The Most Important Position in Kiwanis

by Tom Varner, Governor-Elect

If you want to know my opinion on this statement, you will have to wait until next month. This month, I want to talk about the second most important position in the Capital District. That is the Division Lieutenant Governor. Actually, there are 21 Lieutenant Governors in the Capital District.

Under the reshaping, some of our older members who had served as Lieutenant Governor believed that the District had taken something away from the Lieutenant Governor by Regions and the position of District Trustee. In actuality, the Lieutenant Governor was given more responsibility and direct line authority to provide leadership to the clubs in her/his Division. The Lieutenant Governor is in a supervised/supervisor relationship with the Governor. Each Lieutenant Governor is under the direct guidance of the Governor and has the same linear relationship with he/her Club Presidents.

This is big responsibility to guide each of the five to twelve Presidents and clubs in performing all of their Kiwanis obligations and duties. This includes a list of administrative tasks the Club should be doing each year. These include the training of the club officers, directors, and committee chairs and the preparation of the annual Administrative and Service Budgets prior to the October 1 that their term begins. During the year the President is expected to prepare an agenda for both the regular club meetings and the board meetings. The President is responsible to insure that the club is following both the spirit and the letter of the law, both Kiwanis and civil.

A second major role is that they along with the other Lieutenant Governors in their Region along with the District Trustee are a group that can work together to promote interclub and inter-divisional cooperation and service projects. Annually, this group of leaders is charged with overseeing the establishment of a Regional Midwinter Committee and the planning and carrying out of that conference. Every three years the regional Lieutenant Governors will conduct the election of a District Trustee to represent their region for three years.

Finally, something required by the Bylaws and largely ignored is that all twenty-one Lieutenant Governors will meet twice each year as a council to discuss and to make recommendations to the District Board of Trustees. In 2010 - 2011, these Council meetings will be scheduled. We will meet as a Council and your ideas will be presented to the Board by your representative that same weekend.

So far we only have ten of our twenty-one Lieutenant Governors in the District. These District Officers should have been elected prior to April, 2009. We need, you need to get your Lieutenant Governor elected as soon as possible. They are missing valuable time that they could be using to learn the tools of their new craft. Even those who have served before will soon discover that the wheel did not gather moss since their last term but has turned to keep up with our world of change.

If you, the individual Kiwanian, in the Capital District do not have your 2009 - 2010 Lieutenant Governor-Elect, then asked your Club President to get you the representation you deserve. Thanks to all of you for being Kiwanians.