Delegate’s Report to Area Assembly, January 13, 2019
I’ve been delegate for 13 days and so far, so good!
I received my Conference Committee assignment in mid-December and I’m on Policy & Admissions. This committee sets the policies and admissions for the General Service Conference, not AA as a whole. So if someone asks how can there be “admissions” to a program anyone with a desire to stop drinking can join – the answer is it’s who can attend the General Service Conference. Often, representatives from other countries that are trying to bolster AA in their region will ask to attend the conference as observers to see what they can learn and take back with them. Recently we admitted observers from the Ukraine and India. I thought that was admissions and I was wrong. That actually falls under policy.
Admissions is if a region wants to create a new delegate and/or new Area. That hasn’t happened since 2004 when South Florida, the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands and Antigua asked to break out into more than one Area because it was too big a region for 1 person to cover (but what a way to go!) The Conference voted no on that proposal, by the way.
Other items that fall under “policy” include things like providing all the agenda background material in Spanish and French, making any modifications to the conference committee structure, and how to vote between conferences if something important comes up (and how to define what “important” is)
I get to participate in a Policy & Admission Conference call January 15th with the other committee members, the assigned General Service Office staff member and our trustee. This will be a chance for the delegates to review the proposed 2019 agenda items and give the trustee our opinions about them before the trustees meet and finalize the agenda item selections at their quarterly board meeting in January.
In addition to new agenda items, we will also hear progress reports on last year’s items at the General Service Conference: negotiating with hotel chains to see if we can enter a multi-year contract with one to get better rates for the conference, regional forums, etc., and if there’s a way to more equitably share the workload between the various conference committee. For example, literature usually has several times more items to deal with than some of the other committees.
I also received lots of information about the week of the conference and something that jumped out at me as interesting is there’s a standing AA meeting held before each year’s general service conference and before each quarterly board meeting, specifically to help our Class A (non alcoholic) trustees understand how this program of recovery works. I don’t recall ever hearing about that before.
I will be attending the Salt City Round Up in February, so extra thank you to Liverpool for hosting Area so I can zip across town and not miss a thing!
I will be preparing the 2 minute Area Highlight – a brief report on Area 47 for the General Service Conference. It specifically mentioned sharing anything “new and exciting” so if you have anything you, your group, committee, district, etc. is working on or planning, please let me know. I’ll definitely be reaching out to some of you working on hosting ESCYPAA this summer – because that is exciting!
In Service – Barb C., Delegate, Panel 69
