Re: Who's votes for policies that negatively affect AHS finances?

Daniel:

>Is the suggested raising of dues supposed to make up this lost 
>income?

I'm alway amazed at how the problems in the hosta society seem to be 
so similar to the problems in the daylily society, although the 
details are different.  

It seems that some people in the hosta society made some stupid 
decisions without really thinking through the ramifications and now 
there is less money for them to spend.  In the hosta society it seems 
to be the ill concieved IAC program.  In the daylily society it's 
stupid mismanagment, cowardous leadership and greed.  Back in the 
early 90's the daylily journal editor just lost it.  She published 
some guidelines for writing articles that pretty much told everyone to 
not bother sending in any articles for publication, along with some 
poor color printing and then the Board made some really stupid 
decisions to stop selling the outside and inside covers for color 
advertising which ticked off all the major hybridizers who then stoped 
all their color advertising in the Journal.  I'm not sure what the 
loss in revenue was, but it had to be somewhere between 20,000 and 
30,000 dollars a year.  Then, on top of that they gave HUGE pay 
increases to the paid positions, and of course some of these paid 
positions went to friends of the hierarchy.  The registrars position 
was raised to $18,000 a year and that is for only registering about 
1,000 daylilies.  How long does it take to register a daylily or a 
hosta?  Being very generous, even a slow registar is going to be able 
to do 4 in a hour.  Two months of labor for $18,000 comes out to 
108,000 a year!  Not a bad position to have!  Of course, the person 
who got the job was a friend of..., of well, you know how the story 
goes.  Then the editor finally figured out it was time to resign, but 
someone on the board wanted this one other person for the position.  
She complained about it being too much work, so they cut the work load 
in half and increased the salary to $20,000, and then she quit half 
way through doing her first issue.  Of course the secretary also 
wanted a paid increase, so now when she prints mailing lables that 
people buy she gets to keep half the cost, which of course use to go 
to the daylily society.  And the treasurer was then given a salary of 
$18,000 a year!  However, he voluntarily cut his salary to only $9,000 
a year.  The end result is that, for 1988, the daylily society 
received dues of $201,000 and had employee and officers expenses of 
$125,000.  What wasn't explained was the $12,000 for "other expenses." 
That's a lot of money to just explain as "other expenses!"

Increasing the hosta society dues to $25 is only going to result in a 
significent loss of membership unless the membership perceives that it 
is getting something for the extra dues.  I believe the hosta society 
has 3,000 members, or is it 4,000?  Figure a normal 15% turn over each 
year. Add to that a dues increase and probbaly 25% of the people will 
not renew their membership.  Then figure that about half the people 
who might have joined at $19 probably won't at $25.  If the hosta 
society went to a quarterly journal and beefed up the contents then it 
might get away with a dues increase that doesn't hurt the society.

I'm not sure if a dues increase is on the agenda for the daylily 
societies fall meeting, but I'm sure we will see one, probably to $25, 
either for next year or in 2001.  They are going to use the pitifully 
poor journal as an excuse for raising the dues - most likely to hire 
an assistant editor!  The high cost of paid positions relative to dues 
received and the poor journal is the result of gross mismanagement on 
the part of the Neanderthal's that sit on the board.  Of course they 
won't admit that they made a mistake, just like members of the hosta 
society board won't admit to making mistakes.  The daylily society 
board is content with continuing it's cover up of it's involvment with 
forgery, the fact that one of it's own members and the former 
president misused their positions for personal reasons, that the 
stupid twit of a president removed me from the email robin with no 
justification and with no guidelines for removing anyone from the 
email robin in place, and the incoming president seems to be content 
to lower herself to the gutter level that now exists on the board.  I 
don't know what it is exactly, but it seems that when some people get 
positions of power they change for the worse.  They can't admit to 
making mistakes and steps to correct their errors only seem to 
intensify the problem because they fail to reconize the source of the 
problem, which is themsleves.  What's frustrating is these people are 
not stupid people, with some exceptions - the twit that removed me 
from the email robin actually told the board members that they weren't 
to talk about what they had done so that I wouldn't find out what 
happened!  Now, that is stupid.  Of course she also initiated a 
conspiracy to cover up activities that might cause the IRS to revoke 
their non-profit status, but I doubt they thought about that.

If you think the hosta society has problems now, just wait until they 
decide that this position and that position need to be paid positions! 
Then watch who gets the positions!  The problems that currently exist 
in the daylily society are the hosta societies future problems!

Joe Halinar

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