Message from the Exalted Ruler

Jun 2023

Members All:

Our Lodge has a very active month of May. It started with Tom and his crew moving bar stools, chairs, tables and kitchen items from the Melbourne building. A heartfelt thank you to all involved. I would be remiss in not thanking Ronnie for arranging the lounge area to be more handicap friendly. I would also like to thank Heidi and her team for a fantastic job on the gold tournament. We had nothing but compliments.

The month ended with the FSEA Convention where the Lodge received four awards. All your hard work made these possible. Also at the convention, our Antlers made us proud with their presentation at the Awards luncheon. These young men and women were fantastic.

As we start June, we have a lot of work ahead of us. This is due to some very good news recently received. We have an offer on the Melbourne property. We will present and discuss details of the offer and the BOD will make a motion to accept the offer at our June 1st meeting. The following page contains the Motion as presented at the June 1st meeting and Notice of Balloting to accept or reject offer to be held at our June 15th meeting. In the interim we will also be moving the remaining property we wish to use from the Melbourne property.

Flag Day celebration is on June 14th and Father’s Day breakfast is on June 18th. I hope to see many of you at both events.

Our Membership continues to be a major issue. Our delinquent list, while down to 140, remains over 25%. I need the help of each of you to reach out to those you have sponsored or those you may know and remind them to renew their membership. My goal is to reduce this percentage to 10% or less. Your help will make this possible. I am beginning to have conerns over the attendance and support of our meals, weekly as well as on weekends. The bar is always open weekdays at 4:00. We need volunteers to assist in providing food on weekdays.

Remember this is your Lodge and if you have a concern, see something that you feel could change please let me know. With the help of each of you, Viera will continue to grow and prosper. Let’s leave complaints at the door. I’m happy to address your complaints. But please put them inwriting to me. So much goes on when I'm in the Lodge and my brain just can’t remember everything.

Volunteers need to report their hours and mileage. We have a sheet in a folder at the Secretary’s door which has the form to use. Reporting these hours and mileage needs to be encouraged for anything you are doing for our Lodge and other non-profits. Thank you for your assisting us to better log our volunteer hours, mileage and donations.

In closing, may God bless each of you and may God Bless America and the troops protecting our freedom.

Bill Orblych, PDDGER

Exalted Ruler