AMA and Club Officers

[Jim Branaum]

Recently there was an e-mail from the DVIII AMA DVP that indicated the AMA EC has decided that all AMA Chartered clubs will be required to have Safety Officers WITH E-MAIL addresses to get re-chartered in 2005.

It seems reasonable that the AMA require club officers to be AMA members, but that can be 'tweaked' to fit the local situation if there are not enough AMA members willing to serve and associate (non-flying) members would do the club tasks needed. I was recently told that the lowest acceptable number of AMA members in the club officer list was TWO.

It also seems reasonable that the AMA specifiy which officers a club must have. However this new directive goes much further. This is the first time I know of where the AMA has specified the qualifications of club officers. Now we not only have to have the officers, but they must meet with AMA's approval?

I am not at all sure we want the AMA to take that direct control of local clubs without some significant changes in the way business is done. The second part of that is that I don't have a clue which changes would make the new specification setting acceptable.

[FHHuber]

Where is having a safety officer harmful?

A safety officer is someone who is well versed in safety rules and how to help avoid accidents. (especially preventable accidents like sticking a hand in a prop since most modelers are too dumb to figure it out on their own) He is someone that others can goto for advice on if a certain practice is safe or not.. and if it really violates the club's rules or not.

A safety officer is a "field nazi" out there to holler at everyone... he is responsible for the "less than well thought out" actions of club members that just seem to happen with no warning.

****

Now as for the AMA mandating that a club have one... kudos. That assumes that the club has a member with the knowledge required to serve the office. Most clubs will have someone who can give good safety advice... some newer clubs may have a problem finding someone with the experience and knowledge to do the job.

Maybe it would be better to have a "Safety Issues Contact Person" for each club also... Someone that can aid the AMA in distributing safety information between issues of Model Aviation. (which has a safety column... for disseminating this kind of stuff)

_____________________________

starting with the simulator will HELP. But it won't replace getting some in-person assistance while learning. It will let you practice making the same mistakes all day but you won't crash your rc plane.

[J_R]

The position of safety officer was not defined by the EC. His/her responsiblities were not defined by the EC. Anything more, or less, at this point, is pure speculation. Those are items have left to the club to determine. Normally, the AMA tries not to tell clubs what they must do. The intention was to create a contact so that information might be "pushed" to the officer over the net, in a more timely way than snail mail would allow.

Here is the motion as it was passed:

Motion VI: It was moved that effective with the 2005 Charter Club Renewal, all clubs are required to name a Safety Officer. This officer must have access to E-mail.

[Jim Branaum]

The last sentence of that motion specifies the qualifications the club must use to be in compliance and get flying field insurance in 2005. It makes no difference if your safety officer does not even fly, as long as e-mail is available. Is this really the right way to solve any of the speculated problems?

In conversation today is was suggested that getting information out to the membership in a timely manner has become more important to the AMA and the AMA EC, as was demonstrated with the recent battery/charger warnings. It is recognized by many that some club officers do not take AMA provided information to their clubs, and some suspect that this new requirement is an attempt at addressing that problem.

A better solution might be to simply require that multiple club officers have access to e-mail, rather than specific ones. That way good, hard working officers with no intention of playing with "confusers" can still be put to good use by clubs.

[Viper Pilot]

Geez,

What's the big deal??? Requiring a Safety Officer to have an e-mail address is not a controversial issue, just a practical one. New rulings come out of the EC all the time, and the Safety Officers need to be kept in the know.

Seems to me that this is just another AMA bash thread.

Some people just need to complain, I guess.

VP

[Jim Branaum]

No, this was not meant to be AMA bash thread, reguardless of what the new guys might think or say. Rather the purpose was to test what a couple of interested parties thought might be a better idea.

In my club, the bylaws say the VP is the Safety Officer. He does NOT have e-mail and refuses to be involved with computers, yet he does a yeomans work FOR the club. Because of the new AMA qualifications, he is to be removed from the club EC because he has no desire to take on other tasks.

I am not sure how THAT type of action is going to help the AMA *or* the club. However IF the AMA were to change its position to simply reqiring two e-mail contacts on the club EC, the same 'value' that you noted will be accomplished. This also increases the possibility that AMA 'pushed' safety (or any other subject) information might get shared with the club members.

[Viper Pilot]

. . . . However IF the AMA were to change its position to simply reqiring two e-mail contacts on the club EC, the same 'value' that you noted will be accomplished. This also increases the possibility that AMA 'pushed' safety (or any other subject) information might get shared with the club members.

Makes sense to me. Why can't you're Safety Officer use another EC member's address. That would solve the problem, right?

VP

[J_R]

Not bad Viper. It does not say he has to have e-mail, or a computer for that matter, only that he must have access to it.

[Jim Branaum]

Makes sense to me. Why can't you're Safety Officer use another EC member's address. That would solve the problem, right?

VP


THAT is an entirely different story not really relavent to the discussion other than the example.

However, I did that for him in the re charter packed and someone in the club wants to hang me, but that is MY (our - as in my club's) problem. LOL!

[the-plumber]

THAT is an entirely different story not really relavent to the discussion other than the example.

However, I did that for him in the re charter packed and someone in the club wants to hang me, but that is MY (our - as in my club's) problem. LOL!

IIRC there was an EC edict a year or so ago that the club point-of-contact with AMA must be the club president.

IIARC, that edict went down in flames toot sweet when it was pointed out that the club _secretary_ was the nominal individual who dealt with all the AMA paperwork and that forcing the club president to take on part of the secretary's job was just plain nonsense.

As with the on-again, off-again mandatory/not mandatory "club by-laws" schtick, some things that have come down from on high in Muncie haven't made a whole bunch of sense. With respect to the by-laws issue, the EC found out that a lot of clubs didn't think much of the idea of Muncie mandating how a local club conducts it's own business, and the requirement to have by-laws or lose the charter became a recommendation rather than a mandate.

I would agree that a club should have one person who wants to play Torquemada, and many do. I don't agree that AMA can mandate the club field nazi have e-mail, telephone, or carrier pigeon.

[Jim Branaum]

Thanks, I was beginning to wonder if I was nuts or something.

It is clear that they are attempting to penetrate the clubs and talk to the membership (on some level), but the methods tried clearly will not work.

I wonder if someone suggested that they simply add a stipulation to the officer list issue, at least TWO have valid e-mail. That at least tracks the requirement for two of them to be AMA members.