OK, I'll bite on the whole "I want the Nats in my backyard" thing.
I did the Nats this year on a total budget of $2,862.30. That is based on 38 members and 21 guests. I need to redo the final numbers again since several people joined on site at the last minute, final expenses, etc. Before we had the raffle and sold the extra t shirts, the club had taken in $2,606.25 in meet fees. After the raffle we should have a few bucks to turn back into the club to pay website hosting fees in the future, club stickers, club t shirts, etc.
Atlanta cost nearly $10,000 ALONE for the track rental I want to say. Divide that by 38 paying members and you let me know where you can find 38 people that are willing to pay that to run around AMS for the day. Oh, then there's the banquet cost, t shirts cost, autocross cost, autocross insurance cost, etc. How much is the cost of that meet up to now?
The club just doesn't have the membership numbers to support a meet of that scale ever again. It just won't happen. Sorry. The club needs to rethink they way we do meets to combine our activities as much as possible with existing infrastructure to keep costs as low as possible.
The new blood that the club brings in is not the same demographic that it used to be. Most new members are on the younger side and don't nearly have the disposable income like the rest of us do. $360 for the hotel, $50 for Carlisle, $50 for the meet, food for three days, several tanks of gas. That was a lot of money for our memebrs that were on a tight budget.
I mentioned during the banquet that the main idea of this meet was to do things that were as cheap as possible or even free. (I arranged a FREE private brewery tour on Friday morning of the Nats. People loved it from what I could tell.) The meet was about having as much fun as possible on as little money as possible. The only legit complaints I got all weekend was the hotel was being dumb about parking and people kept erasing their room cards. I'll take that for complaints.
If you want a meet in your backyard you will have to step up to the plate and be willing to put in tons of time, phone calls, and some of your own money to make it happen. I could only make this Nats happen with Carlisle being close by. I made three trips to Carlisle before the Nats on my own time and my own money. There's no way I can help get the logistics for a Nats in say Dallas setup without living there.
Anyone can submit a proposal to host the Nats next year. I will eventually put out an official call for that. I still need to wind down from this year and finish all the things I still have left to do before I will post it.
Carlisle will be an official Division 1 event next year. The hotel has already asked us to come back and stay with them again. I have no problem doing things there again, just don't expect it to be on the same level as it was this year.