In March, the Annual MTM Members meeting was held. This was the second year of the meeting to be held in March. Prior to the last two years, the meeting was held in October. At the October meeting one of the presentations was the company profitability for the current year and the ‘likelihood’ of a members’ dividend at the end of the year. After holding the meeting for many, many years in October, our Marketing Department discussed the advantage of holding the meeting in March at which time, instead of discussing the possibility of a dividend, we could actually hand out checks at the Annual Members meeting. This review and suggestion was made to the Board of Directors and the Board agreed to move the October Annual Members meeting to March.
For over ten years, the MTM Annual Members Meeting has been held the third Thursday of October. That’s outlined in the MTM bylaws and it’s an item that staff looks forward to putting on for our members every year. For the last five years or so we’ve held it at The Inn at St. John’s in Plymouth, Michigan. We had great reviews on the location, meeting room, and food. It’s a hard place to complain about. In May, we held the second quarter MTM Board meeting. A topic that was discussed was how can we increase the number of members that attend our annual meeting. Over the last ten years, the number of attendees bounces between 100 and 150, not taking into account the two years of cancellation or scale backs caused by COVID. We were already underway for our October 2022 meeting when this discussion took us all to a new point of how could we make the meeting better, maybe try something different.
Finally, back to some normalcy. It’s been over a year, but finally MTM Board and Committee members are together again. Maybe 2/3’s of the members were at the MTM office and 1/3 via Zoom. It was great to see our Board and Committee members. It was like a family reunion. At the May 20th Board meeting Joe Keppler, MTM Chairman of the Board welcomed our new Board member Barry Kavanagh. Barry might hit a memory cell for you because about 3 years ago I introduced him as a new Board Finance Committee member.
Here’s a refresher: Barry received his bachelor degree from Waterford Institute of Technology in his native Ireland. He is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), the main accountancy body in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Asia. He also holds a certified management accounting certification from the U.S. Institute of Management Accountants. Barry has been involved with MTM for nearly 15 years. At the beginning we worked with Barry when he was the Controller at a Lansing member’s shop. For the last 8 years, Barry has been the VP of Finance at Avalon & Tahoe Mfg. Inc. That company name might sound familiar too. Avalon & Tahoe is a high end Michigan manufacturer of pontoon boats. They make virtually everything on their boats except the motors and gauges. It is a fascinating company. The company won the Michigan Manufacturers Association “Michigan Manufacturer of the Year” award for 2019.
Well, back to Barry. After two and a half years of successful work on the Board Finance Committee, the Board asked him to join them on the full Board. Consistent with Barry’s enthusiasm on the Board Finance Committee, he agreed to the new position as long as he could retain his Board Finance Committee assignment. The Chairman of the Board of MTM approved his request. Barry has been a valuable contributor to the Board Finance Committee, and we are expecting that same solid contribution to the full MTM Board.
Lastly, with many of our in person activities resuming, we are planning the Annual Member’s Meeting October 21st (11 a.m. – 2 p.m.). As it has been for the last 6 years, the get together will be held at The Inn at St. Johns, Plymouth, Michigan. The Inn is a first class location and there is no “convention food” served. All Board and Committee members attend this meeting as does the entire MTM staff. We hope you can join us.
MTM Annual Members Meeting is October 21, 2021 at the Inn at St. John’s. We are pleased to have Kristi Stepp, a partner with Sigred Solutions as our keynote speaker presenting, Leading With a Growth Mindset. Kristi has over 25 years of human resources experience in the automotive, healthcare, food/beverage and workforce solutions industries and has a broad international and multicultural expertise.
Before joining Sigred Solutions, Kristi served in strategic human resource roles at several leading global organizations including General Motors, Kelly Services, Pepsi-Cola and Volkswagen. Kristi holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and master’s degrees from Central Michigan University and Fielding Graduate University. In addition, she is a certified Global Professional in Human Resources (GPHR), holds the Master Human Capital Strategist (MHCS) designation, and is a Senior Certified Human Resources Professional (SHRM-SCP). Kristi gives back to the community as a board member of Focus: HOPE and as a board trustee for Pewabic Pottery, both based in Detroit, Michigan.
The Annual MTM Members’ Meeting is held each October. Normally, 150 MTM members attend this event. The last few years, we’ve enjoyed the beautiful facility/room and a great buffet of beef, seafood, and vegetarian meals at The Inn at St. John’s. If the main courses did not fill you, the variety of salads and desserts did.
We’ve always had an interesting speaker as part of the two-hour program. A couple of smaller parts of the program are Chris Doebler, the MTM CFO, and I do a five-minute update on the results of the year to date and first look at the annual member dividend. At the end of the meeting, we have a wide variety of gifts that are drawn at random and given to our members. The MTM Chairman of the Board, Jack Accardo, presides over the member gift giving.
Each year, we have an election for the MTMIC Board of Directors positions. Once a Director is elected they hold a three year term to serve the policyholders of the company and with that being said, we are preparing for our upcoming election. Ballots will be sent out next month and the Directors that are up for re-election are the following:
Bobby Cox – President of Acorn Stamping
Gerald (Jerry) Decker – President of Precision Boring Company
John Moll – Retired, Gemini Group
Teena Kowalski, Director of Finance, Repair Clinic
We are anticipating moving forward with our 2020 Annual Members meeting on October 22, 2020 but will remain flexible as requirements change as a result of COVID-19. MTMIC is pleased to announce that John Walsh, President of the Michigan Manufacturers Association will be our featured speaker this year.
Every October the MTM Annual Members’ Meeting is held. This October was no different. On Thursday, October 17th, 120 MTM members gathered at the Inn at St. John’s in Plymouth. The annual meeting starts at 11 A.M., includes an excellent lunch put on by the St. John’s staff and then 90 minutes of presentations. The goal of the meeting is to bring timely information to the members. This year’s topics were: Maintaining a Safe and Drug Free Workplace presented by Lori Schuck Barresi from Allied Safety Consultants. The second presentation was Creating a Safety and Security Plan for your Business by Darcy Leutzinger and Lindsay Gietzen from Premier Safety Group. Lots of questions from members about drug policy and situations were received. And the Safety and Security issues of the day kept the members’ attention.
The program also included a 5 minute update on MTM financials and outlook for member dividends payable in March, 2020. So far, so good was the message on 2019 loss results. One other congratulatory honor was announced, Karen Schluckebier, Director of Human Resources for StageRight is retiring and looking forward to spending much more time in Florida. She has been a valuable MTM Board member for 5 ½ years. We are sad to see her leave. Of course no meeting is complete without door prizes. Here’s the list of prizes given to attendees:
Airline tickets w/ suitcase
iPad
Gift Card Tree
Inn at St. John’s stay with breakfast
$100 Gift Card
Amethyst Bracelets
$100 Gift Card for early registration
And 13 attendees won $25 Gift Cards
As tradition has it the meeting closes with a music video and picture montage of pictures from the past year. Many from the MTM dividend deliveries from March and April 2019.
Staff celebrates the success of the Annual Members’ Meeting for a day or two, then we critique – what could we improve and the planning starts for next year. So mark your calendars. October 15th, 11 A.M. at the Inn at St. John’s, Plymouth will be the time and location of next year’s meeting. Hope you can attend.
If you ask any member of our Loss Control Department, what is one of the questions that we hear most often, our answer will be “how do you remember all of these rules”. While our answers to that question may vary, the most accurate answer, is that we take continuing education opportunities in the field of safety items, ergonomics and MIOSHA standards. These classes provide us with knowledge of new standards, changes in current standards, how rules can be interpreted in different manners, risk management efforts and an overall understanding of the current safety world. At MTMIC, we encourage our policyholders to also take part in continuing their education. As we are all aware of the need to manage costs, MTMIC offered this class to our policyholders at no charge to them.
Be on the lookout for the 2020 Election Ballots that will be mailed to you in the next few weeks. The nominees for re-election are:Jack Accardo – Haller InternationalKurt Heuser – Tooling Solutions GroupJoe Keppler – Shuert Industries, Inc.The results of the election will be announced at the Annual Meeting in October.
It is almost time for the MTMIC Annual Member Meeting and there is still time to RSVP if you haven’t already done so. Contact Patty Allen at patricia.allen@mtmic. com by October 10th so that you don’t miss out on our Crisis Recovery after Active Shooter and Traumatic Events presentation provided by Kenneth Wolf, PhD.
