Board of Directors appoints 2023-2024 Committee Chairs and Vice-Chairs

The 2023-2024 WLIA Board of Directors met March 15th-17th at the Wilderness Resort to appoint Chairs and Vice-Chairs to the WLIA Committees, and to begin work on the activities for 2023-2024. We are excited to begin the work to further geospatial technology and land records in Wisconsin. 

Back Row (L-R): Doug Avoles, Cheryl Berken, David Buehler, Zach Nienow, Jaime Martindale Middle Row: Laurel Hodkiewicz, Kim Christman, Jennifer Borlick, Ann Barret, Nik Anderson. Front Row: Maggie Bennet, Nicole Barbiaux, Kim Meinert, Joe Fleischmann, Colter Sikora, Shelley Witte.

WLIA is governed by two documents, the Administration (Admin) Manual and the Bylaws. The Admin Manual is a general overview and history of WLIA as well as a summary of the different committees, awards, etc. This is updated once a year, typically to add award and scholarship winners. Occasionally there are substantive changes as we discover better ways operate. The Bylaws are updated on as-needed basis and require a vote by the membership. The Bylaws dictate how WLIA operates and how we, as the Officers and Directors of WLIA, should conduct business. If there are proposed changes to the Bylaws, those are brought before the membership to be voted on during the Town Hall at the Annual Conference. The Annual Conference is chosen because that is the time when we have a quorom of our membership. In order to meet quorom for Bylaw changes, we have to have at least 10% of our membership present. There are currently 1,144 members in WLIA, so quorum right now would be 115 members.

You, the members, elect six Directors to a two year term every year. Those six directors become Vice-Chairs of one of the committees for a year, learning from the Chair of the committee, and become Chair of that committee in their second year. This year was unique in that we had a vacancy in the Chair position of the Technical Committee as the person that would have been Chair, Colter Sikora, became President-Elect. According to our by-laws, vacancies are offered to the "first runner up". We had six two-year terms, and one one-year term to fill. Nik Anderson, Doug Avoles, Nicole Barbiaux, Maggie Bennett,  David Buehler and Jaime Martindale were elected to two-year terms; and Cheryl Berken was elected to fill the vacancy with a one year term. The President-Elect, Colter Sikora,  Chairs the Annual Conference Committee and the Past-President, Zachary Nienow, Chairs the Awards, Nominations and Scholarship Committees.

Committee assignments are as follows: