As AMA grapples with spending vs. income, every organization does, it would be useful to take a hard look at some of the "sacred cows" that consume our membership dollars. Given that members' money is being used to fund the "Taj-Muncie" metroplex, I think it would be very interesting to know what the usage profile looks like. To allow members who help pay for it to know if it's actually a "benefit," I think it would be good to know:

- Total visits by AMA member per year for last ten years

- Total UNIQUE AMA numbers that visited by year for last ten years. Data above gives total usage, but would bias toward those folks who live close and get to use it a lot. This representation gets at whether it's a few people (i.e. folks who live close) that use it a lot, or a lot of folks that use it once or twice. For example, if 3 unique AMA numbers visited 9 times, the "9" bar on the x-asis would be "3." Similarly, say 8 people used it 10 times or more, then the "10" bar would be 8 units high.

- Histogram showing number of unique AMA numbers on Y-axis vs. # of visits by those numbers across X-axis. Categorize data by 10+ visits, 9 visits, 8 visits, etc. Gives profile that will show, I suspect, that there's a handful of folks (presumably folks living rather close - like staff) who use it a lot.

- Total NON-AMA visitors to the site, by year for last ten years, that PAID to use the facility.

- Total cash in vs. total cash out by year for ten years (all in numbers, paid events, rentals, farm income, etc.). Categorized by AMA direct use and all other uses.


Why? Well, I don't live that far away really, about 7 hour drive each way. But if you add up fuel costs, meals on the road, hotels, etc., it's the better part of $500 and 4 days on the calendar to attend a 2 day event. The overwhelming majority of AMA members do not live close at all. Heavily biased toward large population centers, and California and Florida. What is the "benefit" to these folks? Who see their hard earned membership dollars supporting a super-duper flying site for people who either work at AMA HQ or live a relatively much shorter distance.