President Kim Ufford, AM has appointed a Nominations Committee to prepare a slate of officers for the coming year. The Committee is composed of

• Georgie Stillman, ASA, Immediate Past President,
• Thom Underwood, ASA, &
• George LeBaron, ASA.

The term of office runs from July 2006 to July 2007. If you are interested in serving your San Diego ASA Chapter as an officer, or wish to nominate someone to serve, please contact a Member of the Nominations Committee ASAP.

Nominations will be taken from the floor at the February meeting or via email. The Nominations Committee will then present their recommended Slate of Officers for 2006 – 2007 at the March meeting and elections will be held in April. The newly elected officers will be installed at the June meeting.

Participate in your Chapter. Call or Email your nomination today!

Please welcome to our newest member!

Dana Ann Gray, who has already joined us for several Chapter meetings, is now a member preparing for the 10-month trip towards Candidate status in Personal Property.

Dana is employed by J. R. Westfall & Co.as an Associate Appraiser. She is on the board of the Scripps Ranch Fire Safety Council and is a member of the Girl Scouts of America.

Please join us in officially welcoming Dana and supporting her development.

Los Angeles Chapter Hosting First Annual Event - February 22 - Cerritos, CA

This one-day Symposium brings together national managers in Engineering, Art, Machinery & Equipment, and Estate & Gift to present critical issues affecting appraisers and valuation.

Current actions regarding appraiser penalties under IRC §6700, §6701, the injunction process under §7408 and Circular 230 are highlighted—potentially a major issue for anyone practicing before the IRS. Specialty breakout sessions will confront new and ongoing issues concerning partial interest discounts, conservation easements and façades, non-cash charitable donations, and other often contentious issues.

There is considerable savings for pre-registration - February 15th deadline - and is approved for CE credits .

Details including presenters, panelists, schedule & registration form (pdf document)

Meeting Location

Our preferred meeting location at the Hilton is no longer available for meetings and dinner. We are in the process of checking out other possible venues. The plan is to move the meetings around for a while and “test drive” a few places until a consensus seems to form about a preferred meeting spot. The Board’s impression is that we should try to stay in the Mission Valley area or somewhere slightly North of Mission Valley on the 163 or I15 corridors.

If you have any ideas for places we should be checking out please contact any of us on the Board.

Please Note: Our March meeting will take place at the Kings Inn in Mission Valley. Members are encouraged to bring their favorite Appraiser toolkit items for sharing – we’ll have a large comfortable room to spread out! See details below.

Please Volunteer

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last decade (and probably even if you have) you know that Georgie Stillman has been the driving force behind almost everything our Chapter has accomplished. She has been in charge of the newsletter, meeting programming, USPAP programs and keeping track of Chapter deadlines such as officer nominations, to name a few. I think it is unfair of us to ask so much for so long from one person. The Board is hoping that, with the talent and experience that exists in our Chapter, we can recruit individual members to write an occasional brief article on a topic of interest to them for our newsletter and solicit ideas for speakers. Please volunteer to write an article or let the Board know about any ideas for speakers you may have.

Kim Ufford, AM

The Appraiser’s Toolkit

What’s In Your Work Bag?

What essential tools, gadgets, ID guides, forms & worksheets and other paraphernalia help you on-site or in the office?

Please join us for this round table, multi-discipline discussion. Show & tell about those essential tools that you just can’t get by without!

Come, Learn & Share.

Contact Pamela Bensoussan, ASA if you wish to participate.

Do you do expert witness work?

It has its peculiar joys, rewards and stress

The law defines an expert as...

An individual with scientific and/or professional training – degrees, courses, practical work - in a field that is well above the level of an average person-on-the-street, and who, as an expert, applies ALL the accepted principles, practices and discipline to his field of knowledge, to reach a conclusion.

(I’m paraphrasing here, the actual wording that currently prevails in California can be found in a case colloquially called “Daubert”, any attorney, or web search, can turn it up.)

This expertise may allow the individual to give evidence about how he/she determined an airplane slid off the runway, the brakes on the car failed, the emerald was a fake, a chair wasn’t Chippendale period – but the important factor is that the “so called expert” applies techniques accepted as standard in the field, and that the conclusions are supported by evidence. Opinions not supported by evidence, and not reached by sound techniques, are suspect. Opinions not grounded in fact (science if you will) gets you in big fat trouble.

This is just the beginning of the expertise required of an expert witness. Explaining your conclusions to your attorney or client is often as difficult as it is to an opposing attorney in a deposition or judge & jury during trial. Court is theatre, not in terms of acting, as in playing a false role, but in terms of using the tools of delivery and persuasion to show the audience that you have done your job correctly. Your clients don’t often understand the specialized world of your expertise and you must educate them, lead them along a path of data, research and logic to arrive at understanding your conclusions.

There is a big cast of protagonists and antagonists – including your attorney(s), the other attorney(s), their staff and minions - before you ever get close to a courtroom, judge & jury. Before you get to a courtroom, it is your job to show your team that your procedures, analysis and conclusions are correct. Make no mistake about it, this is sometimes not a happy experience for all. Your conclusions may not be what your client wants to hear.

In being an effective expert witness you will need not only your skills in your field, but tools from psychology and drama in order to get your points across. Did you know that there are many texts out there for expert witnesses on what to wear, how to gesture, when to smile and make eye contact with the jury?

I always think that my expert witness work will succeed not so much on what I know and how “right” I am, but on how well I am able to persuade others. I hope my research and analysis are already worked out and substantiated before I am presenting my conclusions! (I don’t belong in court if it isn’t!)

Your San Diego ASA Chapter is working on putting on an Expert Witness seminar sometime in the near future. I hope all of us will find this program exciting because every job we do should be given as much care and thought as if it was under the scrutiny of the courts.

I look forward to seeing you at the next chapter meeting.

All the best,

Georgie Stillman, ASA

If you are involved in a community activity, special event, interesting assignment,
or know of courses being offered, please let us know.
Contact one of your board members!

ASA WEBSITE REFERALS?

Are you getting business from visitors to our San Diego Chapter website?

We can see the “hits” but we want to know if you are directly getting calls or emails after someone visits the site. Please Contact Jan (619-501-5444) and tell us if you have received a contact from someone who found you through our Chapter website.

Speaking of "hits"...

Since we began marketing our website through the Google AdWords program, results have been remarkable!

Compare to the same months last year:

If you have any comments or questions regarding this program, please contact one of our board members!

2006 ASA International Appraisal Conference
July 30–August 2, Brooklyn

Preliminary schedule at the Conference website

Seats still available for GJ205 - February 1-4 in Tucson

Details on ASA website...

Introduction to Personal Property - UC Irvine - February 23-26, 2006

Details at UC Irvine website...

USPAP for Personal Property - UC Irvine - February 27-28, 2006

Details at UC Irvine website...

What's Planned at UC Irvine?

April 27-30, 2006 - PP/GJ202 - Personal Property Valuation Methodology-Research and Analysis
June 1-4, 2006 - PP308 Appraising Antiques and Decorative Arts
September 14-17, 2006 - PP/GJ203 - Personal Property Valuation--Report Writing
October 12-13, 2006 - PP445 Report Writing Review
October 14-15, 2006 - PP443 Charitable Contributions: Do's and Don'ts
November 2-5, 2006 - PP/GJ204 - Personal Property Valuation--The Legal and Commercial Environment

Special Interest and Connoisseurship Courses 2006

March 18-19, 2006 - PP424 California Art & Design
May 1-2, 2006 - PP420 Silver: Is It Real?
August 12-13, 2006 - PP428 History and Craft of Handmade Oriental/Persian Rugs
September 18-19, 2006 - PP444 Appraiser's Tool Kit: Fakes, Frauds and Reproductions

Members Need Education Units to Reaccredit Their ASA Designation Every 5 Years

Read about the ASA reaccreditation requirements at the ASA website. (To view this information, you must log into the Members Only section, then, in the left column, click on the Reaccreditation link.)

For a list of courses in our area, please visit our Education page.

This newsletter is published (September through June) as a service to the ASA Members and the community it serves. If you would like to receive this publication, please contact Jan Giamanco- 619-781-8588.

Newsletter Editor - Georgie Stillman, ASA

Newsletter Published by G-Force Services

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