Legislative Officers & Aides Get Ready

Tuesday, July 3rd, was the first day for legislative officers and aides to begin work for General Convention (GC) prior to the "official" first day of convention on Thursday, July 5th. GC 2012 will be eight days compared to ten days in prior triennia, and only legislative days count as official days of convention.

Deputies checking in at the JW Marriott in downtown Indianapolis

The Colorado deputation has been assigned rooms at the JW Marriott, one of three hotels that are linked directly to the Convention Center by elevated walkways. Since the walkways are not air conditioned, it gets pretty steamy in these glass enclosed "tubes" when the sun is shining directly on them. The photo of the Convention Center was taken from the walkway this afternoon as I went to register and pick up my badge and binder.

Entrance to the Indiana Convention Center

This is the 4-inch binder that will fill up with resolutions
by the end of General Convention. Every deputy has one.
While many deputies chose to download a PDF or ebooks
version of the Blue Book, the perfected resolutions coming
out of Legislative Committees arrive as paper copies and
are filed into these binders by deputies for their own use.

View of the first floor of the Convention Center.

The Rev. Mike Houlik, who's a volunteer in the Registration area,
talking with Bishop Rob O'Neill just outside the Exhibit Hall.
Colorado has a large number of dedicated GC volunteers who
come as supervisors and team leaders of other volunteers.

The entryway into the Registration area and Exhibit Hall. 

The exhibition hall is the first big hall, followed by the House of Deputies, and then the House of Bishops. The worship space is at the JW Marriott instead of the Convention Center as a cost savings option. Since we've rented so many sleeping rooms, the ballrooms allocated for daily worship were offered by the hotel for free. The budget for this GC was greatly reduced in the budget approved by the 2009 GC, and many cost savings options had to be implemented to make GC work. The good news for deputies is that the GC Office negotiated great deals on free Internet in our sleeping rooms and a $10 per day discount on food in the hotels' restaurants.

Deputies Lelanda Lee and Larry Hitt from Colorado

Legislative chairs, secretaries and aides at an orientation session.

From Colorado, legislative officers and aides include Lelanda Lee, vice chair of #18-Ecumenical Relations; Zoe Cole, secretary of #5-Canons; and Janet Farmer, legislative aide to #13-Prayer Book, Liturgy and Music. The Legislative Orientation was from 2:00 to 3:00 PM, followed by an hour session just for the Legislative Committee secretaries. This GC, secretaries are each furnished with a flash drive on which they will be recording the successive drafts of the resolutions. The secretaries will also file their daily reports and minutes using the flash drives.

Second Lay Alternate Janet Farmer with Bishop Philip Duncan
from the Diocese of Florida, who is the bishop vice-chair of
Lelanda Lee's committee, #18-Ecumenical Relations.