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The meeting was called to order by President Chuck Allen at 11:15 a.m. All National Officers were present along with approximately 25 delegates. A motion was made by Matt Ganis and second by Julia Bachtell to dispense with the reading of the minutes from the past year’s business meeting. The motion passed. Reports:Secretary: The Bylaws have been updated and new folders have been made. Treasurer: Budget has been approved. Executive Secretary: Janet and Matt Ganis will be moving to Las Cruces, New Mexico. The League continues to grow, we have gained over 1500 new members this year. Vice President: Our new Member-At-Large (MAL) program is in place and we are preparing for the new members. Meade Instruments Corporation has donated an 8” LX 200, to be auctioned at this meeting to help pay for the printing of more brochures. They will be distributed in Meade telescopes; 20,000 have already been used. We will also be offering on line registrations for the MAL’s. Meade Instrument’s incredible support has made this possible. President: The League is doing very well. We are making changes as they are needed to make everything as convenient as possible for our members. Our home page has seen improvements weekly, thanks to Matt Ganis. Sky and Telescope will be sponsoring our convention next year in Ventura. The editor of the REFLECTOR will be receiving a 15% commission on advertising he has generated. Ed Flaspoehler, editor of the REFLECTOR has won an Apex 99 Award for publication excellence in the category of a newsletter produced by a single person. The League will be amending any S.R.’s that apply to our awards stating that all awards and winners shall be reported to the editor of the REFLECTOR and to the web master. Trust Fund interest can be used for special projects, if the Trust Fund Committee elects to. Four members have been voted to honorary status. They are Jim Fox, Jack Horkheimer, John Diebol and Dr. Frank Bash. Some of our regions have not held elections for a while. These will need to be held before next year’s convention in Ventura. If there is a problem, the regions need to let the League know so we can help. On all new convention agreements a line will be added that states the AL will be added on the insurance. From this point on there will be no blank proxies accepted. They will need to be filled out before the Council Meeting. No one will hold more then one proxy and their own vote. We are planning to bond our Treasurer and looking into bonding anyone else that the Council feels need be. S.R. #8 Product Complaints will be repealed and we are amending S.R. #9, Dues. We are grandfathering the Member-At-Large (MAL) memberships prior to March 31,1999. There was a very heavy debate about raising dues for member societies. The rationale for this is that the League is planning on setting up an office and it is very expensive to do so. Our workload is so heavy now that we need to make plans for the future. The vote was very close 12 to 11, but it was voted down for this year. We will wait and see if our new MAL program can’t pick up some or all of this expense. The last dues increase was in 1996. It was increased $1.05 per member. There is approximately $65,000.00 in the Trust Fund. Jackie Wade received the Texas Star Party’s Omega Centauri Award for her service to astronomy. Report on the 2000 convention:Tim Robertson of the Western region will chair this event. It will be hosted by the Ventura County Astronomical Society. This ALCON will be held July 17-22, 2000 at the Holiday Inn, Ventura Beach Resort. Sky and Telescope will be sponsoring this event. Some of the organizations attending are the Astronomical League, ALPO, IOTA, IDA, SETI, AAVSO and others. It is about one hour outside of L.A. It would be best to fly into LAX Airport. Temperatures should be around 75 degrees with the beach right outside the door. It also has a rooftop restaurant and great rooms available. There will be a barbecue on the beach, awards banquet, about 80 speakers, discounts to all attractions, a star party at Mt. Pinos and trips to various astronomical sites nearby. This will be an outstanding ALCON. Don’t miss it! Announcements:Meade Instruments has graciously donated an 8” LX 200 to be auction. The opening bid was $1,500.00. Congratulations to Julia and Dave Bachtell; they add it to their collection for $2,000.00. This money will pay for our next printing of the MAL brochures used in Meade telescopes. Thank you, Julia, Dave, and Meade. Adjourn: A motion was made by Orvil Lawson and seconded by Matt Ganis to adjourn the meeting at 12:09 P.M. The motion passed.
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