To the BFOGA executive board, and the bylaws committee and bylaws subcommittee,
I am now taking a sabbatical from my volunteer duties as by-laws committee chair and as communications committee chair for a period of one year.
This is an act of necessity since my father is ill, and my sister and I will be helping to look after him as he is now failing at the age of ninety.
Moreover this is an act of preserving what remains of my passion and interest in being a long-term supportive member of our Longview community. I have spent hundreds of hours of interesting work on various projects including the bylaws editing and the Longview Network. I have been glad to help organize sessions for gathering member input. I had a blast working through the naming of our roads.
My rationale is that to continue editing and updating the new version of our bylaws would be ineffective under the present conditions of our community. To give a single example (of many possible), our meeting of March 7 was recessed before an unexpected motion from the floor was presented which would direct the bylaws committee to conduct an investigation into errors and procedural failings. This is not the job of the bylaws committee and should never be. And yet, we were on the brink of allowing a single impromptu motion to direct and expand the work of the committee. I recognize now that my role as seconder was out of order and so now with this writing I officially withdraw my offer to second this motion affirming two principles: One, as the acting chair of the meeting I was out of order to place my name as seconder. Two, this contravenes the bylaw committee's purpose as stated in our current bylaws. As acting chair of the meeting I also accept my part in allowing these unapproved agenda items to come forward. I regret that there was no intervention from the elected leaders or members who should know this is an error. Now we can see the elephant in the room.
The uncomfortable fact that executive board members did not stop this obvious departure from the agenda and the out of order proceedings which followed is just more confirmation that I need to step back, and that our elected leaders do not collectively know how to stand up for good procedure. I would suggest the complete state of exhaustion of the board members contributed to this unfortunate situation, but it is not the main reason.
Dammit, our community does not agree on how to meet together! We do not know how to do it. We have repeatedly bypassed the basics of conducting effective meetings and now it has become very clear that our elected leaders have not been properly trained or prepared. We are getting nowhere. Four and six hour meetings are evidence that we have failed at the most basic level.
I hope that this will remove the time pressure to push a set of documents through. My fear is that we would continue to create confusion by presenting documents that are not based on proven practice and truly shared values.
After a year I sincerely hope our elected leaders will have begun to implement a system that sets and follows priorities, uses proven procedures for conducting meetings, systematically and effectively communicates regularly, and coordinates all committees to help our community to thrive. At that time it will be much more effective to then codify our proven practices.
I am willing to leave the bylaws committee altogether if that is what the elected leadership desires. I am also not opposed to someone else taking over in my place. I will await your reply when an answer is ready.
Thank-you everyone. I remain a fellow member of our community.
Glen Brown
