Message from the President

Early in 2018 the Board made it official and sold the building that we have called home since 1975. We actually made out very well on the sale of the building. We were contacted by our neighbor to the north, the Michigan Automobile Dealers Association (MADA) and they made a surprise cash offer to us within a week of our tough decision to sell the building. After performing a considerable amount of due diligence, we ultimately sold the building for $250,000 and we did not need to use a realtor in the transaction. We are very confident that we maximized the benefit to our society as the price was significantly over our independently appraised value. We have now created a Building Fund Advisory Committee to oversee these funds and invest them for the Society. We plan to take about 4% of those funds and use them to help supplement the annual budget each year. The intent of this plan is to be consistent with the old saying of “living off the interest”. Martha Thompson, Phil Porte, and Josh Szymanski are serving on this committee and they are actively meeting to put these funds to work for MSPE. While this 2 year long process was very difficult for the Board and our membership, we are confident that we are moving in the right direction.

The other significant hurdle for this board to address is the resignation of our Executive Director. Just before the annual conference Shada Biabani took a job with another association. She helped us get through the conference but we are now operating without any paid staff. Many of the volunteers on the MSPE Board are taking the most critical tasks to keep us afloat until we can find a replacement. Your Personnel Committee has been meeting to review proposals and resumes to find a new leader. Later this month that committee will review 3 potential proposals to satisfy our need for management staff. We have whittled this list down to 3 competent and experienced association management firms. We have a very good cross section to choose from between larger national firms and a smaller individual based LLC that operates with a staff of 1 full time employee. They will each be giving us a presentation along with a short oral interview in just a few weeks. We hope to make a recommendation to the full board in August. With any luck, we can have a management firm or Executive Director onboard for the beginning of chapter meetings and activities in September.

I’m very excited and honored to be serving as your president for the 2018/2019 year. If you have any questions about what’s new with MSPE or any of the changes we are navigating please don’t hesitate to give me a call or an email. I can be contacted at 616-791-6792 or sconners@walker.city.

Have a safe and productive summer!

Scott Conners P.E.
President 2018-2019
Michigan Society of Professional Engineers
P.O. Box 160
Parma, MI 49269