Minutes of the Annual Business Meeting of the
American Rhododendron Society, May 1971
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FIG: 71. General View at Tyler Arboretum,
entering the Gable section. |
FIG: 72. Looking down into the John
Wister garden, part of the garden tours at the National Meeting in Philadelphia. The "Wister Vista"? |
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The meeting convened by President Phetteplace at 4:20 p.m. at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. President Phetteplace spoke of the development of the Society beginning as a west coast society. As the society grew, membership increased in the east until now membership is evenly divided. There have been elected directors from the east before Mr. Alfred Martin, but he was the first one to regularly attend board meetings in the west. Most committees such as Shows, Judging, and Awards now have representation both in the east and west.
It has been proposed that since the bylaws require two meetings of the board of directors per year that one of these should be on each coast. The board has approved an expenditure of not more than $1500 per year to send one elected officer and director to the opposite coast for board meetings.
As the society has grown, the demands on the principle officers and committees have grown so that access to a secretarial staff is a requirement of office. President Dunn appointed a Long. Range Planning Committee which suggested the need for a central office. The permanent headquarters would contain a complete collection of society publications as well as handle correspondence and other society business. At present no complete public collection exists. This change should be made in a phased manner to avoid mistakes. Hopefully dues will not have to be raised beyond $12 per year to finance this.
The Society's funds look good, but much of the money is in special accounts such as a publication reserve of $13,382 and a research fund financed by receipts from the Seed Exchange. Several thousand of the assets are in inventory of publications. The most important task of the Society is to publish a good bulletin. Costs have increased for paper, printing and postage so that bulletins cost close to $1.00 each.
As far as is known, the American Rhododendron Society is the only society which subsidizes its chapters by refunding 30% of the dues collected. This means of the proposed $12.00 dues only $8.40 goes to operate the national society. The chapters also need more money to conduct their programs than the $2.25 they received under the old schedule.
Meeting adjourned 4:45.
A formal chapter roll call was not taken but the following chapters were represented at the meeting: California, Connecticut, Eugene, Gray's Harbor, Great Lakes, Indianapolis, Massachusetts, middle Atlantic, Midwest, Mohawk-Hudson, New Jersey, New York, Olympia, Philadelphia, Piedmont, Potomac Valley, Princeton, Seattle, Southwestern, Southern, Tacoma, Tappan Zee, Tidewater and Valley Forge.