Remarks from 2019 HBAI State President, Mark Vogt We have our work at the state capitol cut out for us this coming year, and I assure you the board members you send to state meetings are all focused on making our building industry better! This is always challenging here in Illinois, and our best hope of accomplishing our goals is with a unified front at state from each and every one of our locals. To those locals that already send reps to state meetings, you each help make us stronger. To those locals that haven’t been participating in state meetings, I ask you sincerely, to change this and make our state board even better. We need every local active at state, and I hope to here from all of you soon! In 2019, we will likely be working to stop several new tax proposals, all of which won’t be helpful to our already shrunken home market. One of which is likely to be a service tax on remodeling work. We narrowly stopped this once before, but it’s going to be back again. This campaign, and others, will take the combined efforts from several trade organizations, and HBAI will be at the forefront of a lot of these fights. We’re a small trade organization compared to others, so our best approach is always strength in unity. We can’t outspend others, but if we can get all our HBA locals active and talking with one voice across the whole state, we can make a difference. Will you do this? Because I think we can make a difference here by truly ‘standing together’ more than we have in the past. And, I’m asking for your help in unifying all our locals into a much stronger voice in Springfield! My intent is to be the best representative of our HBAI as I can be. Myself, the other senior officers, and all other state board members are volunteers here. And we all look at this work as a service to you and our Industry, never as rulers over anyone. There’s no pay for any of us in this (sorry about that!) but there’s a lot of reward! I’ve made great friends here over the years of coming to state board meetings, and I value each of them immensely. I also hope to get to know more people from every one of the locals in Illinois. I’m aware making real and positive change in this state sounds impossible for our industry, but I’m a big believer in trying hard to do so. Sometimes, and together, that’s all the difference it takes! Here's to a better 2019 for us all! Mark Vogt; 2019 HBAI President official installed by Dean Mon, NAHB 2nd Vice Chairman of the Board with ceremonial gavel and pin from Bill Ward; HBAI Executive Vice President 5
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