NCHA News

Nov 7, 2019, 12:45 PM by NCHA President, Ron Pietrafeso

A message from NCHA President, Ron Pietrafeso

Hello directors and members,

I have sent out notices of special directors and members meetings to be held on November 30th and December 8th, however, I have been asked by the majority of the Executive Committee to re-schedule these meetings until sometime after the first of the year. I felt all along that I was doing the right thing however I also feel that I must listen to the majority of the EC members who were elected by all of you. Our bylaws have been outdated for years and so many things have changed since they were last amended. As a perfect example notices of these type meetings according to the present bylaws must be presented to the membership 30 days in advance by mail and positing in the Chatter. They can be emailed but for the over 2200 members who don't have an email, they have to be actually mailed. Now if that mail contains more than one page as this one did the cost is so high it is not doable. A change in the bylaws could direct them to the NCHA website for the notice in its entirety. Simple things like that have to be changed this is the 21st century, we can not continue to run this organization with rules that were done 25 years ago or longer. Please, all members we owe a tremendous amount of thanks to Dan Churchill and Lew Stevens who have worked tirelessly for the last 45 days, hour after hour to put together at least something for all of us to look at. They did this while still running their practices and at NO COST to the NCHA. We didn't agree with all the suggestions as I'm sure some of you didn't also. However, as they told me several times this is just a starting point the directors will have their chance to amend, add or change whatever they want and then the members will have their chance to do the same. This to me was the democratic way to make these needed changes. I know some of you after receiving the notice and reading the suggested changes saw many places where you disagreed. That was the point your disagreeing with certain things was what would be the start to amending those that you disagreed with and at the end, we would hopefully have what the majority wanted and the needed and agreed upon changes would have happened. Through your elected directors and EC members please make sure they know when you want these meetings to happen. It, in my opinion, is imperative that the long-overdue changes be made to our Governance system. Again I only want what is best for all of you I love this organization. Thank you for understanding.

Sincerely, 


Ron Pietrafeso