Something for Everyone

By Patricia K. Krout, CPA

I was happy to see some new faces and many familiar ones at our annual installation dinner at the Alisal Ranch May 1. We had a fun murder mystery presentation by Sharpo! Murder Mystery Company that kept us laughing for most of the evening. This was the first year we have held a dinner instead of a retreat. I am interested to hear comments from those of you who attended regarding the new format—and those of you who did not attend. Most of the board members were there, as well as many of our chapter committee chairs and representatives. I would like to say a big thank you to Rita Williams, our tireless program associate, for pulling this event together.

Since my last President’s Message, the board met to plan our chapter events for the year. We have many exciting events coming up, so please review the calendar and plan to join us. I will try to highlight some of the events from the meeting.

CalCPA’s statewide and local leaders have set a net membership growth goal for this next year of a minimum of 3 percent. Won’t you join us in this effort? I encourage you to invite non-CalCPA members to an upcoming event—let’s all work together to achieve this goal. It’s always good to have new ideas to re-energize our group.

At the chapter level, upcoming CPE topics include nonprofits, estate tax and multi-state tax. Please check the calendar frequently as the details for these continuing education classes are formalized. Other events include our ABC (Attorneys, Bankers & CPAs) Night in August, our golf tournament in September, which is a fund-raiser for our scholarships, and an awards night in November. The awards event honors our past presidents and 40-year members, and will include presentation of student scholarships.

Our local discussion groups are actively putting together continuing education meetings for the various areas in our chapter. Al Parrington will speak at a two-hour CPE event for the SB AP&AS Discussion Group June 17,^, and Jean-Luc Bourdon will present a one-hour CPE event for the SB Discussion Group June 22. There will a discussion group meeting in Conejo Valley June 3 on new 2010 employment laws with guest speaker Steven Lee and Roy Schneider. And the Ventura Discussion Group has a financial banking topic planned for June 24. There is something for everyone. If you have a topic you would like covered, please e-mail me and I will forward your message onto the committee chairs to be considered for a future event.

June is stacking up to be a busy month. In addition to the great CPE topics and events detailed above, Gail Anikouchine and I will attend the annual member’s business meeting and council meeting June 24–25. I plan to share with you the ideas we pick up at those meetings in a future message.

As always, there is a great need and room for your involvement in the local chapter. Please let me know if you would like more information on how to get involved.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 5:09 pm and is filed under President's Message. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.