I was elected as your President at the 109th PHCC of California Convention, a job that I take very seriously. The State Board of Directors is working along with staff to provide our members with benefits and programs that will help them during this time of great business and financial challenge. We are all going to need PHCC and other trade associations to help us through these times. Now is the time to be involved, not the time to run and hide.

Our recent convention was a great success. All 10 seminars were very informative. I personally attended 8 of them. I would have attended all 10 if my schedule had allowed. I understand the Optional events were great. The Napa Valley Marriott was first class; every meal and event was great. All in all, it was a wonderful convention. I just wish more of our members had attended. Every member of our association would have benefited from the convention.

I would like to thank our sponsors: Kohler Company, Federated Insurance, FBC Building Solution, Lubrizol Advanced Materials, Emergency Services Restoration, Insinkerator, Pace Supply, IAPMO and Gallina LLP. Please consider doing business with our sponsors when possible. We should support those who support us.

I would also like to thank our National Association for their support at the convention. Elicia Magruder from the National Office was there all week and ran the Executive Meeting, and our National President, Skip Pfeffer and his wife came all the way from Boston to attend our convention. Finally, I want to thank our fantastic staff for all of their hard work. Without them, the convention could not have been such a success.

I had many interesting conversations at the convention. The one topic that kept coming up was communication. Sometimes the Locals think that State and National don’t do a good job of communicating. This is probably true to a degree. The Locals sometimes don’t’ do a good job of communicating either. I personally want to do a better job of communicating with all parties involved. We have a Federation and all of us need to do a better job communicating with one another.
I give you my word that I will work on my communication skills.

Tom LeDuc