FRESNO FAQ- Moving on Up! (and over)

WHY ARE WE MOVING?

Despite a strong relationship with the California Army National Guard and Camp Roberts, escalating conflicts in the Middle East could impact Camp Roberts’ ability to house us. Although the base has continually demonstrated their commitment to our events, we will always lose priority to troops and units preparing to deploy. With additional meeting spaces being taken off line for remodeling or demolition, we need to rent additional tents. These additional costs would need to be passed along to the delegates by way of fee increases, and we don’t want to have to do that. Camp Roberts also does not meet our accessibility needs. Rather than limit who can attend the MLC due to circumstances beyond their control, we would rather be more inclusive.

IS THIS GOING TO BE A PERMANENT MOVE?

After T&E II, we will assess and see if the move to Fresno is a good fit for us. If it is, we will be signing a three-year contract. We are not planning on moving our Model United Nations program.

WHERE ARE WE MOVING?

We are moving to the Fresno Convention Center and the surrounding hotels (click here to see the map). Based on last year’s numbers, we will be housing delegations in all the hotels listed.

WHERE WILL WE BE HOUSED?

We are using hotels right next to the Convention Center as well as some additional hotels by the Fresno airport. We will be providing free transportation from those hotels to the convention center and back at regularly scheduled times throughout the conference. We will be rotating which delegations will be housed at the airport hotels and which delegations will be housed at the convention center hotels. The hotels have comparable hotel rooms and one hotel isn’t better than another.

WHY FRESNO?

After looking at college/high school campus’, YMCA campgrounds, and other military bases, none of them met our housing/meeting space needs. Fresno is centrally located, easy to get to, and is willing to cut us a deal so that we can keep costs down. It also has room for us to grow.

WILL THIS AFFECT THE COST?

No, fees will not increase this year. Hotel costs for the Fresno conference are included in your registration fee. Moving forward, we will do additional fundraising to keep costs down.

WILL THIS AFFECT THE CONFERENCE TIMES/DATES?

Yes. We will be starting on Saturday, January 17, 2015 and concluding after the dance the evening of Sunday, January 18th, 2015. Registration fees include housing for Sunday night. It will be much like the Sacramento conference, where sessions are over on Sunday night, and everyone leaves on Monday morning.

WILL THIS AFFECT THE PROGRAMING?

Nope! We will have plenty of room to do all the things we normally do during T&E II, from meals to Joint Session to committees.

WILL THERE BE ADDITIONAL SECURITY?

Yes, there will. Security will be run very similarly to how we handle security in Sacramento. We will have additional security and the city of Fresno will have additional personnel there as well.

HAS FRESNO WORKED WITH A GROUP OUR SIZE BEFORE?

Yes, the Future Farmers of America bring 4000 teenagers to Fresno for their annual conference. They gave us a wonderful review of their experience with Fresno.

ADDITIONAL THINGS

By T&E I, we will be providing delegations with:

• Updated dress code for T&E II.

• T&E II boundary lines.

• How hotel rooms will be selected.

We will be holding two informational webinars for advisors and two for our program volunteers, where we will review the above information and answer as many questions as we can. We will have dates in next week’s bulletins.

If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail rolf@calymca.org.