FW: VVA: RE: VVA Public Affairs Report

 From: vva@vva2.talklist.com
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2015 18:53:37 -0500
Subject: VVA: RE: VVA Public Affairs Report
To: OBSCP@vva.org; vva@vva2.talklist.com

Public Affairs Report 

New PSA Project 2015

Bill Black of Com-cast and Keith King of Keith King & Associates along with collaboration from VVA have been working on a PSA project for this year. Com-cast has requested VVA to consider doing other projects for 2015. The PSA's will inform veterans of transitioning to civilian life from military, searching for jobs after service, as well as how to make the most of the benefits that we have earned.  This project has moved along much faster than we had originally anticipated. Because of a request to have the PSA's  ready for air dates in February of this year, we had to move up the schedule for the production shoot to January. Consequently we will be shooting the PSA's in late January.  Editing of the programs will done almost immediately, in order to meet air dates. Com-Cast has said that the air time currently scheduled for these PSA's would amount to Three and one half million dollars of free air time to VVA.

New Web Site

The new-site reconstruction of the web-site is moving forward.  Our progress is progressing  as planned.  To this point we have spent slightly more than $30,000 in round numbers on the reconstruction. At the same time we have maintained the current web site cost to slightly over $20,000 dollars and  we are closing in on the date when we will turn up the new face of VVA. At this time we anticipate April or May.    

Real Estate Task Force

This has been a project the Real Estate Task Force, Chaired by Tom Owen,  has been working on for about 10 months. We have been making progress in short leaps, but now we hope that we have finally found the avenue in which to make it all happen. The hang up has always been real-estate law and how to find a way to legally submit monies from the real-estate agents to the organization. Mr. Owen believes that he may have found an avenue to do so. We want to make sure that this works before we make the announcement of how we will move forward. So more to come.  

Government Affairs

HR 5484 The Toxic Exposure Research and Military Family Support Act of 2014 was introduced in Congress by Congressman Mike Honda. VVA strongly supported this bill. Unfortunately it died in the last Congress. We have to start over. We are awaiting the new bill number to be assigned so that we will move forward with our battle to have this won over during this session of Congress. The legislation will provide a method where  children of our servicemen and women, will have an avenue  by which their various forms of birth defects will be addressed. The nation needs to know the full effects of toxic exposures to our children. When the new bill number is known Please go to our Legislative Action Center, http://capwiz.com/vva/home/ and take action by entering your zip code. Then send the prepared letter to your U.S. Representative asking them to please join their colleagues to co-sponsor the new bill.  This bill will help to achieve a measure of justice for the innocent victims of the use of toxic substances in times of war. This bill will offer unlimited possibilities for scientific research into the effects of these toxic chemicals.   

Dan Stenvold reported that the Award sub-committee is and has been very active with submissions for VVA's Commendation and Achievement medals  among others. Keep your nominations coming into the committee.  The National Convention is not far off.

Last but certainly not least the committee reviewed the upcoming budget process that will take place early this year. All Officers, members of the board of directors, Committee Chairs,  Department heads and everyone else who is involved with budgets should be actively putting the finishing touches on them before submission to the finance department. Deadline for budget submission is February 1, 2015. 

Tom Burke - Chair - Public Affairs