Looking at the agenda, an item was added to: “Enaction of Member Meeting Items”, requesting that “Actions approved at the latest Regular Member Meeting should be officially enacted by the Board”. This is an item that deserves a far more critical consideration, than might be expected. Please consider the actual ramifications of this resolution, if adopted.
There are approximately 1000 regular members of the Dallas Makerspace, and some additional number of add-on members.
At its best, votes arising during the current membership meetings represent 0.3%-0.4% of the actual membership.
According to our Bylaws, Board members, and only Board members, are responsible for making the decisions necessary to operate the space. This is appropriate, since they are also charged with representing the entire membership, and not just the wants and wishes of a tiny minority (0.3%) of that group.
You can make excuses for the reason that membership meeting votes are so small, in an attempt to equate that to some form of democratic action, but the fact remains, no part of that meeting is representative, nor have any of the members assumed any responsibility for their votes and actions. It simply cannot honestly be argued, that permitting a tiny fraction of our membership to overrule and bully our Board, is in any way a positive thing. It remains that 0.3% of the membership does not in any way represent the membership as a whole, and that fact cannot be argued.
We elected Board members to represent us. When taking that job, they assumed an important legal fiduciary duty to us all. Each of them knows there are important consequences for their votes. Each of them knows they must thoughtfully represent us all. By virtue of their position, they are also far better informed than the standing membership.
There is absolutely nothing Democratic, smart, or sensible, about allowing 30-odd un-elected people, responsible to no one but themselves, to dictate the policies and spending of the Dallas Makerspace, and to neuter our Board into an ineffective group of toadies.
How many of that un-elected gang of 30, would you vote for to lead us in a Board election? Do you really want them to sneak in through the back door and assume command of the Space?
Also according to our by laws, as of the last member meeting, 34 voting members were all that were needed to be present to allow 18 of those members to remove any board member or to modify those by laws.
Any organization should adhere to the concerns/desires of its customers/members/shareholders. An active membership is vital to an organization like ours.
Of our 1000+ members, less then a third enter the building in any quarter. And any of them could choose to be a voting member.
BTW, I too agree the agenda item is a poor idea, but for an entirely different reason.
That begs another serious discussion about the definition of appropriate Notice, as required by the Bylaws, and what constitutes legal notice of an election.
This certainly does not constitute a check or balance, since allowing such a tiny fraction of the membership to subordinate the board, is permitted absolutely nowhere in our bylaws, and justifying it requires invalidating the remaining 99.7% of our membership, and eviscerating the authority of our elected Board.
And their replacement must be elected, and assume the full responsibilities of a Board member.
And are you really arguing, that 34 unelected members should decide matters for the Space?
How many of these members actually use the space on a regular basis? This question could be answered by the badge reader records. I’d guess that the population impacted is less than 1000.
Everyone has a chance to come out and vote at the monthly meetings. If they chose not to, then, to quote Douglas Adams “that’s your own lookout”.
Those who are passionate about DMS will attend, those who just want to ride along won’t attend. About the same, I’d say, as the participation in our current government voting processes.
Some of those who attended the monthly meetings on a regular basis are now on the board. Thus, the answer to your question is > 0.
I’m torn on the direct vote proposal: It does allow much faster implementation of ideas, but I can also see how it might yank DMS in many different directions at once and make us ineffective.
The by laws specifically provide the procedure to do exactly what I described. The numbers are dictated by the members who are willing to regularly attend the membership meetings and therefore ask for voting rights.
Your concerned about the potential misuse by a moderately sized group of members, but not the clear violation of our rules by the incredibly small number of members who have been board members?
The alternative to direct membership supervision of the board would be legal proceedings, which would be very costly for the space, and the board.
The same arguments were used to allow slaves to have only 3/5’s of a vote, or to allow only property owners to vote in elections, or to pass a test, or pay a poll tax, etc.
To posit arguments that claim that one member is more important than another by virtue of X, is a perilously slippery slope.
Calling 0.3% of the membership “moderately sized”, does no justice to truth Walter. As to violations of the rules, that’s an entirely seperate matter, and I think, an overstatement of reality. I don’t believe anyone has been willfully violating rules, rather, I think it has simply been unclear as to what those rules really are. While I agree that we should follow our own rules, I’m not willing to venture into the land of calling folks culpable of deliberate wrong-doing, because I believe they are trying to do the right thing, with no mens rea present.
Getting 18 (which is actually 1.5%) of our members to agree on something clearly makes it moderately size group. Please don’t make such alliterations when you talking letting 0.4% (5) of our members run things with no checks or balances. And that is 0.4% who were elected with only 3-5% of our members voting for them…
It seems like I read in another thread that asking for voting rights but not showing to vote often caused issues. This is why I haven’t asked for voting rights. I would love to have them but don’t have time to deal with all the politics at the space. I would just want to vote on the topics I understood and felt were important to me. The others I would not spend the time to understand and not vote.
Current BoD Election
Since percentages are being bandied about, a look at the last BoD election at our annual meeting for member involvement is probably warranted.
Note: Members eligible to vote is a subset of all member classes, persons eligible for and opting for voting rights is a subset of that, and those opting to vote is a subset of that.
The last had BoD 98 votes cast out of about 900 members eligible for voting at the time (total membership was around 1,050+ at the time) or about 10.5%. So the highest vote getter* had about 6.7% of eligible voting members (~60% of votes cast) while the lowest had 4.7% of eligible voting members (~50% of votes cast)
The number of people actively involved and voting is still a small number, either in direct membership voting or voting for BoD. But they are for the most part the same people that make the Space function volunteering time to make it work. Point being, a small number of people are actually deciding things but they are opting to become involved enough to take part. I see nothing being usurped or people being unrepresented but rather folks forgoing their right to become involved in person or by proxy.
I was using the base value of 1,200 members in my percentage calculations. While family members can’t actually vote, they are still members and I believe should be included in the calculations.
You can request voting rights and for any issues you aren’t interested in voting on, you can ask another member who is present to vote your proxy. If you want, I would be glad to. And you can vote your proxy to abstain. That allows for the meeting of quorum and still not ‘acting’ on any issues you are uninterested in.
I have been working with @ESmith and @frank_lima on some needed changed to the by laws and either next month or the following we will have agenda items for individual by law modifications up before the membership. I encourage anyone who is either willing to attend or willing to send their proxy to become a voting member and influence the direction the space takes on issues.
This is covered by a rule (not in the by laws), and as usual it isn’t particularly well written. Your interpretation is reasonable, but so is mine.
I think the intent was to grant voting rights to members who have been ‘on the books’ continuously for 90 days.
Your interpretation would allow someone who was a member years ago and let their membership lapse rejoin and immediately start voting on issues about the space. It would also allow a member who has only joined for a month at a time over a few years to become a voting member as soon as they have paid for three months, even if those three months were spread over five years.