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Archiver > USGENWEB-ALL > 2002-07 > 1026499083


From: Teri Pettit <>
Subject: [ALL-L] The first vote supposedly about incorporating
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 11:38:03 -0700
In-Reply-To: <3D2DD00D.26685.1EF23D64@localhost>


On 7/11/2002 4:35 PM, "Bridgett Schneider" <> wrote:

> On 11 Jul 2002, at 19:06, Beaufort wrote:
>
>> My proof is my personal observations over several years. Your
>> interpretation of PP and executive session is one such case. Another
>> goes way back to when the AB decided that a majority vote of the
>> membership to Incorporate was not what the voters really meant to say.
>> So they discarded it.
>
> There *was* no Advisory Board when that event took place. It is my
> understanding it wasn't a vote to incorporate but just to find out if
> there was enough interest to "STUDY" the possiblities of doing so.
>
> Bridgett

Bridgett,

Your understanding is basically correct, except that the committee was also
enjoined to explore other possibilities as well. I get tired of hearing
people who weren't there say that the members voted to incorporate and were
overruled by the leadership simply because the vote was too close.

The phrasing of that ballot item was to appoint a committee to explore the
possibilities of forming "a more formal organizational structure."

A corporation was one of the possible structures to be explored, but not the
only one. The discussion on the lists before the vote made it VERY clear
that voting "yes" only meant that you wanted to study the possibilities of
incorporating AND OTHER ALTERNATIVES.

The committee WAS formed, and DID study incorporating and other
alternatives. So nothing at all was "discarded" about the vote results.

The only relevance that the closeness of the vote had to the decision to
form an unincorporated organization was that the committee felt that if
nearly half the membership did not want to even EXPLORE the POSSIBILITY of
forming ANY kind of more formal organization at all, it was unlikely that
more than half the membership would want to incorporate. Such a result would
mean that virtually everyone who voted to explore the possibility of forming
some kind of more formal organization would approve of incorporating.
Considering the pre-vote discussions on the public lists, where quite a few
people had to be reassured by supporters of that ballot item that voting yes
on it would NOT be interpreted as implying any approval of incorporating,
the committee felt that the evidence was that there was not a majority in
favor of incorporation. Based on that logic, which I feel was sound, the
more formal organization structure that the committee decided to put before
the membership for vote was the structure that we have now, with the ByLaws,
the Advisory Board, etc.

(I voted yes to establish the committee, and no on the ByLaws, and I
probably would vote no on incorporation, although I have not completely made
up my mind yet on that.)

Teri Pettit
(A member of KYGenWeb since before there was a USGenWeb)

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