RI president discusses zone realignment

Rotary International --
February 2008

Dear Rotarians,

The Rotary International Board of Directors has approved a realignment of zone boundaries that is available for review on www.rotary.org.

As many of you know, RI directors are nominated by Rotary's 34 zones. To ensure fairness in the election process, RI Bylaws (section 12.010.4) require that each zone has approximately the same number of Rotarians and that the Board conduct a comprehensive review of zones at least every eight years.

Zone boundaries were last adjusted in 1995. Membership demographics have changed considerably since then, causing concerns about fairness. The Board began discussing the zone structure in 2002 and appointed committees of current and past RI directors and past RI presidents to study the issue and make recommendations. The Board presented a proposal to the 2007 Council on Legislation that would have added an additional director and maintained the current zone boundaries. The Council rejected this proposal and instead referred a resolution to the Board requesting it to realign the zones. At its January 2008 meeting, the Board approved a realignment of zone boundaries that will first be used to select members of director nominating committees in 2008-09.

In accordance with the decision, I have appointed a committee to discuss the implementation of this realignment structure and make recommendations to the Board at its June 2008 meeting for final approval. Recommendations will include zone "pairings," the order of zone rotation for the ongoing selection of directors, and other issues such as future appointment of RRIMCs and RRFCs. Any objections to sectioning should be submitted to the general secretary via club resolution no later than 1 May 2008.

A comprehensive PowerPoint presentation giving the history of the zone realignment project as well as a full listing of the realigned zones is available online. If you have comments or questions, you may submit them via e-mail.

On behalf of the RI Board of Directors, I thank you for your understanding and patience with this process.

Sincerely,


Wilfrid J. (Wilf) Wilkinson
President,
Rotary International