President's Perspective

Time flies when you're having fun!

Doug McCloud
President

Boy have I had fun! It hardly seems like it has been almost a year since I was given the honor of serving as your President. During this time, thanks to your hard work, you and CBR have had another fantastic year.

As you can imagine, I don't have the `space' here to thank all of the many people who have contributed to such a great year. But I do want to warmly thank my fellow officers, the committee chairs and vice chairs, the many many committee members and, last but not least, the spectacular CBR staff who make the hard seem easy day in and day out.

However, there are a couple highlights of 2005 that I would like mention:

• Defeat of Issues 2, 3, 4 & 5 -- With your help, we were able to defeat all four of these issues. If passed, they would have gutted the political system, albeit flawed, in Ohio and virtually destroyed your political voice by effectively crushing all PACS and CORPAC & RPAC along with them.
• COCIE -- Creation of the Central Ohio Commercial Information Exchange (COCIE) which consolidated three different sources for commercial real information into one state of the art, user friendly database. It also makes it possible for the primarily residential practitioner to, for an additional fee, have the same opportunity to find or list commercial property that the full time C/I practitioner currently has.
• Online Education -- Partnering with Hondros College, we will be able to provide CBR members a direct link to timely, state of the art online continuing education classes at an attractive price. We expect to have this in place by the end of the year so be sure to check it out.

Finally, I've said more than once that "being a REALTOR® sure beats working for a living." Now, you know I don't mean to suggest that agents don't work very hard. But, I don't know of another organization with as much cooperation and camaraderie as the REALTORS®. We work hard and play hard, are generous to the less fortunate and dedicate untold hours to our families, faith and communities.

Thanks for a great time and the opportunity to serve you.