[Businessmtg] Motion #4 Update

[Steve Rankin]

Hi Lynne,

I believe that Mary answered some of your questions and I touched on others in my other responses.  However, we did not respond to your query about the number of positions on the Steering Committee.

Our Founding Statement says "The Steering Committee is composed of all elected officers, Chair persons of committees (but not sub-committees), two 'founders' (the original founders of A Serenity Place or those most nearly so), and two general members of A Serenity Place."

As I said earlier this evening, ASP ran for 10 years with only 2-3 on the Steering Committee.  Myself as Founder & List Administrator, a Greeter Chair, and sometimes a Secretary.  When the members of ASP were working on the decision of how to set up the service structure after the transition from my ownership, they created additional positions.  

Time has not only showed us the flaws in my thinking when I wrote the Founding Statement, it has also showed us the flaws in Motion #4 developed by the members in 2006.  The bad news is that the Founding Statement is cast in firm cement and is virtually impossible to change, so love it or hate it, it is what it is.  The good news is that Motion #4 can be amended or replaced.  And the other good news is that just because the Founding Statement lists other positions on the Steering Committee does not mandate that those positions must be filled.  In fact, we have never filled all of those positions, and the one attempt to do so quickly demonstrated the wisdom in NOT trying to do so.  Prior to that time, we had been pretty successful at filling the critical positions as they occurred.  Subsequently, since May 2017 we have not been successful at filling the core service positions.  That is 4 years of NOT filling core service positions; a fact that we need to take an honest look at, lest we spend far too much time chasing the goal of filling service positions that perform little if any service for ASP.

The Steering Committee's suggestions regarding the service positions in Motion #4 are what we are discussing now.  
My personal suggestion is that we ignore other service positions that serve little to no purpose in ASP and/or we don't have sufficient qualified members to continuously keep those positions filled.  This is most specially aimed at the two at-large positions.  

Hugs,
Steve







-----Original Message-----
From: Businessmtg On Behalf Of travelynne2 via Businessmtg
Sent: Saturday, May 8, 2021 8:55 PM
To: steve at serenitysys.com
Cc: ASP Business <businessmtg at asp-afg.org>
Subject: Re: [Businessmtg] Motion #4 Update

Thank you Steve for all the information and a very clear explanation of the changes. The web link below to the document with the side by side comparison had the end not included in the hyperlink which made the link not work. I pasted it in below for anyone having issues with it. 

http://www.serenitysys.com/A_Serenity_Place/Business/nbm/asp_service_structure_COMPARISON.html

These proposed changes seem well thought out and I have no issue with any of them and support them. I do have a couple questions about the steering committee that I think are relevant, but please let me know if this is not the time to discuss them. 

I joined ASP a little over a year ago and for most of that time you have been the acting List Administrator and acting Secretary. Why have those positions not been advertised? Is it normal to have a long lag to fill these positions? 

The reason I bring this up is that currently the steering committee members are you, Anne K., Anne O., Kelley and Mary (right?). These changes will eliminate Anne K.’s position which would leave only 4 people on the steering committee. I understand the GR rep would be added to the steering committee. But if it takes a long time to fill these positions (again, I don’t know what is normal), then that would leave only 4 people on the steering committee instead of the 7 described in this document. 

Thanks for all you do for ASP! 
Hugs,
Lynne 

Sent from my iPhone
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