PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
Linda Granados
January 1, 2010
Greetings!
Let me extend a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year to all of you! Let us start the New Year in an optimistic mood! A new year filled with opportunities, goals, and challenges!
We start the year in the midst of the current recession that has impacted the City through furloughs. These events have affected us, as an organization and as individuals, in ways we are only beginning to know. Members who normally are prompt in paying their dues have postponed or skipped paying. To compound the situation, the volunteer LAMAAA coordinators who are responsible to collect, are working on lesser hours and therefore have lesser time to collect. The dues are sorely needed to pay for some projects planned for this year. We, the current officers and Board of Advisors, vow to avoid the use of available cash on hand, conscientiously safeguarded by previous Presidents. To those members, who have not paid, please support your organization!
We start the year with plans to offer our luncheon seminars in offsite locations other than City Hall East, where there is a high concentration of members such as at the Garner Bldg in 7th Street and at 2nd and Figueroa Street where Recreation and Parks Department is located.
Further, we plan to publish a 50-page, glossy Memorabilia that will feature LAMAAA’s year round activities in order to serve as memento and an information booklet. We plan to sell LAMAAA t-shirts to be worn by the members for a departmental picture taking. Sylvia Garcia of LAWA will be in charge of this project.
We also plan to create a roster of retired Accountants /Auditors who still desire to get connected to our organization. Their ideas, suggestions and perspectives are always welcome. Sylvia Garcia of LAWA will be in charge of this project.
We will have Roundtable luncheon meetings with the purpose of informing and inviting Management Analysts (MA) to join LAMAAA through an open dialogue on the following issues:
a) Benefits of LAMAAA membership; and
b) Their suggestions on what they expect LAMAAA to do for them
The outcome of these meetings will enable LAMAAA officers to review their suggestions, which will in turn be used as a foundation for our future training and other activities/projects.
In FY2003-2004, LAMAAA by-laws were amended to include Management Analysts who are performing accounting/budgeting activities in their current line of work, to qualify for LAMAAA membership. There are approximately 586 MA's in the City's employment roster. If we are able to entice the MA's to join LAMAAA, our membership numbers will double in size.
Let us look forward to the year ahead with the hope of a shared appreciation for the remarkable resilience of our members in the face of unpredictability and change. This “hope” will root us in the knowledge and experience of the past, keeping us attentive to the long term, and offering a perspective on the future that we especially need in these turbulent times.
Let us unite and wish LAMAAA a brighter and more prosperous future.
For now, I will close with a quote from "Souls on Fire" by Elie Wiesel. "But where was I to start? The world is so vast! I shall start with the country I know best, my own. But my country is so very large. I better start with my town. But my town too is large. I better start with my street. No, my home. No, my family. Never mind. I shall start with myself."
Sincerely,
Linda Granados