On 20 February 2013 11:17, Andrew Turvey <andrewrturvey(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
I presume this decision was taken at the last board
meeting on 9-10
February. It's very disappointing that the draft minutes of the last board
meeting still haven't been published, a week and a half after the meeting. I
asked when this would be published over a week ago and was told that a
reasonably final draft was available on Sunday. Chapter policy says that
"Volunteers are encouraged to ... hold the Trustees and staff to account,
through public and private discussion". [2] It's impossible to do this if
we're not even allowed to see on a timely basis the decisions that are being
made by the board.
Publishing draft minutes is quite unusual for a board - most I'm aware
of don't publish minutes until they are formally approved at the next
meeting (which can be months later) - so I'm not sure a week and a
half really qualifies as untimely. I doubt the minutes say much, any
way. The discussion was presumably in camera, so there will just be
the final decision in the public minutes and we've already been told
about that.
So, transparency doesn't seem to be an issue here. Proper board
recruitment processes do seem to be an issue, though - it doesn't
sound like they even interviewed anyone else... When Saad and I were
co-opted, we had been through the election process and secured the
support of members (just not as much support as other candidates), so
the board could have reasonable confidence that we were appropriate
choices. When you are co-opting someone that has been completely
uninvolved before, a much more thorough review process is required and
it doesn't sound like that happened in this case.
(To be clear - Greyham sounds like a very good choice, but I see no
evidence that he was the best choice available.)