After two meetings with District 22 and representatives from the Motocross association the IERA has decided to rejoin into an alliance that we have had for many years with District 22. I am writing this to try to reduce rumors that may not be factual. In the notes below I am going to attempt to note the information I got from the last District 22 meeting. If I leave something out or misrepresent something that was said at the meeting hopefully someone else who was at the meeting can email me (gary.barber@iera22.com) and I will correct the information

What does this mean to the average racer?

1. This means that if you purchase an IERA membership, it is also a District 22 membership. You won’t get two cards but new IERA card will have D22 printed on them. The motocross association will also have their own card that will be recognized by District.
2. If you purchase an IERA membership it will be honored at all AMA motocross events, so you can race at no extra charge. This only allows you to race. If you want motocross points you must also purchase a motocross membership. The same reciprocity will be given to motocrossers. If you wish to race at an IERA event you can show your motocross card and you can race with no extra membership costs, but for IERA points you must purchase an IERA card.
3. Because both cards are District 22 cards, by AMA rule they must be honored by other districts putting on an AMA event so there should be no extra cost for participating in those races.

Meeting Update

I would like to say that at the meeting I was at, I felt all parties were very positive and a lot of positive changes should be coming for the District in the future.

I missed the first meeting that the district had about its future, but from what I have heard much progress was made at the meeting and a second meeting time was chosen. At the first meeting the MX representatives decided to create a sub association of District 22 very much like the IERA has done. My understanding is that they will manage issues like rider advancement, MX points, membership, complaints and other duties that the District has done in the past. With this decision it frees the district appointees up to concentrate on the duties that it was originally design to do such as promoting all disciplines equally and sending congress people to the AMA to represent our District.

The second meeting took place on March 13th, 2008 and I was present at the meeting. There were probably about twenty people participating in the meeting and I felt that it was a very positive meeting for the future of the district. The main thing that the representatives from the IERA wanted to see put into place was an equal representation of all AMA recognized membership types (for lack of better wording this would be MX, off road, ATV, street, hill climb and any other type I missed.). In the past the district has been very strongly MX oriented and decisions seemed to be made that favored that discipline heavily and that is a lot of what lead to the IERA separation.

I am assuming the minutes of the meeting will be posted on the district website www.ia-district22.com at some point, so I won’t get into a lot of detail here.

It seemed that the vast majority agreed that the District must represent all disciplines equally. The district will no longer run its own membership signup, but as noted earlier each sub-association will manage that and in the near future an operating fund will probably be setup for the district and the sub-associations will pay into the fund for district expenses. These expenses will be very much reduced since the district will not be responsible for advertising for specific disciplines and managing the affairs of those sub-associations.

The District board will be comprised of the following: (hopefully I don’t miss any)

• 1 President (votes only to break ties)
• 1 Treasurer (no vote)
• 1 AMA MX congressman (one vote)
• 1 AMA Off road congressman (one vote)
• 2 Off-road (IERA) appointed delegates (one vote each = 2)
• 2 MX (D22) appointed delegates (one vote each = 2)
• 1 Hill climb appointed delegate (one vote)
• Representatives of other disciplines as they become active in the district.

Once the board is put together, all future District 22 business will be voted on by the board and not individual clubs as in the past.

Many of the issues of the past came about because of issues with the way money was dispensed from the district to the different disciplines I can’t say it was unfairly dispersed, but the perception that it was has been there for a long time. Since each sub-association will mange their own money this will take away that perception and as most can guess that as with other aspects of life, money causes many problems where no other issues exist.

We also discussed the District website and I believe it was agreed that the district site will be hosted on the same server as the MX association site but will be only a few pages that are very discipline neutral and equal space will be given for promoting each participating discipline. (An image or link connecting to the website of each sub-association.) The district will pay a fee for the pages and a small percent of the hosting expense.

The main change for the future of District 22 is that it will work for all disciplines and each discipline can remain mostly autonomous to manage their own internal affairs.

- Gary