开云体育

Spring Convention Updates

Kim Alley All Messages By This Member #5394 开云体育 Hello, wonderful Region 11 members! We have received several questions regarding the Spring Convention, so we thought it would be good to send out an update to try to answer them. 1. Why did we change locations? Our region is facing many of the same struggles that every other region has been hit with – declining membership, which in turn means declining dues income. Without?the membership numbers we’ve had in the past – and following two years of canceled events – our hotel room counts in Bakersfield have been greatly reduced. In past years, the City of Bakersfield gave us a significant grant to cover a large portion of the cost of renting the Mechanics Bank venue for our conventions. That grant?depends on contracting a certain number of hotel nights within the city. We can no longer fill the required room nights to qualify for that grant.? Events Coordinator Colleen McCormick has spent countless hours researching possible new facilities. Colleen searched diligently within Bakersfield for another venue and?could not find one that would suit our contest needs or our budget. She expanded the search radius and found the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, which met our budgetary?constraints and had the necessary facilities for us to hold a contest. 2. Why did we change the dates for the contest? Losing the grant from the City of Bakersfield put the region in a tough spot. We had limited time to find a new location that would fit our budgetary and logistic constraints.?It may seem that spring is a long time away, but SAI has already begun assigning judges. When we contacted Headquarters with concerns about finding a location, they?suggested we look at alternate dates to see if that would facilitate finding a venue. Changing the weekend of the Spring Convention allowed us to contract with the Oxnard?Performing Arts Center, which was already booked for our original weekend. The change to the venue and convention dates was not done without considerable thought. We understand the potential hardship that these changes may cause.?Unfortunately, time, logistics, and budgetary constraints all came together to make a perfect storm which resulted in these changes.? If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out directly to me. In an effort to restrict this email list to announcements and updates, please do not reply to all. Thank you, Kim Alley Team Coordinator, Region 11

Previous Topic Next Topic