Pearce, please … you know what I meant. No matter what individual members are doing or saying … no one is speaking for the BoD on organizational issues and that’s becoming intolerable for lots of the membership, me included for sure.
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You are completely misrepresenting the facts with that statement.
The BoD had things arranged for the April election and then the group that is studying the bylaws (after consulting with the DMS lawyer) gave the BoD some information that required moving the election out a month to meet some Texas State requirements.
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That’s how I saw it. But as we know the BoD gets blamed when it rains or if the sun shines.
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@tapper is making a mountain out of a molehill, don’t take the bait John.
False. The best I can come up with is…
Which comes prior, and does not support your argument anyhow.
There is no language to restrict us to precisely 365.25 days, and anyone purporting such is either misinformed or purposely spreading disinformation.
The level of pedantry is well beyond excessive. If we want to go to that extreme, then the board has had zero authority after Dec 31, and we would have to hold an election on Jan 1.
emphasis mine.
The board was elected last year, not this year. See? I can make unreasonable pedantic arguments too!
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How long have these unforeseen Texas State requirements been on the books?
“Lack of Institutional Control” isn’t just a problem in college sports.
I can’t speak to how long they were on the Texas books, but when the bylaws meeting uncovered the issue we reported it, got legal review and proposed a solution very quickly. There is a summary of the proposed solution somewhere here on talk, I’ll see if I can find the post.
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There’s an old saying, that starts with “consider the source”.
I’ve been interpreting and writing law for almost 30 years, and paid well to do so. That includes ordinances, by-laws, Charters, Statutes, contracts, settlements, resolutions, etc etc. At least one of my ordinances was challenged all the way to the Texas Supreme Court - which agreed with my interpretation, and is currently saving you (and every other Texan) a significant sum of money.
Plenty of people at the Space can confirm this, including several current Board members, and the Space’s Attorney.
How about you? Why don’t you let us all know your background, so we can "consider the source?. Mine is a matter of public record.
As to pedantry, I’m going to continue telling the truth, regardless of how badly the former Board wants to hide it. I’ll leave it to the membership to decide for themselves what is and isn’t right, and whether these problems are serious, or whether we should (as you and your fellow Board apologists and defenders advocate) sweep everything under the rug and pretend all is well.
Until you do, please spare me the personal insults and ad hominems.
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I’m headed to the space now and will update as soon as I get there. My apologies for life getting in the way of this important update.
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The language in the Bylaws was meant to provision a 1 year cap on Board terms. The original idea was to allow election schedule flexibility, while also allowing the shortening of terms and/or staggering of terms if it ever became necessary.
Political pressures in 2011 caused us to ratify the Bylaws before the final draft was completed; so there remains some conflicting language that doesn’t allow for some of the originally intended flexibility.
However, I never considered the possibility of the Board being able to serve longer than one year. If it is possible, then it got past us.
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I read the by-laws that way. A missed edit before vote. But even so, the Board has no power whatsoever to vote to extend it’s own term, which pretty much negates the leftover 2.6 provision that’s conflicted. Were there some existential occurrence (death, tornado, etc.) then I think you could argue for a 2.6 safe harbor. By voting to move the election beyond the required one year cutoff, they effectively attempted to extend their own terms by vote - and that is clearly not permitted by the by-laws.
Morever, the legal principle governing resolution where two such by-law provisions are in direct conflict is clear - the specific trumps the general. 4.6 is specific, and right on point. 2.6 is not.
Is it a mess? It sure is. But the membership needs to step up and fill the gap, or its going to get worse.
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It is being corrected by member who care enough to Come to the space and to spend time worrking
on issues
Just because we have been sloppy in the past doesnt mean we can continent to be sloppy
We had a financial system so confusing missing in data that even the CPA firm had to close it out and start over Now we have books that can be audited
We are a million dollar corporation we have to act like it
Here is the facts
The by laws group say this and we submitted it as a one of the questions for the laweyr He asked to speak with su We met till nearly midnight one night,
Then we presented it to the Bod
Davit wanted to meet with us and the lawyer again
When the BoD meeting was held that discussed this the lawyer attended my phone
None of these were closed to member
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Please stop with the if you were only a member that came to space. Their $50 gets them the same membership as you. Also I spent more time working for DMS in my own office than I did actually at DMS. Stop devaluing our contributions just because we don’t practically live at DMS.
Again not actually true. PureTax did not create a new set of books and “start over.” Did they close out prior years like 2010-2017, yes they did. But we still have to go back to 2010 to pull accurate committee reports.
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If you are not Active at the space then you do not really know the folks that are heer, that are doing thing
that are Making the space now. You are out of touch with the space
That is a problem I noted early on. leaders that seemed to ignore what was really happening
I have an excellent example from 2015
The Fibers group was seeking to expand the scope. Inkle weaving came up as a possibility
but there was a problem with the needed loom. A common inkle loom is around 3 ft long
and produces several yards of trim. This was not practical for us, Either Jeanie or I stumbled
on some ini inkle looms for sale, at around $75 each, The link was shared with Walter and within
a few days he had designed and built one and had even figured out how to weave and he
wove a band on it! Several of us was looking at in the CA room and Tapper was there. He
then took the concept and figured out how to make them on the CNC and how to make them available to students at a reasonable cost to students,
CA paid for the materials, he cut them, The parts were bagged in kits that student could buy for $10
When they took a class. To pay for the teaching looms, we needed to have Classes. I placed 2 classes on the calendar This was when approval was needed by 3 Bod member. I only got approval from ONE. Now I should have pushed it, but my hubby had a series of strokes about that time so I was distracted. I think I taught one class while by hubby was in the hospital. It was a ten or twelve students, The second class was not as large, but neither was approved
I appealed the lack of approval and I did not get even the courtesy of a reply
I do not know why they were not approved, either I was considered a bad teacher (of a subject
that I had taught many successful classes in in the SCA) or they had not idea what they where and whey they where needed
Maybe you have a better idea but those 2 to nor reflect well on the power structure at that time
No the past history was not one with a lack of disturbing issues
By the way committee funds are NOT our only finances
I will congratulate you and David on greatly improving the facts of honorariums and teachers and committee payments. We still had far too many credit cards out there
I believe that at one time there were well over 20 member that held DMS credit cards. That was sloppy
Back in those days I felt that most of the members were treated more as customer than as valued members. We could do the grunt work and shut up and be used by our
betters That is the way I felt other opinions are out there
I’m assuming that is just a general sentiment and not directed at me personally. Most members have no clue about the finances and how and who are doing them. Board members put tons of time in, you can ask any past and current members. I doubt they would consider themselves out of touch since they have little time left for making things. Agreed the old approval method to get classes on the calendar was tedious and fraught with errors. I actually remember your class and the loom Walter made. I agreed with it and thought it went on the calendar.
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Lots of folks that are active on Talk are out of touch with what is happening at the space
My opinion, only
It was general
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That was fixed in 2016 with the new calendar system that changed the honorarium approval model from seek active approval by the Board to the present 3 days for honorarium auditors to disapprove model we’ve been using ever since.
No one liked the old model. Not the Board with the emails going back and forth with wildly-varying class descriptions with inconsistent approval criteria, not instructors, probably not classroom committee, and surely not Finance committee.
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You know, I’ve had enough of “the value of a member is based on how much time they spend at the space”. If that is truly how DMS feels about their membership I will be happy to find something better to do with my monthly donation.
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It’s actually a pretty small proportion of people that really think this is the case. My definition is much more objective: if your membership and use of the 'Space doesn’t make it harder for others to make or learn or teach or do the supporting logistics, infrastructure, etc. activities that make the first three possible, then you are a perfectly good member in my estimation.
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You know, I’ve had enough of “the my monthly dues entitle me to gripe and whine, and not do anything to help the space”. DMS is built on volunteers, and volunteerism, not on just the monthly dues. While we value every member, many of us that volunteer on a regular basis don’t appreciate people that rarely or never set foot in the building telling us how “Things Should Be Done, and By God Do It Now!”
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