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From the Secretariat

Greetings to all from New Orleans...
Greetings to all from New Orleans where the gorgeous fall weather is only beginning to appear.
The start of the fiscal year (September 1) is always a busy time at the Secretariat:  the final version of the annual budget for the previous year is submitted to the Treasurer by the end of October; ongoing discussions on myriad logistical details resume with the President and Local Arrangements to firm up plans for the meeting the following calendar year; renewal notices are sent out to institutional and personal members, and renewal payments start coming in.  This year has been no exception.
At this time, the 2012-2013 FY budget is almost complete, and it will be submitted before October 31 to the Treasurer.
This year we got a head start with the press release, sending out an abbreviated version of the call for papers on July 17.  President Roberto Delgadillo has posted information on the theme of the Salt Lake City conference in English, Spanish and Portuguese here. Please continue to spread the word as Roberto begins crafting what is sure to be an interesting program.  Meantime, the Local Arrangements team chaired by John Wright is busy coordinating things in Utah.  John has already contracted with the hotel and is in the process of arranging for transportation and reception venues for the host reception sponsored by Brigham Young University, as well as for the Libreros' reception, in consultation with the SALALM book dealers.
In terms of membership numbers, I have good news, a bit better news than I was able to report for this time of year in the past.  As of today, 154 personal and 76 institutional members, including 19 sponsoring institutions have renewed their membership to SALALM.  For comparison, we ended the 2013 fiscal year with a total of 222 personal and 91 institutional members, with 20 sponsors.  I do not have figures from last year for the end of October for comparison but, for whatever it's worth, on September 30, 2012, only 55 personal and 44 institutional members had renewed.   The good news:  All but one sponsor has already renewed.  Huge applause to them for doing so!  We will be sending out a special thank you after October 31 to each institutional sponsor for their continued support in the 2013-2014 FY.  And almost 70% of our personal members have renewed.  Thanks to all who have made the effort to send in your payment on time.  The bad news:  About 30% have not.  I know we can do much better.  I hope 100% have renewed by the October 31 deadline!
In other news, we have begun to update the Code of Executive Board Decisions, beginning with the items approved at the Miami meeting.  This is the list of items, usually related to policy and procedure, approved by vote by the Executive Board.  We will then continue backwards to include the decisions from the 2008 meeting.  I will send them via LALA-L and they will then be incorporated into the existing document in the coming weeks.  We should be up to date by the end of November.

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