Lodge meeting and Nominations

Today’s (October 10th, 2021) lodge meeting was held and several issues were addressed. First I would like to inform you that the following changes to the Executive Board were addressed. President: Paul Lunkwitz will be moving into the immediate Past President position. Vice President Bob Ashcraft has been nominated for the President position. With this move, Mike Thompson was nominated for the Vice President position. Treasurer: Jose Navarrete will be stepping down, and David Whittaker was nominated for Treasurer. Sgt. At Arms: Aaron Dicus will step down and Jason Stinehour was nominated for this position. As of today no other member has expressed interest in running for a board position. Between now and the November Lodge meeting, if anyone wishes to run opposed to these members, you must contact us directly. If there’s no opposition, these board members will be sworn in to their positions at the November meeting. We also discussed the mandate and the upcoming deadline. There is no crystal ball, but we have expressed that if you are not going to take the shot, you need to take steps to defend your position the best way possible. We will publish more information very soon about what steps to take. If you have a religious belief that prevents you from taking the shot, be sure to submit the religious exemption form. FOP members who are disciplined as a result of this mandate, you need to file a claim with legal defense as soon as you are informed of discipline. You need to do this at each step of discipline as they progress. If in the unlikely situation that they actually investigate this, you need to file a legal defense claim to have an attorney present during questioning. There are a ton of questions and unfortunately not a lot of answers as to the legalities of this mandate. As time passes we will have to see the way this works out in court. A motion was made and passed to rescind the referral program. there was a lot of discussion with great points made on both sides. ultimately the vote was 5-2 in favor of rescinding this program. We also discussed that there is an associates lodge opening for non peace officers in our department to join. They will be eligible for legal defense. I will keep you updated as to when they get up and running. Be safe and take care of each other.

Lunkwitz