My report this month will sound like a travel log as I have been away from the office for meetings for both NAR and OAR plus Golf outings for our Board plus the Howard Hanna Coo-Coo, Chow-Chow outing.
• On July 20th thru the 22nd I attended the OAR CEO Symposium in Columbus. This annual meeting is a planning meeting for local board Presidents and AE's to meet with their peers and OAR officers. The meeting started with a presentation from Coach Jackie Leavenworth on leadership skills for incoming presidents. The meeting allows time for the leaders from across the state to get to know each other and to have the OAR officers get to know local Board Presidents. We had a presentation from Gavin Blair, CEO of the Dayton Board on the upcoming NAR core standards. Gavin is a member of the PAG working on the standards. We had a legal briefing from OAR council Peg Ritenour
• The 24th thru 29th I took some time off
• 30th thru 4 in office
• 5th was the 2nd annual Bob Strayer Memorial Classic golf outing. We had a good turn out and our sponsorships were up this year.
• The evening of the 5th I traveled to Detroit to catch a flight to Atlanta for the NAR Broker Summit. The 2 day summit was well organized and set up to keep expenses to a minimum. This was the second annual event and covered many topics on issues facing Brokers and Associations / MLS in the marketplace of today. The event was sold out and the meeting agenda was filled with both speakers and breakout roundtable discussion groups. The exchange of information was good between both large and smaller size Associations and Brokers.
• I returned to the office on the 8th to catch up on issues.
• On the 11th I played in the Howard Hanna Cho- Cho, Chow-Chow along with Phillip, Frank, and D J. This event is well attended by both local and corporate Howard Hanna team members. Our team was the winner of the event.
• On the 13th we held a MLS class followed by a new member orientation class. The class went well and I think that we have made progress in this area of our training for new members.
• On Sunday the 17th I traveled with President-Elect Corder to the NAR Leadership Meeting in Chicago. This annual event one of the most important meeting of the year as it allows the incoming President to hear first-hand the agenda that NAR will be planning for the following year.
As you can see from the above information I have been on the road for a majority of the past 30 days.
In other matters, we have had several ethics complaints filed along with committee meetings of the Grievance, Golf, Awards, and By-Law committees. We are making plans for the membership meeting, awards banquet, and a Broker meeting. I have had several phone conservations with D J on matters of Professional Standards and MLS related matters.
Our work on the Website is progressing slowly due to communication difficulties with Rapattoni staff. I still am confident that we can resolve the issues, but the site is not a turnkey site and has taken a large amount of staff time to get it going.
We have a good start on NAR core standards but we still have some major items to address
• We need to finalize our By-laws and have membership approval by the end of the year. If possible we should try to have the vote at the annual meeting in October.
• We need to finalize our plans on our charitable efforts.
• We have to have a strategic plan finished by the first quarter of 2015
In conclusion we have made great strides in working towards the June 30th 2015 deadline for NAR. We will need to stay on task in the next few months to ensure success in meeting the requirements of core standards.