United States Coast Guard Auxiliary 7th District Breeze - USCGAUX ...

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U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary District 7 Breeze
From the Bridge Commodore Donald Frasch
Immediate Past District Commodore
Deputy Naonal Commodore–Recreaonal
Boang Safety
I’d like to spend
a few minutes
updating you on
some of the significant
accomplishments that
came out of N-Train
this year. Although
St. Louis in January
isn’t exactly what
I’d consider a prime
venue for any event, it was sunny and 40 degrees on
Monday morning. That inspired my fellow Deputy
National Commodore from the Pacific area, COMO
Marie Scholle, to take advantage of the perceived “heat
wave” by sitting outside, soaking up the warm noon
sun in a short sleeve top and light slacks. Of course,
COMO Scholle is from Fairbanks, Alaska, where it was
-35 degrees when she left for St. Louis. The teasing was
endless!
Regardless of the weather, the Recreational Boating
Safety Board can look back on a couple of significant
accomplishments. First, the National Board voted to
approve a new Program Visitor Ribbon (PV) for our
members who participate in that program. The present
ribbon for a PV member consists of a Vessel Examiner
(VE) ribbon with a gold star attached. The original belief
was that one must first be a VE to become qualified as
a PV, which is simply not the case. In fact, a PV must
understand all of our Recreational Boating Safety (RBS)
programs and activities to effectively guide Marine
Dealers in delivering the right boating safety messages
to the boating public. Creating a new “identity” for
the PV program should encourage more members to
participate in this critical part of our overall RBS effort.
How about you
Secondly, the Board voted to separate State Liaison and
Legislative Liaison officers into two distinct groups.
The Legislative Liaison people will focus completely
on what is happening in State Legislatures related to
boating safety and will pass that information both up
through their Parallel Staffing Chain and directly to
the District Commodores and State Liaison officers.
The Parallel Staffing chain will now work through
the Department of the Chief Counsel and his team.
Selection for the legislative position will be made by
the Chief Counsel, the District Commodore and the
Director of Auxiliary. A strong legal background, with
the ability to understand fully the legislative process
and language will be a requirement for the position.
This action should insure that the Auxiliary knows the
direction of boating safety legislation being considered
by all states and that this information gets to the
appropriate Active Duty leadership.
State Liaison Officers (SLO) will now focus on the
Boating Law Administrators (BLA) of each state. When
anyone asks me what is the expectation for the State
Liaison Officer position, I respond that the SLOs best
friend should be their state’s BLA. The BLA is the one
responsible for implementing a state’s boating safety
laws and programs. These administrators are clearly
vital to the success of our RBS activities. We can not
afford to have anything other than a dedicated and
focused partnership effort with the BLAs if we intend
to save lives.
An additional benefit of this new direction is to improve
our partnerships with each Coast Guard District’s
“Boating Safety Specialists” (BSS). Each CG District has
only one BSS, who is also responsible for working with
the District’s BLAs. We can help these BSSs in their
efforts. As a case in point, District Eight includes twenty
five (25) states in its Area of Responsibility (AOR) —
an area in the center of the county that extends from
the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border. Although
vacant for several months, the BSS position was just
filled this week, and our SLOs will significantly help
the new BSS as he develops his working relationships
with the BLAs. In this case, we can “bring the Coast
Guard” to the BLAs.
By developing effective relationships with the Coast
Guard and the states and working together as a team,
we should be able to have the best possible Recreational
Boating Safety activities.
From even this one example, I hope you can see the
importance of what we are doing and the advantage
of even seemingly minor changes. We absolutely
must look for every way possible to achieve Mission
Excellence in our primary mission – better Recreational
Boating Safety. Would you like to help
Semper Paratus Ω