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Recorders are now required to provide an annual report to Council and this will normally
be published in the journal. If you are a Recorder and have not sent me your 1996 report,
now is the time to do so or to present your excuses! If anyone out there wants to take on
the recording of a particular group of plants or animals in Essex 1 would be very keen to
discuss this with them without any obligation.
Council also spent a great deal of time discussing changes to the Club's rules. The present
rules were designed several years ago and whilst they have adequately served their
purpose they have become rather dated and are not adequate for our present and future
needs. We hope to have the finalised version ready for members to see at the next AGM
in March 1998 but, in the meantime, I will be pleased to receive any helpful comments or
constructive criticism. You should all have received a copy of the rules when you joined
the Club! If you have lost your copy write for another one (please enclose an sae) to Tony
Boniface at 40 Pentland Avenue, Chelmsford, CM1 4AZ.
Finally, and this is the bit you probably won't like, we discussed the membership
subscription. Members have been paying a measly £7.50 a year for a good many years
and so it will come as no surprise that our reserves have been diminishing rather rapidly.
At the same time, our costs have risen drastically. When you bear in mind the cost of
hiring meetings rooms, printing the programme and newsletter (and let's not forget
postage and envelopes) it soon mounts up. The Essex naturalist alone cost more in 1996
than we took from you in subscriptions!!! Although from a pure financial standpoint we
should have raised the subscription ages ago, we have resisted doing so until we were
certain that we were in a position to supply all our members with a good quality journal
every year. We now believe that we are in that position but in order to do it, we need
more money. Its that simple. We spent a great deal of time debating how much extra we
needed to get from subscriptions. We do not want to lose members by raising the fee to a
ridiculous level, but we do need to raise it to cover expenditure. It has therefore been
decided that from January 1998, membership subscriptions will rise from £7.50 to £10
per year for ordinary members. The new rates for other membership classes will be £5
for Student members, £12.50 for family membership and £15 for institutional
membership.
It is my belief that nobody will object to paying £10 a year for membership now that we
are in a position to guarantee the journal. However, if any member is suffering genuine
financial hardship and feels truly unable to afford the subscription, he or she is welcome
to get in touch with me in complete confidence.
As always, I welcome your letters and calls on any Essex Field Club related topic.
Colin Plant, 14 West Road, Bishops Stortford, Herts., CM23 3QP. Telephone or fax me
on 01279 507697 or e-mail me on Colinwplant@compuserve.com
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 22, August 1997