total agreement

I completely agree with Gaye's interpretation of the bylaws and having been around when the Canadian Driving Society used to beg people to put their names forward for the board I understand the rationale for these bylaws. In an ideal world everyone in Canada that drives horses would see the value of joining a national organization. There would be a large pool of interested members and therefore it would not be a struggle to encourage nominations from all regions. In reality there are very few members of DC. $40 is expensive. I made a formal request to the board to lower the 2010 membership fees in the hope that more people would join and that was turned down. I guess the possibility of new members was not appealing. There were just over 150 possible votes at the Nov. 14 meetings. When you subtract the affiliate club votes and those members who must belong to DC (coaches, officials, CET members) there aren't very many voluntary individual members. Last fall there was a request sent to DC for a breakdown of the membership numbers by region. That doesn't sound like an outrageous request does it? It was turned down.