Happy New Fiscal Year for those agencies that celebrate with July 1^st as the beginning of the fiscal year!  Hopefully, everyone’s budget processes went well with your respective governing bodies. I will vouch for it being one of the more challenging years and leave it at that.

While going through some files, I came across the 2006 CSMFO Annual Report. I don’t consider myself a pack rat, but for some reason I had saved this report.  Quick question – do you remember off the top of your head who was President? (No peaking at the Directory) Think of the final Jeopardy music playing…. Answer:  Mark Alvarado who was then with City of Monrovia, now retired, but still working in our municipal finance industry.

The report noted one of the highlights moving into 2007 was the on-line registration for conferences, training classes, membership renewals, and for those of us that remember the Mini-News – that published format moved to an electronic format.  Included as 2006 goals were website improvements, CSMFO communication process, integration of Chapter Chairs, enhancing training opportunities, and evaluating and revising internal operating procedures.  That sounds oddly familiar to our current goals.  I guess somethings never change with where we place our priorities to “Make it Happen” (communicating to and effectively & efficiently supporting our members).

More fun facts.  In 2006, we had 1,234 members with 80% (or 986) municipal members and 16.6% (or 204) commercial members.  As I compare that to our 2018 Annual Report, CSMFO had doubled since then to of 2,449 ⁽¹⁾, with 82% (or 2,007) municipal members and 12% (or 292) commercial members.    The 2006 report even showed data back to 1994 when we had 955 members. So, in the 12 years following 1994, we grew by 279 members (or a 29% increase).  But in the 12 years following 2006, we grew by 1,215 members (a 98.5% increase).  Thank you Mark (Alvarado) for being a part of the groundwork that supported this growth.

Talk about CSMFO walking our talk of “succession development,” see if you recognize some of the names who were involved in leadership in 2006. Some were past presidents, others became Board Members or Future Presidents (Parenthetically showing agency members were they were at that time.)

Inland Empire Chapter Chair                             Laura Nomura (Riverside) ⁽²⁾

Monterey Bay Chapter Chair                               Marcus Pimentel (Watsonville)

Administration Committee                                  David Cain (Chino), Joan Michaels Aguilar (Covina), Bob Biery (Westlake Village)

Budget & Mgmt Reporting                                   Pamela Arends-King (Santa Ana), Laura Nomura (Hemet) ⁽²⁾

Career Development                                              Ronnie Campbell (Lakewood), Mary Bradley (Sunnyvale), Margaret Moggia (Central West Basin Water District)

Technology Committee                                         John Adams (Thousand Oaks), Jesse Takahashi (Campbell)

By the way, our Past President was Janet Salvetti from Stockton who remains a familiar face at CSMFO conferences helping us navigate our way each year with her work with Meeting & Association Management.

I am starting to feel the “I remember when” coming on.  But with the explosive growth of CSMFO, we have added value and opportunity by expanding leadership opportunities on committees and Chapter levels, with the addition and emphasis on creating Vice Chairs to help manage the workload.

Back in the day, the Committee Structure had three types of committee members, a Chair, a Vice-Chair and a Senior Advisor.  Over the years, a Board Member has been assigned to be a liaison to a Committee or two, and there may be two Vice Chairs and many members to carry out the work of a standing committee.  Our Committee rules have also evolved so that our commercial members are now able to be on many committees, where they offer valuable input into the processes that help us carry out our CSMFO mission, and to help us all “Make It Happen”.

(1) I’m sure some of you did the math already.  Yes, it wasn’t quite double.  We needed just another 19 additional members in 2018 to exactly double.  But I’ll take a 98.5% membership increase any day.

(2) Yes. You read that correctly.  Our CSMFO hero and fried Laura really got around in 2006 to both Riverside and Hemet.