Rachel Davis, a former Carnegie Board member and long time volunteer in the Carnegie Music Program, has tried everything from hiring a lawyer to giving radio interviews to get "abuse of power" by City management and the Board of Directors at Carnegie Centre to stop. It hasn't stopped. So she announced yesterday that she is boycotting her volunteer position until changes are made.
Davis outlined her reasons for boycotting her volunteer position in the following email sent to Carnegie management including Executive Director Ethel Whitty and Vancouver City Manager Judy Rogers; City Council including Mayor Sam Sullivan and Councillor Peter Ladner; Carnegie supervisory staff; Carnegie Board members including Secretary Rolph Auer, and media:
This is to inform you that I am boycotting my long-held position as a Volunteer Music Leader for the Carnegie Community Centre due to the following reasons:
1) Carnegie's City Staff employees failure to follow proper procedure in matters of Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy requests by Carnegie members. The Carnegie has been investigated for this before, and found wanting, but still the rules of FIPPA are not being complied with.
2) Carnegie's City Staff employees, namely the Executive Director, acting as tellers in the election of Carnegie board members, in contravention of the Carnegie constitution, and in obvious conflict of interest.
3) The failure of the Carnegie Community Centre Association Board of Directors to comply with the Carnegie constitution, and produce a teller's report at CCCA Board elections.
These last two failures in procedure have resulted in a call for a recount of Board of Director Election results due to the CCCA membership's mistrust of the proceedings. The recount was done in exactly the same manner as the first time, unfortunately, only further disregarding the membership's obvious desire for accountability, and thereby deepening the mistrust.
It is extremely distressing to me to feel I have to take this measure. I am a community volunteer, I have contributed to Carnegie since it's opening, and have always considered it a beacon of light in a dark place; but I having tried to remedy these problems with due process at Carnegie through many other means, and I find myself unable to continue to be officially involved in a volunteer program that contributes to a City-run establishment that systematically breaks the rule of law, land, and it's own constitution.
I have written emails, talked to the President of the Board of Directors and the Executive Director, held meetings, called the City, hired lawyers, filed FIPPA complaints, given radio interviews to CBC Radio One, and Co-op Radio, written articles, had articles written in the Sun and other publications, and many other members have also done many of these things as well, in an effort to resolve the situation of rampant disregard for the law of the CCCA Constitution and the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Our earnest attempts at communicating our need for basic human rights are met with platitudes such as "We've always done it this way", and the abuse of power goes on. These abuses are many and varied, and well documented at Downtown Eastside Enquirer ,but I bring forward these three specific examples because they are so egregious, and so directly connected with the City of Vancouver, therefore, I am hoping, they are easily resolved.
If City employees begin complying with the rules of FIPPA, and stop putting themselves in conflict of interest by being tellers in Board elections, and if the elections tellers report is made a part of the proceedings at Board elections as it should be, I would be overjoyed to take up my volunteer position again. I have always have taken pride and enjoyed making a contribution to the lives of the CCCA membership, but I sadly must boycott my volunteer services in an yet another, but not final, effort to end the abuses the CCCA membership and I have tried so hard to resolve in a myriad of other ways.
Sincerely,
Rachel Davis
Senior Member of the CCCA
Showing posts with label Roberts Rules. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roberts Rules. Show all posts
Friday, September 12, 2008
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Special Meeting Tonight Over Demand for Recount of Election Results at Carnegie
There will be a Special Meeting at 5:30 p.m. today in the Theatre of the Carnegie Center. Members will vote on whether to have a recount of the June 2008 election results. Members have been demanding a recount.
Board President Mathhew Mathhew has announced that at least 30 Carnegie members have to show up to make the election valid. But Carnegie member, B.B., alleges that number is "arbitrary". Sort of like the arbitrary 150 signatures, Mathhew said members had to get on a petition before the Board would consider a recount.
Even if a recount is granted, it is unlikely that the results will be trusted by members. The election was just too sloppy. One member has pointed out that the ballots are photocopied and that anybody could photocopy a few more, add some Xs, and substitute these ballots for others. This could have been done over the two months that have passed.
Some members such as B.B. say that the request for an election recount is actually pre-mature, that members should first demand that the Board release the results of June's election. To date, Carnegie Board of Directors and Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty (who is given an automatic seat at the Board) have avoided releasing the Teller's Report from the June election that would reveal how many votes each candidiate got. Members have been waiting for two months for this report. The Board is required by Roberts Rules, which was adopted by the Board, to make the Teller's Report public. But fair elections have never been a strong point of the Carnegie Board or Whitty; they after all colluded with the locking of an elected Board member out of the building for a year, denying him access to Board meetings.
Carnegie member, Jim A., who is usually not politically active, is one of several members asking about the Tellers Report. He asked Whitty why the Tellers Report was being concealed from voters. She responded that it was tradition not to release it.
Board President Mathhew Mathhew has told a different story than Whitty. According to B.B., Mathhew said the Teller's Report would be printed in the Carnegie Newsletter. Three Carnegie Newsletters have been published since that promise was allegedly made. No Teller's Report.
A primary reason behind the demand for a recount and for copies of the Teller's
Report is that Rachel Davis, a popular candidate amongst members who frequent Carnegie on a day to day basis, didn't get elected. Davis was the only incumbent who had spoken up -- and continued to speak up -- about the fact that homeless man, William Simpson, was banned from the building two weeks after Carnegie members elected him to the Board last year. Whitty told him he would not even be allowed into the building for Board meetings.
Paul Taylor, Editor of the Carnegie Newsletter who was forced to retract libelous commentary about the homeless Board member, and Jean Swanson, a paid organizer with the Carnegie Center Action Project on homelessness, stacked the election with pals who were instructed to vote for a slate which didn't include Davis. Low income Carnegie members who had not planned to run, report that they were instructed by Taylor or Swanson to show up at the election as they were going to be nominated. Taylor and Swanson were manipulating the poor.
Swanson's stacking, though, also involved bringing unfamiliar faces to the Carnegie election and getting some of them elected to the Board. These virtual strangers will now be making decisions affecting the lives of regular users of Carnegie. So much effort expended by homeless advocate Swanson so that incumbent Rachel Davis, who was speaking up about the banning of an elected homeless man and the banning of other members without just cause, would not get re-elected. Here is one of the few election results clearly revealed: Jean Swanson is not an anti-poverty activist, she is an anti-democracy activist.
Board President Mathhew Mathhew has announced that at least 30 Carnegie members have to show up to make the election valid. But Carnegie member, B.B., alleges that number is "arbitrary". Sort of like the arbitrary 150 signatures, Mathhew said members had to get on a petition before the Board would consider a recount.
Even if a recount is granted, it is unlikely that the results will be trusted by members. The election was just too sloppy. One member has pointed out that the ballots are photocopied and that anybody could photocopy a few more, add some Xs, and substitute these ballots for others. This could have been done over the two months that have passed.
Some members such as B.B. say that the request for an election recount is actually pre-mature, that members should first demand that the Board release the results of June's election. To date, Carnegie Board of Directors and Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty (who is given an automatic seat at the Board) have avoided releasing the Teller's Report from the June election that would reveal how many votes each candidiate got. Members have been waiting for two months for this report. The Board is required by Roberts Rules, which was adopted by the Board, to make the Teller's Report public. But fair elections have never been a strong point of the Carnegie Board or Whitty; they after all colluded with the locking of an elected Board member out of the building for a year, denying him access to Board meetings.
Carnegie member, Jim A., who is usually not politically active, is one of several members asking about the Tellers Report. He asked Whitty why the Tellers Report was being concealed from voters. She responded that it was tradition not to release it.
Board President Mathhew Mathhew has told a different story than Whitty. According to B.B., Mathhew said the Teller's Report would be printed in the Carnegie Newsletter. Three Carnegie Newsletters have been published since that promise was allegedly made. No Teller's Report.
A primary reason behind the demand for a recount and for copies of the Teller's
Report is that Rachel Davis, a popular candidate amongst members who frequent Carnegie on a day to day basis, didn't get elected. Davis was the only incumbent who had spoken up -- and continued to speak up -- about the fact that homeless man, William Simpson, was banned from the building two weeks after Carnegie members elected him to the Board last year. Whitty told him he would not even be allowed into the building for Board meetings.
Paul Taylor, Editor of the Carnegie Newsletter who was forced to retract libelous commentary about the homeless Board member, and Jean Swanson, a paid organizer with the Carnegie Center Action Project on homelessness, stacked the election with pals who were instructed to vote for a slate which didn't include Davis. Low income Carnegie members who had not planned to run, report that they were instructed by Taylor or Swanson to show up at the election as they were going to be nominated. Taylor and Swanson were manipulating the poor.
Swanson's stacking, though, also involved bringing unfamiliar faces to the Carnegie election and getting some of them elected to the Board. These virtual strangers will now be making decisions affecting the lives of regular users of Carnegie. So much effort expended by homeless advocate Swanson so that incumbent Rachel Davis, who was speaking up about the banning of an elected homeless man and the banning of other members without just cause, would not get re-elected. Here is one of the few election results clearly revealed: Jean Swanson is not an anti-poverty activist, she is an anti-democracy activist.
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