Once again we welcome you to the bi-monthly UTAG newsletter. It’s springtime in Utah, which means many things to many people. For our UTAG association, it means two important happenings. It’s time for our Spring Event, and the Election of our 2005 UTAG Officers.

Elections
From the UTAG bylaws Article V SECTION 3, “Annual Election: The election of Officers shall be conducted by one of two methods --a secret ballot at the Annual May General Membership Meeting or by an electronic ballot conducted prior to the Annual May General Membership Meeting.”

(You can read all the bylaws by going to our UTAG site: http://www.utahgeocachers.com/business-bylaws.php )

The last two years have worked very well, and so continuing in that tradition we are organizing the 2005 election by electronic ballot. This process involves four steps.

Step 1: Nominations
Step 2: Accepting/Rejecting of a nomination
Step 3: Announcing the nominations to the membership
Step 4: Voting by the membership

We have determined the following timetable to proceed with the election. Each period lasts one week, and starts on a Wednesday. This allows the weekend to fall in the middle of each period. (Statistically, the weekend is the busiest time for our website, and we didn’t want members to miss one of the deadlines because the weekend fell at the beginning or end of a given period).

Nominations: April 20- 26
Acceptance Period: April 27 –May 3
Time to campaign: May 4-10
Elections: May 11-17
Announce New Officials at the Spring Event and on the UTAG website on May 21st.

All nominations should be sent to JeeperDad. They can be in any of three methods: Private Message from our UTAG Forums page, Email from the Forum page, or directly to his email address Jeffry@xmission.com. He will then make contact to the proposed nominees.

To accept a nomination or to vote you must be a registered member of UTAG.

One last note, as stated in Article IV, Section 1: “The officers shall not be eligible to serve for more than two consecutive terms in the same office.” Jody from JJAC has served two years as Treasurer, and Scout Master has served two years as Secretary. Sir Gerald has served one year each as 2nd Vice President and 1st Vice President.

Amendment to the Bylaws
It has also come to our attention that the election, as executed above, doesn’t strictly follow the bylaws, and so as outlined in Article VII (Amendments), the Officers have proposed an amendment to the bylaws governing elections.

Specifically, we propose making a one word amendment to ARTICLE V Section 4 Paragraph (b).

This paragraph currently states:
(b) In the event that elections by electronic vote are deemed expedient by the Association Officers, nominations shall be accepted in the week prior to commencement of electronic balloting. Such nominees must state their willingness to serve prior to the commencement of electronic balloting.

We propose changing the word “week” to “month”.

The argument to support this amendment is fashioned around the fact that as the organization grows bigger, it's not probable to involve the majority of the membership, take nominations, extend invitations to accept those nominations, and receive “willingness to serve prior to the commencement of electronic balloting” all within one week. The officers strongly believe that we still need to complete the process in a timely manner and don’t want to leave the election time open ended. We feel that one month provides a better opportunity for greater involvement of the UTAG members, while still holding the elections in a prompt fashion.

There was no argument against this amendment from the officers.

We have opened a thread in the Organizations Forum to allow further discussion of this amendment by the UTAG members: http://www.utahgeocachers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1216

Since this newsletter is received by all the UTAG members, we are fulfilling the requirement to present the proposed amendment to the membership. We will include an option to vote FOR or AGAINST the amendment on the general election ballot.

Spring Event
We are excited to announce our annual Spring event. This year we are holding it at a pavilion in Sugarhouse Park. (N 40° 43.396 W 111° 50.971)

Details can be found both on our UTAG site: http://www.utahgeocachers.com/eventshell.php?EventFile=050521 and on the geocaching.com site. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=ee5fc95a-ad76-4b76-ab06-2653c0ac8995

Agenda
10:00-11:00 Gather, Greet-Socialize & Trade Travel Bugs
11:00-11:30 Call to order, UTAG business and election announcements
11:30-12:30 Lunch
12:30-1:30 Auction
2:00 Activity

There is plenty of opportunity to be involved in helping with this event. As always, lunch at these meetings is a buffet/pot-luck affair. The UTAG Committee provides all the burgers, hotdogs, buns, condiments and paper products. We ask everyone to bring something potluck to share. You should also plan on providing your own beverage.

Activities at the Spring event
We're looking at creating some kind of caching activity in the park, and are happy that Cach-u-Nuts have volunteered to head that up. They willingly will accept additional help to make this happen.

Scout Master is in charge of the auction; please direct all questions, or donations to him.
Jody of JJAC is in charge of door-prizes; please direct all questions, or donations to her.
Dewayne of DeViDe is in charge of cooking; please direct all questions or comments to him.

Please log a note on the cache page regarding how many people will be coming with you so we can get a head count of attendees. ( http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=ee5fc95a-ad76-4b76-ab06-2653c0ac8995 )

UTAG Coins
Just a quick note about the UTAG coins. The voting has been completed, and the original designs sent to the company. They are in the process of creating the “final” design mockup. As soon as we have that, we will post it on the forums. We are hoping to have the coins for the Spring Event, but if that doesn’t happen, we’ll hold several mini events throughout the state to distribute the coins as soon as we get them in.

Closing
It has been our great pleasure to serve you this year. This is a wonderful organization with great people involved at many different levels. It has also been my (JeeperDad) great opportunity to work with the fine officers of UTAG this year. Each of them puts forth extra time and effort to do the very best job for UTAG.

To all our members, thank-you for all you do to make UTAG so remarkable.

The 2004 Officers
(JeeperDad) Jeffry J Simpson
(SirGerald) Jerry Hansen
(DeViDe) Dewayne Dean
(Scout Master) Matty Ross
(JJAC) Jody Carlson