PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE February 2020
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE February 2020
PAAI Membership,
As the winter of 2020 marches on and we approach spring I want to take a few moments to update the membership on news and some things the Board has been working on for our members.
Brent Frain has stepped down as the 2nd Vice-President as he has retired from fire investigation. I have appointed Dennis Woodring to fill this position until the June election. Nominations will be taken at the AGM to fill the position through 2021. I plan to nominate Dennis Woodring to run to fill out the rest of this term.
The PAAI Board voted at the January 2020 Meeting to withdraw from the IAAI Enhanced Chapter program. We have been dealing with several long term and ongoing issues with this program including but not limited to
- The lack of accurate numbers on the membership sheets, late payments, members unable to renew or being double billed.
- Not enough staff to handle the issues for membership. Membership has almost doubled but the staff is the same as it was in 2013!!!
- Our chapter dues being incorrectly billed. Our dues were changed to $30.00 as of July 1 but the IAAI are still showing as $25 in the software and on the website!!
What does this mean to our members going forward? Effective immediately all chapter dues will be paid directly to the PAAI. Members of the IAAI will be able to pay their IAAI dues only through the IAAI website. The ability to pay chapter dues through the IAAI website has been disabled. If you have paid your chapter dues for 2020 after July 1, 2020 through the IAAI your dues were incorrectly collected at $25.00 not at the correct rate of $30.00. Therefore, a balance of $5.00 is owed to the PAAI and should be paid to the PAAI as soon as possible. (I understand that this is a burden on some of our members. I am in the same boat as many of you are and will be paying the $5.00 directly to the PAAI at the March Board meeting.) I want to thank the members for the cooperation and understanding as we move forward.
The PAAI currently has a membership of approximately 350 people. If you are a current member and know of people in your area that would be interested in joining please direct them to our website and have them apply for membership.
We just wrapped up our 2020 Jack Christmas Weekend. Attendance this year for each day averaged 59 attendees which was a great turnout. Classes were well received, and early feedback has been favorable.
The 2020 June Training is now available on the website and will be the IAAI 3-day Electrical Aspects of Fire Investigation. The dates are June 22-24, 2020. There are prerequisites for the training class that must be completed and submitted with the registration. As always please feel free to pass our training notices on to anyone interested.
Scholarships are available for this training class. Applications are on the Scholarship page on the PAAI website.
Many of you might not be aware of the different awards and scholarships the PAAI has and offers to our members. Please check out the PAAI Awards page on the website. We have several awards for our members and a scholarship program for family members of the Association for college. Please take advantage of these opportunities.
We are still looking for someone to volunteer as a Zone Training Coordinator in the Central and West Zones. Information is available at http://paai.org/zone-contacts/ or contact me directly.
Anyone that has a suggestion for upcoming training classes please contact Kevin Pezzano k.pezzano@comcast.net or Dave Klitsch david@technicalfireanalysis.com. We are always looking for locations and suggestions for training.
The PAAI has adopted a formal cancellation policy and we have revamped our Sponsorship program. Information on these items can be found in this newsletter and on our website. If you know of any companies that might be a good fit as a sponsor for the PAAI please let them know about our Association and our sponsorship program.
Kevin Pezzano, President
Pennsylvania Association of Arson Investigators
