Mike, In hindsight I'm sorry that I did not make a motion to amend Director Norton's motion to include all of the Vice Directors. (It seems clear to me that since Director Norton was making a main motion, a motion to amend would have been in order according to Robert's Rules.) At the very least I should have made a comment to the effect that I preferred to have the Vice Directors included in the committee of the whole. I will try to avoid making that same mistake again in the future. 73, Mickey K5MC ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Mileshosky" <n5zgt@swcp.com> To: "arrl-odv" <arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org> Cc: "arrl-odv" <arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org> Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2010 10:33 PM Subject: [arrl-odv:19178] Re: Parting Remarks Mike -- The first question I asked while, I believe you were still in the room, was if a motion to resolve into a committee of a whole could have been amended. I asked because, while I didn't know any better about Robert's Rules on this particular procedure, I would have liked my vice-director, Dwayne, in there with us for one reason: The same reason why Joyce was at the front table this time due to Frank's absence...to have, ideally, seamless leadership and knowledge of all issues in the event of absence of a Director. 73, Brian N5ZGT On Sun, 18 Jul 2010, raisbeck@comcast.net wrote:

Hello All,

I gather that my absence at the â?oclosing ceremoniesâ? on Saturday was noted. Tom tells me that he did put in a plug for Boxboro â?" Thanks, Tom !! At 11:30 or so, when the board decided to dissolve into a â?oCommittee of the Wholeâ?, I did a quick cost/benefit calculation; the value of 4 hours of my personal time versus the likely impact of my closing remarks on the board. The personal time won by a landslide, so I headed home to work in the garden.

It is traditional at the end of our board meetings for us to congratulate each other on a job well done, throw about a few compliments, and wish each other a safe trip home. I do wish a safe trip to all of you who havenâ?Tt already left, and hope that each of you who already has will have experienced an uneventful ride home. I look forward to seeing all of you in January. You may or may not look forward to seeing me â?¦

As to the job well done, I offer no kudos. It was not well done. It was barely a D- performance.Â

It seems that we as a board require a major, service threatening crisis, something that goes to the core of our hobby, in order to make any headway.

During my tenure on the back bench I have lived through the enforcement problems,  code wars, and the BPL crisis. In each case, board members were passionate. We stayed up until midnight working on the problem, drafting motions, debating positions. It was hard, it was gritty, and it got results. Perhaps not always perfect results, but results that have stood the test of time. It seems that we are at our best when we have a dragon to slay.

The July 2010 performance was anything but that.  We had a motion on voting. It should have read something like â?odirect the staff to develop a proposal for  an electronic voting mechanism and present in Januaryâ? and it should have passed with no more than 5 minutes of discussion.   Instead, it entailed an hour (or was it two?) of wrangling and nitpicking â?" crawling through details. And then there was the A&F motion that directed the staff to implement project accounting without implementing project accounting.  In the end it came down to â?oA&F ought to do its job, and staff ought to do its job.â?Â

Both of these, as well as most of what went on in between (awards excepted), were senseless micromanagement.

OK, so the board did not perceive any really big issues on its plate (though it should have). That happens. There are three approaches that can be taken when lacking a burning NOW issue to tackle:

1 â?" donâ?Tt have the board meeting. Probably not the best idea, since we all benefit from the personal encounters, but preferable to what was actually done. At least, it would have saved some money.

2 â?" micromanage. It demoralizes staff, annoys the rest of the board, wastes time, and accomplishes little or nothing. This is the path that was chosen, and results will be as predicted.

3 â?" look to the future, and try to guide the organization and the service in a useful and productive way. This is the job of a BOD, and it is what should have been done. Sadly, an opportunity was missed. Some of the things we could have worked on include:

a)      Succession planning.  Dave, Harold, Mary, and a whole bunch of senior people are getting old enough that they could retire (or leave in a fed up huff) at any time. These people have the knowledge and experience that make the League tick. What are we going to do when they leave? Not one word about this at the meeting.

b)      Membership building. OK, our grand plan to increase the number of hams has given us only a barely perceptible blip. Why? A complete critique of these programs AND ESPECIALLY our underlying assumptions seems in order. Again, not a peep at the meeting.

c)       The upcoming UHF/microwave spectrum grab. Chris filled us in on the potential. Iâ?Tm amazed that no one took it and ran. Not even a committee appointed â?¦

I think the best hope now for the League would be a proposal by the FCC to take 440, 900, and 1296 and give them all to broadband. Then maybe we could get some creative juices flowing.

---------------------

The above was what I had planned to cover in my closing remarks. Sadly, the closing remarks are the only time that a Vice Director gets to speak and the rest of the Board is obliged, more or less, to sit down, shut up, and listen. However, as most of you will recall, we had a little dustup last time around when the Board decided to deal with some apparently important matters out of the view of the Vice Directors. That involved the use of email lists. New Vice Directors â?" ask your director about it â?" let me know if you get a coherent explanation.

This time around something similar happened â?" the Board decided to dissolve into committee, and to exclude the Vice Directors.

I was profoundly disheartened that NOT ONE DIRECTOR questioned the wisdom of this. A Vice President did complain when Mr. Norton attempted to exclude VPâ?Ts â?" Jay cited the Bylaws, interpreting them to mean that VPâ?Ts cannot be excluded, but again, no mention of Vice Directors. Let the record show that from a â?ostatutory interpretationâ? point of view, I believe Jay was correct, but it makes the contrast no less glaring.

Jay â?" Please explain to us why an IVPâ?Ts presence (recognizing that an IVP will never vote on an issue) at that session is more important than Vice Directorsâ?T presence (folks who could well have to deal with the results of whatever transpired.)

Kay  - I suspect that the decision as to who to include in such a session belonged to you, not the of the maker of the motion.  Perhaps even the decision to go into such a session at all was yours. Please explain why you decided to exclude Vice Directors.

Dave Sumner â?" You are perhaps the best interpreter of the rules of order in the place. Please explain who makes the call as to who to include or exclude from such a session, and whether or not to go into such a session. Perhaps my assumptions above are wrong?

Each Director (you too, Tom ...) â?" Please explain why you chose to not object to the exclusion of Vice Directors.

I await your responses.

73,

Mike

K1TWF

_________________

Mike Raisbeck

Manager, Quality Engineering

Conexant Systems, Inc.

201 Jones Rd.

Waltham, MA 02451

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