By-laws meeting produces trail set of by-laws. Vote next Monday at new meeting time of 6:15.

In attendance at last night's meeting were: Dan Marcalus, April Dahm, Cynthia Keith, John Davenport, Stewart Greathouse, Feico Kempff, Jimmy Couvillon, Ryan Tew, Troy Messina, Ian Webb, and Loren Demerath.

COATES BLUFF UPDATE

Though we spent nearly whole meeting occupied with our primary task of discussing what by-laws our new non-profit organization should have, there was also a brief Coates Bluff Greenway update. We learned that state archeologist Jeff Gerrard may be helping us, that Tim Wachtel has begun discussing the plan with us over email, that David Alexander and others are aware of the project, and that we may take a walking tour of the site with various interested parites soon.

BY-LAWS ISSUES (latest draft of by-laws)

Paid membership:

The group decided that Stewart's idea of having voting members pay membership dues of $5 per year was good one. We didn't list that amount in the by-laws though, to allow the board of directors the freedom to change it in the future. (In fact, everyone in attendance paid their own $5 at the end of the meeting, so we now have 13 voting members on our "rolls"! [Question: would it be a good idea to set up a Paypal button on our home page so people can do that online? I assume we want to be as accessible as possible for anyone that wants to contribute their voice and to support us, and it would help people do that. Just a thought.])

Who votes to change the by-laws:

We had an extensive discussion over the issue of who should vote to change by-laws. Ian felt the board should vote to change the by-laws, though the board should be larger than five people, while Stewart felt the membership should have to vote to change them.
Discussion touched several issues, including whether or not notifying all members of a vote and the issues involved would be difficult, and whether having the organization be responsive to its membership was as important as the group being able to maintain it's mission and cohesiveness. While some noted the ease and convenience of email, others pointed out people can stop reading e-mail from certain addresses once they lose interest.
In the end, the group seemed to favor having the board of directors be able to vote to change the by-laws.

Other issues:

• the number on the board was raised to seven
• the number of officers was reduced to four
• the number of days in advance an official board meeting needs to be called was increased to seven.

We'll be voting on the by-laws, as well as nominating and voting on our officers at next weeks meeting, so if you're interested participating in this landmark moment, please attend, and don't forget your $5 if you'd like to vote!

And on that note, we decided to bump up our regular meeting time to Monday evenings from 6:15 to 7:30 for a bit more convenience. Tea and coffee will be served, and feel free to brown bag.