The Finance Committee (FINCOM) met October 18 at AAPM Headquarters. Full details of this meeting process were described in my previous column. We had a very constructive meeting and at the end of the day, the FINCOM unanimously approved the 2018 draft budget that will be sent to the AAPM board. Once approved, I will detail the budget in an upcoming column. I want to thank all the members of FINCOM and the council chairs and their respective staff liaisons for a very constructive budget meeting.

I want to briefly respond to the questions raised by AAPM members regarding the recent Governance Change Process, such as, "What was the total expenditure of Association funds on developing this proposal and marketing it to the members, including committee meeting expenses (travel, accommodations, meals, meeting space, etc.), remote meeting expenses, consultant fees and expenses, any staff personnel time and other headquarters resources dedicated to this project, and sundry other expenses?"

As the treasurer for AAPM, I felt compelled to respond and hence asked our finance staff to tabulate the various costs of the proposal. I want to clarify that the finance staff tabulated these expenses during the peak period of budget preparation.

The total cost for the entire Governance change process that occurred over 2015-2017 is estimated as $286K, which breaks down as the following approximations:

• $58K – outside consultant charges
• $13K – legal and chapter visits by the Ad Hoc Committee members
• $162K – travel (including accommodations, meals, etc.) of board Members & Strategic Planning Committee members
• $53K – Overhead charges (staff time spent on this project)

I would like to inform the readers that the cost tabulated for the process does not include the volunteers' time spent on the process. To place the above expenses in perspective, the average annual expenses for the association have averaged $10.7M over the past few years.

Finally, I would like to thank Robert McKoy for all his work on the budget and helping me throughout this year on finances.

I wish all of you very Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year.