Whether or not you agree with the ruling, the BoD holding secret, unannounced meetings to make sweeping changes about DMS policy, without input from the membership at large, has really bad optics. This should not be the way our BoD operates.
Unannounced special meetings have their place, but that is not for non-emergency situations. Policy decisions that effect the entire membership should be discussed as an agenda item and voted on at a regularly scheduled BoD meeting.
9 of the 11 meetings this BoD has had in the last 2-3 months have been unannounced. Admittedly several of these meetings could easily be considered emergencies, but not this last one… especially since a regularly scheduled meeting was already on the calendar less than 10 days away.
while i can not say for certain (not on the board nor do i pretend to be) i think this all stemmed from a complaint either a member or the city had (either from expansion stuffs or just different fire Marshall stuffs) and in order to skirt around that this was issued. i for one am happy about this new rule, we are no longer a clubhouse. these rules are put in place for the betterment as a whole. granted i do enjoy some libation but not around a hot glue gun or goddess forbid a laser.
the previous bod had meetings as well that were important. the new board just had a striking blow early on in the game but they are still rolling.
im sure if you talk to the board they would be more than willing to talk about why they did this. so far nothing has stated NDA so im guessing it can be talked about.
I did not enjoy voting on this. Unfortunately it became obvious that this rule was needed urgently. I read every comment on the thread where this was discussed. Feel free to suggest modifications or discuss further for the next board meeting which is less than two weeks away. If you cannot wait two weeks please consider whether or not you were the reason we had to have a rule.
I think that bad optics is the perfect description for the ludicrous display for the cameras that I cannot unsee.
Did it ever occur to the board the OP of the thread in question was posting out of spite because he had been banned for Makerspace?
I have been here a long time and never have I seen anyone operating machinery while intoxicated. I have seen a few drunk people but those should be dealt with on a case by case basis and habitual offenders should be punished.
Please don’t skew the issue, but I think the OPs tread is about changes in unannounced (i.e. secret) meetings not about the drinking issue (apologies if I’m incorrect). I’m ok with the rule, just not how it was implemented especially after all the BoD candidates who are now sitting members stated they would be transparent and all that. The ship has sailed so no need to rehash it at a real board meeting.
No ship has sailed, we posted minutes promptly and can modify the rule as needed at the next board meeting. Voting on emergency items at a special meeting doesn’t engrave the rule in stone, never to be changed again.
In my opinion, the shocking part is that a non-emergency rule was made in a non-scheduled meeting. It doesn’t matter what the ruling was (much), just the fact that it wasn’t an emergency, and the talk thread about it wasn’t couched as an agenda item that was coming up in a scheduled BoD meeting.
I don’t have a dog in the hunt about drinking, as I don’t drink much or often.
The only adjustment I’d like to see done in the upcoming meeting is a process where the BoD or maybe Education can grant some kind of exception when needed…for example in the Essential Oil distillation class.
I get it. Locking down the calendar without passing adjustments to the honorarium guidelines isn’t great optics either but I know that was in response to an emergent issue as well. If I understand what Julie’s response is there were things on camera that were also making this an emergent issue. How those optics change under those circumstances I am not sure.
Actually it was an emergency as the drinking onsite had gotten out of hand. The police were telling us they have been out to DMS 20 times since April. He also was happy to come through the front door instead of around back.
Comes back to don’t make us make a rule. Due to our lease and our insurance we had to make a rule since it has become a problem.
