Thursday, August 24, 2006

Through the eyes of the president

I'm trying to get more of the local agents to read this blog so I'm going to share some of the items talked about today at our Board of Directors meeting. And if you are a member of a Realtor Association you may be interested as well at some of these observations.

At the start of the meeting I spoke of the broker council meeting I attended a couple of weeks back and mentioned that I'd like to hear (as an Association Board Member) from them on a more regular basis. My hope is that they will get better organized then they have been for a couple of years now. Of course getting input from any Member has been difficult ever since I've been on the Board, apathy is mostly my gift from the Membership.

I gave the Managers report on behalf of our Association Executive because he is regularly seeing doctors to prepare for his prostrate cancer procedure. The Board missed his presence today and will do so for the length of time he will be absent from his position. Our AE is Frank Lessing, please keep him in your prayers for a healthy and speedy recovery if you don't mind. He has really been the glue to helping me run the Board this year. Even the other day I had him do some reports for me and he was still at the office at 8:30pm as I went by on my way home. His emailed reports hit my email at 8:47pm. I'm such a tough boss. Anyway, Frank get better we all miss you.

We discussed the situation ongoing about the county's land split matrix and our draft resolution we (as part of the state Association) presented to the county. Plenty of work to be done and our eye must remain firmly on the ball because we are in for a fight to defeat the matrix. Today there is another meeting for Members of the Association at 4:00pm for more information at the public library meeting room. I'll be there and hope to see about 30 to 50 Members there.

The Board then agreed on how the Association will furnish representation to the new regional MLS (WARDEX) Board of Directors that is fairly close to launching. The brokers council will select, at their meetings, two of those representatives and each year the Association president will also be a member of the WARDEX BOD. There were some conditions that a broker would have to meet to be considered by the brokers council, but in my opinion it is up to that group of brokers to choose the best qualified representative to serve what will be two year terms to the WARDEX organization. Yes, the onus is on the BROKERS... are you listening BROKERS?!?! You wanted control of WARDEX and this is how you will have that control. Now... do me proud.

I'm starting to leak information to the Members on the cost change for membership to the Association. The bulk of the Association revenue for years came from the MLS, well our KGVAR MLS will be dissolving to make room for WARDEX and with that the revenue goes bye-bye. So the annual dues are sure to increase. Currently those annual dues are $141 a year, I expect them to be in the $325 to $400 range to make up for the lost MLS revenue to run the Associations expenses. This subject will be on Old Business for at least the next meeting. Meanwhile we must have a Budget Committee meeting hosted by our Treasurer very soon. Once that meeting date is settled on I'll be going to the Members to ask for their attendance for input and simply for information purposes, as change is a comin'. Change can be hard for Realtors??... duh.

Lastly, for the record this morning I announced the going 'live' date for the new MLS provider. It will be October 25th. I eagerly look forward to that date because I hate my current providers product (Paragon 1 and Voyager... if you are in the biz I bet you hate these products as well). Training classes will be held two times a day for the week of Oct. 16th through Oct. 20th. The Board talked about making it a mandatory session, but we instead are putting the onus on the BROKERS whether or not to make those training sessions their requirement of the Agents in his or her office. Should be interesting. I personally do not wish to attend those training sessions because I believe the new product will be very easy to use and a few hours for me on the system to play around with the features is pretty much all I'll need.

I want to thank the Board Members for their attendance and input today. Also I'm so happy with the committee's that were represented as well. And special thanks to the FOUR other Members who sat in on this meeting. Their input was valuable as well. I just wish more Members would bother to have a glimmer of interest.

Members make or break the Association. Get involved.

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