It was such an honor to finally bring back this cherished event. Every person that attended is truly a community leader. Here is a recap of what happened.

Around 70 people were able to attend. We started out with Representative Pam Marsh. Rep. Marsh shared her appreciation of all our efforts to see the bill pass and said that it was the highlight of their legislative session this year. Mindy Bachmeier, District Director from Lebanon, was kind enough to share her notes from some of the other speakers, which we will share in the next section.

From The OSTA Podcast with Bill Bateman, President, “our first conference in five years was a success in all kinds of good ways. If you didn’t get to comment, I’d be surprised because the room was packed.  I didn’t see room for more than maybe one more person, and you would have had to know somebody really well to get anybody extra into that room.

We filled it and I thank you for coming out. This is something that we have not done for five years. We did it and we’re happy we did. We’re happy you were there.

Everybody who was in attendance seemed to go away with a lot of good things, both lovely parting gifts and some good information and new purpose. More on that in a second.

I’d like to begin as I did in my opening remarks by thanking Rochelle Love Elder for her tremendous hard work. She worked up until midnight the night before, and her hard work showed.

Also thank you to everyone on the board whether you drove in and made a personal appearance or took time to take part in a Zoom session. It contributed to an overall excellent day. And that included things like checking in the guests, passing out the gift bags, and being there to answer questions and point people in the right directions.

Thanks too to Representative Pam Marsh, who is our opening speaker, and Senator Jeff Golden, who was kind enough to take time out of his schedule and provide us some opening remarks on video.

Senator Jeff Golden with a welcome message to the group, which is always appreciated. I appreciate their continued support and participation, and we look forward to working closely with them in the months to come.

While we’re passing out thank yous. I want to include the Hilton Garden Inn up there in Springfield. Had an opportunity to stay there as well and experience their support and help during the conference. A high five to everyone there. Nice facility, nice rooms, nice people.

Everything worked out just great. Thank you guys. I had time, and this is a luxury for me, I had time to sit and listen and observe with a lot of the members, people who you see the name on the list, but here they are right there in front of you. People came up with good suggestions, and I saw some positive outcomes of our meeting.

One of the persons took my workshop on how to build a newsletter, and that generated a conversation about the fact their manager has said, no, you can’t do a newsletter without my permission, and I need to check it out. Well, no, that’s complete garbage.

We found the appropriate section of the Oregon ORS 90, and we sent that resident back to their park armed with information, and they have decided, nuts to this noise, we’re going to start a newsletter in our park on Monday morning.

So this is one of the many positive discussions we had. Myths or downright fabrications, fake lies, and bogus balihoo were being debunked left and right.

There’s a lot of shenanigans happening out there, and you having good information, knowing where to get good information and how to present it appropriately to get your point across was a good part of that day.

We also have some good information on what we’re going to do different the next time. Technology was a big bugaboo for us. We had some good connections, things worked out, but there were some situations! I think in one point we had to call someone on the phone because the audio didn’t work on the computer, and then hold the phone up to the microphone.

But the point is, they were able to be heard and the presentation got made. I also want to thank uh everybody who took that extra step to be there.

Samantha Sheehan from the Oregon Law Center came, She was masked. She had just gotten over an illness and was trying to avoid getting sick again, and she took time and had quite the nice presentation.

We had one of our board members, as she was not feeling too appear by zoom. She had just returned from Germany, so that would be Angela Garvin, who came in and took time to zoom in. She didn’t want to risk making anybody sick by coming in physically.

Both her and Ken Pryor zoomed in from the north end of the state. And so a lot of people went that extra mile to do things and it really showed.

I’m glad we were able to build on the success of HB 3054 and turn that into a highly successful conference. People walked away with a new and positive sense of where OSTA is headed and a box full of good ideas and information.

Well done, everyone. Give yourself a pat on the back. We have all decided, whew, because it took us awhile to kind of come back together and put things away. We’ve taken a few deep breaths, and we’re cleaning up our information, packing away our toys.

We’re going to already be working at the next board meeting on what to do different, what to do better, and how to have an even more successful and perhaps even longer conference. Maybe a full-day presentation.

Your ideas, of course, are always welcome. We did get a lot of good input. One of the things I put on this program previously, I would like to find out what you, our members, are interested in us doing. Things we should be working on in the next five years, or the next year. How to continue this positive growth.

Finally, I’d like to report on, I believe, 19 new members. Welcome! Some folks were lucky enough to pick up some t-shirts and some ORS 90 guidebooks, Those things are still going to be on sale.

Send us a message if you did not get a chance to purchase one, as we ran out. We didn’t expect that kind of a response, So if you’d like more information on things to purchase, be it an OSTA t-shirt or the very popular ORS guidebook, which is a discussion and a line-by-line breakdown of the Oregon’s rental code, (that’s what we’re always referring to: the things that you need to show your landlord and your owners that give you the legal strength and the legal standing to have very positive discussions.)

Those things are still going to be on sale. Send us a message if you’d like to purchase that.

Okay, so once again, you made it happen, you made the passage of the bill happen with your support, you made the conference happen with your phone calls, your emails, your ideas, and your suggestions, and our board and our volunteers went the extra mile to work on that for you even if they weren’t feeling 100%.

We had a lot of support from our community and sponsors. We look forward to keeping you up to date with our next chapter.

There’s more ahead, and we hope you’ll have a good holiday season, So with that in mind, be safe out there. Thank you again. I’m glad you had a good time at the conference.

I loved being there and meeting all of you. Aren’t we a good group? A good looking bunch of people. Take care. Talk to you next week. The preceding program was a presentation of a retired guy productions.