2023 ASURA Annual Meeting
(a play in four acts)

The first in-person Annual Meeting in three years was held on April 19, 2023 in the Ability360 conference room. Sixty plus registered; forty plus attended. A bit of a disappointment but the forty who did attend enjoyed an excellent program organized and presented by Mary Stevens, Will Stasi, Kay Faris, and Trudy Perez.

Before the meeting started, the meeting organizers were busy getting the room ready. A registration table was set up; food and drinks were put out along with copies of the Annual Report and a meeting program. A welcoming slide was displayed on the four large screens; there was not a bad seat in the room.

Act 1 – Reporting on ASURA Activities

A little before 9:00 am attendees began trickling in after finding the entrance to Ability360 and all the parking. By 9:25 am there was quite a buzz in the room with all the tables in active conversation. Will Stasi, the current ASURA President, started the meeting by reviewing the meeting program but few heard him begin over the buzz. The buzz soon faded and the meeting started in earnest.

Will got the meeting going with two, three, four? chicken jokes, each better than the last. He then turned the meeting over to several committee chairs who presented a short item about their committee.

• Connie McNeill (Websites) reviewed the new Help for Volunteers website.
• Barry McNeill (Video History and Finance) reviewed the restarting of interviews and the growth of the scholarship endowment.
• Pat Schneider (Seminars) reported on the popularity of the seminars.
• Trudy Perez (Pre -retirement Seminars) highlighted the move to monthly seminars.
• John Brock (Travel) discussed past and future travel events.
• Mary Stevens (Book Sales) talked about the new arrangement ASURA has with the Friends of Phoenix Public Library to sell books.

You can read more details about each of these items in the Annual Report.

Act 2 – Guest Speaker

Kay Faris breathed a sigh of relief about 9:50 am when the guest speaker, Professor Dennis Hoffman, showed up, right on time. Dr. Hoffman is a professor of economics in the W. P. Cary School of Business as well as Director of both the L. William Seidman Research Institute and ASU’s Office of the University Economist.

Dr. Hoffman gave a very interesting, fact (read chart) filled presentation. He was an engaging speaker and as the talk proceeded, he took numerous questions from the audience. There is no way I can possibly summarize his talk and you can review his slides and draw your own conclusions. A couple of things that stuck in my memory were:

• There are mixed signals about whether a recession is coming. One negative signal to a recession was that there has never been a recession when unemployment is below 5%, which is the current status.
• With dropping birthrates the needed workforce will have to come from internal, e.g., state to state, migration.
• There are currently significant negative aspects of Arizona that can suppress the needed migration, e.g., worst quality of life of all the states, education in the bottom 40%.

Act 3 – Words from Sylvia Ceja-Gonzalez

Jan Shore, ASURA Scholarship Committee Chair, introduced Sylvia Ceja-Gonzalez, this year’s scholarship recipient. Sylvia told us that she had been born in Mexico and did not want to come to the United States. Her grandfather supported this desire but in the end he put her on the bus and it was the best thing that ever happened to her. She told us she is pursuing an online degree in Political Science and is interested in ASU’s Masters degree in Non-Profit Leadership and Management. She ended by thanking ASURA for the scholarship. She said that she would have to delay her education at least another year if she had not received it.

Act 4 – Changing of the Guard

Will Stasi thanked the Board for its support of his presidency and urged the five members leaving the Board: Kathy Gunn, Mark Henderson, Mary Stevens, Pat Schneider, and Trudy Perez, to stay involved. He then handed the official gavel over to Kay Faris, who became ASURA’s 33rd President.

Kay thanked Bill for stepping up last year to accept the presidency and then working diligently throughout the year to fill chairs and spread the workload over more volunteers. She then announced the five new Board Members:  Jeff Bush, Carl Cross, Don Dotts, Maria Hesse, and Kathy Palmanteer. Next came the new Officers:  Immediate Past President (Will Stasi), Secretary (Partha Dasgupta), and Treasurer (Terrie Ekin).

In conclusion Kay told us how carrot cake came to be the traditional cake at the Annual Meetings and finished by inviting all the have a slice of the cake.

Story by Barry McNeill

Pictures by Barry McNeill