It is only appropriate that I start this report by acknowledging Southern Autos for supporting us and supplying today’s location to hold our AGM. Thank you to Andrew Craw – the dealer principle for allowing this to happen, Alex Rains -Sales Manager for the coordination as well as Don Howarth in one of his last acts as a committee member for arranging it. Their support as well as our other advertisers, largely through the advertising revenue in our magazine is what keeps this club afloat financially and keeps our membership fees stable. Just in case you aren’t aware these advertisers are (in the order they appeared in this month’s magazine);
- Euroline Parts Connection
- Euro Motorworks
- Auto France Ltd
- Peugeot Drive Europe
- Apex Auto Centre
- Southern Autos Manukau
- Armstrong Motor Group Greenlane
As well as supporting the club, many also give significant discounts to club members. They support us, please support them in return.
Further to these I also must acknowledge Armstrong Motor Group who as distributor have allowed us access to Press Cars so that we can review the new cars for our members as well as offer support in other ways including press releases and have offered access to Peugeot merchandise at competitive rates. If you don’t know about this offer, give me a call or email – but in short form, what is available on the parent company website is available to us at prices that are competitive.
This year we have a challenge on our hands as far as the committee goes, three members have resigned, all with over 20 years service. Wynne I believe has been secretary since 1995. These gaps need filling, and I will talk about that later in this report.
Firstly however I would like to personally and on behalf of the club thank Wynne, Don and Greg for their many years of service, I and the club will miss you in the administrative roles. Furthermore I would like to thank all of the committee members and state that I have enjoyed working with you and appreciate the efforts that we all put in. I would also like to single out Xerxes with a special mention, some of you may have noticed that our Website has been improved, this would never have happened had Xerxes not put the effort in and presented us with various potential website designs and options. As it turned out the committee more or less rejected all of the options he gave us, it did however have us exploring how to improve what we have already got, progress has often been slow and almost painful, but it has happened. Credit must also go to Julian Eden (not even a club member) for undertaking many of the changes and Kevin for being involved in his role as webmaster.
Many of you will have seen what I can only describe as reasonable efforts and communications over email in the last week with suggestions of remote/interweb committee meetings through such devices as Skype or other. Personally I believe these should be seen as temporary desperation methods of keeping the committee going, I do not believe that they are a viable long term solution. We still need people who can sign the cheques, fill the envelopes with the magazines and other occasional flyers, organise the trophies for engraving, purchase the afternoon teas for meetings such as this, be on the ground to liaise with our advertisers, the distributor, Citroen Car Club for our interclub activities and people to be prepared to act as points of contact with various car show organisations. None of these are particularly onerous, and some can be done remotely, however the more we have in the committee based in or near Auckland the easier it will be.
That’s my opinion and it is now expressed,
Brent.