4 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 45, No. 1 The Continued Importance of Community From the PLSO Office Aimee McAuliffe PLSO Exec. Secretary I t’s no secret that the past two and a half years have been an exhausting marathon. While many facets of our personal lives have been put on hold, our professional lives have kept up at an unrelenting pace. Everyone has had to make decisions on how to move forward within the realities of where we are right now, and the conference is no different. We had around 400 people registered for the conference, with a fairly split even attendance between in-person and virtual attendees. While scheduling a hybrid-event has its own challenges, with costs we don’t usually factor into the budget, it’s an important benefit to continually provide quality professional development hours. With that said, despite its added measures and relative discomforts, being together in-person has no replacement. The attendance at the conference showed us the continued importance of community. Despite the momentary hiatus the world outside of surveying has experienced, PLSO’s assets continue tobe strong. I firmly believe this is because we quickly adapted to fit the continuing education needs of our community. Looking at the 2021 end of year financials, we saved money on expenses like travel and catering and the virtual conference performed very well. Because of this we were able to do three important things. One, we added to our money market reserves, per our financial reserve policy put in place post recession. Two, we set aside funds for the Leadership Academy Project, which is intended to help create emerging leaders in the profession that will ideally volunteer their time and expertise on the board of directors. Three, we were able tomaintain existing scholarship levels and budget for COVID assistance to fund teaching remote geomatic labs so students may continue to work towards their degrees and enter our workforce, where they are desperately needed. While I know many of you are successful businesspeople, I will briefly explain how PLSO operates. Each year the board works off two budgets. One is the balance sheet, which keeps them up to date on what is in the bank. As of December 31, 2021, our end of year financials totaled $336,505.27, splitting between $112,516.44 in the reserve money market fund and $223,988.83 in checking for our annual operating budget, which is the second budget the board works with when directing projects for the year. The annual operating budget is the projected net income for the year between revenue and operating expenses. Pre-2021 conference, with no idea what to expect for the year, the board approved to be in the red by $28,535. A reminder—in the red does not mean we are bouncing checks. It means we wouldn’t cover that amount with 2021 projected income. Our actuals ended with a net profit of $44,571.91, which includes line items for leadership and labs that will carry over for this year. On Tuesday, the 2022 board of directors approved its annual operating budget to be in the red by $18,880.00. This is the amount being held for both projects from 2021, essentially meaning that, for 2022, PLSO plans on breaking even at the end of the year. As you well know, budgets are a projection and the actual living finances are reported to the board of directors Despite the momentary hiatus the world outside of surveying has experienced, PLSO’s assets continue to be strong. I firmly believe this is because we quickly adapted to fit the continuing education needs of our community.
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