier), watched a second source of income turn into a money pit (our annual conference went from making money to losing money due to a huge drop in attendance), and for a while lost a good deal of our third major source when our dues income dropped when we were a house divided for a few years. We tightened our belts, reunited our house and turned the conference back into a profit center thanks in large part to the efforts of your leadership over the past few years, the efforts of our many committees and a rebounding economy.

President's Message

Tom Woodward