All good thoughts Kenneth. I can only share with you what the previous board of FLNACHI had in mind and what our biggest obstacles were.
-
The board would be comprised of two representatives from each chapter. We reached out to all of the existing chapters at that time and asked them to join. We had a South Florida, Riverview, Central Florida and Jacksonville chapter. We asked the panhandle chapter to join our efforts but they declined. Maybe they had insight into what our future was.
-
We wanted to create a proctored exam that would serve two purposes. The first was to help members that had only taken the online test. Each chapter would schedule a testing date and the chapter would provide volunteers to work the event. The board agreed that we would have a volunteer board member at each site. The second benefit was funding. The fee for the test would go into the general fund and be used for expenses related to the chapter. The expenses for the test would be paid from the general fund.
-
Create a SOP that was focused on the issues that Florida inspectors would encounter.
-
Hold quarterly educational events (like FABI has) where members could gather for education and to discuss and vote on any other projects that the membership felt would benefit the association and its members. Several educators offered to teach and attend the events at their own expense for the first year (this offer was made to help the association build up its general funds). Each member would be required to attend one event a year.
-
The last benefit we wanted was to have an association that was operated by the directions given from a majority of the members. It was our intent to have regular elections for board members and that any project would be approved by a majority of the membership or we wouldn’t do it.
The biggest obstacle we had with forming a state association or chapter was funding.
I thought that we had a good set of goals to lay the foundation for FLNACHI.
Everything was going great until we reviewed the charter from NACHI. The charter had a rule that stated that NACHI could take control of the association and seize all of its assets with 30 days written notice. It wasn’t a week after making our goals known that I received a call from the enforcer (Joe Farsetta) telling me that he could take the chapter away anytime I did something that he or Nick didn’t like. They didn’t like the goals that we had. After this call the board had many discussions about how to proceed. We took a vote and all but one board member decided that we could not proceed with the chapter based on the charter we had. That is why the second attempt failed.
