August 5, 2025

Dear Members,

On June 27, 2025 there was a Petition posted on the unofficial TripoliMN Facebook page and at the July 12, 2025 launch signatures were being collected for this Petition.

With this petition the author has either misunderstood and/or misrepresented Honorary Memberships along with the history of Honorary Membership to the members. The board would like to respond with a few facts:

1. Until this year membership information was recorded in an excel spreadsheet. In January 2025 we started to use a new club management and website suite called “Club Express”. We created the two memberships that are currently in the bylaws, Junior and Senior. We asked all members to sign up in the new system, so that it would have up to date and correct information. We did not transfer any old information automatically.
2. The TripoliMN bylaws never contained a “Lifetime Membership”. “Honorary Memberships” were part of the original Bylaws published in 2008. However, the term period of Honorary Memberships was never specified in the Bylaws. Consequently, the phrase “Lifetime Membership” used in the petition is a misnomer and misrepresentation of the Bylaws.
3. The TripoliMN Board decided in November 2015 to remove the Honorary Membership section from the Bylaws. This was nearly 10 years ago. It was not a recent rule change as alleged in the petition.
   1. Furthermore, in December 2015 the Board decided: "By-law changes - as voted in the November 2015 meeting, the bylaw article allowing for honorary members has been eliminated. Dave Leininger will remain as an honorary member as long as he chooses. All board members voted in favor of the change."
4. This spring Mr. Leininger asked the Treasurer for the 2025 membership badge. He was told that it had not been printed with the first batch, since he was not in the new system. Mr. Leininger was also told by the Treasurer that we had forgotten to plan for the legacy Honorary membership, but he would check with the board on the rules for regarding this and how to enter it in the new system.
5. The Treasurer printed Mr. Leininger’s 2025 membership badge with the batch on May 10 and he received it at the next launch. On May 20, 2025 his old data was manually transferred from the excel spreadsheet to the new system and activated.
6. Mr. Leininger has been a member since the changes outlined in bullet point C. He has annually received a member badge and remained as an Honorary Member as outlined in the December 2015 Board of Directors Meeting Minutes.
7. Other members mentioned in the petition who had Honorary Memberships are either no longer members of National Tripoli or if offered an Honorary Membership would continue to pay annual membership dues as they view this as a benefit to the prefecture. Furthermore, one of these Honorary Members was on the 2015 Board and voted in favor of removing the Honorary Membership from the Bylaws.
8. The board has seen the petition and will discuss whether an Honorary Membership or some other mechanism of recognizing members should be incorporated in the Bylaws.

Tripoli Minnesota Board of Directors