An End to BayLisa Board Follies

Sun Feb 6 21:51:02 PST 2005

There's been some dramatic mail to the mailing list about
the BayLISA  board and its doings. A special meeting of
the board has had as its principal outcome a request that as
an uninvolved party, I attempt to clarify matters for the members.

The details are long, involved, and show most of the participants
not in their calmest and most productive moments. Trying to
explain them is like giving a blow-by-blow description of a
bloody but inconclusive battle -- it's gory and tedious to
everybody but those who there, and they have viewpoints
so different they are impossible to totally reconcile.

The general outline goes like this: BayLISA, like most volunteer
organizations, has a bunch of excitable and overcommitted people
on its board. A particularly bad confluence of events led to
a very heated argument occurring while the organization's
legal status is unclear (its incorporation had lapsed but the
paperwork to correct this is in the hands of the state). This
turned up the heat under the argument even further, leading
to a chain of hasty actions many of which people regretted
later.  That's really unfortunate, but it happens sometimes,
and it's not fatal. Everybody involved really wants the
best for BayLISA.

While things were going wrong, Mark Langston resigned,
leaving a vacancy which according to the bylaws will be
filled at the next regular board meeting on the first Thursday
in March. Any member who wishes to be considered for
this vacancy, including Mark, is welcome to attend the meeting.
In fact, any member who wishes to be part of the board is
encouraged to attend any board meeting -- there's plenty
of work to go around.

The only formal action that the board took at the special meeting
was to pass a motion intended to decrease the heat level,
stating that the board will not officially censure anybody
until the state updates its incorporation status. Since the
BayLISA board has so far managed to avoid ever censuring
anybody, and the incorporation status is expected to
be updated any minute, this shouldn't represent an undue
hardship. But it's one less thing to worry about while
the organization's status is up in the air.

Elizabeth Zwicky
zwicky at otoh.org