[Eg-oversight-board] Statement of Clarification

[Andrea Buntz Neiman]

All,

At its heart I think that this is a communication breakdown.  For many 
years we have been casual about things that perhaps should have been 
more strictly controlled, but we have been a small and mostly friendly 
community and we were able to get away with this.

The points about communication are well-taken and I am hopeful that they 
will be addressed.  Obviously there are things that need to be more 
formally written down and communicated and I trust that the current 
Board will do their best towards getting this in hand.

I respect the fact that Tanya has made her concerns known out of a 
desire to improve the project and the conference, and hopefully the EOB 
uses them to improve communication and coordination at future events.

That said, I strongly object to the assertion that a member of the EOB 
who is a vendor cannot act as the Conference Liaison.  We have several 
current and former Board members who would fall under the designation 
"vendor", and to restrict activities or roles of duly-elected Board 
members because of their employer seems to me to be a dangerous 
precedent.  There have been multiple vendor-employees on the Board over 
the years and they have all served faithfully and honorably in the best 
interests of the project and the community.

I understand that there is a long history in the library world of 
"vendor" being something of a dirty word, but we have a bit of a 
different dynamic here in the Evergreen community.

All EOB members are *openly elected by the community* and entrusted with 
the ultimate financial responsibility and viability of the project.  If 
the community has elected an EOB member, that EOB member should be 
trusted to execute her/his responsibilities in whichever form they 
take.  Grace was not, in this case, acting as a vendor or in the 
interest of her employer -- she was acting as a duly elected EOB member 
and and duly appointed Conference Liaison.  I don't think that this 
rises to a conflict of interest under the Rules of Governance; rather, 
it was an attempt to ensure that all vendors were held to the same set 
of expectations.

Should the Board feel that the conduct of one of its own is so egregious 
that removal is merited (let me be crystal clear that I think this has 
definitely NOT occurred here), there is of course a procedure for that.  
Failing that, the Board should be free to determine its own 
representatives to committees, SFC, etc. as outlined in the Rules of 
Governance.

I have every confidence that the communications issues will be resolved 
and we can all move forward in a spirit of cooperation. I am of course 
no longer on the EOB but I'm happy to help in any way that is needed.

A.


Andrea Buntz Neiman, MLS
Librarian II, Public Services
Kent County Public Library
408 High Street
Chestertown, MD 21620
410-778-3636 x2115
www.kentcountylibrary.org

On 5/18/2016 9:01 AM, Grace Dunbar wrote:
> Hi Terran,
>
> On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 5:47 PM, Terran McCanna 
> <tmccanna at georgialibraries.org <mailto:tmccanna at georgialibraries.org>> 
> wrote:
>
>     For the benefit of the record, I would like to add two things to
>     this message that I feel were obfuscated:
>
>     >>a.On February 17, I was notified by the Board Secretary, Chris
>     Sharp, that Tanya had been going to him privately to resolve
>     issues for the conference and to deal with the SFC, excluding the
>     conference committee altogether.<<
>
>     Chris Sharp was the designated liaison to the SFC at the time. The
>     role of SFC liaison is to facilitate communication between the SFC
>     and other parties that have to work with the SFC.
>
>
> That's actually not true.  The stated role of the Representative to 
> the Conservancy is to "instruct the conservancy on the project's 
> behalf".  The role is for that person to communicate to the SFC /as 
> directed by the EOB./
>
>
>
>     >>b.If the issues discussed between Tanya, Chris, and the SFC
>     included the PINES sponsorship issues or anything regarding the
>     Emerald Data sponsorships, I would point out that there is a
>     potential conflict of interest in that involvement since GPLS is
>     Chris’ employer and Emerald Data is their vendor.<<
>
>     Grace neglected to mention that GPLS also has a current contract
>     with Equinox. Equinox is as much "our" vendor as Emerald is.
>
>
> I think you're missing the point.  If the conference host felt it was 
> a conflict of interest for me to be involved in sponsorship issues 
> simply because I work for a competing vendor, I fail to see how it is 
> NOT also a conflict of interest for someone else on the EOB to be 
> asked to handle matters when they have a relationship with that very 
> vendor.
>
> Grace
>
>
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