It’s time to begin the budget process again for the Center for the coming fiscal year.  When I moved from Treasurer to President, I corrected a problem in our budget system where program activities had to worry about the overhead of the Center (lights, heat, salaries and rent of our Center).  This was a burdensome and unhelpful method for our group and we moved to a budget system where the sustaining funds for maintaining the Center are now separated from services and programs.  This is essentially an Activity Based Costing system and helped focus the committees and programs of the Center to devote their energies to their services and programs.  I understand this was seen as a helpful move. It is now time for Phase Two of our budget development process and today I want to introduce a new way to assemble our budget ideas.  I would like to urge all members to participate in this new process and to make sure everyone feels that they have a place to offer their ideas to the Center.  We are all in this together and all our ideas will be important. The new process for our budget ideas is for each of us to give thought to our wishes and dreams for the Center.  It would be helpful for you to put your wishes and dreams for our Center on paper with the idea that these are things you would like to see us do next year.  Once you have your ideas please email them to Debbie Morse at dmorsecpc@sbcglobal.net the Budget and Finance Committee will gather your ideas and provide an estimate of the costs.  If you have some ideas about costs, then please include them but do not feel obligated to come up with numbers at this time.  We want to ensure that we can renew the Center and bring enthusiasm and lively involvement to new levels next year. So please think about what you would like to see us do next year and send in your ideas by April 15.  We will be enriched by all the contributions of our members and we will do our best to find funding for all good ideas.  David I. Falk PhD FIPA