OVA Bylaws Progress Report – 2024 November 5

The OVA Bylaws Committee meets on the first Tuesday of each month at 1 pm in Suite B of the OVA offices. This month’s meeting was held today, November 5, and this is a brief report of what took place. See last month’s report for more background and a synopsis of progress made up until that time.

Today’s meeting almost didn’t happen, because three of the four members (Jerry Gladstone, Heidi Klyn and Christel Antone) were sick, but Heidi and Christel came anyway, and the meeting was convened around 1:18 pm. Prior to that time, the guests, of which there were at least five, including myself, had an open discussion with Steve Spillman, the Committee chair.

After approval of the minutes from the October 1 meeting, Steve opened an Open Forum session, at which several of us spoke. I suggested that the Committee should aim for maximum transparency, and complained that no minutes had been published for some meetings held during the summer, nor any information about the advice given to the Committee by legal counsel. Committee members generally agreed that maximum transparency was a good goal, and Steve described some of their ideas for achieving it. The following items came up during this discussion:

• Approval of minutes by Email, so that Committee minutes might be published within a few days of each meeting, rather than not until the following month. Christel liked the idea and promised to publish minutes promptly on the OVA web site.
• Christel also promised to look into the missing minutes and try to get them published.
• The Committee has reported verbally at each month’s Board meeting, but there has been no written report in the meeting packet. I believe that they will try to include a written report in the future. This will assist any OVA member who wants to review what progress the Committee has made.

There was a brief discussion of the draft schedule for Committee activity, but this was deferred until Jerry Gladstone can be in attendance.

The draft charter for the Committee was approved, and will be submitted to the OVA Board for its approval at this month’s Board meeting. This means that we will be able to read the proposed charter in the Board meeting packet. It should be noted that the scope of the Committee has been expanded, in the charter, to include all OVA governing documents, so the new name of the Committee should be the OVA Governing Documents Committee, or something similar.

Recruitment for additional members of the Committee was discussed. Steve emphasized that he was interested in recruiting members who would have an open mind and have diverse perspectives. Christel promised to put an announcement in the next Inside Oakmont Eblast and in the next available issue of the Oakmont News (probably the November 25 issue). Each candidate will need to submit a Bio or Resume, and there will be a deadline for such submissions. The Bios for candidates recommended by the Committee (and maybe for all candidates) will be included in the meeting packet for the OVA Board meeting at which their membership on the Committee is to be considered.

The Committee approved a recommendation for Bern Lefson [please forgive me if I have misspelled his name, and let me know] as a new member.

Finally, a non-regular meeting of the Committee was scheduled for Tuesday, November 12, at 1 pm in Suite B, to consider items not acted on today, in particular the draft schedule. The intent is to finalize the schedule for recommendation to the OVA Board at their meeting in two weeks. The meeting was adjourned at 2:04 pm.

Conclusion

I am optimistic that this process will result, eventually, in governing documents that meet all legal requirements and that are modernized to include, for example, membership votes to approve large projects. But the Committee is determined to do the job right, and that will take a considerable amount of time.

I urge all OVA members to monitor the progress and to speak up on issues of importance to you. Have patience, but don’t forget that the results of this process will affect every one of us, in our rights to collectively control the future of our community, and in our pocketbooks.

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