6 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 46, No. 1 high school students. As an overall trend, there were 34,725 single licensed land surveyors in the United States. For a point of reference, there were 37,805 in 1997. In summary, Trent explained that 43.8% of licensed surveyors are over the age of 61, which means we will lose approximately 15,000 licensed surveyors over the next 10 years. To make this up we need 1,500 surveyors passing the PS exam and then their state exam. None of this is particularly new to hear, but seeing it in quantifiable data is helpful. So, where do we go from here? Trent suggests creating a full path from kindergarten to licensure that focuses on outreach, education, and workforce development. Throughout the session he shared quite a few promotional materials and opportunities available for people to use. One such source for us all is www.getkidsintosurvey. com. Another fun experience is the Future City Competition, which includes a Best Surveying Practices Award. This program is for middle schoolers and you can find it at https://futurecity.org. Trent also discussed the importance of CTE programs, including Oregon’s upcoming CTE Conference in April. I could go on about all the great ideas that came out of this session and hope to see Trent come back to share more with us in the future. Another item of note is this year’s Annual Membership Meeting, which is held on Thursday the week of the conference, where I share working details about PLSO. As a reminder, PLSO is run by a State Board of Directors that is made up of representatives from each chapter of the state. The Board works off two budgets. One is the balance sheet, which keeps them up to date on what is in the bank. As of December 31, 2022, our end-of-year financials totaled $355,468.14, splitting between $112,528.58 in the reserve money market fund and $242,939.56 in checking. This time every year we tend to be a little high because we’ve taken in nearly all of our income for the conference but haven’t paid any of the bills. On average, in a non-world-closing pandemic year, the conference costs around $100,000 to produce and nets between $45,000 to $50,000. PLSO uses this money and our annual dues, which consistently hits around $81,000 each year, to run our Annual Operating Budget, which is the projected net income for the year between revenue and operating expenses. Some years we net high in the black, others have been narrowly in the red but we generally always aim to break even by spending what we make on outreach. As of January 31, PLSO has a total of 544 members. That breaks down as follows: • 342 Corporate Members • 92 Associates • 29 Special • 16 Retired • 15 Sustaining Members, making up six different companies • 27 Life Members • 23 Students And of course, we had our annual changing of the guard. I want to thank Jeremy Sherer for serving as our State Chairman and the others stepping off the Board. These are all incredible people and I appreciate them very much. We need more like them to help lead us into the future. From the PLSO Office How to Send Us Your Work Please email the editor Vanessa Salvia with submissions. vsalvia@gmail.com Your submission should be in .doc format. Please send images separately (not embedded in the document) and at the highest file size available (MB size range versus KB size range—larger sizes are encouraged). Please include the author’s name and email address or phone number for contact. continued
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Nzc3ODM=