Hey Great Lakes Members!

Just a quick update from our Fall Quarterly General Membership Meeting at the Rocks 'n Valleys lodge yesterday (10/6/18)! Member attendance was a little light, but never-the-less we covered a lot of ground and had a great meeting.

At the top of the agenda was the annual re-election of officers, with the Treasurer & President slots open this year (even number years).

The membership elected Paul Hittie to a two-year term as Treasurer, and Mike Olmstead (me!) to a third two-year term as President.

Both terms began at the drop of the gavel at yesterday's meeting.

Congratulations to Paul, and a hearty and sincere "Thank You" to Dave Smith for 8 (or is it 10, Dave?!) years of outstanding service as Treasurer. And thank you all for the confidence in me to let me go at it one more time!!

With that our Executive Board of Directors now looks like this:
- President: Mike Olmstead
- Vice President: Dale Stroebel
- Recording Secretary: Mary Jo Airo
- Treasurer: Paul Hittie
- Membership Secretary: Kari Dunlap
I know I can speak for the entire Board here: We are energized and excited to be a team and work together to further the Association's goals and objectives!

We heard reports from Treasurer and Membership Secretary. Finances are healthy, and we're addressing a couple membership issues. As reported out of last week's EBOD meeting, the Association is making good progress towards upgrading our membership management system, and integrating that into an e-mail system which will provide the Association a much more robust capability to stay in touch with our membership base. Thanks to the work of the ad-hoc Communication Committee and Brandon Goldberg we've chosen a software package that should accomplish all of our goals and then some! And there were a couple other membership issues that we have also worked out an resolved.

And not in any particular order a quick glance at some of the other topics from yesterday's meeting:
- We will be maintaining our presence at the annual Jeep Creep again!! Please come out and help us staff the GLFWDA tent for an hour or two! It's easy work and you get to talk Jeeps & 4x4's and trails and cool stuff like that with lots of people!!
- The Trail Ride Committee was asked to look at a 2019 Gitchigumi trail ride; after some excellent discussion it appears that we will need someone to step up to coordinate & organize this event.
- Land Use Committee issues:
> Oakland County ORV Park won't be opening to public until 2020, possibly some special events next year. Work is still progressing towards a viable public venue, though.
> Non-ORV parties are threatening/advocating for winter and/or spring ORV Route trail closures; stay tuned to the GLFWDA.ORG website and Face Book page for updates. The possibility that we may have to show our numbers at forthcoming DNR meetings.
> Per DNR personnel they will be working on the section of trail on Drummond Island known as the 'north fork' next spring.
- The Association is working on new brochures! Should be ready soon.
- And we still need a volunteer to step up for the Trail Maintenance Coordinator's position; Eric Culling is the current coordinator and has expressed a desire to move on. Eric has been an excellent representative of the Association and has indicated he will stick around until a replacement steps up. If you're inclined at all please take a hard look at it - shoot any of the Board an e-mail if you're interested!

So those are the hilights of yesterday's meeting!!! Minutes will be posted to the website for your review shortly. Next Quarterly Membership Meeting will be in January 2019, with time & location details to be announced later.

Thank you all for your support of the Association - looking forward to another two years with you all!

Mike Olmstead
President, GLFWDA.