I wanted to provide you with a very brief update on the steps we have taken over the past year to provide even better customer service and support to our Members.

While we have been weathering one of the worst economic storms in our country's history, and globally, we have worked during the Year of the Member to maintain and restore key programs and services critical to your work to protect lives in the built environment.

As you heard from Board Treasurer Steve Jones earlier, we have reintroduced the Customer Call Center; revamped the complimentary Chapter Training Benefit Program; expanded services for Chapter Members to support attendance at ICC and Chapter events; and increased funding for the ICC Foundation Code of Honor Scholarship Program, which provides scholarships for Members to attend our Final Action Code Development Hearings.

We also continue to look for innovative new ways to serve you. For example, our cpd ACCESS initiative to use technology to expand participation in the code development process launched this year and a steering committee of volunteers made great progress on this effort.

Thousands of our Members were registered to vote through our new Electronic Voter Designation System. It is a user-friendly online system to ensure that Governmental Voting Representatives are eligible to vote on code changes and at ICC events such as this Annual Business Meeting.
This summer, ICC and the National Fire Protection Association founded the Coalition for Current Safety Codes to advance safety by advocating for the adoption of current building, sustainability, electrical and life safety codes. Since then, the coalition has grown to more than 400 members.

We also have been strengthening our ability to provide exclusive benefits to our Members such as on-demand code opinions and discounts on products and services.

On a daily basis the Code Council continues to make more tools and resources available to you to help ensure your voice shapes the future of our professional association:

• Examples include the debut of the 2012 International Swimming Pool and Spa Code, and the 2012 International Green Construction Code.
• We also focused on providing vibrant online discussion forums and active Membership Councils for our Members to participate in a dialogue, gain easier access to the tools you need to do your jobs and help guide the direction of your association.
• The Code Council Board of Directors recently announced the formation of the Corporate Membership Council. It establishes a forum for the corporate and regulatory communities to build better relations, and identifies and examines issues of mutual interest related to the built environment. The Corporate Council joins the five existing discipline-specific Membership Councils: Building Official, Fire Service, PMG Official, Sustainability and Global.