July 2012 ACEC-CA Board Meeting Highlights

The ACEC-CA Board met for its quarterly meeting in July in Manhattan Beach after a morning session of New Leader Workshops. Highlights are summarized below. If you would like additional information on any of the items please feel free to contact any of the Sierra Chapter State Directors (Bob LoRusso, Marco Palilla, Ed Henderson, Steve Greenfield) or checkout the state website at www.acec-ca.org.

Our new State President John Moossazadeh led the meeting. After a brief reminder that the Chapter of the Year Award submissions will be due in October, John led a discussion regarding fundraising for Prop 32 – Stop Special Interest Money Now. Due to the importance of this proposition passing, the Board voted to send fundraising requests of $50/FTE to all member firms. Firms that are concerned about anonymity will be provided an option to donate without their firm being identified. More information on Prop 32 is summarized in an article in this newsletter.

The Board was updated on ACEC-CA’s positions on November’s propositions. In addition to supporting Prop 32, ACEC-CA has decided to oppose Propositions 30, 38, and 39 which are all tax measures. No positions were taken on the remaining propositions which were determined to not directly affect our industry.

The Board passed a resolution commending sponsoring agencies and participating firms for their involvement in the Presidio Parkway Public-Private Partnership (P3) project.

On the National ACEC front there has been some discussion of changing the dues structure to revenue based; however, this was rejected given concern over firms not wanting to disclose revenue information.

Statewide member firms’ FTE numbers are up 2 percent. Is this an inkling that we are crawling out of the recession?

The Legislative Action Committee gave an update on SB 975, a bill that would limit authority to license and regulate the practice of professions and vocations to the California Architects Board and the Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists. Currently law allows for various boards, commissions, and bureaus to license which led to the QSD/QSP certification, which allows for non-registered engineers to prepare and implement Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plans (SWPPPs). ACEC-CA is in support of SB 975 and the bill is moving through the process with ongoing discussions happening with the Governor’s office to gain support.

John Zumwalt of the Sequoia Chapter was recognized for his decades long commitment on the Legislative Review Committee. John has spent countless hours reviewing reams upon reams of proposed bills looking for bills that would affect (positively or negatively) the engineering profession.

Finally, the Business Management & Insurance Committee reminded everyone that the Salary Surveys are complete and available for purchase on the ACEC-CA website.

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Author: Editorial Team