Last year, our annual election ballot included a proposed bylaws amendment that would have combined the professional, industry, and associate membership classifications into a single group. Although the amendment received over sixty percent of the votes, it fell short of the required two-thirds majority required to pass. The Los Angeles chapter brought the issue before the members at the annual meeting in Philadelphia, where eighty percent of the members voted in favor of again putting membership reclassification before the members, as an amendment proposal on the 2011 ballot.
Readers of this column may recall that last year I questioned the need for changing to a single class of voting members. I still feel the same as I did then about some of the issues, but in the last couple of months I learned a few things that led me to the conclusion that the time for a single class of voting members is long overdue.
