Third Quarter - FY 2003-04

We worked as a team. To build that team feeling and cooperation, we have had our regular monthly meetings, constant communication through e-mails or telephones but most of all, we had a framework of our goals clearly communicated at the beginning but refined and adjusted in the process and participated by every one.

History, as documented in our Memorabilia, was our guide. Anita Domingo commissioned the first memorabilia. It is a very useful and powerful tool in understanding our history. We continued the Memorabilia to preserve our history and be a guide to future administrations just as we were guided.

Under Anita Domingo’s presidency, LAMAAA was registered as a non-profit organization. We operated as a true non-profit but professional organization. We changed the guidelines of our scholarship with focus on need rather on scholastic achievement, opened our monthly seminars to all professionals in the City with complimentary refreshments and contributed to other non-profit organizations such as the March of Dimes and the Los Angeles Filipino Association of City Employees (LAFACE). Like any non-profit organization, we depended more on our fund raising activities rather than on the regular annual donation of member-donors, which remains to be $10 from the inception of LAMAAA. Due to the increase in tuition fees and other increased scholastic expenses of students as a result of the budget crisis, we also increased our scholarship grant from $500 to $1,000 and increased the number of scholars from the 2 that was done during the term of Bill Lamb to 3.

We aspired to increase our donor-member base. We again looked into our Memorabilia and saw that the highest membership was achieved during the term of Anita. We focused on our goal to surpass that, not for the purpose of competition, but in the spirit of strengthening LAMAAA’s image and presence in the professional community of the City.

Thanks to the consistent efforts of Perla Veneracion and Bill Lamb in making feasible LAMAAA’s regular seminars. We duplicated that effort and worked harder to conduct monthly trainings and bring in more people to the seminars. We never had lower than 80 people at any given time.

To grow, we recognized we needed to expand our membership criteria. We turned to Greg Vergara and sought his advice on how to successfully amend our by-laws because it was during his term that the first amendment was done.

All past administrations linked with the members through the Newsletter. We enhanced our communication with the members by publishing regularly and electronically our monthly Newsletter. Not only did we save our organization extra expenses in printing costs, delivery charges but also in the quality of print. Moreover, we can archive all newsletters and memorabilia for posterity and preserve them in a CD form in the future. We also used the Newsletter as tools for networking by publishing the photos of monthly speakers and the contributing article authors.

We continued to observe our tradition of camaraderie by holding Christmas and Valentine Parties. LAMAAA’s contribution to the continuing education of City accountants and auditors was finally recognized during our Christmas party when we received the long-delayed Certificate of Appreciation from Councilman Tom LaBonge.

We re-defined LAMAAA’s aspirations for our members, focused on leadership and diversity, which are consistent with the demand of our times. We preserved this by composing an anthem. We hope it will survive the test of times.

Lastly, we expanded the participation in our annual training-conference by inviting the Association of Government Accountants to co-sponsor this event together with the City’s Controller Office. For the first time, we had teams from two top CPA firms as resource speakers on The Challenges of Change,î namely: Simpson & Simpson, the City’s external CPA and Deloitte. We had about 272 attendees at this event, which included representatives from LAUSD, MTA and SCAG.

As the ultimate person responsible for the success or failure of our administration, I believe I have served to the best of my abilities in the face of challenges and demands on the position. As I said in my induction address ìan idea without action is just a dream, but a dream put into action is a milestone. We achieved another milestone for our organization.

Thank you for this opportunity. It was a privilege and an honor to serve you.