The 1999 AGM was held at the Warehouse on 14th November and there was a good turnout of about 70 members. The meeting started with a 2 minutes silence at 11 o'clock, it being Remembrance Sunday. Unfortunately our retiring chairman Ron Harker, was unable to attend because of work commitments, but Sue, our past secretary was there in his stead.

    The routine reports were got over quickly, The club has had a successful year from a club racing point of view, even if it seemed quiet following last year's hectic Euro's events. With Ron and Sue stepping back from the running of the club, the year had been one of consolidation and reorganisation. Hopefully the new club year will see continued progress again.

    The accounts were presented and reflected the good year the club racer has had. Even allowing for the disruption caused by the 2 break-ins we had during the year, the club's value increased significantly. Full accounts can be seen by any club member by asking me.

    The interesting part of the proceedings came with the elections. We had un-opposed nominations for Treasurer (Stewart Craig), Joint secretaries (Debbie Doyle and Sandra Wilson), Race Director (Stewart Craig) and Competition Secretary (Carole Cook). For Chairman we had 2 nominations, Simon Cook and Colin Blades. For Vice Chairman there were 3 nominations, Chris Roe, Malcolm Hebden and Ray Taylor. We also had a new position of Junior Committee Chairman and there were 2 nominations, Gary Bonnar and Graeme Robinson.

    Both candidates for Chairman had the opportunity to address the meeting then we had an adjournment to hold the written ballot. After the votes were counted the result of an extremely close election were Chairman Simon Cook and Junior Chairman Graeme Robinson. The vote for Vice Chairman was a tie between Chris Roe and Malcolm Hebden, so a further vote was held with Ray dropping out. This resulted in Malcolm getting the vote.

    Simon then thanked everyone and hoped that all the members would get behind the committee and take the club forward.

    The ordinary committee had 17 nominees for the 12 positions so another election was held, this time by a simple show of hands. The results were that the following make up the new committee. Paul Cook, Ian Craig, Paul Davies, Andrew Dorrian,   Jason Harrison-Young, David Pugh, Ray Taylor, James Trenchard, Andrew Robinson, Chris Roe, Barry Williams and Peter Winkworth.

    We then had the annual presentations of the club's championship shields. There had been no Off-road championships held during the summer so we went straight to the on-road championships held early in the club year. The winner of the Tamiya championship was Peter Craig, that of the Non-Tam was Jason  Harrison-Young. We also have the Gerry Wright trophy for the most improved under 16 driver in off-road and this went to Louise Hebden and last year we added the Dave Williams trophy for on-road which went to our youngest driver Greg Williams.

    Louise has improved steadily over the past year and has matured into a very competitive driver. This was shown to its best during the Interclub championship at Harrogate when she was telling her dad what to do!!! and making life very uncomfortable for supposedly better drivers. Hopefully with the increased support for off-road we will see Louise continue to make her way up the finals list.

    Greg is only 5 years old and has been a regular on Saturday nights for most of this year. He started by helping his dad Barry push the sticks on his tranny and it was obvious watching him that concentrating for 5 minutes was very hard for him. However he slowly became able to play a larger and larger part in the races and about 2 months ago started to do the whole race by himself. He has since made steady progress and is now able to show some faster cars how to drive round the track. There was no hesitation by the committee in giving Greg the Dave Williams trophy for 1999.

    Finally we held a special presentation to Ron and Sue Harker of a tray with ships decanter and 6 brandy glasses, to thank them for the immense help that they have given the club over the past 10 years. Some tears were shed and there were hugs all round for Sue.

    We were all tired and everyone was eager to race so the meeting was closed just after 1 o'clock.