Easytiger,

I think that the easiest way to put this is that alot of the basic AMA services that the District Vice President is supposed to provide are not being provided because the organization that is supposed to be there is broken.

The most glaring one is the position of Frequency Coordinator. This position is one the directly relates to the safety of the model airplanes and the people at your flying field. The Frequency Coordinator position remains unfilled because the last one - Mr. Stillman - decided to run against him in the election. This decision to remove Tony Stillman had nothing to do with his job performance clearing up radio safety problems at clubs, but because he decided to run against him for his job.

Another obvious problem is the one of Assistant Vice Presidents (AVP). The AVP is your local "go-to" guy concerning issues relating to the AMA. There are over 20,000 modellers in District V - obviously way more than one person can communicate with. So. . . the AMA bylaws allow - no, they require - the District Vice President to appoint AVP's to communicate with the membership. Not only do these AVP's represent the different regions of the District, they represent the differnt TYPES of flying. Say a control line club is having problems, but Tony Stillman has never flown control line before. . . no problem. . . he picks up the phone and calls his Control Line AVP and puts him on the job. Same for Free Flight, Pylon, Helicopters, or paper airplanes.

The current AVP's in District V have nothing to do with modelling activities. Every past AVP that has shown the slightest inclination that they MAY support a challenger was immediately removed from their post. Once again, these AVP's were not removed because of their inability to do the job, but because Mr. McNeil viewed them as a threat to his position.

Basically, the complaint that most people have is the breakdown in AMA services for District V that our dues money is supposed to be providing but is not because this man is jealously holding onto his position for personal reasons. After the last election he went out of his way to send gloating messages to the people that ran against him. Not once did you hear him say - "Thanks voters of District V, I'm going to do my best for you during this term" All we get are more photographs each month in the AMA magazine.

Most modellers aren't aware of the services that they are missing out on because Mr. McNeil has been in office so long that they have never had them. Also, once you get past the local club structure, the majority of modellers don't care what happens with their dues money until their field is threatened. We have a big education job ahead of us to get the word out so people will know what they COULD have in this District and that it will only take them 10 seconds of effort to get it.

The truly sad part of all of this is that the District VP job is not even a paid position. The only payment is that his travel expenses are reimburses by the AMA, so he can travel around the Southeast and take photos of people's airplanes and make comments wondering how they fly. The modellers of District V are owed so much more than this.

The President of the AMA cannot remove Mr. McNeil from office - that would be like the President of the United States trying to fire a member of Congress. The only people that can remove Mr. McNeil from office are the modellers of the Southeast in the next election in December 2004.