[MRIC] Final Reminder for Meeting Saturday

[brettham at aol.com]

Maryland RACES Officers,

One final reminder that the Maryland RACES Interoperability Committee 
(MRIC) of the Maryland Emergency Management Association meeting will be 
held tomorrow morning at the Queen Anne’s EOC (see details below). The 
meeting will begin promptly at 10:30 AM so please mapquest for travel 
times and plan to arrive on time, or early. We will adjourn promptly at 
15:30, and break for 30 minutes for pizza at lunchtime. Pizza usually 
cost about $6-7 per person, so please bring some cash. I will provide 
sodas. If you do not want pizza, please feel free to bring a bag lunch.

Per the committee’s established procedure, if you cannot attend, please 
feel free to send someone from your RACES organization to vote in your 
stead. Representatives from your Emergency Management Agency or other 
technical advisors or assistants are welcome to attend. If you are 
sending someone to vote for you, you must let me know by midnight 
tonight who that will be. They cannot just show up and say they are 
voting for someone else. One vote per jurisdiction.

As usual, our agenda for this meeting was set at the previous meeting 
(April), and can be found in the minutes I distributed in April, and 
again this past week. There is one issue that surfaced since than that 
we may want to add to the agenda: TMARC discussions to eliminate some 
VHF simplex frequencies.

Just a reminder we also need to elect a
 Chairman for 2009. I will be 
running, and I know of at least 1 other nomination. All are welcome to 
throw their hat in the ring. Nominations will remain open until just 
before the vote on Saturday. If Frank Winner (AAC RO) does not run, 
perhaps he can conduct the election again this year since he did such a 
fine job last year. Vote is by sealed ballot. Your Emergency Manager 
will be liaison and present MRIC reports and motions before the full 
Association, so make sure you have your EM’s permission before you run.

One last thing I would like to say before the meeting:

We have accomplished a lot in the two years we have been meeting. In 
just 6 meetings, we standardized on a single message form for 
sending/receiving messages between jurisdictions; we coordinated 
frequencies so we don’t interfere with each other; listed contact info 
for all ROs; frequencies for contacting each other during an emergency; 
established a statewide HF net to use in the event of a catastrophic 
emergency where VHF repeaters may be down; and agreed to a standard 
mode of data communications (Winlink2000 email). It is a tribute to 
your hard work, your cooperation and technical input during meetings, 
and giving up your Saturdays to participate, to leave this legacy you 
can be proud of. Since we have been so productive and professional, we 
are getting much more attention from Emergency Managers state-wide than 
we have enj
oyed in the past. If we continue at this rate, Maryland will 
have the most capable amateur radio emergency communications system in 
the USA within the next few years. I hope this inspires you to attend 
tomorrow.

There will be one slight change, however. In the past our meetings have 
been informal and included healthy debate with lots of good technical 
input. We have not cut off debate until everyone was done speaking and 
had nothing else to say. This helped to build unanimous consensus on 
almost every issue, something that is extraordinary. And we have 
entertained motions from anyone on any subject at any time. However, 
after our last meeting where a few members took advantage of this 
flexibility, side tracked our agenda and attempted to undo earlier 
work, I am going to be more restrictive and assertive from this point 
forward. When possible, we will be open and flexible as we always have 
been, but if I feel the meeting is becoming unproductive I will take 
action to get it back on track. I will not allow a few to ruin a good 
thing for the majority. I received many comments about the last meeting 
indicating that many ROs will no longer give up their Saturdays to 
attend if we have a repeat performance of what took place in April. I 
hope I can count on your support to keep the meeting moving along. If 
not, you are welcome to elect someone else as Chairman. I pledge to do 
my part.

It20has been my pleasure to serve you, the Association, my Director and 
the citizens of Maryland, and look forward to getting back on track to 
another productive meeting Saturday. Hope to see you there!

Brett Hammond
Chairman, MRIC
410-829-6749 (cell)



-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Hodell <hodell at umbc.edu>
To: mric at mailman.qth.net
Cc: John Conover <JConover at qac.org>; Mike Widdekind 
<mjwiddekind at atlanticbb.net>; brettham at aol.com
Sent: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 9:45 pm
Subject: MRIC Meeting Location for Saturday



Location for Saturday is:
Queen Anne's County EOC
100 Communications Drive
Centreville, MD 21617

URL for Mapquest is:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Centreville&state=MD&address=100+Communica
tions+Dr

I will be listening on the 146.94 repeater, pl 107.2 if you get lost.

73 Chuck N8ADN
Queen Anne's County RO