President’s Message I recently attended the Spring Conference and want to again thank Coconino County Sherriff’s Office Search and Rescue for the excellent event in Flagstaff. They were professional, organized, helpful and appeared to enjoy working together! There were lots of new faces at the conference and the pre-conference events were very well attended. For those of you who made it all the way to the business meeting, you are aware of some big changes in proxy voting that will be in effect starting with the February winter business meeting in 2024. In short, there is no proxy voting anymore. The Officers of the Mountain Rescue Association have been aware that proxy voting was not standard practice on a Board of Directors, so we hired lawyers in Washington State, versed in non-profit law, to investigate the issue. They confirmed that as a non-profit, proxy voting is not permitted on the governing board. Our structure in the MRA is such that each team makes up the BOD and the BOD is responsible for essentially all decision making in the organization. Despite the inclusion of proxy voting in our bylaws and policies, we cannot continue with this practice. The MRA is going to correct in the simplest way possible, which is to
eliminate proxy voting. This maintains most of the existing policies and procedures the MRA has been using for decades. Each member team can still send a representative to the BOD meetings. The roles and responsibilities of the Board will not change. There will be a necessary re-write of our bylaws and policies to reflect this change. There will also be some minor updates to the bylaws that will be proposed at the same time. Look for these in your inbox for review at least 6 weeks prior to the business meeting in February. The result of this change is that teams will need to send a representative in person to have their voice heard and their vote counted. In the past, more than 30% of votes were cast by proxy at the MRA business meetings. Going forward the teams that participate in person will be the ones making the decisions and deciding in what direction the MRA will grow. As professionals we need to be accountable and available to work through our problems and plan the future of the organization. Show up, get involved, we will be stronger working together. Alison Sheets President, Mountain Rescue Association
