Greetings,
I hope all of you were able to enjoy the winter season. We’ve had a very different winter in Alaska this year as our climate is definitely changing. At the winter business meeting we asked for suggestions on how the membership could become more engaged with the MRA. There were more than a dozen captured and the board will be looking at ways to implement them.
There was discussion about moving the date of the winter meeting to November or December. This would allow approval of the year’s budget before the beginning of the fiscal year. The board instead decided to make the fiscal year March 1 to the end of February. To initiate this, for the transition year the board will approve a two-month budget for January and February 2026. At the winter business meeting in 2026 we will then approve a one-year budget for the revised 2026-2027 fiscal year.
The March board meeting agenda and Zoom link were sent to the membership. About a half dozen members attended. The agenda and link will be sent out for each board meeting going forward. Once the meeting minutes are approved, they will be shared with the membership.
The Scholarship Funds for 2025 are $1500 per region plus $200 per team. The intent of the scholarship fund is to entice new MRA members to attend spring conferences and their attendant business meetings. The hope is that this will spark interest in engaging with the MRA at the national level and not just local. I ask that the region chairs solicit interest amongst their teams for new members to participate in the scholarship fund program. Any questions about the program should be directed to Antonio Arizo at californiabrd@mra.org.
This year’s spring conference is being hosted by Marin County Search and Rescue at the NatureBridge Golden Gate campus on Rodeo Beach. This is a beautiful setting just north of San Francisco. More details can be found in the story in this issue and a full schedule of classes and pre-conference events can be viewed here. I hope to see many of you there.
The membership will be voting on a revised set of Bylaws at the Spring Conference Business meeting. These are small changes that will be described in my email to the membership mid-April which will include the revised bylaws for review.
Mark Miraglia
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