SCAPE Newsletter - January 2024

Message from our PRESIDENT

By Kathy McGill

Dear SCAPE Members,

Happy New Year! I hope you all enjoyed your holidays, and managed to keep your feet dry during our recent deluge. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that Mother Nature finds a way to balance giving us both plenty of rain and plenty of nice painting days.

    Coming into the new year, I am already starting to see membership renewals and new memberships trickle in. Thank-you to all those renewing, and a big welcome to our new members. I look forward to learning what SCAPE activities you are most interested in. And, as you all know, we are always looking for volunteers.

    As I start my term as SCAPE president, I want to pay tribute to our outgoing President, Linda Collins. I have only gotten to know Linda since agreeing to take this role, so I reached out to others who know her well. There is unanimous agreement that without Linda’s relentless, ongoing efforts, SCAPE would no longer exist. Things that we now take for granted, like our website, would not have come into being without Linda’s vision and perseverance. And she is widely credited with keeping SCAPE afloat through the pandemic. To quote Cez Totton: “Linda is creative, intelligent, and devoted to SCAPE. She is an innovator and fun. She cares deeply about people and does kind things without expectation of acknowledgement.”

Cez’s words certainly capture the spirit of the woman that I am getting to know, and these are clearly big shoes to fill! Fortunately for all of us, Linda will be continuing as Treasurer and as Beneficiary Chair. I look forward to working with her, and with all of our dedicated volunteers throughout the year. 

I also look forward to seeing as many of you as possible out painting. Our paint out team has been coming up with beautiful and varied locations, and this month is no exception. If you are new to the paint outs, give it a try! We encourage carpooling, so please put out the word if you need a ride or want to carpool.

In the meantime, I hope to see you soon, brushes in hand. Happy painting!.

Message from your Treasurer

By Linda Faye Collins

Happy New Year!  First of all, I want to give a heartfelt  thanks to those of you who are paying your membership dues early.  The early funds help to cover some of our major corporate expenses that come due at the beginning of the year, such as our liability insurance and rent for our storage unit which houses our old records and our panels and other equipment for our shows.  

Secondly, I am desperately seeking a reliable assistant treasurer whom I can train to eventually take over my job as treasurer.  

The job is not as frightening as it may seem.  We have a bookkeeping company that handles the major job of keeping the books and preparing our financial reports. Our website generates all the notices for stockholder dues payments, so that function is automatically handled. We also have a wonderful volunteer, Barbara Gates, who regularly picks up all the mail (bills, payments, etc). at the post office, forwards it to the bookkeeper and myself and deposits any checks, so that is another chore that is taken care of.  So the treasurer's job is mostly one of oversight. The assistant treasurer is usually a voting member  of the board. The treasurer is necessarily a member of the board. If interested, please message me at 805-881-2472, or email me at linda93101@gmail.com.