HARRISBURG, Pa. – Continuing its plan to streamline its board governance, the board of directors of the Pennsylvania Credit Union Association recently approved a redistricting plan for electing directors. The plan, which was approved Feb. 21, calls for voting districts to be made up of counties, rather than chapter areas. "In streamlining our Board Governance, it only makes sense that the voting districts be made up of counties, rather than chapter areas," said Erie FCU President/CEO Norb Kaczmarek, PCUA director and chairman of the Governance Restructure Task Force. The redistricting plan will be presented to affiliated credit unions at the Annual Business Meeting in May. Kaczmarek stressed that the redistricting leaves the number of districts – nine – in place, but it realigns them "to make them more equal." The intention, he said, is to "create as geographic an alignment as possible." He explained that, "Over time, the districts had become unequal in size. District 1, for example, had 35 credit unions, and District 9 had more than 100. It was hard to determine how the old alignment system was figured out, but it left some counties like Alleghany split into two different districts. The new alignment assigns different counties to districts, so we'll end up with having a low of 54 credit unions to a high of about 90 in a district." The process to make the PCUA more "progressive and effective" began in November 2002 when the membership of the Pennsylvania Credit Union League – as PCUA was known as then – voted to accept several initiatives the league said would allow it to be more responsive to its members and to more easily make strategic decisions. The name change to Pennsylvania Credit Union Association was part of the long-term strategy. The membership also approved an initiative to grant board members a two-year term and to reduce the size of the board from 21 directors to nine in 2005. In one of PCUA's latest moves to streamline the organization and "to better prepare it to meet future challenges," PCUA in January restructured its senior staff which included the naming of its five-person executive management team and its senior management team which includes its executive management team plus seven others. -

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