Mar Vista Community Forum

What Happened to Our Bylaws?

Aug 21, 2002

At a pre-certification meeting held at the Daniel Webster Middle School on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2002, with our DONE co-ordinator, Amber Meshack, it was made clear that our application for certification would not go forward as planned unless our Bylaws were changed as required by DONE and submitted to DONE by August 2. The required changes were mostly requests to clear up areas that were considered ?“vague?”.

Accordingly it was decided that the Bylaws Committee needed to be convened to deal with this. In answer to a question, Tom Ponton agreed that this was the old Bylaws Committee chaired by Doris Nelson that had worked on our Bylaws for many months and that had succeeded in getting them approved and adopted by the general membership in November, 2001.

A meeting of the Bylaws Committee was called for 7 pm two days later, Thursday, July 25. A report of that meeting was posted on this website under a date line of August 8 in ?“Mar Vistas Community Council News?”.

When Alex Utas spoke to Tom Ponton on the following day (Friday), he asked Tom to please let him have a copy of the Bylaws as submitted to DONE. The first Alex saw of the amended Bylaws was tonight, August 12 when Amber Meshack sent them out.

They contain much more than ?“clarifications?”. There are MAJOR changes. Where the Bylaws approved in November, 2001, contemplate up to 25 directors, the amended bylaws call for 13. Officers are to be elected by roll call vote, not by secret ballot. Stakeholder status is for people living, working or owning property in the area, - apparently now excluding active members of neighborhood associations active in the MVCC area. These are not clarifications of ?“vague?” text, this is an unauthorized rewriting of our bylaws by three members. Even the districting for geographical director elections is unfair.

This is more of what some of us have complained about: we are looking for democracy, openness and inclusion. What we get is paternalism, secretive actions and exclusion. As a minimum, the changes should have been approved or ratified by a MVCC meeting called for that purpose. There was time for this.

Red Line Version Here

AU