2020 Annual Membership Meeting

Because of the restrictions associated with the Coronavirus pandemic, we were not able to have our traditional Annual Meeting together with an enjoyable lunch at a nearby Country Club. Instead we had our 2020 Annual Meeting online on October 1st and, to be very honest, while it served the required purposes of our Annual Meeting, doing it online didn’t have quite the same conviviality and pleasant environment and first rate food as our traditional in-person Annuals have had.  Still, it was valuable.

The Committee Chairs took the stage and summarized their Committees’ accomplishments over the past year. What was most impressive was that, despite all the problems and complexities introduced by the pandemic, every Committee had adjusted its procedures to permit NCC to continue operations in a solid manner and pursue its objective of educating people about world political events in an objective and unbiased manner. 

Bill Crooks detailed the Financial results which were solid; Tom Reeve spoke extensively about the extremely successful effort that Programs had made to shift from in-person to online meetings and the future directions he foresaw; Bob Ning and Lewis Sherman talked about Membership and the upcoming challenges they anticipated; Ray Sutton described how Newsletters was faring and then Claudia Spencer, Joe McElroy, Marty Mathios, Harold Montgomery and Nancy Bashant spoke about the valuable work their Committees had done before the shift to online fundamentally changed their way of doing business.

Then, in accordance with the NCC-SDWAC By-Laws, the 2020 Nominating Committee (led by Jim Larrimore with members Roseick Reilly, Claudia Spencer, Tibor Varga and Cal Watson) presented their recommendations for the 2020-2022 NCC Board of Directors. 

Jim Larrimore began by noting that Kiki Munshi, Marjorie Postel, Margot Laue, Karen Caldicott and Vojin Joksimovich are all retiring from the Board of Directors and he thanked them for their extremely valuable contributions to NCC.

He then noted that 8 current Directors will continue for the second year of their two year terms. They are: Bill Crooks, Bill Davison, Jim Larrimore, Joe McElroy, Robert Meyer, Robert Y Ning, Pat Reeve and Claudia Spencer.

Next he explained that the 2 year terms of 11 Directors ended today and the Nominating Committee recommends that they be elected as Directors for the 2020-2022 term. They are Mary Agne, Farouk Al-Nasser, Nancy Bashant, Betty J Burt, Bill Jordan, Dr. Alan Lasnover, Martin Mathios, Harold Montgomery, Clifton Reed, Ray Sutton and Tibor Varga.

Next, he stated that the Nominating Committee had identified three additional members of NCC that it felt would make valuable contributions if they were elected as Directors. They are Dominique Batiste, Alfred Grech and Lewis Sherman.

Then, Jim made a motion to place the eleven expiring term Directors and the three new members in nomination for Directors of the North County Chapter of San Diego World Affairs Council for the 2020-2022 term:  No other nominations were received from the floor. The motion was approved unanimously so the recommendation was officially accepted and the 2021 NCC Board was officially constituted. 

After this was accomplished there was a discussion about how NCC will continue to meet its missions goals despite the pandemic. Despite the obvious uncertainty about the future that made a specific plan forward difficult to agree on, one thing was clear – everyone at the Meeting was committed to finding the best path through the difficulties that lie ahead!

On this encouraging note, the Annual Meeting was adjourned.