OTA Issue 4 2016

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2 Oregon Trucking Associations, Inc. Oregon Truck Dispatch
CHAIR’S MESSAGE
Bart Sherman
OTA Chair
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industry. In addition, you will be recognized in our email newsletter and the
website, and you will be invited to the annual Leadership Circle appreciation
event. Contact to join.
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Welcome to the last edition of the Dispatch for 2016.
This issue focuses on our organization itself, the
Oregon Trucking Associations. With 2017 just
weeks away, I’d like to share our 2017 agenda and
plans; however, I would first like to welcome our
new board, committee chairs and OTA staff
members. Please help me in welcoming everyone
and I look forward to working with each of you.
I am very excited about our new Image and Allied
committees and the dynamics they will add to our
association in 2017. Mike Card is chairman of the
Image committee, while Mike Boyd is heading the
Allied committee. Each committee has already held
preliminary meetings in 2016 and are off and
running—setting their mission statements,
establishing goals and making plans for the
upcoming year. In the long term, I would like to
have both a chair and a vice-chair to ensure a
seamless transition and to maintain the ongoing
vision of each committee.
In 2017, the Government Affairs committee will be
busy providing policy direction on the broad range
of issues that the Legislature will be considering.
Key among those issues will be a Transportation
Package that is likely to be contentious given the
funding challenges they will be facing.
To enhance these efforts, the OTA in Action
committee has been tasked with taking a more
regional/local approach to OTA’s outreach and
activities. Local and regional representation on
transportation acts gives OTA more visibility to the
unique issues of each region, as well as how overall
state transportation plans impact all of our
members. This is a healthy grassroots method for
the trucking industry to get the word out and
increase member involvement. We will be looking
to our regional representatives to play a greater role
in local/regional transportation acts.
In addition to the above, we have also established
two Task Forces that will give the Board
recommendations. The first is our Dues Task Force
that will review our method of calculation and take
a long term approach to administration, audits and
the financial stability of OTA. Dues are a major
source of OTA revenue. With our major sources of
revenue in flux and highly susceptible to change,
the dues structure, which has not been addressed in
20 some odd years, needs our attention.
In 2016, OTA went back to separating our
leadership convention and safety conferences.
While this year’s convention was a “not to be missed”
event with exciting speakers and top industry
experts, attendance was not as high as we hoped.
OTA holds these events to bring our members
together to gain insight and share knowledge, as
well as the chance to celebrate our industry. To
ensure that we can meet member expectations for
this event, Mike Boyd has agreed to head our
Leadership Convention Task Force. Please contact
Mike with any helpful suggestions and to learn
more about ways to get involved. Let’s support our
association and give feedback to our task force so
we can plan for another top notch event in 2017.
The 2017 calendar of events is in its final stages and
sponsorship opportunities are still available across a
wide range of events. It is OTA’s goal to have one key
sponsor for each of our major events and all of our
sponsors will be highlighted as soon as they come
onboard. Acting early means more exposure for your
organization, so I encourage you to take a look at
your 2017 budgets and decide how you can show
your support by sponsoring an OTA event next year.
And speaking of budgets, OTA is finalizing our 2017
budget. As always, the major goal of the executive
committee and board of directors to take into
account our members’ best interests, not only from
a trucking standpoint, but a business standpoint.
With a long cycle legislative session in 2017, we
believe our staff ’s time will be maxed out. To ensure
we have the coverage needed to fight on a number
of fronts, we have taken some measures to line up
outside sources and part-time help to best represent
the interests of our members and the trucking
industry in Oregon.