President's Report - January 2026

(Dawn Smith, President)

I’m writing this on December 30, so I’m still recovering from the holidays and gearing up to go back to work on January 2 after a nice break. As I’ve said before, 2025 was a tough year for a lot of people, and I, for one, am looking forward to flipping the page on the calendar and starting fresh with a brand-new year. 

I would like to give a huge thank you to everyone who was able to attend our Holiday Brunch on December 6. Around 20 members joined us, enjoying delicious food, lively conversations, and plenty of fun. Thank you to Denise Gaumer Hutchison for managing all the decorations, and to Lynn Gerlach for leading us in the civics game we played. 

2026 is a general election year, so Voter Services has already started gearing up for the upcoming Spring election (read the Voter Services update for more details in our plans for this year). But I’m expecting this to be a busy year for us as a League, so I hope everyone has spent some time recovering during 2025, and we’re all ready to go this upcoming year. 

A few upcoming League events I’d like to call out: Our Annual Meeting will be held on Saturday, January 10, at ADRC from 10:00 to 1:00. You all should have received your Annual Meeting packets with the proposed budget – if you haven’t, or if it got lost in your email, let me know and I can resend it. The Annual Meeting is the most important event of the year, and we need a quorum to vote on our board and budget, so if you’re available on January 10, please plan on attending.

Wednesday, January 14, our National Popular Vote Committee will be hosting  Zoom at 6:00 for anyone interested in learning more about NPV.  Please check out the newsletter for additional information on this event and share it with anyone you think would be interested.  I believe this event will be recorded, so we’ll also share it on our YouTube channel once it’s done.

Last event I want to call out is our Lively Issues, with will be held on Saturday, February 21, at the Howard Library.  Additional information for this event will be in February’s newsletter, but I wanted to get it out there early for people, because I know how busy everyone is.

With that, I’m going to wish everyone a Happy New Year and wrap up my last President’s update for 2025.