Friday Afternoon General Meeting

The athlete welcome speech was given by Amanda Evora and Mark Ladwig who recounted some of their memories from competing at the Olympic Games.

Frank Carroll was honored by the council with a standing ovation for his life long dedication to our sport. He gave a wonderful speech about how important teaching all levels of skaters is so important to him. He promised that he will continue to coach as long as he is physically and mentally able.

President Pat St. Peter gave a welcome speech that included some milestones in membership and renewals of contract with sponsors and the renewal of our contract with NBC for the next four years.

The business of the Governing Council got underway with a report of the state of investments of the organization. It seemed that the investments that are under management, while there was a loss of principal during the this economic downturn, have recently recovered any lost ground and have increased substantially this year. The list of trustees that volunteer their time to USFS to manage these funds was displayed and reads like a who’s who of former skating stars and financial sector stars.

The council began to debate any concerns with the Interim Report of Action which is a list of proposals that committees have made, the Board of Directors have reviewed and have either approved, amended, clarified, deferred or did not approve.

Often in the rulebook there are conflicts between the bylaws and the rules. When there is such a conflict the bylaws always take precedence. Many of the exhibits for bylaw amendments concerned with removing any redundancy or conflict between the bylaws and the rules. All of those exhibits were adopted by the council.

We spent quite a bit of time discussing an exhibit which describes and clarifies the classification of an introductory member. There were quite a few parliamentary issues with making those changes but they were able to be reconciled.