Region 6A: Sawyer / Washburn / Barron / Rusk / Burnett Counties

December  2024

Meetings: See Text Below

Hello everyone, Scotty here giving you the current report. I will make this as short as I can and hopefully hit some of the main points within our Region and District 6. I’d like to start by saying Happy, Happy Birthday to our 6A secretary Gina, on her big 50! We had a great surprise party for her at Big Dicks in Spooner in October and she was surprised. Thank you for everyone showing up for her! As I said many times before, Gina does a stand-up job as secretary, and I appreciate everything she does! Gina asked me to write the newsletter for her this month because she is busy with some things going on in her life right now.

I would like to send out a big thank you to Big Musky, one of our new members, for hosting our November meeting on the Chippewa Flowage. It was a great turnout. Thanks again for the hospitality and to Tracy and Kim for putting it together there.

Right off the bat there have been some significant changes within District 6. Andy and Polly came down from Region 6B to our meeting. I had been talking to them prior to this meeting as they have few members attending meetings on a regular basis. They announced, and we agreed, that 6B will be basically retiring as an active region. I want to thank Pat Meyer, Andy Mathieson, Polly Anderson, and Bob Berg for being the glue up in 6B and holding it together over the years. With the inactivity, and only the chosen few officers showing up to their meetings, it was agreed-upon and decided that they will retire that region and 6A will take over and incorporate that region int 6A and try to make us all one, which is what we are anyway as ABATE of Wisconsin. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, we are all one. Something to remember when talking to people. I will be appointing at least one or if there’s more interest, more area reps in the 6B area to be contacts for me. This will keep ABATE alive and make sure people know we are there. Tell your friends/motorcyclists to start coming to our 6A meetings. We will also try to branch out and have some meetings up in that 6B region area. A big thank you to Pat Meyers, who had recently retired as regional rep in 6B after all of his years of hard work and dedication.

Also, I need to announce the resignation of several officers within our region 6 for personal reasons. Our Washburn Area Rep Aron Christensen, Products Grace Christensen, and Legislative Officer Jeff Westlund have stopped down. Thank you for everything you’ve done. They will be staying active with us, but just can’t fulfill their positions at this time. I would like to welcome our new Washburn Area Rep, Jamie Olson, who has stepped up to the plate for Washburn County. I’m sure he will do a great job. Jamie likes to talk, lol, so he will be good at what he does especially pushing memberships. He jumped on the bandwagon immediately by signing up and is doing a great job! Membership is what keeps us alive, and we all need to remember that if it wasn’t for our members and our strong voice as a group, we would not be what we are today ! There’s power in numbers!

It was my first seating at a BOD meeting on the board of directors in the month of November in Wisconsin Rapids, and there have been some significant changes this year. I won’t get into all of them right now, but I will talk about some of them at our meeting. There will be some changes in our membership incentives to sell more memberships, we have two more product officers at the state level, each region will receive two free tickets for the Summer Hummer to present to new attendees, however we would like to do that, whether it be raffle, or how we feel fit. There will be a band on Sunday of Summer Hummer for all of the cleanup crew and any adult beverage leftovers from our big party will be sold that day also.

February 7^th, 8^th and 9^th will be Officer Training. All officers within our District 6, please set your calendars for officers training in Marshfield. It’s very important that all officers, and especially new officers, attend this training. It’s very informative and it is really important to know how we operate and what your duties are in the position you hold.

Lobby Day will be February 13^th. This is the most important day of the year for us. Going to Madison as grassroots lobbyists to present our issues to all of our leaders at the state level is very important. We will have buses that will be available to haul people down to Madison and back , and I will have that schedule route information for you shortly. There will be some restructuring on the bus route for our neck of the woods. We will talk about that later. Also, we are in the process of hiring a Madison lobbyist to watch the legislative bills that might slip by us. We need to be informed if there’s an issue that we are concerned with being brought up so we can nip it in the bud before it gets too far. The consensus believes this money is well spent to protect our issues at the state level!

Land warming at the Summer Hummer grounds will be May 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th, with the board meeting to follow on the 18^th.

June 7th is our Patata, Patata Party and June 20 through the 22nd will be the Summer Hummer. Our big Christmas District 6 Christmas party will be at the Springbrook VFW on December 7th. We have our buddy Doug Sheen playing music that day along with Sarge cooking the main course. Please contact Sarge for side dishes, which are very well appreciated! Wear your ugly sweater and bring an exchange gift if you want to participate in that. Please limit it to $25 or something you have at home that you would like to exchange.

So much for being short winded, but there was a lot to talk about and say, and we won’t have a lot of time at the Christmas party at our meeting at 12 o’clock noon that day because it’s more about the Christmas party, so I covered a lot of our topics in the newsletter! By the way, these newsletters cost us money! And I hope everyone in our organization reads them whether it be digital, or hardcopy through the mail. This is where the information is listed throughout the state. If you don’t know what’s going on, it’s your own fault.

Hope to see everyone at the Christmas party. It’s been a great summer and ‘till then everybody be safe!

Thank you,

Gina