[Bylaws Committee] Week 1 Recap & Article-Specific Meetings (Scheduling Polls)

[Zachary Yaro]

Hi neighbors,

1. Recap

Thank you to everyone who came to either meeting this weekend or contributed to discussions online!  At this point, we finished a first pass through the first few of the major topics.  To briefly summarize, we:

• Agreed on an overall document structure
• Changed and defined some terminology and formatting for consistency and readability
• Moved some things to the Appendix and footnotes for readability
• Added and revised/condensed the proposed “Purpose” article with our Objective and Values
• Revised and condensed the membership eligibility and admission procedure
• Added the proposed Outreach Committee
• Discussed ways outreach and inclusion need to go beyond just representation on the Board
• Discussed ways to balance wanting to ensure outreach and inclusion with not being so prescriptive we restrict our agility when circumstances change

The full updated text is in 📝 the Bylaws Committee WIP doc, and I also added a tab to that document more comprehensively listing the changes we made.

2. What's next?

Since the next articles up have substantial matters to resolve, and not everyone is passionate about all of them, I am going to plan a meeting to discuss each.  Please fill out your availability for whichever meeting(s) you want to attend!  (For others who want to discuss all of these, sorry for making you fill out your availability several times; if the schadenfreude helps, I have to too 😅)

• Conduct/Ethics - https://www.when2meet.com/?29340178-4buV1
• Board - https://www.when2meet.com/?29340174-8qfs5
• Committees/Working Groups - https://www.when2meet.com/?29340175-HvOzh
• Meetings - https://www.when2meet.com/?29340177-m8cYs

Once again, I encourage everyone who can't make it to in-person meetings, or wants to keep engaging outside those meetings, to leave comments in  📝 the proposed amendments doc, our WIP draft, or the prior drafts that have been available for comment!

Best regards,

Zachary Yaro

[Christopher Beland]

FTR, the draft text in the Google Doc does not represent what I thought
we had agreed to. Our writing process was pretty informal; maybe going
forward, we just need to validate our work output with each other more
explicitly before moving on to the next topic.

I thought we had agreed to combine the Accessibility, Stewardship, and
Wellness sections into a single bulleted list of values, and then add
some which we felt were missing. Something like the following, possibly
with wording tweaks:

<<
When negotiating CBAs and pushing for change, we will value:
* Physical accessiblity
* Parks and urban trees
* Sustainability
* Multi-modal mobility
* Physical, mental, and economic health
* Affordable housing
* Vitality of local businesses
* Fiscal responsibility
* Government transparency
>>

I was also hoping to get more opinions on whether to go further in the
direction of brevity to make the document more likely to get read and
followed vs. keeping the prose if people felt it expressed important
ideas.

Under "Membership Eligibility", I thought we had agreed to "real
estate" not "land", because it's possible to own a building without
owning the land it sits on. I don't recall agreeing to "Lacks a
permanent address"; if we allow employees of local businesses to be
members, why don't we allow people who get social services at SHC but
have supportive housing in Cambridge to be members? I also thought we
agreed that "Operates a business" makes more sense than "Employs
people" because some businesses have no employees.

I'm not sure what's being changed with respect to the current draft,
and I don't know what sections will be added or removed as the full
groups makes major decisions, so I don't want anyone to think I would
be unhappy if we don't use the proposed overall structure. It's a good
one, but I'd be happy with anything most people agree is tidy and
readable, and happy to tidy-up after incorporation or general textual
stability.

I'm also unclear on how the membership eligibility section is changing
from the current one because we discussed it as a from-scratch text
rather than as a diff, and I left before we could circle back to that.
Some of the issues in there are major questions like dropping the
eligibility age to 16 and adding land/building owners, which seem like
they should be dealt with in separate amendments. We didn't really
discuss how text changes would actually be queued up in a meeting.

-B.

[Zachary Yaro]

Hi Chris,

I am sorry I misunderstood where you stood on where we left off with the Purpose section and/or failed to confirm we were looking at the same text before moving on from that.  There is still the note in the doc that Wellness needs to be revised or merged into the other Values; I didn't realize you still wanted to merge Accessibility and Stewardship as well, but I will make sure we discuss that when we next revisit that article!

Under Membership Eligibility, some of those changes are still in “suggestion mode”  from the meeting because, as you said, we didn't confirm consensus on that wording and will need to revisit them later.  Others I also reverted to “suggestion mode”  last night because I realized, while they were in the amendment text we discussed, we didn't specifically discuss those noteworthy changes, so I wasn't comfortable calling them resolved.  I am sorry I didn't ensure we covered all those points before moving on to the next topic at the meeting; I will try to be better about that in future meetings so I don't need to make those notes afterward, and I hope my having already noted those points as unresolved by last night instills a little trust that I am trying keep the doc accurate.

The changes we made are listed as bullets in the “Differences From[...]Last DSNC Meeting” tab of the document (and I just went and added elaboration on why certain ones of those are in “suggestion mode”).  If you think some changes need to be broken down differently than I did, please let me know or insert your own bullets/word changes!

Best regards,

Zachary Yaro

[Zachary Yaro]

Hi all,

Since I know some folks are itching to discuss matters related to the Board, let's plan to next meet at Diesel Cafe, this coming Sunday, March 9th, at noon to do just that!  The first hour will specifically focus on Conduct/Ethics topics related to the Board, and then we will proceed into Board structure & duties, nomination & elections, resignations & removals, and handling vacancies.

Given the amount of meat in those, I am bracing for this one to go longer than our previous meetings, which is why I am not strategically scheduling it at a location that closes by 3 P.M., but let's still try to adjourn well ahead of closing time.  If a topic seems to be at an impasse without any new ideas or compromises arising, I will ask the group to move on and circle back later.  If the topic gets too far into one of the articles that isn't on that agenda, I will ask the group to save it for the later meeting* with time dedicated to it.

As folks may recall, one of the major aspects we need to tackle is what the bylaws do to ensure a Board that people from all demographics, circumstances, and roles in our neighborhood feel represented by.  Our discussion and informal straw poll last general meeting indicated a thorough opposition to the prior Board seat quota proposals, and substantial opposition to quotas as the means to achieve equitable representation, but still support for achieving equitable representation.  I would love for folks to come to the meeting with other ideas on how to achieve that.  I also encourage you all to—with a collaborative spirit toward ideas that aren't done cooking—share your insights on 💬 Brendan's thread about this topic.

*If you want to discuss one/some of those other topics, here are the scheduling polls once more:

• Conduct/Ethics - https://www.when2meet.com/?29340178-4buV1

• Committees/Working Groups - https://www.when2meet.com/?29340175-HvOzh
• Meetings - https://www.when2meet.com/?29340177-m8cYs

(By the way, I know it says “Sign In” for each poll, but it isn't like making a serious account—the “password” you make up is just for updating your availability on the one poll, so you don't need to stress about it being super secure, or even set one at all!)

Thanks,

Zachary Yaro

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Davis Square Neighborhood Council · https://sites.google.com/view/DavisSquareNC · https://linktr.ee/DavisSquareNC
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[Zachary Yaro]

Reminder next meeting is at Diesel Cafe at noon today!  See you soon!

Zachary Yaro