January 15, 2008 General Meeting at Hanscom AFB
RADM Mike Milner first spoke to the 27 people present during dinner and there was a Q & A afterwards. He handed out two documents to the membership 1. “Transformation Accomplishments and Future Direction”, (http://dcp.psc.gov/PDF_docs/Transformationdirection.pdf) dated December 6, 2007 and 2. Uniforms, Personal Appearance and Grooming Standards, January 2008 Reminders” (http://dcp.psc.gov/ccbulletin/articles/USPHS_Uniforms_01_2008.htm) dated January 1, 2008. He spoke about various relevant PHS activities he was involved with and specifically discussed recruiting activities. He briefly discussed some uniform issues and stated that the “Salt and Pepper” uniform is definitely going to be phased out and that the SG wished to move forward with transformation and does not want to re-visit old issues. He reported that DHHS has approval to fund 500 officers this year (up from 250 last year) to attend this years National COA/COF Symposium in June, 2008. He requested that the NE-COA Executive Board canvas the general membership about (1) the location of each officers alumni university, (2) do they still have a relationship with their alumni university that they could use for recruiting purposes or (3) do the have a relationship with another college or university that they could use for recruiting purposes.
We had a brief general membership meeting following RADM Milner’s talk regarding the following items:
Creation of new
Committees- CDR McClain and LT Guardia informed the membership that the
Executive Board with the guidance of LT vanTwuyver had recruited members to
form three new committees: 1. Marketing (FDA officers LCDR
The Membership Committee has been working to identify active duty officers and retirees in NECOA’s geographic area by working with National COA to resolve membership discrepancies and has submitted a list of officers identified as members by National COA, and a list of officers in question as NECOA members. The Membership Committee is responsible for developing the completed roster which will be forwarded to the Recruiting and Retention Committee.
The Recruiting and Retention Committee will contact officers in the NE-COA’s geographic area for follow up to try and recruit these officers to join our NECOA. They were already provided a list of NECOA officers working at Devens.
The Marketing Committee was formed to start marketing the PHS Officers Cards and the cards are completed and ready for possible sale at PHS events, possibly including the COA/COF Symposium in June, 2008. CDR McClain and LT Guardia both said they would be at the Symposium and that other COA chapters were working on having a table to sell various types of PHS goods, and each is willing to volunteer at the table to possibly sell these PHS Officers Cards.
The status of NE-COA
elections- CDR McClain reported that we needed to conduct the annual
elections for the Executive Board. LT Guardia said that we were already late in
getting this done and that he will send out and e-mail to the general
membership with the NECOA website address (http://www.necoa.us)
and reported that election will conducted soon; the same way as last year as
follows: We will first request the names of officers interested in being
specific Executive Board members, then we will post on the NECOA website a
summary of the officers Biography and reasons for wanting to be in that
Executive Board office. We will then hold a vote for the elections via e-mail
votes sent to the President (CDR McClain) with an e-mail cc to Secretary (LT
vanTwuyver) and then announce the winners. We hope to have a reconciled general
membership list before this all happens.
Possible financial sponsorship for officers to the next National COA Symposium in June, 2008- CDR McClain and LT Guardia explained that Executive Board was considering a small financial sponsorship for Executive Board members to the next National COA/COF Symposium in June, 2008. This was mentioned as a possible incentive for officers to run for board membership positions now and in the future. There was a question about how much money the board can vote on before we get the general membership involved. LT Guardia said it would be in the NECOA by-laws and that he would look into it and that the by-laws are on the NECOA website. If the Executive Board does vote to provide financial sponsorship, it will be a small amount to help with the officers general funding needs (hotel or flight or car, etc) and will documented using a form being drafted by the Treasurer (CDR Perlman).
Encouraging the general memberships for ideas: CDR McClain and LT Guardia talked to the members about how this was everyone’s NE-COA and asked to members to think of ideas for our NECOA branch improvements including possible creation the following committees: fund-raising, by-laws, elections and social. There is a standing website committee with LT vanTwuyver being the web master, but it can always use ideas and help. We also talked about various ways to (possibly) use some of the money from the treasury to help keep (or increase) the meeting attendance at the current or increased levels. The following ideas were suggested (some of which may required spending money from the treasure): having meeting speakers (financial planning, retirement information, benefits, Space A travel, etc.), bring some type of leadership training to a meeting and having some type of general training at the meeting (like BLS).
Treasurer’s report: CDR Perlman provided a written report that showed that the NECOA has $1677.17 in its banking account. He also reported that the new NE-COA checking account is now through Hanscom Federal Credit Union and is a service fee free account.
LT Guardia stated that we hope to plan the next general membership meeting for sometime in May, 2008.